Thump.  

     Steven Cole’s fingers froze claw-like over his keyboard at the sound.  

     Thump-thud.  

     He sighed and propped his head wearily against the monitor and cursed whatever nameless educational pillar had instituted mandatory naps in kindergarten class. 

     The gangly, six-year-old source of the thumping flipped over yet again, in what had become a daily ritual that grated on Steven’s nerves. He wished it didn’t. He wished that naptime was the boon his education courses had promised it would be. But his books and teachers had failed to account for such creatures as Nick The Flopper. 

     Little Nick Walker, whose bedraggled, clothes, hair, and sleeping habits had inspired the nickname, had crept onto the new teacher’s radar in a way that shy, awkward students rarely managed to do. It was usually the loud kids, the needy kids, the energetic kids, the miniature primadonnas and bullies who kept him tearing his hair out and wishing that he didn’t just shunt the gems off to the side out of sheer relief that they had followed directions. But Nick, silent and introverted, seemed to be the one child his mind would flit to when Steven crawled home at night. He was a complete enigma of a little boy, clad in his big brother’s threadbare hand-me-downs and hidden behind a greasy dark flop of hair that hid his eyes and made Steven shiver slightly every time the kid dragged his fingers through it before gripping his pencil. Personality wise, he was a sweet child, a fact viewed with suspicion by the classroom teachers of Nick’s troublesome big brother, Jake, teachers who couldn’t imagine the sibling of malcontent being anything but another impending terror. But Nick always followed directions, never spoke out of turn, and was unfailingly polite to his classmates, all factors that ordinarily would have rendered the boy teacher’s-pet material.  

     Except Nick was slightly gross.  

     The greasy hair and grime crusted clothes were cringe worthy. And the child never, ever lay still during naptime, which wasn’t an exception in a room filled with furtively giggling nap dodgers. Steven’s irritation stemmed from the violence and frequency with which Nick flipped-flopped around. Like a dying fish, he would wriggle and swap sides over and over again. The kid couldn’t go a full minute without a flop. And it was this bizarre duality, sweet kid, nasty habits, had kept Steven treading the waters of guilt for the entire school year thus far. 

      Thud-thump. Steven tried to shake off his irritation and punched the keys harder, hoping to drown out the maddening rhythm.  

 

# 

​

     “Sure you can draw a crown on your head, Loquisha. It’s a self-portrait. Draw yourself how you see yourself.” 

     “I’m gonna draw Captain America!”  

     “Don’t draw a character, Dylan. Draw yourself.” 

     “But I wanna be Captain America.” 

     “Tell you what. You can draw the shield, but make sure the face looks like you.” 

     “But Mr. Cole. We’re in Kindergarten. We can’t really make it look like us.” 

      Steven grinned through his teeth, told Tiffany to try her best, and made a mental plot to find and skin her parents for teaching her that she was a free thinking six-year-old and therefore entitled to correct her teachers. 

      As he wandered away from Loquisha and her princess self-portrait, he found himself hovering over Nick The Flopper who was hunched over his work, intently scribbling away at the assignment he’d commenced without a single request for clarification.  

     Nick paused to push his hair out of his eyes, providing Steven with a clearer view of the drawing.  

     Around one eye, Nick had scribbled a purplish ring to which he was currently adding shades of brown and yellow. The mouth was drawn with a straight line, not even a hint of a wobbly curve that could be mistaken for a smile, and beneath the line, presumably where a bottom lip would be, he’d drawn a livid stripe of red. 

     Steven’s nervously swallowed against a throat webbed shut by dread. “Is this supposed to be you?” he mumbled. Nick nodded without looking up or ceasing his scribbles. “Why do you have a black eye?” Steven pressed. 

     The little boy shrugged and began to shade the white of the blacked eye with a pink crayon. “I have one most days,” he said.  

     Steven retreated a step and looked closely at his student for the first time since the beginning of the school year. On the back of the boy’s neck, just under the thready collar of Nick’s shirt, were the shadows of bruises, dark lines running parallel like finger marks. The hollow of his ear was flecked with black crusts of dried blood, and a similar black scab ran vertically through the center of his bottom lip. And as Steven peered between the greasy bangs covering Nick’s forehead, he glimpsed the yellowed traces of older bruising.  

