Chapter Twenty:

Corrin – the bully's brother

He hated crying in front of his family. Crying in front of his classmates was even worse.

Corrin was standing under the scrutiny of twenty-five pairs of eyes. His face was flushed, tight. Knees and fists shaking with anger. He was wearing his Pop Punk Isn't Dead shirt and anger was tearing holes in his chest.

In front of him, his teacher crossed her arms. "Care to explain this?"

No, he thought, because he didn't have an explanation. Those weren't his words. That wasn't his handwriting. And his excuses were composed of nothing she would believe. In her hands, she held a note. Over and over against the faint blue notepaper margins, someone had written F***ER, creased it into a paper airplane, and let it coast to a stop by Corrin's shoe.

That was how this had started. His teacher had seen it, swooped in. Assumed the worst: that it had fallen out of his backpack, that he had been planning on throwing it at someone else. It was unjust. He felt very self-righteous, thinking that word. And then he looked up into a pair of steel eyes and knew he was busted for a crime he hadn't committed.

"Really," she said. "Nothing?"

He shook his head.

"Class..." she crossed the room to set the note on her desk. Arm propped on the back of her chair, balling the side of her long skirt between her fingers, she sighed. "This is kindergarten stuff. I don't want to see it again."

Corrin opened his mouth. "But –" a pencil drove, hard and straight, through the back of his kneecap. He started, legs buckling, and grabbed for the edge of his desk to steady himself.

Snickers sounded behind him. It had been the culprit. His head swung around, searching. Landed on a smug face and a lacrosse jersey and an ugly sneer. Pencils were lined up in a sharp row, miniature guard posts, in front of him. It was juvenile. That didn't make him any less angry.

"Is something wrong?" his teacher was watching him. "Do you have something to say to the class?"

"No," he said.

"I didn't think so."

After class, Haven ran full-tilt towards him in the hall. She slammed into his shoulder in a burst of pink hair dye and blue glitter, headphones sliding off her ears. Cords thrashed out into the sudden silence.

"Corrin! I heard! That's horrible!"

"What? What did you hear?" Irritable now, he pushed her off him. He shook glitter from his sleeve; it rained, effervescent, onto the dull tile floor.

"That you were suspended – which sounds very dramatic and all that, so I figured that part wasn't true. The part that was: you did something. Did you walk into class and punch him? Stand in front of his desk, and then – POW! – right on his stupid mouth?"

Since she had screamed pow! at top volume and close to his ear, Corrin jumped. He shied away from her. Glitter was still dripping off his clothes. How much did she wear?

"Who are you talking about? No, I didn't punch anyone! Some idiot –"

"Oh," Haven cut in, sounding disappointed. "He needed another black eye, or something. That would have been epic. And here I was, thinking the whole load about Knights in Shining Armor wasn't a complete myth..."

"If a knight's going to rescue you," Corrin said, "it wouldn't be me. I'd just leave you in the tower. You'd have you headphones with you – you always do – so, really, would you need saved?"

This time, she punched his shoulder. "Unkind. Are you going to tell me what happened, or what?"

Corrin told her. Then watched as her nose scrunched and her cheeks flushed and she exploded. First she waved her arms. Then she mumbled under her breath. Then she grabbed his shirt collar, pulled him close enough to smell the Doritos on her breath, and said: "What an idiot!"

"Yeah, he's a jerk –"

"No, idiot, you. He had all those pencils and you didn't try to pick one up and stab him back? I'm disappointed. Here I was, thinking you would avenge my honor..."

"I'm not avenging anyone," Corrin said. "Would you get off this vengeance thing?"

 "Corrin." she pulled her face down. Began walking backwards to her next class, so that he had no choice but to follow. "He looked up my skirt."

"I know, I know –"

Without warning, she stopped walking. Again she grabbed for his shirt. "There he is!"

When he turned to look, she elbowed him. "Don't look. You're so obvious – oh, Dear God, he's walking over here."

Scowling at her, Corrin said: "You sound love-struck."

"I'm going to ignore that. Do you think I'll get suspended if I clock him with my binder?"

He took hold of her wrist and tugged her to the side. "Yes, idiot."

"I knew it. No one's going to stand up for me."

"You know what –" he unzipped her backpack. Yanked out her binder – the plaid one, chock-full of notes and sharp-edged plastic folders – and turned his back on her. He walked up the boy, Lacrosse Boy, the savant jersey-wearer who had stabbed him in the kneecap and humiliated his friend.

