The Blue-Haired Boy by Courtney C. Stevens

Chapter 1
    IT’S a thirteen-minute walk from my house to the Clip-N-Save parking lot, but I don’t care if it takes a year. Dad has the day off.
    I’ve been to this shopping strip plenty of times. There’s a bench I like to sit on here. It’s in front of the army recruiter store. Technically, Army Recruitment Center. But they buy people—people like me, so store it is.
    I’ve still never been inside.
    My older brother, Ben, joined the day he was eligible. Mom and I walked him down here, but I sat outside on this bench. They met with the recruiter, signed on the dotted line, and Ben went off to boot camp instead of Rickman Community College. And left me to deal with Charles Lennox’s beer bottles and fists.
    “I’ve seen you here before,” a voice says from behind me.
    “Yeah,” I say, and swivel on the bench to face a man in army wear.
    “You thinking about joinin’ up?” He’s not a hick, but from his accent, he definitely grew up somewhere near here. Tennessee is hard to get rid of.
    Yes. No. I wish I could. I can’t today . “Too young,” I say.
    “And your name?” he says, as though he’s taking mental notes.
    “Bodee Lennox.”
    He shakes my hand and doesn’t do the crush all your bones thing that Ben always does. I like him for this right away.
    “I’m Lieutenant Williams,” he says, as he points to the patch with his last name. “And, Bodee Lennox, from the size of you, you can’t lack much till you’re eighteen. What are you, six-two?”
    “Six-one,” I say. Which most people don’t notice. Mom says it’s because I walk with my hands in my pockets and my shoulders rolled forward; I say it’s because Dad started beating the crap out of my tall when I was five. “I’ve got two years and some change before I graduate,” I tell the lieutenant.
    “Your parents know you’re interested?”
    “Nope.” Because I can’t be interested. I sit here because it’s next to the cheapest way out of town. And some days I need the reminder there’s any way out, even if I can’t take it.
    Lieutenant Williams props one black boot on my bench and leans toward me. I bet he’s done this a million times toguys like me.
    “It’s a big decision, but it can take you places,” he says.
    “I know.”
    I’ve lain in bed plenty of nights thinking about those places. Anywhere. Nowhere. Somewhere I won’t find one of Mom’s punched-out teeth on the floor of the kitchen. Somewhere I’m not the one who plays EMT after Dad buries a bottle in her skin. Somewhere I don’t wake up with his hands around my throat.
    “I’ve thought about it a lot,” I tell him.
    “You sound like you want to get out of Rickman.”
    “Doesn’t everybody?” I ask, and am immediately frustrated that I’ve extended the conversation. Lieutenant Williams is interrupting my bench time. I didn’t come here to talk.
    “Not exactly,” the lieutenant says. “Most of the people round here are kin to trees or something.”
    I raise an eyebrow.
    “They’re rooted,” he says, sliding both hands into his pockets as if he’s given up on signing anyone ever again.
    “I’m not.”
    And this is a lie. Mom and I aren’t just rooted, we’re cemented, concreted, and chained to Dad. We—Mom, Ben, and me—tried to leave him once, and he almost killed us. Not the way kids at school might say a roller coaster or a wild car ride almost killed them. Like dead. The real dead way.
    I guess almost dying still counts. It kills things like strength and belief and will and hope. Now, Mom’s as broken as an oldhorse. She doesn’t buck Dad. And I don’t buck her.
    The lieutenant smiles and winks. “No pretty girl to write home to?”
    “There’s a pretty girl . . .”
    “And . . .”
    “There’s no and .” Out in the world, at school, I don’t talk. Because Exhibit A, I’m the son of Charles Lennox. And Exhibit B, there’s nothing I can offer the girl I like.
    “From the look on your face, there is definitely an and .”
    I