     Steven wasn’t sure if he’d ever felt worse. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Not in year one of his teaching career. Not ever. No child should be drawing a picture of himself with cuts and bruises as if that were his normal state of existence. No teacher should have a student with traces of abuse under his skin. No teacher should react to discovering a hurt child by thinking first of the impending descent into the dangerous bureaucratic and legal waters of reporting suspected abuse rather than thinking with outrage upon the welfare of the child. And yet, here he stood, mired in guilt, and utterly stymied for a response.  

     “Mr. Cole! Come and see my picture!” shouted Carly, an adorably dimpled anal-retentive in training.  

     “Coming, Carly,” he muttered after another glance at Nick, whose contented expression gave no hint of awareness as to the feelings that he’d inspired in his teacher.  

​

#

 

     “So Walker wants to be Muhammad Ali now,” drawled Miss. Ryan, the spunky third grade teacher who dripped sarcasm everywhere she went. 

     Steven found himself wincing at the opener to her daily tirade about Nick’s older brother, Jake. Usually, he joined in the collective crack-up produced by a solid rant from the kind of teacher who even after four years at it still fought cursing in front of ten-year-olds; but today, though he’d never met Jake, he wasn’t in the mood to laugh at either of the Walker boys’ expense. 

     “How does a ten-year-old kid even know who Muhammad Ali is?” quipped a chubby colleague around a mouthful of microwaved lasagna.  

     “Don’t ask me. The kid never fails to surprise with the amount of B.S. he can pull.” 

     “How’d this come up?” 

     Miss Ryan rolled her eyes and held her hands aloft, demanding the silence and attention of everyone present. Steven tried to busy himself in a stack of to-be-graded worksheets.  

     “Starts off like usual,” said Ryan, “He clocked some kid. Punched him dead in the mouth.” 

     “Did he say why?” 

     “Oh he always says why. Little Mr. Jake, charmer, Walker never hits anyone without a reason.” 

     Steven raised his head a bit, wondering suddenly if Jake might be the source behind Nick’s bruises. If it was just sibling rivalry, he’d be off the hook in terms of reporting what he’d seen. His stomach twisted a bit at how swiftly he’d pounced on an opportunity to avoid doing so. 

     “So he hits the kid, in the middle of class mind, and I yank him off and send him to the principle. Don’t talk to him again till recess. There, he’s already against the wall for some crap he pulled last week. I ask him. ‘Jake, why did you hit Bradley.?’ He blinks his little green eyes at me and says, ‘He took my crayons without asking.’ ‘Jake,’ I say. ‘You don’t hit him for that. You ask for them back or tell me he took them.’ ‘I can take care of myself,’ he says. ‘Jake! You don’t hit people for taking crayons. You don’t hit them for humming in your ear. You don’t hit them for stealing your dodge ball. You don’t hit them for being on the jungle gym when you want to be. You just don’t hit people.’”  

     “Geez, these all just this year?” 

     “Huh. Try this week. But anyway, you know what he says back? ‘But I’ve gotta practice and no one will show me how to punch.’” 

     A shiver slithered along Steven’s spine. 

     “Practice?” 

     “Yeah. Practice.” 

     “For what?” 

     “That’s what I asked!” 

     “So he’s practicing to be Muhammad Ali.” 

     “Oh, no. That’s not even it. He didn’t answer me the first time. He just shrugs, and looks at me, like he has no frikkin’ idea why it’s so imperative that he learns to punch. Little thug. So I go, ‘The only reason anybody practices hitting is so they can be Mike Tyson when they grow up. But you don’t even wanna do that.’ He gets this kinda panicked look like I caught him out, then flashes that devil grin and says, ‘That’s cause Muhammad Ali was better.’” 

     Steven didn’t join in the cacophony of guffaws that followed. He felt genuinely sick. The seemingly innocuous anecdote was anything but when placed along side Nick’s behavior from earlier in the day. As a new teacher, he’d had little interaction with the other grades, thus no evidence to support his theory, but he felt certain that despite his bullyish reputation, Jake wasn’t the one hitting Nick. That Jake felt the need to practice punching struck Steven as the need to learn to punch back. The need to protect himself, or Nick from being punched. And his quip was a hasty cover stolen from his disgruntled teacher’s prompting. 

     With a ragged swallow to ward off a sudden urge to cry, Steven steeled himself against the panic produced by deciding that he did indeed, have something to report. 

 

# 

​

     “He drew this in class?” said Principal Waters.  

