The car hits.
He folds in on himself, a rag doll, all loose arms and stuffing spilling on to the road.
For a second the pain is bright and white hot, the road sheering the skin off his arms and the soft tenderness of his cheek. Then the world stammers to an abrupt halt. It doesn’t hurt. He doesn’t care.
He just needs to know if the little De Lainey boy is OK.
Car doors slam. Voices rise in panicked flurry. Blood, hot and thick and metallic, coats Sam’s arms.
He pushes himself up.
‘Wait, kid! Don’t move. Let me call an ambulance—’
The driver is sobbing. Someone has a phone out, frantically dialling.
‘No.’ Sam tastes hot bitumen, salty blood. He scrambles to his feet. ‘No, I’m fine.’ His T-shirt sticks to his hip, his skin raw as skinned fish.
He looks for Moxie.
She sits in the gutter, Toby clutched to her chest, as her father pulls them both into his arms. Their backs are to Sam. Their father’s shoulders shake. But there’s not a scratch on the little boy.
Sam clutches at the car hood for a second.
‘Kid, just sit down.’
An adult reaches out to steady Sam, but he shrinks back. ‘I’m fine.’
Moxie looks up over her father’s shoulder. Her eyes are fierce and relieved as the aftermath of a storm.
Sam turns away.
He slips amongst the growing crowd and they move back – probably so he doesn’t get blood on them. As soon as he’s on the footpath again, he breaks into a run. He’s fine, he’s fine fine fine. His body screams so he just runs faster. Blood slicks down his arms. Hot tears crowd behind his eyes but he doesn’t have time. Just get away. Move. Don’t let people see. Don’t let them notice.
He slips behind a row of shops and grabs at rough bricks to steady himself. The footpath ends here. No pedestrians. He sinks into the gutter, grabbing his stomach. The ground pulses and agony flashes in his guts.
He puts his head between his legs and vomits.
Tears spill next, hot and fat down his cheeks. His hand goes to his left side, where he took most of the hit. He peels it back gingerly to view red oozing road rash. His mind has completely stopped functioning so he just stares at it until the bile comes back up his throat and he pukes again.
A shadow falls over his head.
‘Whoa,’ Avery says. ‘If that’s a stomach bug, stay away from me.’
Sam closes his eyes, tasting blood and tar.
‘I was looking for you but some idiot just got hit by a car up there and I got distracted and—’ Avery stops. The shadow drops from Sam’s head, and he winces because the brief respite from the sun was nice, and then Avery is kneeling next to him, grabbing his arm and twisting it to show raw skinned flesh. ‘Sammy.’ His voice is high and panicked.
‘So,’ Sam says, his voice thick, ‘that idiot might’ve been me.’
Avery’s fingers tighten on Sam’s wrist and he fairly explodes. ‘What the hell, Sammy? You could’ve died! Why would you even – you idiot. You c-c-could’ve died! We can’t go to hospital or the c-cops will find—’
‘I know!’ Sam snatches his arm back. He wants to shove Avery and his panicked flapping hands away. Sam hurts he hurts he hurts. ‘I don’t need a hospital. Shut up, OK? I’m fine.’ He presses fingers lightly to his left side again and his heart trips.
‘You’re lying! You’re lying.’
Sam glances sideways at him. Avery’s hands spin as he crouches by Sam. His eyes have a frantic edge to them and no, just no, Sam hasn’t energy to tug him back from a meltdown right now.
‘Avery,’ he whispers, ‘it was a little kid. I just … I had to.’
‘You did not.’ Avery says it so forcefully Sam sinks into himself a little further. ‘You and your stupid Superman complex are going to get us killed. So just shut up.’ Avery grabs Sam’s shoulder. ‘Now c’mon. We’ll go to my friend’s place.’
Oh, great. Avery’s friends. Shifty assholes who screw Avery around and probably run drugs and worse. They’re the reason Avery showed up to work so drunk he smashed a car.
‘No,’ Sam says, voice rough. ‘I don’t like them.’
‘What? You want to try Aunt Karen’s?’ Avery’s voice is high and sharp. ‘She’ll call the police on us. Now stop being a b-baby and—’
Sam pushes himself out of the gutter. His skin is flame and ice all at once, his pulse a suffocating fury behind his eyes. ‘Screw you, Avery.’ His voice bounces high and low, raw as his bloodied skin. ‘You don’t understand a single freaking thing. Those people you hang out with are bad—’
‘We’re not exactly good!’
‘—and,’ Sam’s voice rises, ‘I don’t want to be around them and end up as messed up as you.’
Avery stiffens.
The terror in his eyes, the anxious knots, and the frantic clawing at Sam’s shirt – it all stops. His eyes go blank, guttered out. He retreats. Sam watched this happen when bullies went at him at school. When teachers sent him out of class for his annoying tics. When Aunt Karen told him just what she thought of his attitude. When their dad hit him.
Avery just shuts down.
Sam has never made him do that before.
Avery rises and skitters back. ‘Fine. You don’t need me and I don’t need you.’
‘Avery, I didn’t mean—’
But Avery’s turned in a flurry of spinning hands.
And he runs.
Great. He’s probably going to freak out and Sam won’t be there to catch him and –
Well, fine. Fine. Anger suddenly whitens behind Sam’s eyes. Let him melt down somewhere alone and figure out what a stupid little jerk he’s being.
Sam shoves to his feet and limps down the street. People stare, but he focuses ahead. He rounds a corner and has to lean against a wall, leaving a palmprint of blood against the bricks. He looks over his shoulder. Avery hasn’t come back. Sam didn’t realise, until that moment, that he desperately wanted Avery to come back.
Sam sinks into a crouch and puts his head on his knees. He cries.
Because it hurts.
That’s the only reason.
The boy from nowhere sits at a bus stop with empty hands and a bloodstained shirt. He flipped it inside out so at least the garish smiley face, now streaked with blood, doesn’t make him look like an extra in one of Jack De Lainey’s horror movies.