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Alfred is such a bully. Mattie can’t stand it. He just thinks that because he’s loud and popular and cool that he can get away with anything he wants? Nuh-uh. Not today. Mattie is not going to budge today. He had a bath first, he got to the TV first, he put on his show first, and so he gets to sit in the ONE recliner massage chair Papa got last month.
This chair has been a bone of contention for the whole family. Everyone wants it, but they could only afford one, so they’re supposed to take turns sitting on it. Dad and Papa sit on it after work, first-come-first-serve, because they both claim their backs hurt. They’re old, so they get to say stuff like that. Alfred and Mattie, however, have to compete. It’s a cold, brutal world out there.
Alfred always wins, of course. Because he’s stronger than Mattie. No. Because Mattie lets him win. Alfred always pushes him off and Mattie doesn’t fight back. That ends today. Miss Elizabeta played them a documentary about Philippe Petit in class yesterday. And if he could walk between the World Trade Centres on a tightrope, then Mattie could fight for a chair.
So he sits. He puts on his show about polar bears that he’s been waiting for all week. He reclines the chair so it’s at the perfect seventy-degree angle. He starts up the massager. It kinda hurts because he’s not tall enough so the massage-y bits press into his head, but he scooches up until he gets them on his back and sighs in pleasure. This is the life. When he grows up, he’s going to get a chair just like this and Alfred won’t be allowed to sit on it at all.
Fifteen minutes into his show, Alfred comes plodding down the stairs, his hair still dripping from his bath. “Yoo, Mattie,” he says, approaching the chair. “Get up. It’s my turn.”
Mattie grits his teeth and clutches the armrest. “No. I just sat down.”
Alfred narrows his eyes. Tilts his head. “Move.”
“No,” Mattie says more determinedly.
“Move, before I sit on you.”
“No way.”
So Alfred clambers onto the chair, ignoring Mattie’s protestations, and puts his whole stupid stinky butt on Mattie’s lap. He tries to shove Alfred off, but Alfred grips down on the armrests and says, “Oooh, so comfy.”
“Get off, Alfred!” Mattie shoves him. “Why do you always do this? It’s my turn!”
“You had your turn! It’s my turn now!”
Matthew shoves him again, and Alfred turns around and shoves him back. The whole chair wobbles as their slug-fest continues. The TV aptly depicts two bears fighting for territory. If Mattie dies in a chair-related accident it’ll be worth it. Some things are worth dying for.
Alfred’s arm smacks into Mattie’s face, but instead of whining, he thinks like the polar bears on TV and bites.
“OW!” Alfred yowls.
“You taste gross!” Mattie says as he gets the upper hand. He crawls out from under Alfred and sits on him, instead. Take that, idiot.
“MOVE!” Alfred whines, shoving him. But Mattie just perches higher on Alfred’s body, on his chest.
“Soooo comfy.”
“Mattie!” Alfred shoves him again, more lightly this time. “I can’t breathe!”
“Yeah, right!”
“Mattie!”
“MATTHEW!” a sudden voice bellows from across the room, and Matthew’s so startled he jerks. The motion is just enough to destablise him. Alfred pushes him one final time and Mattie tumbles out of the chair and onto the floor. When he sits up, Dad is looming over the pair of them, hands on his hips. Mattie rarely gets in trouble, so he’s not used to seeing Dad’s angry-face directed at him. Dad’s a little red. His nostrils are flared. A vein in his temple pulses. “What on earth are you doing? You could have seriously hurt Alfred!”
“Yeah!” Alfred cries petulantly, rubbing his chest. He’s fine. He has the chair. Ugh.
“He started it! He never lets me sit! He was squishing me first! I just fought back!”
“Alfred,” Dad says, training his severe eyes on him. “Is this true?”
“Nuh-uh,” Alfred mumbles, but he’s looking down.
Dad rubs his temple. “If you two can’t agree on who gets to sit on the chair in a civil manner, then maybe neither of you should sit on it.”
“What!” Alfred cries.
“No fair!” Mattie wails in solidarity.
“Unless you two learn to share, neither of you get to sit on it for the rest of the weekend,” Dad says with an air of finality.
