Send by Patty Blount Page B

“Kenny, I can’t do that to them anymore. I can’t expect them to keep packing up and moving away every time I get a death threat.”
    You’re eighteen. You can live on your own now. Move out.
    â€œAnd do what exactly? Do you really believe there’s a huge demand for convicted—oh, wait, pardon me— adjudicated juveniles with no diplomas?” In the state of New Jersey, the technical term was “adjudicated juvenile,” but “convicted” worked just as well.
    It’s been five years, man. You can get your juvenile record expunged now. Do it so we can move on.
    I scoffed, shook my head. Move on. Yeah, right. My dad’s been bugging me about doing that. Juvenile records, okay, sure, but the…the other part was harder to hide. So why bother?
    Come on, man! Do something. Fight back! He stood up and took a swipe at me. Kenny may have existed only in my mind, but don’t be fooled. When he hit me, I felt it.
    I lay back down on my bed and said nothing out loud. I’d been fighting since I was Kenny’s age. Every day, I fought, even though I knew it was a lost cause. So instead, I fought for the things I could still get. A high school diploma. Maybe a degree. But friends? A girlfriend?
    No. I punched my pillow and closed my eyes, but it was a long time before sleep took me.
    â€”———
    â€œWhat makes you think that, Dan?”
    I gave Dr. Philips half a laugh and shook my head. “I think the question should be ‘What doesn’t make me think this,’ don’t you?”
    I was so damn tired of Dr. P.’s question. I’d been seeing a version of her, answering a version of the same question every Friday for about five years now, and nothing changed. Not one damn thing. I was still crazy. I skirted the issue by telling her all about Julie Murphy, disguising Kenny’s interest in her as my own. She’d just asked me if I felt there was no potential for a future together, and I’d said, “Well, duh.”
    â€œShe thinks I’m Dan Ellison, defender of the bullied, saver of lives. Letting anybody see the, uh, ‘real me—’” I made air quotes and took in a breath to finish my thought, but Dr. P. held up a hand.
    â€œHold it. Let me interrupt you there. You said ‘the real me.’ What does that mean? Who is the real you?”
    Careful, bro. She’s got a straitjacket in your size.
    I shifted, stared at my fingernails. “A bully. A murderer. A…and worse.”
    â€œI heard you used to play hockey,” Dr. P. changed the subject.
    We were good at it.
    â€œYeah.” I laughed once. “We were good.”
    â€œWe?” Dr. P.’s ears prickled at the plural word. “Who’s we ?”
    Crap. “Just me and my friends.” I covered the slip with a shrug. “But I can’t do things like hockey anymore.”
    â€œWhy can’t you do those things?”
    â€œKind of defeats the whole changing my name thing, doesn’t it? If I keep the same friends and do the same things, Liam’s dad can find us again and—”
    No, man. We won’t let him get anywhere near Mom or Dad.
    A shiver ran down my back on hairy spider legs. Jack Murphy was crazier than I was. The thought made me cringe. He’d vaulted over the bar and nearly choked me during my sentencing hearing, shouting threats and obscenities at me, my parents, my attorney, even the judge. We’d packed up and moved from the only house I’d known the day of my release when he showed up at the front door, along with half our neighborhood, carrying a baseball bat. Just one more thing to add to my list of sins.
    â€œIs this about Liam’s father or about the girl?”
    I raked my hands through my hair and rubbed the throbbing spot at the back of my head, but it did no good. None of this mattered! I wanted to tear the hair from my scalp. I sucked in a big breath and