The Impossible Coin (The Downwinders Book 2) by Michael Richan Page B

trailer court who would report to her
if they saw him out later than ten or the lights on after midnight, but he
didn’t believe her. He routinely stayed up later than midnight with the light
on in his bedroom, and nothing had come of it.
    As he finished his cinnamon toast,
his mother rose from the chair and smashed out her cigarette, then walked down
the hallway to the bathroom. He heard the shower start up.
    Brent must have come by after
he found me and Marty gone, Winn thought. He’s always late. He’ll be
pissed that we left him, but it’s his own fault. I told him he had to be on
time.
    He walked to his room and pulled
his Walkman from his bed, then went out the trailer door, heading for the
treehouse. It was time for some Dandy Warhols and to think over what McGraves
had said to him.
    Since his mother was in the
shower, he knew she wouldn’t be able to hear him climbing on the trailer, so he
didn’t worry about being quiet. He reached the top and climbed to the branch,
then up the trunk to the platform. As he brought his head up above the platform’s
height, he realized Brent was there already, lying down. He looked like he was
sleeping, with his head turned away from him.
    Winn pulled himself up onto the
platform and kneeled next to Brent. “Before you give me a speech about ditching
you,” he said, “remember that I told you you had to be on time. We waited an
extra half hour for you before we had to go!”
    Brent rolled his head to face him,
and Winn gasped. Brent had a black left eye, the lid swelling shut, and a cut
across the bridge of his nose, half covered by a bandage that was soaked
through with blood.
    “What happened?!” Winn said,
shocked by the damage on Brent’s face.
    “My dad,” Brent said. “I would
have been on time, but he stopped me. Told me I couldn’t go. I was really angry
at him. Later, I snuck out. By then you’d already left.”
    “You went by my house, right?”
    “Yeah, wanted to see if you might
be there, even though I knew you weren’t. Woke up your mom. She didn’t seem
happy about it.”
    “She wasn’t,” Winn said.
    “So I went back home, hoping I
could sneak back in,” Brent said, tearing up. “He caught me.” He began to cry. It
embarrassed him, so he rolled to his side, away from Winn.
    “Oh, Brent, I’m sorry,” Winn said,
feeling like he wanted to cry, too. At that moment he hated Brent’s father more
than he’d ever hated any human being. He wanted to jump down from the treehouse
and march over to Brent’s trailer, haul his father out, and beat him up, right
on the driveway, in front of the whole trailer court. He knew that was
impossible. Brent’s father would just do the same thing to him that he did to
Brent.
    “How bad is it?” Winn asked.
    Brent turned back, allowing Winn
to inspect his face, his body jerking with a sob now and again.
    “I saw in a movie you’re supposed
to put ice on a black eye,” Winn said. “Wait right here.”
    Winn hurried down from the
treehouse and back into the trailer. He heard the shower still running. He
opened the freezer and looked for ice – there was none. Thanks to his dislike
of peas, there was a frozen bag of them sitting inside, a good year past their
expiration date. He grabbed the bag and left, racing back up the trailer and
onto the platform.
    “Here, hold this against your
eye,” Winn said, handing Brent the bag.
    “Peas?” Brent said.
    “Just do it,” Winn insisted.
“It’ll help the swelling. Can you see out of that eye?”
    Brent raised his head and looked
right at Winn, holding a hand over his right eye. “Yeah, I can see,” he said.
    “Good, then you just need to get
the swelling to go down. Go on, put the peas on it.”
    Brent lowered his head back down
and placed the bag on his face, letting it sit. As he raised his arm to place
the bag, his t-shirt rose up from his waist, and Winn saw the bruises on his
stomach. Brent’s father had hit him there, too.
    “Does it feel any