Hollis
Hollis always grinned when this happened. He couldn’t help it.
The aftermath wasn’t his favorite, for obvious reasons. But this? The way James’s knuckles felt as they slammed into his gut?
It made him clench his teeth.
Hollis was good at dodging—adrenaline always slowed down time, so he had the leisure of watching punches slice through the air. Hollis had taken enough hits in his life that he’d gotten good at making them miss. It wasn’t like James was a slouch at this though; he was a haymaker for sure.
James’s face twisted with rage, eyes darkening. The corners of Hollis’s mouth ticked up.
Most of the time, when people fought Hollis, they were yelling at him too. But James was silent as he slammed his fist, sharp and violent, under Hollis’s chin, cutting Hollis’s smirk off. His head was still tilted, face warming in the midday sun, when James backhanded Hollis hard enough that his shoulder met pavement.
It felt real good to lie there for a minute.
James didn’t even give him a second to breathe. He scraped Hollis off the ground, pinned him to the brick wall. Slotted close, thigh to chest, he shoved his broad hand across Hollis’s throat. James pulled his arm back, biceps bunching with muscle to continue punching Hollis in the head, and Hollis realized at once that he couldn’t take it.
He flinched, closed his eyes. Waited for his vision to explode in red and yellow, but the hit never came. When he got the courage to look, James was staring back at him hard.
Then James let him go. Watched Hollis’s knees buckle without his support, saw the heels of his boots skid in the gravel, pathetic. But he didn’t mock Hollis, or tease.
“Leave me alone,” James said instead. Pulling his backpack onto his shoulders. “You don’t always have to be such a dick.”
Boy
Hollis Brown looked up.
Annie was staring at him, blocking out the sun.
He scrubbed the back of his hand across his face, smearing the blood beneath his nose.
Annie’s frown got deeper.
“I didn’t do anything.”
She rolled her eyes. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe that.”
“Oh come on! There’s nothing I could say that would hurt more than James Miller’s right hook. He almost broke my fucking jaw.”
Annie opened her backpack and pulled out her roll of Hello Kitty Band-Aids. She wiped his cuts roughly, spraying them with antiseptic, then she pressed a kiss to the scrape across Hollis’s knuckles.
“Maybe if you bitched at him less, your jaw wouldn’t be almost broken,” she snapped, merciless. “Yulia isn’t going to be happy.”
Hollis let himself fall gently back until he was flat on the pavement again.
The thing about being friends with only girls was that they held him accountable for his actions. He got scolded and berated and pushed to be better. But he also got Band-Aids. Even kisses sometimes, if he played his cards right.
Annie sprayed antiseptic all over his face, then chucked the bottle at him hard enough to hurt.
Annie
Annie and Hollis lived next door to each other and walked to school together every day.
It was the only reason someone like Annie had become his friend in the first place.
Hollis was fine, but Annie was cool. She cut her hair herself and made her own clothes and jewelry. She had big brown eyes, wide sharp shoulders, and cheeks that flushed pink in any season.
She was the school photographer, so Annie knew everyone. She dated guys from student council, guys on sports teams, guys who did mathletes, guys who smoked weed and thought they were cool, no social group seemed off-limits.
She was the kind of girl who could sit down at any lunch table and no one would look at her sideways.
Annie Watanabe could do it all.
But instead, she was there. Right beside Hollis, always.
Scream
Yulia Egunyemi leaned against her Dodge Challenger and waited for Annie and Hollis to stumble across the parking lot. Hollis wasn’t heavy, but Annie was small, and he had at least a foot on her. His long arm dangled over her shoulder, welts turning vivid and red.
“You’re such a dumbass, Hollis,” Yulia shouted when they got close enough to hear.
“It was James Miller,” Annie yelled back. “Hollis won’t tell me what he said to him, so I’m sure it was awful. As usual.”
Yulia helped Annie shuffle Hollis inside so he could lie across the seats on his stomach. Then she slapped the back of his calf hard.
