Neal Shusterman - Bruiser

“What, then?”

She sighed—again that small kind of sigh that spoke of minor concerns. “Mondays are still Mondays,” she said. “My night out.”

Usually I’m a quick study, but it took a while for the words to relay from my ears to my brain before settling in my solar plexus like a rock. And in the other room, I could hear Brew groaning again. I turned to Dad, who had a slice of Muenster cheese hanging from his mouth.

“And you’re… okay with this?”

Dad’s eye twitched slightly. “No,” he admitted. “But I’ll live with it.” And then he added, “Maybe I’ll take Tuesday nights off.” I snapped my eyes to Mom, certain she would say something like “Over my dead body!” but instead she opened the cookbook again. “Do you think it’s too late to start a roast?”

This was wrong.

The things they said, the things they felt were wrong to the core—but it wasn’t just them. The depth of what I should be feeling was absent from me as well. My emotions had become as shallow as a wading pool. I couldn’t feel anything but a pleasant, airy void, as incongruous as sunshine in a thunderstorm.

I left my parents in their surreal stupor and took a moment to peer in on Brew. Stomachaches I could understand. They had easy solutions that came in bottles and tasted like chalk. Brew wasn’t moaning anymore, but he was breathing heavily and haltingly beneath the covers.

“Can I do something for you?” I asked, feeling helpless but wanting desperately to somehow ease his pain.

“No,” he said weakly. “My head’s better now. Thank you.”

“You said it was your stomach.”

“Did I?”

And then I finally connected several of the many dots littering my head. Brew had acted this way after that lacrosse game—the one where Katrina broke up with Tennyson. I had the sudden sneaking suspicion that Tennyson knew something I didn’t.

I pushed my way into Tennyson’s room without knocking. He was sitting on his bed, a plate of veggies beside him, a textbook in his lap, and his TV playing a bad slasher film.

“Yes?”

He didn’t look surprised that I had burst into his room uninvited; he merely waited for me to say something, like he was expecting me to burst in all along.

“Mom and Dad are acting weird, and something’s bothering Brew.”

“What else is new?” he said. He picked up a carrot and started munching on it. “Is the fur ball gone?”

“Yes, and no,” I told him. “But Thorlock’s beside the point. You know something, don’t you?”

“I know lots of things—your inquiry needs to be more specific.”

“Just answer the question.”

“True/false, or multiple choice?” he asked.

“How about an essay worth ninety percent of your grade.”

He tapped his pen on his textbook. I waited. On screen a woman with bulbous, inorganic breasts was chased by a dwarf wielding an oversize carving knife. I reached over and turned off the TV.

“Feeling ticked off?” Tennyson asked. “Feeling angry?”

“No, not really,” I told him honestly.

“Funny,” he said. “Neither am I.”

“Can you please stop being enigmatic!”

“Yes, and no.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. Round and round we always went, my brother and I, always trying to see who was more clever. I folded my arms, content to be silent until Tennyson said something useful.

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t comment on what I don’t understand.”

“So tell me something you do understand.”

He thought about it and finally said, “I think I might understand his uncle. I know why he wouldn’t let Brew have friends. And why he did his best to keep Brew housebound.”

“Because he was a sick, sick man!” I reminded my brother. “Yes,” Tennyson agreed. “Sick, and twisted, and cruel. But keeping Brew lonely might have been the one act of kindness he ever did in his entire, miserable life.” Then Tennyson turned on the TV to a bloodcurdling scream from the silicon starlet. “Now if you’ll excuse me, a sizable body count awaits.”

I wanted to be furious at Tennyson’s bewildering insensitivity, but I couldn’t be. I wanted to be neck- deep in frustration over our parents’ psychotically serene behavior, but I couldn’t feel that either. The flood of distress I so desperately wanted to hold on to was mercury in my hands: heavy, dense, yet impossible to hold. So I grabbed Tennyson’s plate from him and hurled it across the room—anything to shatter the numbness.

The plate didn’t even break. It hit the wall and fell onto the bed, dumping carrots, celery, and ranch dressing all over the bedspread.

Tennyson, who should have jumped up and yelled at me, just looked at it and said, “Now look what you’ve done.”

“Push me!” I screamed at him. “Call me an idiot! Tell me I’m a waste of life! Fight with me!” I begged. “Please, Tennyson, fight with me! It’s what we do. It’s what we’ve always done!”

He stood up but made no move to confront me. Instead he looked at me and shook his head, like he did when I didn’t get the punch line of a joke. “Things are good, Brontë,” he said. “Things are great. For all of us. Why do you want to mess with it?”

I tried to answer him, but how can you find words for what you’re not feeling?

“Fine,” he said. “If you want to fight, let’s fight.” Then he reached out his hand and gently nudged my shoulder. “Okay,” he said. “Your turn.”

But instead of nudging him back, I found myself throwing my arms around him, hugging him tightly, suddenly needing the kind of closeness we must have once shared in the womb.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“I don’t know… I don’t know….” All I knew is that I wanted to cry and I couldn’t, and it made me want to cry all the more.

If your heart tells you something but your mind tells you something else, which do you believe? Both are just as apt to lie. In fact, they play at deceit all the time. Mostly they balance each other, giving us that crucial reality check. But what happens on the rare occasions when they conspire together?

Things are good, Brontë.

And Tennyson was right. My heart told me that life was better than ever, and my mind told me not to think too deeply or all might be lost. Between my heart and mind there was a strong argument to eat my mom’s first truly homemade meal in months, then slip beneath my comfortable quilt and dream peacefully till morning.

But we all have a fail-safe, don’t we? When our heart and mind fails us, we have our gut. And my gut told me that if I didn’t question things tonight, I never would. So after dinner I quietly left the kitchen, counted the paces to the guest room, and pushed open the door into darkness.

Brew was under his covers, but I knew he wasn’t asleep. I turned on the light.

“I want to know what’s happening in this house. And God help you, Brew, if you lie to me.”

He rolled over to face me, squinting in the sudden illumination. “Everything will be okay,” he said. “Whatever’s wrong, you’ll feel better by morning.”

But I already knew that. That was the problem. Right now I could feel the turmoil inside me clearing out like smoke through an open window; but as long as I could keep generating it faster than it could escape, I had the upper hand.

“Tell me!” I demanded.

He sat up. “Are you sure you really want to know?”

I nodded, even though I was feeling less sure by the second.

He stood, went over to the door, and closed it. “Why don’t I show you?” Then he slowly began to unbutton his shirt.