     “Yes, Sir. When I asked him why he’d blacked the eye, he said it was because he had one most days.” 

     “Really?” 

     “Yeah,” Steven said as he took the nearest available seat to still the shaking in his knees. “The little guy just shrugged at me, like it was the most natural thing in the world.” 

     “And which student is this again?” 

     “Nick Walker.” 

     The older man hesitated. “Jake’s little brother?” 

     “Yes,” Steven said. 

     The Principal groaned as he took his own seat and flicked his gaze over the grisly self-portrait. 

“I don’t mean to throw water on your suspicions, truly. I’m grateful you even opened your mouth. Very few teachers bother these days. But I don’t think you’re familiar with this particular kid’s history.” 

     “You mean the bullying thing.” 

     Waters rubbed his chin and grimaced.  

     “It’s not even really a bullying thing. He’s never targeted anyone specifically, but Jake is in here for punching someone at a minimum of once a week.” 

     “So he picks fights?” 

     “Kinda. Mostly, he just throws a punch or two and then leaves it to the other kid to make more of it or not. Nick’s very likely just a convenient punching bag.” 

     “But, Sir, that’s not consistent with the marks I saw on this kid. The back of his neck looked like someone had gripped it, hard enough to leave a bruise. And there was dried blood in his ear. For some reason that doesn’t seem like something a ten-year-old could do.” 

     “Jake’s a big kid.” 

     “But has he ever done that kind of damage?” 

     “What kind?” 

     “Leaving weeks worth of bruising and drawing blood!” 

     “He’s broken some noses, and half his classmates are currently sporting black eyes, yeah.” 

     “I’m sorry, Sir, but I don’t even think his hand would fit around the back of Nick’s neck. Nick’s a big kid too.” 

     “Okay, okay, but slow down. Say we do call in DEFACS and then find out it is just Jake ragging on the kid. That opens up the school to being sued by parents and jobs could be lost, yours included. We need to protect the student, but we need to be sure there’s a reason to throw a fit.”  

     Steven glared at his feet. Hearing his own initial hesitation articulated galled him with how cowardly it sounded. Could he really have been reduced to such ass-covering by the idea of losing his job? Of a parent suing? Who really gave a shit. Nick’s grim self-portrait seemed to stare at him accusingly from where it lay on the desk.  

     “I thought we were legally obligated to report this. Even if it’s nothing.” 

     “Reality and college ethics seminars don’t have a lot in common, Steven.” 

     Steven inhaled thinly to check his temper. “I understand you, sir, I do. The fact Nick is hurt is one thing. But the psychology of what he did today in class scared me. He didn’t seem bothered by it at all. Like he just knows that’s what he looks like, so he drew it. I think it’s an unconscious cry for help.” 

     “Or it could be a ticked off little brother whose sick of being pushed around trying to get his brand new teacher to start a fuss.” 

     “What?” 

     “Don’t get mad, I’ve just seen kids pull a lot crazier stunts in my time. And now-a-days, these kids are even worse about manipulating the system against people. Usually, just for a laugh.” 

     “Nick’s not like that.” 

     “I’m sorry, Steven. I’m just not convinced. Not with the way Jake gets trotted in here to see me every damn week.” 

     “Have you talked to their parents about it?” 

     “They only have the one. Just their Dad. And I have never once gotten that man to answer a single phone call regarding his children. I’ve gotten Jake a couple of times when I tried after school, but he’s always got an excuse about why Dad can’t get to the phone.” 

     “That sounds like neglect to me.” 

     “Steven,” said the Principal. “Let it go. If you get anything more definitive, you come to me.”

     "More definitive than bruises, you mean?"

     "Go teach your class, Steve."

 

#

 

     By the next morning, Steven had almost talked himself back around to Principal Waters view. 

Distance from the classroom, and the removal of the drawing assignment had helped to blunt his doubts, while a glass of wine after dinner and a movie with his girlfriend had doused the rest. But he maintained his decision not to put up the self-portraits on the hallway bulletin board. 

     When the infamous nap-time rolled around, he’d almost put Nick out of his head entirely. But when the familiar thump-thud of his flopping sounded, Steven’s usual irritation erupted into guilt with more than usual ferocity. 

     Glancing up, he glimpsed Nick curled up alone on a corner mat. Every few minutes or so, he would begin to grimace and shift but not out of typical, nervous-six-year-old-being-forced-into-a-nap energy. The hitch of his mouth and twitching cringe before he moved suggested pain, pain strong enough that he could not find a way to lie comfortably. 

