Page 10

If he’d been any other boy, I would’ve fled. But this was Liam O’Sullivan, and my first impression of him held fast in my memory.

The day after we’d moved in, my mam asked if I wanted to meet our neighbors. But new people intimidated me, so I asked to stay inside. As my mam walked into the yard, I rushed to open the front window, keeping low.

On our lawn, my da was talking with the woman next door. Her husband wasn’t in sight, but her two younger boys were scrapping in their yard. Her eldest son stood by her side, a boy my age, his dark hair neatly combed.

A shiver ran down my spine. Although his brothers were the ones roughhousing, the boy looked like he’d win any fight. The fact that he’d chosen not to fight made him appear quietly dangerous.

When I thought the word dangerous, I felt another shiver.

The boy greeted my parents by confidently shaking their hands. He had an air of authority, even with adults. As my parents spoke with the woman about all of them having emigrated from Ireland, the boy stood taller.

“I’m Irish too,” he declared.

“Are ya now?” my da asked. “Where were ya born, then?”

“Right here on the South Side,” the boy said proudly.

“Ah, then you’re Irish-American, not Irish.”

The boy’s face crumpled, and my heart cried for him. I pressed my nose against the screen, feeling its dusty smell in my teeth. Even from a distance, I felt the boy’s danger crackling with his pain.

In my hiding spot beneath the bush, I finished my granola bar, waiting for the boy who radiated dominance, but with a current of sensitivity hidden underneath.

He returned with the sloppiest sandwich I’d ever seen, oozing mayonnaise and with a hunk of cheese hanging out. In that moment, I didn’t sense any danger from him.

He watched in earnest as I took my first bite and felt the Irish cheddar filling my mouth. I finished the sandwich in seconds.

“Do you want to come out of there?” he asked. When I hesitated, he added, “You don’t have to if you don’t want.”

He sat back on the sidewalk, then used a stick to scratch lines on the concrete. I wanted to know what he was drawing, and this boy made me feel safe.

That’s why I came out of my hiding spot.

Liam was outlining a tricolor flag. He grabbed a leaf and bunched it in his hand, then smeared its pigment inside the first rectangle, a streaky dark yellow.

“It’s s’posed to be green as the hills,” he grumbled.

“Is that the Irish flag?” My voice creaked from long silence. The boy snapped his gaze to mine, his eyes the shade of green he was trying to draw.

“Yeah.” His face went tight. I knew what bothered him, the hurt he’d bottled inside.

“I think you’re Irish,” I said.

He frowned at me in doubt.

“If your parents are from Ireland, then you’re Irish.”

“You mean it?” he asked suspiciously.

“I mean it.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die? Stick a finger in your eye?”

I’d never heard that last part, and it sounded painful. But more than anything, I wanted to comfort this boy who made me feel safe. I crossed my heart and nodded solemnly. Then I brought a finger to my eye, ready to jab it in.

“Stop!” Liam grabbed my hand. “You don’t actually have to stick a finger in your eye.”

“Then how will you know I’m telling the truth?”