The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay Page A

when you’re an eight year-old boy. People will make a lot of excuses for you. I dealt with my acceptable anger by doing unacceptable things like beating the crap out of other kids who pissed me off. Pissing me off didn’t take much. I was pretty liberal about what would be enough set me off. Turned out, even the unacceptable things I did with my fists were considered acceptable and brushed under the carpet.
    I punched Mike Scanlon in the face, twice, because he said my mom was in the ground getting eaten by maggots. I don’t think there was even enough of her body left after the crash to feed a maggot, but I didn’t argue with him. I just nailed him in the face. Gave him a black eye and a split lip. He told his dad. His dad came to my house and I hid around the corner, listening and wondering how much trouble I was going to get in. But he wasn’t even mad. He told my dad it was okay. He said he understood. He didn’t understand crap, but I didn’t get in trouble. And that’s the way it always went.
    The only time I really had to answer for it at all was the one time it happened at school. I punched Paul Keller on the soccer field during P.E. and I thought I was in for it. The principal called me in, which had never happened in my life. Lucky for me, he also understood and I got off with a warning and a few trips to the school psychologist. All the kids I beat up learned that no one was going to touch me for anything I did. I could hit them in broad daylight with ten witnesses and even their own dads would tell them to give me a break.
    My angry phase had ended by the time I got to eighth grade, just in time for my dad to have a heart attack. By that time, almost everybody left me alone. No one would give me an excuse to be angry at them. Then one day I was walking home from school and ran into three shits beating the crap out of Clay Whitaker. I didn’t even know him at the time but they were kicking him good and I needed an excuse to kick someone back. I had a lot of healthy, acceptable anger built up and they were good therapy. There were three of them and I wasn’t the biggest kid around. They should have been able to grind me into the sidewalk without breaking a sweat. But they had only garden-variety cruelty to fuel them. I had pure unadulterated rage.
    Clay was sitting on the ground when the other kids finally ran off. I was hurt and out of breath so I sat down, also, because I didn’t know where to go and I didn’t care if anyone else came looking for me. No one did. I probably would have hit them, too. Clay didn’t say thank you, or anything else to me for that matter, which was good, because I didn’t deserve any thanks. I didn’t do it for him. There weren’t any noble intentions.
    I didn’t care if I got in trouble. I didn’t care about Clay Whitaker, sitting a couple feet away, bloody and crying. I just didn’t care. That was the last time I hit anyone. After that day, I decided to wait until someone gave me a good reason. But it didn’t matter, because everyone had already learned that I’d get away with it if I did. I wasn’t even sure what a good reason would be, but I figured I’d know when the time came. And maybe it never would.
    I didn’t say a word to Clay before I finally got up and walked home and we never spoke about what happened. I was used to people not bothering me, but after that day, nobody bothered Clay Whitaker, either.
    “I’m starting to understand the feeling,” I mutter, and he knows I’m not serious but he throws his hands up and takes the hint.
    “Fine. I’ll leave you to your very compelling table. I’m going to draw a girl,” he says smugly and turns around to open his sketchbook.

CHAPTER 12
    Nastya
    I used to spend excessive amounts of time thinking about what I’d be doing over the next twenty or so years. It usually had something to do with playing the piano in concert halls all over the world. Which would mean lots of world travel that would include