Sean arched further. Eric yelled in pain.
Sean lifted his head so he was looking directly at Eric’s red, contorted face. “You going to bother me anymore?”
“I’m gonna kill you, you little—”
Again Sean arched. This time, Eric positively shrieked. Livia glanced over to the side of the building and realized some of the other children had heard it. They were looking left and right, but couldn’t see around the corner.
“You going to—”
“No! No! I’m not going to bother you anymore. Let me go! Let me go!”
Sean released Eric’s arm and scuttled off him, then came quickly to his feet. Livia noticed that he kept his hands in front of his face as he stood, as though in anticipation that the other boys might rush him. He took a long step back and watched them warily.
But if he was worried, he didn’t need to be. The other two were too shocked, and maybe too afraid, to do anything but gape at their fallen friend, who was cradling his arm now and actually crying. “Why did you do that?” he said, his voice high. “You broke my arm. You broke it.” Then he drew in a long, hitching breath and sobbed, “Oh, God, it hurts, it hurts.”
“It’s not broken,” Sean said. “Just sprained.” Then he added, “This time.”
After a moment, Eric managed to get to his feet. His friends didn’t help him. And when he walked back toward the school, cradling his injured arm and still crying, they didn’t even get the door. They just followed him, looking at each other and then at Eric and then at each other again. Before disappearing inside, one of them glanced back at Sean, and the hurt and resentment Livia saw in his eyes was the expression of a child outraged that someone had confiscated a favorite toy.
And then they were gone. Sean picked up his books and sat on one of the benches near the doors. Livia noticed he was shaking a little. He looked up and saw her watching, and she quickly looked away.
The bell rang, and the children who had been playing football and laughing at the picnic tables began to come around the corner and dutifully file inside, none of them even glancing at Sean as they passed him. After a few minutes, the area was deserted. Other than a few birds chirping in the surrounding trees, the schoolyard was suddenly silent.
Livia came out from behind the oak tree and started toward the building, her heart pounding, her books pressed across her chest. Sean watched wordlessly as she approached.
She stopped in front of him. He looked up at her, and she thought he seemed very sad. She didn’t know why, but she felt like crying. But hers wasn’t a sad feeling. Instead, she felt fierce, awake, electrified, as though for so long she’d been suffocating and suddenly had witnessed a way she could breathe. For the first time since the van had pulled up in the forest and Skull Face had gotten out, she wasn’t afraid of anything—only that this boy might say no to what she had to ask him.
“Please,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper. “What you did? Will you teach it to me?”
27—THEN
It turned out that what Sean had done was called jiu-jitsu, a way small people could fight bigger ones. It had been invented in Japan and then honed and popularized in Brazil, and Sean’s father had learned it from some people named the Gracies after he’d left the Marines and gone to live in Rio. Sean told Livia his father had been making him train since he was little, and that he would ask if his father would train Livia, too. Sean’s house was across the street from the school, and they walked over together when classes were done.
“Is your father home now?” Livia asked, thinking of how late Mr. Lone sometimes worked.
“Not yet, but soon,” Sean said. “He made a deal with his boss that he would start early every day so he could come home early, too.”
“So he would have time to train you?”
Sean nodded quickly but otherwise didn’t answer, and Livia wondered if there was more to it than that.
Sean’s house was two stories tall, with a porch that wrapped all the way around the front and side. There was a big green lawn, too, and though it was nowhere near as grand as the Lones’ mansion, Livia sensed Sean’s father must be reasonably important to be able to afford something as nice as this.
“Is your mother home?” she asked as they walked up the front steps.
Sean looked down. “She’s n-not with us.”
It was the first time Livia had heard him stutter since they’d left school together. She realized her question had made him uncomfortable. Was this why his father came home early every day—because his mother was gone? Without thinking, she said, “My parents aren’t with me, either.”
Sean glanced at her, then down again, and then back. “Did they . . . l-leave you?”
She didn’t want to lie to him, but she wasn’t inclined to explain, either. So she simply nodded.