See No Color by Shannon Gibney

wall, pinning my arms against the brick wall. The wind knocked out of me, I felt my hand scrape against the sharp limestone. I tried to push back, managing to get my bleeding right arm away from the wall by a few inches, but it was useless—he really was stronger than me now. His arms strained against his T-shirt, and he was half-grinning as he began to twist my right arm. Yes, he was coming at me hard, and all I could manage at the moment was just to take it, to bite back the cry growing in my throat. Come on. Come on! my brain screamed, the same mantra I said when a ball was headed my way during a game and I needed that highest level of concentration. But there was no denying that I already was on that level, and all I could manage was to release the growling howl in the back of my throat, as a bolt of red energy ran up my arm. I didn’t even recognize the sound as it came out of me.
    Then it was like Jason woke up or something. His eyes opened wide, and he let go of me. I slid down the wall to the ground, still howling, but dully.
    Even though my hand and arm throbbed, it felt good to lie on the dark, wet floor, to let the cool seep into my bones and calm them. I held onto my knees and tried to make myself as small as possible. Eventually, the pain dulled, and I found I could speak again. “I said I wouldn’t touch those letters again,” I said quietly.
    Jason had moved to the other side of the room by that time and was sitting on the stone steps, holding his head in his hands. He lifted it up for a moment and squinted at me. “What?”
    I sat up and touched my fist with my left hand. It was swollen and bleeding lightly, but it was nothing serious. “I don’t want to know what my birth father wrote,” I said. “Mom and Dad were right. I know I’m not ready.” I pushed myself up from the floor a bit unsteadily. I would like to meet you someday. I am your father.
    Jason came to my side and braced my side with his own weight. “I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean to do that.”
    I nodded. “I know.” And I did know. I knew he was my brother, and I knew with a sudden stab of sadness that we would never be as close as we had been in the past. We headed toward the stairs, taking very slow, very tiny steps together.
    â€œDon’t tell Mom,” we both said at the same time. Then we laughed, a strained sort of laughter. We took the first step carefully, negotiating both weight and space. I told him that I had it after that one and made it up the steps just fine on my own. When we got to the top, we both had our usual pleasant looks plastered across our faces. No one would be able to tell that nothing was the same.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
    S ince Jason and I never spoke of the incident in the cellar again, it was almost like it hadn’t even happened. Almost, but definitely not exactly. My throwing arm and hand had completely healed two weeks later, the body forgetting almost as fast as the mind, moving on to new concerns. Which was how I could find myself completely engrossed at Foot Locker not long after that in search of new cleats. My screw-ins were almost completely worn down, and in the game that week I’d failed to track down a fly ball because I’d slipped on my first step.
    Buying the shoes on my own was in itself a small act of defiance—a crack in the Kirtridge family monolith that only one of us could notice. First, Dad was an absolute Nike man (he’d been close to a small endorsement deal when the collision happened). Second, buying equipment without his oversight was just not done.
    But I knew how to read shoe reviews as well as he did and Nike cleats had always been a little too wide for me anyway.
    I turned over a pair of Mizuno 9-Spikes in my hands. I knew now that Mizunos ran narrow and so I only needed to find a salesperson to see if they also came in my size and in red.
    â€œAlex?” A voice said in back of me. In an