“This is child abuse,” Alfred declares boldly, arms crossed over his chest.
“Yeah,” Mattie parrots, even though he doesn’t have much idea what that means.
Dad raises an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed. “You have no idea what child abuse actually is. And be grateful for it. Now pipe down, both of you, I’m getting on an important work call.”
“Ugh,” Alfred snaps when Dad leaves the room. “This is all your fault!”
“My fault?” Mattie cannot believe this. “Nobody asked you to bully me! I hate when you do that!”
“Don’t be lame.”
Mattie pushes him. Alfred doesn’t even stumble, that’s the dumb thing. He shoves back, and Mattie goes flying to the rug, butt-first. The polar bears on TV have stopped brawling because one of them got hurt. Alfred stands over him, hands on hips, just like Dad, and laughs. “Losers don’t get recliners, dude,” he gloats, and adds, “you’re so weak." Then he walks off. Mattie is honestly going to kill him one day.
The entire next week, Mattie tries to prove himself stronger than Alfred. He carries all his books in his backpack and doesn’t use his locker at all. He even helps Michelle with her books. When the teacher needs some kids to move some desks from one room to another, Mattie is the first to volunteer, and he insists on doing most of the heavy lifting. He even weasels his way into Alfred’s group of friends, who are all older than him and bigger than him. He challenges them to arm wrestling, which he loses, and dodgeball, in which he nearly takes a basketball to the head. All the while, Alfred rolls his eyes and scoffs and says things like, “You’re gonna get hurt,” and “You’re an idiot,” and, “You’re such a BABY.”
It’s that last thing that really makes Mattie angry, because he can’t help that he was born two years after Alfred, and adopted two years after Alfred, so yeah, of course he’s younger, so what? It doesn’t mean he’s a baby! Alfred is really just abusing his privilege as the elder brother.
“Oh yeah?” Mattie shouts. “Well, you’ll die of old age before me!”
“Better than dying of Lame Idiot Baby disease!” Alfred shouts back, and all his stupid friends laugh as if that’s the cleverest thing a person has ever said.
“UGH!” Mattie yells. “Whatever! I hate you!”
Alfred’s grin falters. “Wait—what?”
“I HATE YOU,” Mattie hollers, louder this time, and storms back inside the school building. He and Alfred don’t share classes, of course, so he spends the rest of the afternoon with Gilbert, and when they have to go home, Mattie walks ahead and ignores Alfred, who, in turn, is ignoring him.
Maybe it’s for the best. If they don’t talk then they can’t fight, and if they can’t fight, peace reigns on planet earth.
At dinner, Dad and Papa both notice that they aren’t speaking. “What’s the matter?” Papa asks, gently, because he’s always better at the emotional mumbo jumbo.
“Whatever it is,” Dad goes on, “the mature thing to do is talk about it so everyone’s feelings are addressed. Who wants to go first? Alfred? Matthew?”
They both glance at each other, then cross their arms and turn their heads away. Despite it all, everything they do is kind of identical. Dad and Papa’s prying questions don’t work on either of them, not at the table, and not at bedtime, when they individually come into both their rooms and continue the interrogation. Later, lying in the dark, Mattie thinks that it’s kind of strange Alfred didn’t rat him out. He did say something kinda mean.
He doesn’t hate Alfred, of course…it does suck that they’re not talking. But Alfred is just such a pain! Whatever. Mattie isn’t going to stress himself about this. He turns on his side and shuts his eyes. He keeps waking up through the night, it’s as if he can’t sleep.
The next day both he and Alfred are identically puffy-eyed and exhausted. Dad and Papa share a look, and Papa puts his hands on Mattie’s shoulders. “This fight is stupid. Brothers fight all the time. If neither of you can even sleep…”
“I slept fine,” Mattie declares.
“Alfred had a nightmare,” Dad supplies. “And you look tired too.”
Mattie whips his head to Alfred, who pointedly drinks the milk from his cereal bowl.
“Alfred had a nightmare because he’s a Lame Idiot Baby.”
“Oh yeah?” Alfred has a milk moustache as he sets the bowl down. “Takes one to know one.”
“Stop it. That’s enough,” Papa instructors. “You two need to talk about this like grown-ups.”
