Being HEARD, after all, presupposed, at least in his particular context, raising his voice enough, which was something that he had never — not after exiting the infant and toddler years, during which inarticulate screams had been the better part of his lexicon — done, consciously; angrily, decisively.  Until that day.  And on that day, balancing on one of the flatter rocks that, after hundreds of excursions to that part of the shoreline, he could have found solely from memory, he had found himself staring across the bay, the wind whipping his bowl-cut hair around his head, feeling an amalgam of emotions of which fear was the most dominant.

Had he meant it?