My eyes caught on the discoloration. Something about it made me pause. Logan and Adam were twelve-year-old boys, so bruises were pretty common. But this one looked extra mean. I wondered if he’d been in some sort of skating accident.
Logan pulled me out of my thoughts then when he turned to asked me, “What happened?” His face was full of concern. Despite his anger, his voice was soft when he spoke to me.
“He called me a b-i-t-c-h,” I said, feeling instantly embarrassed that I spelled out the bad word. I made myself look at Bobby and saw the fear mixed with anger now. “Twice.”
At this, Adam whirled me behind him and moved toward Bobby to try and rush him, but Logan was already swinging his fist, moving quicker than lightning. The smacking sound of skin on skin as his fist connected with Bobby’s cheek would have made it to the swing set, where I heard the audience of other kids begin to yell “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as they ran over to swarm around us.
It was chaos. Logan kept raining down punches on Bobby’s face, knocking him down into the sand. Kids from all over the playground were surrounding us, trapping us into a tighter and tighter circle. Adam, who’d been about to push Bobby around himself, looked shocked as he realized the hell that Logan was pouring into this kid and quickly moved to pull Logan off of him. “Dude, stop. Stop! You’re going to get us in trouble! He’s down, Logan, he’s down!”
After what felt like days of being frozen in fear as adrenaline began coursing through my body, Adam finally pushed Logan far enough off of Bobby to step in between them. He kept pushing Logan back toward me, telling both of us it was time to go. “We need to run,now!”
Logan looked back at me, and it was like I was looking at someone I didn’t recognize. His face was full of so much anger that he almost looked like a wild animal, cornered and about to be caught. As our eyes made contact, I could see him searching me,within me,for some sort of assurance. “I’m okay,” I said, my voice small, my thoughts panicked.
At this, I saw his face shift. It was as if he was brought back into reality. “Shit!” he yelled, and started running—Adam and I close on his heels.
We ran the entire way home, never once looking back.
That night,as Mom was cooking dinner in the kitchen, I overheard her talking to my dad in a hushed voice. She sounded upset, and I wondered if she knew what had happened that morning at the park.
When Adam, Logan and I returned home, they’d gone straight to Adam’s room. Heart racing from adrenaline and running the entire way home, I plopped myself down on the couch next to Dad, who’d been watching college football.
“You kids have fun out there?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the television screen. Although he wasn’t a big fan of watching sports, college football was always an exception.
“Yeah, you could say that,” I responded, quickly checking his face to make sure I hadn’t revealed too much. He was zoned into whatever game was on, and I moved to rest my head on his lap, letting a sigh loose from my lungs.
Now, hours later, I was back in our living room standing just outside the kitchen’s doorway, frozen in place after realizing I was about to walk in on their conversation.
Their low tones made it seem like they were talking about a secret, something only for grown-ups, and I realized with relief that it wasn’t about this morning at all.
My relief didn’t last long.
“Richard, I saw more bruises on his arm today. We can’t just sit back and pretend like something isn’t going on . . .” Her voice was only a whisper, just audible over the sound of boiling water. I could hear the fear in her voice.
I felt the panic in my bones rise up, remembering the bruise I saw on Logan’s arm as I heard my father sigh. It was heavy, like all the oxygen in his body left in that quick moment. “I agree. I think it’s time. Quite frankly, I have a professional obligation to report something like this, Elizabeth, and as much as we’ve hoped that this isn’t true . . .”
“I know, dear. I know. I just can’t believe that poor boy is dealing with something so awful.”Logan? Is that who they were talking about? It had to be . . . who else’s bruise would my mother have seen? It couldn’t have been a coincidence. “We need to do whatever we can to protect him,” I heard her say.
“We need to be prepared,” my father replied, keeping his voice so low that I almost couldn’t hear him. “Once the proper authorities get involved, things can, and likely will, happen very quickly. Given the circumstances, I have no doubt that he’ll be removed from his home and placed into the system. At least until they can figure out where it’s best for him to be. I’m not sure if there’s any other family around.”
When my mother spoke again, I could tell that she was crying. I’d never heard my mother cry before, and the sound of it made my skin erupt in chills.
“Richard, what if we have him here, with us? He’s such a sweet boy, and it would help for him to have Adam . . .”
“Oh Liz . . .” My father sighed again. “We can try. It won’t be easy, and nothing would be guaranteed. But we can try.”
I quietly ran to my room and shut the door behind me. I could hear Adam and Logan in the bedroom next to mine, laughing as they played video games.
Logan. That’s who my parents had been talking about, I was sure of it. I thought about the bruise I saw on his arm this morning at the park and wondered what it all meant.I have no doubt that he’ll be removed from his home and placed into the system.Removed from his home? What could be so bad that Logan would need to be removed from his home? And how did he get that bruise? My stomach soured as I tried to figure it out.
At dinner, we all sat around the kitchen table and ate my mom’s lasagna. Logan took his usual seat to the left of my brother, and I couldn’t help staring at him as he ate.
I wasn’t the only one acting different. My mom, who was normally asking all of us a zillion questions about our day—about school, about friends, about anything she could think of—stayed quiet. Her eyes kept flicking to Logan while she ate. And my father, who was always quiet during meals, simply watched Mom with the stirrings of a storm in his eyes.
The sudden clank of Adam’s butter knife falling to the ground sent Logan flying backward in his chair, and my heart cracked into a million pieces as I saw the terrified look in his eyes. I realized with awful clarity that it was the same wild look he’d had this morning, when Adam pushed him away from Bobby. Why was he so scared? What was going on?
“Dude, it was just my knife,” Adam said, incredulously. My brother might have been Logan’s best friend, but he was the only one in the room who didn’t know that something was terribly wrong.How long has Logan been in danger, neither of us noticing?
“Oh honey,” my mother gasped. My father cleared his throat, as if to gently warn my mother to keep herself together.