Alfred grabs his backpack off the floor. “I’m getting late for school. Unlike Baby Mattie, I have important things to do.”
“Like put gum on the teacher’s chair,” Mattie mutters in an undertone.
Once again, they don’t chat on the walk to school. And Mattie’s stomach keeps sinking and sinking, because they always chat on the walk to school. About Kiku’s new video game or Ivan’s funny hair cut or how Miss Elizabeta from homeroom is definitely dating Mr. Roderich the music teacher. The horrible feeling continues throughout the day, when Alfred doesn’t so much as look at him during lunch. Usually, he always comes to say hi to Mattie, even if he’s teasing him about something stupid.
“Maybe you should just apologise,” Gilbert suggests when Mattie complains about it.
“No?”
“Well, you said something really mean. I once told Luddy I hated him and he burst into tears.”
Mattie raises his eyebrows. “Alfred doesn’t have feelings.”
Gilbert mouths the word ‘wow’ and drops the subject.
It all comes to a head on the walk home from school. It is, as these walks are quickly becoming, awkward and miserable. Mattie wants nothing more than to talk to Alfred, and Alfred just marches ahead without looking at him. And while Mattie, lagging behind, thinks about what to do, a few large boys rush up behind him. They’re teenagers, they have to be, probably fourteen or fifteen. They surround Alfred, and he starts talking to them. One of them pats his back. The other ruffles his hair. Mattie frowns, confused. Alfred definitely does not have friends who are that much older than him. He can’t hear what they’re saying from this distance, but he’s more than positive that Alfred’s whole frame is becoming increasingly tense.
Then, without warning, one of the kids punches him. Alfred goes down, hugging his stomach, and Mattie cries out. The other boys laugh, exchanging high-fives, and one of them opens Alfred’s backpack and throws out all his stuff. They quickly find a roll of twenty dollars—lunch money that Alfred had been scrounging away to buy a new video game—they also take his candy bar. The Twix. Those aren’t even for him. He keeps them around for Ivan, as Ivan sometimes gets lightheaded and dizzy because of his diabetes.
When Alfred tries to stand up, they hit him again. And Mattie is running before he can stop himself.
“Hey!” he yells, “pick on someone your own size.”
The older boys gape at Mattie for a terrible moment, and burst out laughing. “Run away, pipsqueak,” one of them says.
“Mattie, just go,” Alfred mutters, through a pained groan.
“Nuh-uh.” Mattie stands directly in front of Alfred. “I’m gonna protect you.”
“No!” Alfred shouts, but Mattie has already made up his mind. He picks the biggest, scariest looking boy and throws himself at him. He barely comes up to the boy’s chest, but he surprises him enough that the bully staggers backwards and falls.
It’s pandemonium. One of the other boys hits Mattie, and Alfred lets out an angry scream and jumps up, hitting back. It probably feels much more cool and dramatic than it looks, because the truth is, they’re both getting their butts kicked. But Mattie is too pumped on adrenaline to even feel scared. He’s angry, and euphoric, because he and Alfred are fighting together, even if they’re losing, and that in itself is a big deal.
“HEY!” someone shouts. It’s a pair of girls, grown-up girls, probably in college. They dart across the street, and one of them is already pulling out her cell phone.
“Are you seriously fucking beating up KIDS?” the shorter of the pair cries.
The girl with the cell phone says, “I’m calling the police.”
The teenagers drop their fists, turn, and run.
Mattie watches them go, and suddenly feels incredibly dizzy. He’s bleeding from both his knees and his knuckles. He’s got a big bruise on his cheek. Alfred has a gash on his forehead and keeps clutching his side. They’re both bloody and breathing hard and holding each other up.
“Are you kids okay?” the shorter girl asks. “Did you know those guys?"
"They bother me sometimes at school," Alfred says. Mattie had no idea that was happening.
"Carmen, are you calling the cops?”
She nods.
“No, don’t,” Alfred says. “You’ll freak out Dad and Papa. We’re okay.”
The shorter girl crouches in front of Alfred. She’s red in the face and scowling. She brushes Alfred’s hair aside and clucks in disapproval. “My name is Chiara. What’s your name?”
