while remaining seated, and even forcibly still.

Tonight.

That had been the plan. It has also been, at first, his hope. I want to get this over with. He had felt vaguely nauseous all the way home from school that day, barely able to make customarily mundane conversation with Llewelyn.

And now, he was getting what he wanted. And, as it was becoming clear, clearer than at any other point along this trajectory, what his father and Greta wanted. But mostly Greta.

“What about YOUR tank?”

As his father’s words had left his mouth, Brandon had seen that same smirk cross her features.

“Do you want me to fight for you?”

His mother had looked over at him, in — had it been sadness? Defeat?

His ears were filled with a rushing sound, as if he had just been underwater — and he found himself remembering the afternoon when his grandfather had chosen to teach him to swim, and had pushed him into the pool at his retirement community, where Brandon dutifully visited each year. He had been scared; he had looked into the blue of the water, not seeing the bottom, and he had hesitated — and his grandfather had pushed him in. “You have to just DO something when you’re scared of it,” he had told him afterwards. A simplified lesson among many, supposedly meant to Prepare Him For Life, but all Brandon had remembered was the moment of terror when his head went underwater, and he had seen the hazy shape of his grandfather above him while fighting to breathe.

I guess that was my tank, Brandon thought.

In the living room, he heard the sounds of the conversation drawing to a close.