     Steven’s throat caught as The Flopper twisted onto his side forcing his shirt to ride up over his ribs, displaying a dark fringe of ugly bruises. Without a word, he stood, stepped to the supply closet, fetched the pillow that he kept for sitting on during his after school planning sessions, and crept quietly across the room to Nick’s mat. Gently, he put a hand to the little boy’s shoulder. Nick jerked away from him so swiftly that he almost rolled into the bookshelf. The child shivered and looked up. Steven held out the pillow and nodded. Confusion suffused Nick’s features for a moment, but relief won out, and he took the pillow. Arranging it carefully, he lay on his side and fell asleep within moments. 

 

#

 

     Recess monitoring or hall monitoring. During his first few months teaching, he’d been unsure which he hated worse. The debate had been settled by a stray dodgeball to the groin.  

He stared out over the playgrounds and tightened his scarf. Yes, it was only a fifteen minute break, but the short duration had no impact whatsoever on the outdoor temperature. He was freezing his face off, and really didn’t want to be standing there.  

     To distract himself, he struck up a head count of which of the hundreds of kids scrambling over the frosted metal work playthings were actually his students. He rattled off their names and some correlating item of their winter gear that would fix them in his memory. Jenny: purple Monster High scarf. Blane: camoflauge coat. Imanuel: lime green stocking cap and matching mittens.  

He found Nick on the blacktop playing a shoddy game of basketball with a handful of other kids. It was the one playground activity that prompted his classmates to include him because he was the tallest kid in his grade. It was almost pitiful how grateful he seemed to be to participate.  

Ever since the debacle over Nick’s drawing, Steven had taken special interest in the little boy. He’d also watched the child’s ever evolving array of clandestine injuries with a sinking feeling.  

     The game took a rambunctious turn, and the kids began to jostle each other vigorously for the ball. Nick, caught in the tangle, tripped over another boy’s foot and slammed face first into the asphalt. His chin caught the pavement head on, and a layer of skin peeled away from it in a wash of blood. Pain twisted his features and he hissed through his teeth against its well.  

Before anyone could even offer assistance, Jake appeared at his side. He threw his arms out, blocking access to this brother, then knelt down and took him by the arm. Gently, the little boy guided his brother to his feet, then whipped off the pathetically thin hoody with which he was equipped to combat the cold, so he could strip off the plaid over-shirt he wore underneath. Said shirt, he wadded into a ball, then gently pressed to his brother’s shredded chin to staunch the bleeding. 

     The pair disappeared into the crowd as Jake shouted for the other kids to, “Get out of the way, damnit!” and carefully led his brother toward the building.  

     It seemed to Steven that Jake The Bully Walker had just shown an uncharacteristic amount of compassion to the kid brother he was supposedly beating up on a daily basis. 

 

#

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​

 

      Steven kept a weather eye on Jake every day on the playground for several weeks thereafter. Most days, he played with the handful of his own classmates who tolerated him, but always distractedly. He was four years older than Nick, but not much bigger, which rendered the neck bruising alone on Nick ludicrously beyond his ability to produce, but the way he hovered near his brother during recess belied it even more. He was careful not let Nick notice he was hovering, obviously wanting to eschew the mother hen act, but his glance was never far from his sibling. Woe be to the child who attempted to bully Nick Walker. Such an attempt guaranteed a swift, and solid beating at Jake’s hands.  

     But that was about as bullyish as Steven had ever seen him act. He had witnessed Jake’s if-provoked-punch routine, but otherwise, he seemed to leave the other kids alone. And he never made a grand scene out of his fights. One or two punches and he was done. It had gotten so that every time Mrs. Ryan launched into one of her guess-what-Walker-did speeches, it took everything Steven could do not to slap the woman. 

     One afternoon, it just so happened that Jake, in serving punishment for some unseen infraction, was seated on the wall very near Steven’s monitor post. With a quick glance around to make sure Mrs. Ryan was nowhere to be seen, Steven wandered over and stood beside the little boy. 

     “Hi-ya Jake,” he said.  

     The kid eyed him suspiciously. He was cuter than Nick. Aside from the similarly cheap clothes, his blonde hair, green eyes, and dimples could have placed him on the front of any hallmark card in America. He seemed to lack Nick’s cultivated grunge as well.  

