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myself into a ball and I prayed.
    John’s heaving breath was the only sound I could hear over the pounding of my heart. I could tell he was exhausted, but I knew he wasn’t finished with me. I’d let him corner me, and he wasn’t backing away. After a few seconds, I heard him moving into position above me. Something deep in my gut told me I was about to die. By then, I was ready; I just wanted it to be over. I drew in what I assumed would be my last ever breath and waited for his final blow. It wasn’t what I expected.
    “That’s it!” John said. “You’re outta here! I fucking hate you! Your mother fucking hates you! I don’t want you in my fucking house no more! Pack your shit.”
    John paced the hallway outside my bedroom door like a pit-bull in a run. I grabbed what I could. He was on my heels as I marched down the stairs, a duffel bag of clothes in one hand, hockey stick in the other.
    My mom’s timing was too perfect to be accidental. She walked in the front door just as I stepped into the living room. She said not one word to me as I dialed the telephone. She wouldn’t even look at me. But I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Never in my thirteen years had I ever seen her eyes so hard or her scowl so callous. That’s when I finally understood who had been calling the shots.
    “Mommy’s kicking me out,” I said into the telephone. Mommy. What a fucking word for me to call her. What a joke. Kind of like Daddy. But it’s what I’d always called them. “Can I live with you?”
    A few seconds of silence feel like hours when you don’t know the answer you’re going to get.
    “Of course,” my dad replied. He sounded drunk. I didn’t care.
    As I walked out the door, John sneered at me. “So long, retard.”
    My mom didn’t say a goddamn word. Neither did I.
    The whole bus ride across town, I kept thinking to myself, “You ought to be really upset. You just got the shit kicked out of you. You just got kicked out of your own house. Your own fucking mom hates you.”
    But I wasn’t upset. I was relieved. I was thrilled. I was free.

The Neo-Phyte
    COLD SOBER, MY DAD COULD READ THE TRAIL OF ANOTHER fighter’s hooks and jabs like a Boy Scout could read a map. Of course, it had been a lot of years since my dad had been sober. Still, I knew he wasn’t going to buy, “It happened in hockey.”
    “John shoved me around a little,” I said on my way in the door.
    My dad eyed me suspiciously.
    “It was nothing.” I lied.
    If I’d confessed the truth at that moment, my dad might have gone after John. I like to think he would have if I’d told him. But how in the hell could I tell my dad the truth? That every precious afternoon with him at the bar had been a waste of time? That I hadn’t put even one of his lessons into practice to save my own ass? That I hadn’t looked to see where somebody might be hiding? That I’d let John attack me with my own goddamn lamp? How could I tell a 68th and Buist boy his only son had let himself be a prisoner of war and a punching bag for nearly three years?
    He took me to the bar. Cha-Cha, Fat Mike, and the other guys sensed something was up; they left us alone in a corner booth. I sipped a Coke in silence while my dad worked his way to the bottom of a pitcher.
    “So, youse wanna talk about it?” he finally asked me.
    “No.”
    He started to get up from the booth.
    “I can’t believe she fucking kicked me out instead of him.”
    I didn’t expect much of a response from my dad, maybe
not any response. What could he say? He didn’t know what John had been doing to me. He didn’t know John. Hell, he barely knew my mom. I wasn’t expecting him to give me some mind-blowing insight. But he did.
    “She chose dick over you.”
    That’s all he said, but it was enough. It knocked the wind out of me. It was so brutally, undeniably true. My dad knew my mom better than I did. And he knew I needed to see her for what she really was if I was going to make it through even my