Until my accident, I was always out there on the front lines, cutting out a chunk of every week to be there. To be doing something. To fight the injustice and wrongs that we seem to do so casually to each other.

So how can I not fight for myself?

As soon as that big brother of mine gets close enough, I give him a solid kick in the groin with all the power of a little girl’s leg behind it. And it hurts him. I know it hurts him. I can see it in his eyes. I can see it in his body language.

But he doesn’t buckle. He just stands there, and I watch the pain leave his eyes. I see him grin at me.

“You just don’t get it, do you?” he says. “You might have put this world together in some little dark place of your mind, but it was never yours. It was always mine, little sister. What I say goes and only what I say.”

“Bullshit.”

He gives me a casual swat with his hand that sends my little child’s body tumbling to the grass.

“Don’t you sass me, little sister,” he says. “I purely don’t have the patience for it.”

My head is ringing, but I force myself to sit up. I can feel the heat of a welt burning on my cheek. But I’m too mad to pay attention to either. Too mad to consider the consequences of fighting back, if only with words.

“You don’t have the patience for it?” I say, getting to my feet. I feel dizzy and my voice sounds so weird—thin and childlike. “You arrogant piece of—”

He hits me again—still with an open hand, but harder now, enough to make me cry out and send me sprawling once more. Before I can even think of getting up, he’s standing over me—towering, larger than life. He puts a boot on my shoulder and pushes down until it feels like my shoulder is going to snap.

“Where’d you get all this fight in you?” he asks.

He leans down, peering into my face. The motion puts increased pressure on the weight of his boot. Tears of pain leak from my eyes.

“Not that it matters none,” he tells me. “It all comes out the same in the end. You do whatever the hell I tell you, when I tell you, the way I tell you. Or I just break you like a twig.”

The weight of his boot lifts for a moment, then he brings it down hard and bones snap in my shoulder. He grins as I cry out.

“And here’s the fun part,” he says.

He grabs me by my hair and hauls me to my feet. My arm dangles limply from the broken shoulder and pain flares in sharp, dark waves until I can barely stay conscious.