She studied my face for a moment; then she sighed and kissed me on the cheek.
“Okay, kiddo,” she said, hugging me. “I know it isn’t easy being stuck in that zoo. Just tough it out for a few more months and then you’ll be free. Captain of your own destiny.”
“I know, Ma,” I said. “Two months. I’ll make it. No worries.”
“Remember,” she added, biting her lip. “You’re not a minor anymore. …”
“I know,” I said. “Don’t worry. Nothing like that will ever happen again, okay?”
She nodded. I could see that she was thinking about the Incident. The Incident that I’d just promised her, for the thousandth time, would never happen again.
Here’s what would never happen again:
One morning, a few weeks after I started seventh grade, I was walking past Knotcher and a few of his friends in the hallway when he smiled at me and said, “Hey, Lightman! Is it true your old man was dumb enough to die in a shit-factory explosion?”
I’m not paraphrasing. That’s a direct quote. There were eyewitnesses.
The next thing I remember, I was sitting on Knotcher’s chest, staring down at his motionless, blood-drenched face, amid a cacophony of screams from our classmates. Then I felt a tangle of strong arms around my neck and torso, pulling me up and off of him—and found myself wondering why my knuckles were in agony, and why Knotcher was now curled in a bleeding heap on the waxed marble floor in front of me.
Afterward, they said I attacked him “like a wild animal” and beat him unconscious. They said I kept right on beating him, even after he went limp.
Apparently it took two other boys and a teacher to finally pull me off of him.
Knotcher spent a week in the hospital recovering from a mild concussion and a fractured jaw. I got off pretty light, considering—a two-week suspension and mandatory anger-management therapy the remainder of the school year, along with the nickname “Zack Attack” and a permanent reputation as the class psycho.
Far worse than any of that was the terrible ten-second gap the Incident had left in my memory, and the question it’d forced me to ask myself nearly every day since: What would I have done if there had been no one there to stop me?
Knotcher had probably seen a scan of father’s old newspaper obituary online. It was one of the only results that came up when you searched for his name. That was the way I’d learned how he’d died. My mother and grandparents had kept the details of his death from me while I was growing up—and I’m thankful they did, because that obituary had haunted me since the moment I’d first read it. I still had every word memorized:
Beaverton Man Dies in Wastewater Treatment Plant Accident
Beaverton Valley Times—October 6, 1999
A Beaverton man was killed at approximately 9am Friday in an accident at the city’s wastewater treatment plant on South River Road. Dead is Xavier Ulysses Lightman, 19, of 603 Bluebonnet Ave., an employee of the city of Beaverton. The Washington County Coroner pronounced Lightman dead at the scene. Lightman was working near a storage tank when an undetected methane leak rendered him unconscious. Investigators surmised a spark from an exposed electrical circuit ignited the gas, and Lightman was killed instantly in the subsequent explosion. A lifetime resident of Beaverton, Lightman is survived by his wife, Pamela, and son, Zackary. Funeral arrangements—
“Zack, are you even listening to me right now?”
“Of course I am, Mom,” I lied. “What were you saying?”
“I said that your guidance counselor, Mr. Russell, left me a voicemail, too.” She folded her arms. “He said you missed your last two career counseling sessions.”
“Sorry—I must have forgotten,” I said. “I’ll go to the next one, okay? I promise.”
I tried to slip past her again, but she blocked my path and then stomped her foot down in front of me again, pretending like she was Gandalf and I was the balrog.
“Did you finally make a decision?” she asked, eying me.
“You mean, did I decide what I want to do with the rest of my life?”
She nodded. I took a deep breath and said the first thing that came to mind.
“Well, I have thought about this quite a bit, and after careful consideration, I’ve decided that I don’t want to buy anything, sell anything, or process anything.”
She frowned and began to shake her head in protest, but I kept going.
“You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that,” I went on. “I don’t want to buy anything sold or processed, I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed—”
“—or process anything sold, bought, or processed,” she finished, cutting me off. “Who do you think you’re messing with? Lloyd, Lloyd, all-null-and-void?”
“Busted,” I said, raising my hands in a gesture of guilt. “That’s what you get for making me watch that flick seven gajillion times.”