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him?”
    “Yeah.”
    His voice was very small. “Is…is he nice?”
    “Seems to be,” I said gently.
    “And…and he knows about me?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “He wants to be here for you. But he can’t.”
    “Why not?” Irwin asked.
    “It’s complicated.”
    Irwin nodded and looked down. “Every Christmas there’s a present from him. But I think maybe Mom is just writing his name on the tag.”
    “Maybe not,” I said quietly. “He sent me. And I’m way more expensive than a present.”
    Irwin frowned at that and said, “What are you going to do?”
    “That isn’t the question you should be asking,” I said.
    “What is, then?”
    I put my elbows on the table and leaned toward him. “The question, Irwin, is what are you going to do?”
    “Get beat up, probably,” he said.
    “You can’t keep hoping they’ll just go away, kid,” I said. “There are people out there who enjoy hurting and scaring others. They’re going to keep doing it until you make them stop.”
    “I’m not going to fight anyone,” Irwin all but whispered. “I’m not going to hurt anyone. I…I can’t. And besides, if they’re picking on me, they’re not picking on anyone else.”
    I leaned back and took a deep breath, studying his hunched shoulders, his bowed head. The kid was frightened, the kind of fear that is planted and nurtured and which grows over the course of months and years. But there was also a kind of gentle, immovable resolve in the boy’s skinny body. He wasn’t afraid of facing the Bully Brothers. He just dreaded going through the pain that the encounter would bring.
    Courage, like fear, comes in multiple varieties.
    “Damn,” I said quietly. “You got some heart, kiddo.”
    “Can you stay with me?” he asked. “If…if you’re here, maybe they’ll leave me alone.”
    “Today,” I said quietly. “What about tomorrow?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “Are you going away?”
    “Can’t stay here forever,” I replied. “Sooner or later you’re going to be on your own.”
    “I won’t fight,” he said. A droplet of water fell from his bowed head to smear part of a sentence on his paper. “I won’t be like them.”
    “Irwin,” I said. “Look at me.”
    He lifted his eyes. They were full. He was blinking to keep more tears from falling.
    “Fighting isn’t always a bad thing.”
    “That’s not what the school says.”
    I smiled briefly. “The school has liability to worry about. I only have to worry about you.”
    He frowned, his expression intent, pensive. “When isn’t it a bad thing?”
    “When you’re protecting yourself, or someone else, from harm,” I said. “When someone wants to hurt you or someone who can’t defend themselves—and when the rightful authority can’t or won’t protect you.”
    “But you have to hurt people to win a fight. And that isn’t right.”
    “No,” I said. “It isn’t. But sometimes it is necessary.”
    “It isn’t necessary right now,” he said. “I’ll be fine. It’ll hurt, but I’ll be fine.”
    “Maybe you will,” I said. “But what about when they’re done with you? What happens when they decide that it was so much fun to hurt you, they go pick on someone else, too?”
    “Do you think they’ll do that?”
    “Yes,” I said. “That’s how bullies work. They keep hurting people until someone makes them stop.”
    He fiddled with the pencil in his fingers. “I don’t like fighting. I don’t even like playing Street Fighter.”
    “This isn’t really about fighting,” I said. “It’s about communication.”
    He frowned. “Huh?”
    “They’re doing something wrong,” I said. “You need to communicate with them. Tell them that what they’re doing isn’t acceptable, and that they need to stop doing it.”
    “I’ve said that,” he said. “I tried that a long time ago. It didn’t work.”
    “You talked to them,” I said. “It didn’t get through. You need to find another way to get your message