     “I’m Mr. Cole. Nick’s teacher?” Steven ventured. 

     “Oh. Hi.” 

     “I saw you help your brother out the other day. When he hurt his chin?” 

     Jake’s green eyes narrowed as he stared hard at Steven. “That was a while ago,” he said.  

     “I know. But I thought it was pretty cool for you to help your little brother like that,” Steven said. Jake shrugged. “Most big brothers wouldn’t do that. I mean, I was never that nice to my little sister. When I was a kid, she annoyed the crud outta me.” 

     “Nick’s not annoying. He’s just quiet,” said Jake with yet another shrug. 

     “Really. So, if he gets on your nerves, you don’t, y’know, punch him like you do the kids at school?” 

     Shock flared on the little boy’s face and he shook his head vigorously. “I wouldn’t ever hit Nick! He’s my brother!” 

     “Whoa, hey! It’s okay, Jake. I was just asking.” 

     “Well it’s a stupid question!” 

     Steven paused, unsure of how to direct the conversation now that he’d confirmed his suspicions out of Jake’s own mouth. He just hadn’t expected such a strong reaction from the little boy. His protective feelings for Nick were clearly very strong. 

     “I only asked because I’ve noticed that Nick comes in…hurt sometimes,” he said after a moment. Jake stared ahead and stayed silent. “With the way you tend to get in trouble for hitting, people might think you’re the one hitting him.” 

     Jake’s head whipped around in shock. The boy blinked at him a few times and then disheveled into tears.  

     He cried quietly, fiercely, and for several minutes. Steven was stricken. He’d only meant to attempt to prompt Jake to tell him who was hitting Nick, not make the poor kid cry. Clearly, whatever was happening at the Walker’s was serious enough that the idea he could be blamed for it troubled Jake. And if Steven’s own theory was correct, that Jake was busy trying to protect his brother, that the never-ending punching campaign was an attempt to learn to strike back at his tormentor, then it made sense Jake would be upset at being mistaken for the bully in the situation.  

Steven took the space while Jake cried to examine him. While his face and neck were free of injury, his forearms were ringed with brown and yellow blotches, grip marks like the ones on the back of Nick’s neck. Nick as the passive child might be bearing the brunt of the abuse, but Jake clearly hadn’t escaped harm.  

     “I’m sorry,” Steven said quietly. The little boy, who had subsided into hiccups, nodded. “Jake, are you two okay at home? Is someone hurting you?” 

     Then it descended. The icy wall of silence his education textbooks had warned about. The barrier built of fear, shame, and distrust that the abused erect between them and the well meaning who are too inept to offer a plausible way out of their living nightmare. Jake straightened, sniffed hard, and stared ahead. 

     Steven couldn’t get another word out of him for the rest of recess. 

 

# 

​

     Steven’s crusade had absolutely no impact. Stalled by the collective apathy engendered by Mrs. Ryan’s numbingly vitriolic and repetitive depiction of Jake as a troublemaker, and financially unable to abandon the profession, Steven settled into a pattern of efficient mediocrity. It kept administrators satisfied and ensured that he would never again get close enough to a student to feel the need to involve himself in his or her life outside of school. The next few years were spent sliding into a routine of emotional distance from everything about his teaching, and building up his external relationships to bolster that distance.  

     But Nick Walker never quite dropped off of his radar. The little boy moved from class to class, growing taller, quieter, and more withdrawn as age began to strip him of the dregs of innocence he’d retained in kindergarten. Jake seemed to simply grow taller and more skilled at making his instructors miserable. He maintained his suspicions of Steven, but Nick never failed to acknowledge his old teacher with a hello and a smile.  

     By the time Jake had reached sixth grade and Nick the second, they had receded in Steven’s mind to such an extent that he found himself surprised when they were thrust back into his attention in the teachers' lounge. Just like the old days, it was a Jake centered teacher rant, not Mrs. Ryan, but a sixth grade instructor, who brought the Walker boys back to notice. 

     “He’s systematically attempting to fail,” said Mr. Langford, Jake’s teacher. 

     “Systematically?” 

     “I don’t know what else to call it. I’ve never seen such a deliberate campaign to get left behind a grade. He won’t do homework. His classwork is a joke, and SCANTRONS are apparently just an opportunity for him to use the bubbles to develop his artistic abilities. He makes pictures out of the answer bubbles!” 

