He puffs himself up like a blowfish. He’s always been so proud of the two years and two inches that he has on me. It’s just him and me back here, and that makes him bold.
“Why. Are. You. Here. Little. Brother?” he asks. He steps closer, so that we’re toe to toe, and pushes his face closer to mine.
He expects me to back down.
I don’t back down.
“I came to ask you a question.”
He pulls his face back just a little. “Sure, I’d fuck her,” he says. “Is that what happened? She want me instead of you?”
The thing about being a fish on a hook is the more you try to get off, the more trapped you are. The hook just buries itself deeper and you bleed a little more. You can’t get off the hook. You can only go through it. Said another way: the hook has to go through you, and it’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker.
“Why are you like this?” I ask him.
If I’ve surprised him, he doesn’t show it. He just goes on with his usual shittiness. “Like what? Bigger, stronger, smarter, better?”
“No. Why are you an asshole to me? What’d I do to you?”
This time he can’t hide his surprise. He pulls out of my space, even takes a step back.
“Whatever. That what you came here for? To whine about me being mean to you?” He looks me up and down again. “You look like shit. Don’t you have to try to get into Second-Best School today?”
“I don’t care about that. I don’t even want to go.” I say it quietly, but it still feels good to say it at all.
“Speak. Up. Little. Brother. I didn’t hear you.”
“I don’t want to go,” I say louder, before realizing that my dad left his position at the register and is now close enough to hear me. He starts to say something, but then the doorbell chimes. He pivots away.
I turn back to Charlie. “I’ve been trying to figure it out for years. Maybe I did something to you when we were younger and I don’t remember.”
He snorts. “What could you do to me? You’re too pathetic.”
“So you’re just an asshole?” I ask. “Just the way you’re made?”
“I’m stronger. And smarter. And better than you.”
“If you’re so smart, what are you doing back here, Charlie? Is it big fish, small pond syndrome? Were you just a tiny douche bag fish at Harvard?”
He clenches his fists. “Watch your mouth.”
My guess is good. More than good, even.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You’re not the best there. Turns out you’re not the best here either. How does it feel to be Second-Best Son?”
I’m the one with the hook now. His face is red and he’s puffing himself back up. He gets right in my face. If he clenches his jaw any more it will break.
“You want to know why I don’t like you? Because you’re just like them.” He points his chin in the direction of our dad. “You and your Korean food and your Korean friends and studying Korean in school. It’s pathetic. Don’t you get it, Little Brother? You’re just like everybody else.”
Wait. What?
“You hate me because I have Korean friends?”
“Korean is all you are,” he spits out. “We’re not even from the goddamn country.”
And I get it. I really do. Some days it’s hard to be in America. Some days I feel like I’m halfway to the moon, trapped between the Earth and it.
The fight leaves me. I’m just sorry for him now, and that’s exactly the worst thing I can do to him. He sees the pity on my face. It enrages him. He grabs me by the collar.
“Fuck you. You think because you grew your hair out and you like poetry anybody’s gonna treat you any different? You think because you bring some black girl in here? Or should I call her African American, or maybe just—”
But I don’t let him get the word out. I thought I would have to work myself up to it, but I don’t have to.
I punch him right in the fucking face.
My fist catches him around the eye socket area, so my knuckles hit mostly bone. It hurts me more than it has any right to, given that I’m the one supposedly delivering this beatdown. He stumbles back but doesn’t fall flat like people do in the movies.
This is, frankly, disappointing. Still, the look on his face is worth all the I’m-sure-they’re-broken bones in my hand. I definitely hurt him. What I mean is: I caused him physical pain, as was my intention. I wanted him to know that I, his Little Brother, could dish it out and not just take it. Now he knows I can hurt him, and that I’m done putting up with his crap.
I don’t do enough damage, though. I watch his expression turn from pain to surprise to rage. He comes at me with his extra two inches and his extra twenty pounds of muscle.
First he punches me in the stomach. I swear it’s like his fist goes through my stomach and out through my spinal cord. I double over and think that maybe I’ll just stay in this position, but he’s not having it. He pulls me up by my collar. I try to block my face with my hands because I know that’s where he’s going, but the stomach punch makes me slow.
His fist smashes into the side of my mouth. My lip splits open on the inside from bashing into my teeth. It splits open on the outside because the bastard hit me while wearing some giant-ass secret society ring. That’s gonna leave a mark (possibly forever).
He’s still got my collar in his fist, ready to deliver another blow, but I’m ready for him. I block my face with my hands and bring my knee right up into his balls—hard, but not hard enough to prevent him from having future little demon spawn children.