Lacrosse Boy made a face at him. "What?" he said. Pushing his snapback up on his forehead, he smirked. "If you hit me – you'll get suspended."

"Right," Corrin said. "So..."

Reaching forward, he held the binder over the boy's foot. Shook the pages a little, so that the jagged folders were facing down. And – feeling a bit like his brother but more like someone who was trying desperately not to do something as stupid as cry – he dropped it.

***

"Dude." Haven said. "Dude."

Corrin flexed his fingers and soft-hit her in the side. "Would you get off the topic? We're at my grandfather's funeral."

"Right," she said. "Sorry." but, a moment later: "But it was epic."

He stared across the funeral home. Open casket, still white body inside. The person who had taken him to McDonalds and given him encouragement and had even managed to love his older brother was lying lifeless. And so he couldn't even muster up the attitude to smile at Haven's still-smug mood.

People fluxed in and out of the service over the next three hours. Dabbing wet eyes, holding tissue wads, carrying purses and condolences, too much sorrow and not enough grief. The pastor, the same one who had told the grandfather he had quite the family led those attending in several hymns. The piano was out of tune. But it still made the knot in Corrin's throat close into a chokehold.

After the viewing had ended those not in the immediate or extended family left. Corrin's parents and older brother remained; his aunt Joanna and his uncle Stefan, Eden, not Seven but Taegan, who was playing a sort of stand-in; Daniel and Mirrin – who weren't speaking; and Haven. There were still two outliers, coined "family friend," who could have left but stayed.

Corrin wasn't sure why Haven had stayed. This is what she had told him: she wondered what it was like to be a part of a family. She came from a house divided. Her father hated her; her mother drove her to band practice and the mall, but was otherwise apathetic and prone to drinking. He didn't mind. In any case, Haven was crazy enough to belong to his family.

Four to a car, they drove white and black sedans down to the cemetery. A graveside plot had been set up; green faux-grass around the coffin, a ring of folding chairs, a sun tent and heavy bouquets of flowers. The tombstone was right off the ring of pavement that looped a path up through the buried.

A handful of World War II veterans came to commemorate the ceremony. They wore full uniform and stood in a half-circle, behind the crowd. At the closing of the service they folded an American flag, the one that had been draped over the casket, and handed it to Daniel; after this, they formed a line and shot blanks in the air.

As he stood and watched the smoke clear, Corrin rubbed his face. His fingers came away wet.

Afterwards, his relatives lined up for pictures and talked, voices subdued, among themselves. None had dry cheeks. Since he didn't want to pretend to smile and he had somewhere to visit before he left, Corrin took off through the tombstones.

Haven tried to follow. "Trying to escape already?"

"Don't follow me," he said.

"But –" she adjusted a barrette and stuck her tongue out at him. "Why ever not?"

"I'm visiting my sister."

"You have a sister?"

"I had a sister," he said. "Twin. She's dead."

"Oh." she melted back towards the crowd. "Okay. Um – Corrin? Thanks for...tolerating me. And, you know, for dropping a binder on that kid's foot. I feel sufficiently avenged."

"Good," he said, "now can you go away?"

"Going."

Catharine's grave was at the top of a hill. He thought it was fitting – when she was little she had wanted to fly. His earliest memories were of jumping off everything: couch cushions and kitchen counters and house gates and the top of the playground. Later, he had learned that it was because of his sister.

He didn't try to find her tombstone. He couldn't. The older he got the fresher the wound become; it was more and more real, the more and more he realized about it. Instead he climbed to the top of the hill and stood on the edge.

"Hey, sis," he said into the wind.

He spread his fingers, palm-flat, against the legs of his jeans. Perspiration cooled on his face. He wished he knew how to understand death. All he knew was this: the reality of death is that someone cannot live forever.

He also wished that he had known his sister. His twin. But the best he could do was stand looking up at the sky, saying, "I'm sorry you couldn't live forever. I'm going to memorialize you, somehow."

With his music, he would learn to immortalize. Art would never die – it was one of the only things that couldn't, that had thus far survived centuries of history. And so Catharine would be woven into the immortality that he discovered, and he would outlast even himself, and perhaps the most comforting part of death was that he thought he had a lot of time until it came for him.

"Hey, sis," he said, still speaking into the sky. "Remember when you wanted to jump?"