     “That’s odd,” commented Mrs. Ryan, in a non-hostile tone that rather shocked Steven. “Sure he was a pain in the butt when I had him, but he was never an idiot. And his brother, I’ve got him now, he’s extremely bright.” 

     “This isn’t idiocy. It’s calculated,” said Langford. “He wants to fail the course.” 

     Steven watched as an oddly thoughtful expression crossed Mrs. Ryan’s face. She bit her lip and toyed with a loose tendril at the nape of her neck. “He goes to middle school next year, right?” she asked. Steven’s stared at her in astonishment.  

     “Yeah, so what?” said Langford. 

     “Just wondering,” she muttered. 

     Steven watched as the normally irrepressible Mrs. Ryan wandered silently to a corner and sat there looking fretful. The sight irritated him, bone deep. He’d known in seconds after Langford’s statement that Jake’s campaign was centered around the fact moving to middle school would separate him from Nick and leave his brother open to bullying from classmates in addition to the abuse from their father, but that Mrs. Ryan suddenly appeared to share his opinion, after all her years of denigrating Jake and sabotaging any chance a teacher might have of putting a stop to the abuse, it was so far beyond maddening that the anger made his hands shake.  

     But he tried to swallow back his emotions. There was an opportunity here. If his instincts were right, if she, after exposure to Nick as a student, had begun to suspect the truth and rise above her opinion of Jake, she could undo the damage. She was the only one who could. 

     Steven rose from his seat and joined her in the corner. She started as he took the chair.  

     “Are you alright, Kelly?” he asked. She shrugged.  

     “Why?” 
     “You just seem upset all of a sudden.” 

     “It’s nothing.” 

     “I was kind of expecting you to launch into one of your old Jake-the-charmer-Walker tirades there. Didn’t he give you fits?” 

     She nodded. “Yeah. He was hell to teach. Having a kid who randomly punches other children isn’t conducive to classroom management.” 

     “I’ve lucked out of having one of those yet.” 

     “It’s extremely distracting,” she muttered. “It can sort of trap you into tunnel vision. You get so hung up on how the behavior is affecting you and all of your other kids, you tend not to wonder why the kid might be acting like that. And even if you do, it’s not in a compassionate, ‘why does he hit’ way, but in a ‘why can’t he just do as he’s told’ way.” 

     For the first time, Steven felt a breath of compassion for Mrs. Ryan’s point of view. It reminded him of his own ‘Nick the Flopper’ days, before he’d been trapped into noticing the evidence of abuse by the drawing assignment. His moral high ground began to erode as he mentally acknowledged that had Nick never drawn his battered self-portrait, he’d probably have written the child off as  ‘The Flopper’ for his entire career. 

     “Are you saying he’s not so bad now that he’s not in your class?” he offered, tentatively. Her eyes welled, and she wiped at them roughly with the back of her hand.  

     “I’m thinking he may never have been that bad in the first place.” 

     “That’s a turn around. What the heck, Kelly?” 

     She pushed her food around her plate without making any move to consume it. “It’s the way his brother is about him,” she said.  

     “Nick?” 

     “Yeah.” 
     “I taught Nick,” he said. 

     “That’s right. I’d forgotten.” 

     “They seemed pretty close to me. I would have called Jake protective of Nick.” 

     The tears threatened again, and this time she had to swallow against them. “It’s funny you say that,” she breathed. “The other day I assigned a writing project. We’re working on a unit about heroism and our reading is fairy tales, so I had the kids write a story about a hero and to make sure it had some fairy tale qualities to it.” 

     Steven shuddered a bit at the thought they’d both had their attention forced by an assignment.        “What did Nick write?” he asked. 

     “He wrote a story about a stable boy who is mistreated by his master. It was actually kind of graphic, which was the first thing that freaked me out. But later in the story, the master gets killed in a joust by a noble knight who then takes on the stable boy as a squire. It ends kinda silly with the squire growing up and getting married to a fairy princess, but that’s not what bugged me.” She paused and wiped again at her eyes. “He named the knight Sir Jake.” 

     Steven felt his own eyes welling up, thinking how very like Nick the story sounded. The kid was still instinctively trying to reach out, though he’d obviously come to recognize how much of a role his big brother had to play as his lone defender in the situation.  

     “But why would that bother you? The whole thing sounds pretty innocuous.” 

