I become aware of my hands again.
I stand over him. He has to tilt his head back to look at me. He does not get up.
“Stand up, sweetheart.”
He stands up.
His backpack comes up with him by the strap. He settles the strap on his shoulder. His posture is the posture of a boy at a school assembly, chest forward, hands still.
He is waiting.
“I'm going to say a thing,” I tell him. “I am going to say it once. I need you to listen to it like a grown man and not like a kid, even though you are a kid. Can you do that.”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, sir.”
My jaw clenches.
“Don't.”
“Yes, Maddox.”
The shape of it again. I am going to have a problem with this specific sound.
“I want to take you somewhere,” I say.
“Where?”
“A room I keep. Ten minutes from here. It is a place I go with people when I want to do something I do not want anyone to see me do. It is not my home. It is not yours. It is a room.”
His throat does the swallow thing. Once.
“Okay.”
“I'm not done.”
“Okay.”
A gull goes past low over the water behind him, wings tipping.
“You can walk away from me right now. Right here on this pier. You can turn around and walk back to the parking lot and go home and I will not come near you off the ice again. I will leave you alone. I will be a teammate and that is all. You say the word and I walk. No chirping. No punishment. You have my word.”
“Okay.”
The wind lifts his hair off his forehead and drops it back.
“Or.”
“Or?”
I let the word sit between us.
“You come with me to this room, and when we get in the door, I am going to do what I want with you. Do you understand what that means.”
“I—”
