The Swap

Chapter 6 Jack

It's the night before my first day at Thatcher and my brother is blasting slap shots at my head. We are in the basement, or The Cage (that's what we call it), the empty unfinished room down the steep stairs off the kitchen. We are down here practically every night.

The Cage is awesome. My dad put wire up over the windows, flipped over an old wooden table we use aa the goal, and he basically lets us destroy the room.

When we were little we used tennis balls down here, but now we're older and the walls are covered with a million marks from the rubber pucks dinging the white paint. There's nothing in here besides weights, a squat rack, a bench press in the corner, and our old washing machine pushed up against the wall, covered with black polka-dotted puck dents. It's unreal when it's all four of us, but most of the time it's me and Stryker, because we're closer in age and Gunner and Jett are usually away more for hockey.

As far as The Cage goes, with my brothers, they always make me the automatic goalie because one, I'm the only one crazy enough to stand in front of a firing squad, and two, I'm the youngest and that's what happenes when you have three older brothers-you don't get much say in the matter. They like to play around, toughen me up.

"You're nails, Jacko!" my brothers tell me when I stop their shots.

It's a compliment. Nails is the opposite of soft. And if you're a boy especially if you're a boy in my family, you do not want to be called soft. That's about the worst thing someone can call you.

Tonight I strap everything on-helmet, mask, chest protector, the works-and Stryker starts firing. We don't really talk.

We just go like that forever.

Target practice.

Stryker could snap pucks at me all day and all night. And he does. We stay down in The Cage until we hear The Captain.

"That's enough boys!" He yells from the top of the stairs.

My dad isn't the type of guy who likes to ask more than once.

I take off my helmet, Stryker catches me off guard. He fires a puck-BAM! I throw the gloves and drop to the ground, covering my eye with both my hands, pressing my forehead up against the hard cement floor. No, I don't cry. I'm not a girl! You think I want my brothers to harass me for the rest of my life? Malloys don't cry, okay? I'm not saying it doesn't hurt like a ....

Stryker crouches down next to me. I can feel his breath on my neck.

For a second I think he actually feels bad.

Then he wispers into my ear, "Aww, you gonna die, princess?"

"Screw you," I say, but he can barely hear me, because I can barely speak.

"Don't be a girl," Stryker says, laughing. "Get up!"

If I was a girl, I'd burst into tears.

No way am I going to cry.

We don't quit, and we don't whine.

"Meow," says Stryker. He thinks this is hilarious. "Meow, meeeeeeeow. Lets go, Sally!" He's standing over me now. My brothers love to do this. They call me Sally, or Nacy, or Mary, or Pansy, Wuss, or Baby, or Butter-as in you're as soft as butter, or even worse, Butter Baby.

"Come on, Butter Baby! Don't be soft! You're a tough guy. Let's go! Get up!"

I want to elbow his face in, but by the time I stumble to my feet and stand, Stryker's already upstairs. He's gone. Somehow I make my way up the stairs too. I slip past The Captain (reading the paper), past Stryker, Jett, and Gunner (watching hockey), and hide out in the upstairs bathroom, where I almost puke, it hurts so bad.

"Oh, you're nails, buddy," Stryker yells up after me.

Then I hear him outside the door. "Hey, you okay, bud?"

I don't answer.

'You're gonna rock a nice shiner, Jacko!"

I stay in the bathroom splashing my face with cold water until I can't feel my eye anymore. Pretty quickly it starts getting a little bit swollen and purple. I stare at myself in the mirror for a good long while.

There's no blood.
Nails, I think, and sort of smile. Honestly? I'm kind of proud. I got a black eye, and its my first, and it won't be my last.