The Fight

"Don't do it!" I screamed. "Don't even think about it!"

I'd punched Tommy in the stomach. Hard. Not as hard as I could, but still, it had to hurt. He gasped for breath for at least a minute before running downstairs. 

Going to tell mom, I figured, and I had to start putting my excuse together quickly. Tommy smashed the model I'd been working on. "See?" I'd say, showing our mother the bits of plastic that used to be a fighter jet. My fist came down hard on the wing and cracked it, so I repeated the blow, this time with so much force that a couple slivers of plastic stuck in my hand. I pulled them out and cradled the remains of my beloved plane in my hands to show to mom as proof of Tommy's unmitigated violence.

I dashed down the stairs, but mom wasn't in the kitchen, or the living room. Of course she was gone, I thought, she'd have already been shouting at us to "Keep it down!" if she'd been home.

That's when I heard the garage door open. She's home, I thought. I put on the most pathetic face I could muster and walked to the door leading to the garage. But, the door leading to the garage was already open. So was the garage door, but mom's car was nowhere to be seen. Just Tommy calmly wheeling my bike into the driveway.

He steadied the bike with one hand with a baseball bat under his other arm. 

"Do it and die!" I dropped the scraps of plastic from my hands and rushed outside. "I swear I'll kill you!"

Tommy put down the kickstand of my bike and raised the bat over his head. Then, as I waiting for him to smash the wheels or the lights or take a swing at the frame, he paused and looked at me. His face was bright red from crying. 

"Tommy, think about it. Mom'll kill you. She worked nights for three months to buy that for me."

"I don't care!" Tommy yelled. I looked at his eyes, but the Tommy I knew wasn't there. Instead, it was blind fury. 

No matter how many fights we had, Tommy was always the one who apologized. Even though I always started it. 

"I'm sick of this! Every day after school you beat the crap out of me! Well, now you're going to pay!" Tommy raised the bat a little higher over his head and looked over at me from the corner of his eye.

I stood still, knowing that if I moved towards him, it meant the end of my most valuable possession. "Tommy, smash my bike, if you want. But, if you do it, that's it. I've got no reason to stay here. I'm coming over there and that punch in the stomach will seem like nothing."

Tommy knew I was right. Any leverage he held over me would disappear as soon as the bike was damaged. And I also knew he'd never his me with the bat, no matter how mad he was. Tommy blew up his cheeks and started inhaling and exhaling loudly, like he was trying to get his courage up. But, he couldn't do it. He dropped the bat and kicked my bike to the ground.

Normally, an infraction like that would cost him a slug in the ribs or at least a couple minutes of me dragging him around the house in a neck lock, but I just stood there as he walked down the driveway and up the street. 
***
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