     She stiffened and began poking her cafeteria meal with unusual vigor. “Because I’d spent the whole year feeling sorry for the kid because I thought that Jake must be beating him up at home,” she said.  

     Bingo, Steven thought. “Why did you think that?” 

     “Because the kid is a perpetual bruise. His wrists and neck are wringed with them, and every other week or so he’s got a fresh black eye. I never even asked him about it cause I just assumed Jake was the one doing it. But after the story…well. I finally did ask him about it.” 

     “Really?” 

     “Yeah. I verified he’d named the character after his brother and just sorta quipped that it was pretty nice of him to name the hero after a brother that seems to like to pick on him so much.” 

     Steven grimaced. “What did he say?” he asked.  

     She sniffed. “He looked at me like I was the lowest, dumbest, piece of shit to ever crawl the earth, and said, ‘Jake would never hit me.’ I felt like absolute crap. Because if Jake’s not doing it, it’s gotta be their Dad. No one at school touches the kid. I’ve never seen him get in a fight. And if Dad’s doing it, then I’ve been frikkin oblivious as hell.” 

     Steven breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, someone else got it. Understood the relationship between these boys and the trauma that lurked behind their bond.  

     “You know, I suspected something might be going on when he was my student,” he said at last. Kelly’s eyes bugged and her mouth gaped open.  

     “What?” 
     “He had bruises then too. Turned out to be the reason the poor kid couldn’t lay still during nap time.” 

     “Why didn’t you say anything?” She snarled.  
     “I did,” he said. She stared. “I was told that Jake’s history of bullying made it so likely that he was the culprit, that there was no reason to look into it.” 

     Mrs. Ryan kept staring at Steven for several minutes. He watched her emotions kaleidoscope across her face morphing from shock to guilt with alarming speed. She stood, dumped her lunch, gathered her things, and excused herself with a hasty whisper.  

     Steven sat in bewildered silence for a moment, but eventually coaxed himself to hope that she was so stricken by the impact of her actions that she’d immediately rose to repair them. He spent the rest of the afternoon hoping for a summons to the principal so he could back up her story. 

     It was only after spring break ended and he heard that Kelly Ryan had transferred schools during the gap that he realized he’d grossly miscalculated. And when he really thought about it, he was once again reminded of how the system was skewed to rank ass-covering and job security over the welfare of the kids. Had he and Kelly come forward with their accusations, it would have come out that the school had spent three whole school years vaguely suspecting that Nick Walker was the object of abuse. Something that would not only result in his own, Mrs. Ryan’s, and likely the principal’s firing, but serious consequences for the school itself, and possible media coverage should the boys be transferred to vocal and litigious family members. Of course she hadn’t done the right thing. Pretending nothing happened would save so much trouble. Why should she ruin her entire career and future over one little kid who seemed calmly accustomed to the abuse? He took small comfort in the notion that at least she was guilt ridden enough to change schools so that she wouldn’t have to look Nick Walker in the eye.  

 

#

 

     Years passed. Nick and Jake outgrew elementary school and thus Steven’s immediate attention. Steven himself eventually managed to cobble together a higher degree that released him from public school confines back into the safety of a University, idealistic young students, and the ability to drill into their heads how necessary it was for them to fight the cultures of the schools in which they were all destined to work. Steven married one of those idealistic students after she graduated, and together they raised an idealistic young girl who made it into an Ivy League University. Time marched on, its sheer relentlessly unavoidable progress blurring that painful first year teaching into an aching footnote at the back of his memory. Like so many others, the incident lost its potency, and he was able to file it away as a lesson learned.  

     So when his daughter, a freshmen at Princeton, stopped by the house, dressed in simple black and told him she had just come from the funeral of a graduate named Nick Walker, Steven couldn’t believe his ears.  

     “What did you say his name was, honey?” 

     Karen swallowed hard and handed him a small pamphlet. “Nick Walker. He’s from around here, actually. He was several years older than me, but I met him when he came to speak to a class or two, and I worked with him down at the children’s shelter. He was a really neat guy, Dad. You would have liked him.” 

     Steven took the slip of paper between shaking fingers and stared. Under the plain italic In Memoriam was a photograph of a smiling young man in his twenties. His dark hair was slightly long at the top, but pushed to either side of his face in an attempt to make floppy bangs look tidy. The long shape of his face and wide shoulders suggested a lanky build that would have matched the stringy, over tall kindergartener that Steven remembered. The broad, beautiful smile almost convinced him that it couldn’t be the same kid, but the birth year was correct. He felt a slight shiver at the sight of what looked to be the edges of some kind of deep scar at his hairline. 

