We’ll deal with this at home,” my mother whispered, pressing a dripping bag of frozen peas against my arm as if cold could erase what had just happened.
The peas were already thawing.
Water slid through the plastic and down my skin, but the cold never reached the real pain.
That lived deeper, inside the arm I had thrown up over my head when my brother swung a metal baseball bat at me in our hallway.My entire right side throbbed with a hot, pulsing ache that made me feel both dizzy and horribly awake.
Across the room, the bat still lay where Marcus had dropped it after the impact.
It rested half in shadow, half in the yellow light from the kitchen, as ordinary-looking as a forgotten piece of sports equipment.
That was the disturbing thing about violent objects once they stopped moving.They looked harmless.
They let everyone pretend the danger was over.
“Marcus didn’t mean it,” Mom said, though we both knew intent had nothing to do with the shape of my arm.
“He was upset.
