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BRONTOSAURUS
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I. My fingers curled themselves around Danny's trachea like a house fire collapsing in a burst of spark. I remember the sound of him choking on his own laughter while my scalp oozed bloody from where he had ripped my hair out. I kept squeezing until I could see him afraid of me. That was the last one. II. Brontosaurus. Because it took up two whole pages in my science book, I imagined that something so big must have lived for a thousand years, and back then I wanted to live forever. III. It was probably summer. It was probably something broken. It was probably an accident. I discovered the strength of my right arm and the shape of my brothers mouth wrapped around a scream. I can still see it. That was the first one. IV. Brontosaurus. Every single time, and I don't remember what would have come second. V. It was my mother who saw it first. Matt hid himself under the dim streetlights that guarded our house to spray paint thick lines on square letters f-a-g-g-o-t. He had been deliberate with each sidewalk staining stroke— left the empty blue can in our driveway like awful punctuation. He was smaller than me, but I already had a reputation for writing my name in softer cursive, and the boys here were more interested in flattened knuckles and knowing who stood where. Matt asked me if I wanted to do something about it. I said no. VI. In all of the coloring books, the pictures of brontosaurus are exactly the same: the husband is eating the entire top of a tree while the wife twists her neck down to suck up a lake. Dilophosaurus and stegosaurus. T-Rex and triceratops. The other dinosaurs were always pictured hungry and circling their prey backed up into a corner, and you could almost smell the inevitable blood spill. VII. You always give in too easily, she said. So I told her about the electricity in my fist the first time I hit someone, and about how it was gone the second time. I told her about the sound of Danny choking. I still get scared by a lot of things, I said. I always did. Even when I was little. We used to make-believe that we were dinosaurs in the yard, and I was the only kid who picked VIII. Brontosaurus. He was so big, he never had to fight.
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