“Alfred,” he says. “And this is my brother Mattie.”
“How old are you?”
“Ten, and Mattie’s eight.”
“They really are kids,” Carmen mutters. “Ay, dios. Let me call your parents, at least?”
Alfred sighs, but nods, and rattles off Dad’s number. Mattie, meanwhile, begins picking up Alfred’s fallen things: his books and pencils, his beautiful set of wax crayons that are broken and flattened all over the pavement. Chiara stops him and takes out a bottle of water from her bag. “Here, drink.”
“Thank you,” Mattie reaches for it, but Alfred slaps his hand away.
“Dad says we aren’t supposed to accept food from strangers,” he cuts in protectively, glowering at her. Chiara rolls her eyes, but puts the bottle back in her purse.
“I guess that’s true," she mutters.
Carmen hangs up. “Your Dad said he’s on his way. Can we walk you home?"
Mattie looks at Alfred for approval. Truth be told, he’s kinda scared of walking home now. It was a cool fight but in the aftermath, Mattie is kind of overwhelmed. Alfred pauses to think about it and finally says, “Okay.”
The four of them pick up all the fallen school supplies and resume a slow walk back. Mattie’s feeling extremely tired. The adrenaline from the fight has long dissipated, and he just wants to cry. Or lie down. Or something. It’s been an emotional day. When they get to the door, Alfred politely thanks Chiara and Carmen, and says they’ll wait for Papa inside. It’s a dismissal worthy of Dad, and Carmen actually grins. “All right, mijo. You two take care of each other, okay?”
Alfred nods and smiles and shuts the door and locks it. Then it’s just the pair of them.
They’re usually alone after school. It’s a safe neighbourhood, bullies aside, and Dad and Papa don’t work too far away. There’s always a snack waiting for them in the fridge, and they know their routine. Wash their hands, eat, maybe watch some TV, and then finish homework. Their parents are usually home by then.
But today is not a normal day, so Alfred turns Mattie’s chin and examines the bruise on his cheek. “Are you stupid?” he says at last. “They could have killed you.”
“They could have killed you!”
“I’m tougher, Mattie! You’re just a kid!”
Mattie balls his fists. “Alfred, news flash: you’re a kid too! They were big boys! I wasn’t gonna let them hurt you! I don’t actually hate you, you know! I was just mad when I said that.”
Alfred regards him for a long second, and then shakes his head. He makes for the kitchen. They wash their hands in the sink. Alfred finds the first aid kit from the bathroom, and Mattie helps him clean the wound on his head. Alfred obliges with the gashes on Mattie’s knees. And then they take bags of frozen peas for their bruises and retreat to the living room. Mattie puts on Encanto, since they both like the songs, and when he turns around, Alfred is sitting on the chair.
But it’s different this time.
He’s scooched over to the side, and there’s an empty space beside him. He pats it.
And Mattie grins. “Really?” He can’t believe this. This is the best day of his life.
“Yeah,” Alfred grins in equal measure.
Mattie clambers onto the chair. There’s no pushing. There’s no shoving. They just snuggle up together as Alfred reclines the chair. They forgo the massager since they’re both sporting bruises and everything is stinging and tender, but it’s still really nice. Mattie’s eyes grow heavy as soon as the movie starts, and he’s struggling to stay awake. Dad comes home around We Don’t Talk About Bruno. Alfred pauses the movie mid-song.
“Boys?” he asks softly, and Mattie stirs. “Your injuries, my god…What happened? The lady on the phone said something about bullies?”
“We got into a fight,” Alfred says.
“But we made up!” Mattie adds, wincing as he sits. He stifles a yawn.
“Yeah. I mean, we got into a fight with some older kids.”
“You should have seen us!” Mattie chimes in. “We were all—” he mimes punching the air. “And they were all—” punch punch punch— “Anyway, it was great. Scary, but great.”
“You’re such a weirdo,” Alfred laughs, ruffling his hair. “We’re okay, Dad. We’re only halfway through the movie, you wanna watch?”
After some fretting, Dad settles on the couch. Alfred unpauses the movie. Mattie, pillowed by the soft, plush recliner, curls up at his brother’s side and falls asleep.