Change

Before the day everything changed, Xero had never been further on his own than the cold, black, spear-tipped fence that separated charming little Depot Park from the overgrown lot that practically swallowed the old abandoned school standing like a sleepy sentinel at the easternmost edge of town.

Xero had never even set foot on the other side of that sharp-toothed fence.

Then came the day (a mid-May afternoon, to be exact) when Mick chased him twice around Little Pond, out past The Willows, and off the twisty paved path that wove its way through the quiet park, until he finally caught Xero and sat on his chest right there at the end of everything. Just a few feet away from that cold black fence.

At first, Xero simply tried to catch his breath, but that’s especially hard to do with an older brother’s deadweight on your chest and especially especially-hard when he reminds you with several sharp thumb-jabs to the ribs that running away might just save your life one day.

“Once you go,” said Mick, his eyes like the bluest part of a flame, “don’t bother coming back.” After bouncing on Xero’s chest as if he were riding a bucking bronco, Mick finally stood. “You know you’re adopted, right?”

Xero was pretty sure he wasn’t adopted, but sometimes Mick made him wonder. In fact, Xero had asked his mom and dad that very thing so often that they’d started answering him before he even got all the words out.

“Are you sure I’m–” he would ask.

“You’re all ours,” his dad would say.

“Every last bit of you,” his mom would add.

“But I don’t look anything like you.”

It was true. Xero had short black hair and the darkest green-brown eyes, so dark in fact that no one ever saw the green in them but him. The rest of his family were blue-eyed blondes, every last one of them. They were tall and thin and could do just about anything. Even Syd, who was only seven, could cartwheel her long-legged way around the house more gracefully than Xero could walk.

Xero was the twenty-third shortest (and twenty-fifth tallest) boy in seventh grade. He wasn’t fast. He wasn’t slow. He was a bit awkward in his movements, sure, but never outright clumsy. He wasn’t particularly strong, though no matter how many times Mick bounced on his chest, no matter how many rainy days Mick spent smooshing his face into the mud, Xero never, ever cried.

“Name one thing,” said Mick still straddling his little brother’s legs, bringing Xero’s thoughts back to the moment, “just one thing about you that’s like any of us.”

I’m a daydreamer, thought Xero.

His parents were professional daydreamers.

His mom was an artist, to be exact, a painter who taught high school because she said it was almost impossible to make a living doing what you love. His dad was a writer whose twenty-first novel, Return of The Night Crawler, had hit stores last June and had been a Bestseller those entire eleven months which meant his dad could afford to do what he loved and that was telling stories (which Xero was pretty sure was the very best kind of daydreamer).

He wanted to be a storyteller, too, one day, if he ever had stories to tell, but he wasn’t going to let Mick know any of that because his brother always found a way to spoil things if he could.

“That’s what I thought,” said Mick. “Nothing! Just like your stupid name says.” Xero hated his name, but he’d have to wait a few more years before he could do anything about that. “Maybe it’s time you went and found your real family!”

Mick could slug him a million-million times and Xero wouldn’t cry. Not even close. But for some reason, even though he was pretty sure they weren’t true, those words, on that particular day, made something inside him swell up and get lodged in his throat. It took every ounce of strength he had to keep from letting it out.

Xero told himself Mick was just mad because of Samantha Collins.

Not only did Mick not get the Wednesday-After-School Kiss out behind the barn that he’d bragged to his friends he was going to get from Sam, but (from his very best hiding spot in the deep-middle-thickness of the purple lilac bush at the far corner of the barn), Xero had recorded his brother striking out on his Flip Camera: first there was Mick trying to take Sam’s hand as he led her behind the barn, and then there was Sam waving her hands like you do when they get stuck on a nasty old cobweb; then there was Sam stuffing both of her hands in her pockets; then Mick stopped and leaned against the barn, saying something, with Sam saying something back, but the camera didn’t get the words; then came the sudden thrust of Mick’s face toward Sam’s face and her quick step aside, her hands shooting out of her pockets, colliding against Mick’s shoulders, hurling him back; then came an even harder shove that knocked him into the barn; then there was Sam stomping away; then Mick, all alone, pacing back and forth with his fists balled up the way they usually were before he pounced on his little brother.

Xero probably shouldn’t have uploaded the video to the computer, but he thought maybe it would keep him safe. Once it was there, though, he made the mistake of putting it on his Facebook page. He made the mistake of tagging Mick.

He was sure that was why Mick was angry.

But his brother still didn’t need to say those hurtful things.

Mick had already thrown the camera on the hardwood floor and had stomped it into a thousand pieces after his friends started sending LOL’s his way.

The destruction of the camera had probably saved Xero, though, because while Mick was hopping around like a lunatic, he took off out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and into the street. He was pretty sure he was going to be the next thing Mick would stomp and that head start is the only thing that allowed him to reach the fence before he got caught. If he hadn’t hesitated climbing those sharp black spears, running toward the abandoned school, Xero might have gotten away entirely.

But Mick caught him in the end and slugged him a dozen times in the gut.

“If you left,” said Mick, finally walking away, “no one would remember you had ever been born.”

Xero tried to keep down that dark thing writhing around inside him, but it was stronger than ever before.

His brother was twenty feet away, at least, when Xero got to his feet.

To this day, he’s not sure how the stone ended up in his hand or what possessed him to throw it. Xero had never fought back. He had never, ever dared. It was as if some other him had taken over his body and his life just then.

He felt the cold flat gray heft leave his hand, watched it spin through the air, heard it all the way from where he was as it clipped Mick hard on the shoulder.

Relieved when the stone missed his brother’s thick head, when he didn’t hear the melon-splitting sound they make in movies, Xero let out a small breath. When Mick turned around, however, his eyes full of murder, Xero wondered if maybe that splat sound wouldn’t have been better than the sound of his own imminent death.

But that didn’t stop him from yelling, “Samantha Collins would miss me, Loverboy.”

Mick froze in disbelief. For a second anyway. Then he was a ball of ninth-grade fury, more wild and ferocious than Xero had ever seen, arms and legs flailing wildly, voice cracking with rage.

“I’m going to kill you!” he screamed.

Xero was over the fence before he even blinked.

He was halfway to the abandoned school before he dared to look back over his shoulder as he ran, sure that Mick was only an arm’s length behind him. That his brief, uninspiring life was about to end before he ever had the chance to do anything extraordinary.
Before he had the chance to do anything at all.

Looking back like that over his shoulder is what saved Xero from seeing what Mick saw in a second floor window of the school when he, himself, was nearly over the fence: just a flash of yellow and red moving in and out of the shadows.

Sometimes, Xero would later admit, it’s doing the things you would ordinarily stop yourself from doing that makes all the difference in the end. Had Xero seen that flash of color, he would have stopped for sure. He would have taken his chances with Mick.