“Ow! Fuck!”
“Shut up.” Yulia slammed the door.
She hopped in the front of the car, turned on the ignition, and squealed out of the parking lot.
“Where are we going?” Hollis griped.
“Urgent care. I heard that James got a scholarship for mixed martial arts. Who knows what he rattled around in there.”
“I’m fine, just take me home.”
“No!” Annie shouted.
“I’ll pay the fucking copay, but you owe me,” Yulia snapped. “I don’t care if you don’t have any money—figure it out.”
Hollis stayed miserable and quiet until they pulled in to the urgent care parking lot. Yulia sucked her teeth in disgust as they helped him into one of the waiting room chairs.
Annie settled down beside him while Yulia handled the bill. She plucked at the thread from a hole in his jeans.
Yulia
Even though he had known Annie longer, Yulia was Hollis’s best friend. She got him in every way there was to get someone. They just clicked.
Yulia was tall and very dark, like a supermodel. Eyes slender and lionlike, a jaw sharp and glamorous. She dressed like she was going to a casting and didn’t let the stares stop her. She took to farm culture in furs and thigh-high tights. The only reason Yulia wasn’t the most popular girl in school automatically was because she was the kind of New York chic that small-town people didn’t like. Plus, her and her family were the only Nigerian immigrants for miles around.
A trust fund angel like her shouldn’t even be in a podunk place like this.
Her pa was a real estate developer who moved their family to town to work on a nearby housing development. They were supposed to have stayed for just a year, but the project was taking longer. All projects near Rose Town did.
So here she was, three years in. Trapped with the rest of them.
Gray
Hollis had nothing fractured and nothing broken, just bruises and burst vessels and shame. Annie and Yulia bundled him home, fast as holy chariot.
Yulia agreed to be paid back in bread and demanded Hollis bake it for her by the end of the week.
Annie helped Hollis into his house and put him to bed. She scraped her acrylic nails across his cheek, soft, while he held himself together.
Hollis watched them leave.
He waited until he heard the sound of Yulia’s car peeling out of his driveway to cry.
Rot
Hollis didn’t know any other way to be.
He had a temper. Not the kind that makes you lash out at your friends and family. But . . . his mouth got away from him. You couldn’t be like that when you were like him. It bucked the social order.
He wasn’t a loser. But if someone popular asked to copy his homework, he shouldn’t just snap “Go away” at them if he didn’t want problems. If he missed a shot in gym and one of the jocks called him “butterfingers,” he shouldn’t whirl on them and ask about their parents’ divorce. But he did.
James Miller was tall, blond, popular, and had about fifty pounds of muscle on Hollis.
Hollis told him he was going to die in this town.
No one’s parents had much money for college, very few people figured out how to leave, but James was trying and trying hard. Punching Hollis into a brick wall a few times was the correct response to hearing his greatest fear tossed right in his face.
Annie was right, he was an asshole.
Not to her and Yulia, of course, but the fact remained.
Hollis turned on his side and coughed hard. He swallowed his own blood, wiped his tears on his sheets.
It was ironic though. That James was so scared of never leaving this place, when Hollis was sure he’d make it out.
Hollis would have to stay though.
His bones belonged to this soil.
Home
They lived in a forgotten American dreamscape. A sliver cut from time.
There were other towns like it: coal towns, lumber towns. Places of Industry left to rot when some factory everyone worked at boarded up or government investment ran dry. Where people put down roots and built homes and schools and churches. Lives dependent on work.
An economy dependent on work.
Most of these kinds of towns eventually died. The young moved away, the elderly expired, and the wind turned their houses into wood and stone sculptures.
That was the best-case scenario.
The worst-case scenario was a town full of hungry people. Parents driving hours to other cities for work, paint peeling and metal rusting, time slowing and slowing until it stood still.
Good enough to keep things going. Not enough to ease anyone’s suffering.
Just enough that people refused to move away.
They stayed, caught. They died there.
Hollis understood why it chilled the sweat on James’s back. ...
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