     “How did he die?” Steven asked around the catch in his throat. 

     “He was stabbed. A junkie parent broke in demanding to see their kid and Nick stepped in to try and toss the guy out. The knife severed his abdominal aorta. He bled out in minutes.” 

     “Dear God.”  

     “I know. He didn’t have any family present, but an old teacher of his did the eulogy,” Karen continued.  

     “What did he have to say?” 

     “He didn’t say anything. He read the essay Nick wrote for his application to Princeton. That year, one of the frames they could use for the essay was to write about an influential person in their lives. The teacher said Nick’s answer epitomized the kind of man that Nick was. I thought it was amazing. They actually put it in the school paper today too.” 

     “You wouldn’t happen to have a copy of that, would you?” Steven asked. 

  

Tell us about a person who has influenced you in a significant way: 

     Of the many people I have met in my life, there are very few whom I would consider influential enough to emulate. But if forced to choose, I would name my older brother Jake as the man whose influence molded my existence. Not because of a list of accomplishments, but because every day of his life was spent saving mine. 

     When I was five years old, Jake broke into the local Thrift Store to find me a jacket for school. My father, an alcoholic, drank away most of our money, and we had no familial or church connections who might have otherwise helped a pair of five and nine-year-old boys. When I was six, he taught me to write with both hands so that I would be able to use either should my father break one of them during one of my weekly beatings. When I reached second grade, Jake deliberately tried to fail the sixth so that he wouldn’t go on to middle school and leave me to the mercy of bullies who were as verbally relentless as my father’s fists.  

     When I reached ten, and the beatings moved from weekly to daily, Jake offered to go to the police, saying he would turn our father in and put a stop to the violence that had been a facet of our daily lives for as long as I could remember. I refused, knowing that with no relatives and no friends from any source, our destination would be Foster Care, where the possibility of separation from Jake was more frightening to me than yet another black eye. I simply continued to bury myself in my studies, my only real refuge from the nightmare that was my life.  

     When I turned fourteen and began to seek out the company of other children like myself, ghosts who slipped through the cracks of the system, Jake found me high and bleeding on the bathroom floor because I’d clumsily begun “cutting.” He wrapped threadbare towels round my wrists to staunch the blood and told me that he never wanted to see me like this again. He told me I was too damn special to waste my life stoned carved up. He begged me to keep being smart and to go to college because if I could just make it to graduation, I would be free. At College I could live on campus. It would take me away from this hell-hole and from my father.  

     I only listened with half an ear because, distantly, I was aware that my father was walking towards the bathroom door. When it crashed in from the force of a kick, I was unsurprised. He’d caught scent of the pot I’d been smoking, and come to investigate. Jake, he hauled to his feet, kneed in the groin, punched in the ribs, and bashed into the corner of the porcelain sink, leaving him unconscious on the floor. Me, he picked up and dragged from the room before proceeding to give me the worst beating I ever suffered at his hands. 

     I woke several hours later on the floor of the hallway, glass scattered in my hair where he smashed my face into the bathroom mirror. Jake still lay in the floor, awake, but delirious and vomiting, such was the severity of his head injury. But even in his delirium, he had the wherewithal to catch me by the back of the head, pull his mouth even with my ear, and tell me to get the hell out and never come back. I nodded and scrambled away to find the phone. I left him lying there. I called the police. I went to my room and stuffed my backpack with whatever was near to hand that might be useful. I know that obeying him and leaving saved my life, but to this day I do not know if my brother is alive or dead. 

     Now I don’t mean to parade my tale of woe before you today as if my hard life is anything unique or even lamentable. I’ve endured as many kindnesses as I have hardships. From the kindergarten teacher who offered me a pillow during naptime to ease the pain of one of my father’s beatings, to the motorcyclist who bought me breakfast on my bus-ride away from my hometown, I’ve been the object of depthless kindness. But it all pales beside my brother’s sacrifice. If I would emulate Jake, I would emulate his ability to put everything he had toward a single goal: keeping me safe. If I can pursue my studies at this institution with the same single-mindedness that drove my brother to protect the one person weaker than himself, then I can do anything.

 

The End.