He would strut in every other week or so to leave his initials at the top of the high score reel. It had started out as our place because, for the two years before he left, Rance had been the longtime Galaga champ. To try to avoid that, we hid-surprise-and the main place we hid was the arcade down at the mall. We’d gloved up with his mom’s oven mitts and tried fighting each other for practice once, but we had to admit that, at best, we were just slapfighters, that our main and best defense would be to curl up like pill bugs, wait this next thrashing out.
You’d think all the attention of being the only two red kids would turn us into scrappers, just out of necessity, out of survival, but neither of us had any size yet. Just because he had to have his hair in twin braids when he left for school, though, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be down by the time he got to his locker before class-down and puffing out all crinkly and metal, which meant he was always glaring out of a frizzy shroud of black, just the way he liked it. Yes, we knew it was the boys’ room, not the girls’. His dad made him keep his hair long, not buzzed short like in my house, but Marten hated all the attention his braids drew in the halls, in PE, in every bathroom we had no choice but to eventually brave. Me and him were the only Indians for two grades in either direction, and, since he’d been held back one year, we were even in the same class, now. My best friend that year, and for the rest of the years we’d have together, was Marten French. Homeroom was all pumpkins and skeletons with brass rivets at their joints, so whoever was first to class could tack those white cardboard hands and feet up in lewder and lewder positions. This was sixth grade for me, fall semester, ramping up to Halloween. If he did that, then I would know for sure there was some way out. Just to piss my dad off, I secretly hoped Rance had gone military as well: Air Force, so that one morning bright and early he could buzz the house in his fighter jet, waggle his wings to announce it was really him, and then burst through the sound barrier, breaking every window on the block. My dad, if asked, would just shrug, knock back the rest of his can of beer, and say he hoped Rance was in the military, where someone else could tell him to get up, face the day. My mom’s story when anybody asked was that he’d moved out, he was old enough, he needed room, it was completely natural. No sad goodbyes, no notes, no taking a knee in the hall before dawn to give me any good advice for high school when I got there. Two days after my brother turned seventeen, he was gone, just like he’d guaranteed my dad. Series: The Tales of Gorlen Vizenfirthe.Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide.People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction!.
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