Ellen Hopkins
Twelve-year-old Trace Reynolds has always looked up to his brother, mostly because Will, who's five years older, has never looked down on him. It was Will who taught Trace to ride a bike, would watch sports on TV with him, and cheer him on at Little League. But when Will was knocked out cold during a football game, resulting in a brain injury—everything changed.
Now, seventeen months later, their family is still living under the weight of "the incident," that left Will with a facial tic, depression, and an anger he cannot always control, culminating in their parents' divorce. Afraid of further fracturing his family, Trace begins to cover for Will who, struggling with addiction to pain medication, becomes someone Trace doesn’t recognize.
But when the brother he loves so much becomes more and more withdrawn, and escalates to stealing money and ditching school, Trace realizes some secrets cannot be kept if we ever hope to heal.
You
Yes, you.
Come here.
Please? I need
to ask you something.
Have you ever felt the desire
to hurt someone?
I mean pummel them,
wound them, watch
them bleed?
Did you?
Would you?
Could you?
If I were the gambling type,
I’d put my money on “yes.”
See, there’s this thing inside
every one of you,
the collective human call
toward violence.
All it takes is one singular
moment to encourage
it into play
and the lamb
transforms
becomes
the lion.
Have you ever thought
about killing someone?
I mean, poisoning them,
bludgeoning them, grabbing
a well-honed knife
and carving them into pieces?
Chances are you haven’t,
wouldn’t, couldn’t
follow through.
Contemplate.
What’s required
to become the catalyst
for death?
A moral compass, sprung
and spinning haywire?
Antifreeze, flowing
through your veins?
Or, perhaps, nothing more
than circumstance?
In that instant when the lamb
unleashes its roar,
would you heed
the call or instead defer
to the quivering
voice of reason?
Existence and demise
are inextricably linked
as per the Grand Scheme
either drafted by some
all-powerful architect,
or randomly designed.
Perhaps this is the true
knowledge of Eden—not
the mechanics of procreation,
but the promise that one’s time
on Earth is nothing more
than a journey toward
inevitable departure.
Surely the ancient ones
who bore witness to birth
in the wilds, and death
from claw or club or predation
by creatures too small
for the eye to identify,
were aware of nature’s plot.
As their spines uncurled
and they drew upright to run,
discovered the value of flint,
the power of spear and arrow,
the lust for blood billowed
like a black-bellied cloud. Oh,
to wield a weapon mercilessly,
extinguish a beating heart.
Dawn to dusk to dawn
to dusk, and humankind
shed its fur,
fashioned clothes,
deserted its caves
in favor of villages, cities.
But even as people
learned to plant,
harness sunlight
and rain to nurture
garden, fields,
their passion
for the hunt remained.
They killed
in the name of
survival,
protection,
vengeance.
They killed
in response to
lust,
jealousy,
despair.
They killed
for the thrill,
the simple pleasure
of witnessing bloodshed.
For one delicious moment
how they would have watched
in wide-eyed reverence
the advent of gunpowder,
marveled at the fire lance,
its relentless evolution
from crude spear-driven
flamethrower
into a fierce weapon
able to discharge one thousand
flesh-ripping metal projectiles
in sixty lethal seconds.
Ponder their amazement
at a machine with the ability
to level entire villages, infant
to ancient, in mere minutes.
They would’ve fallen on their knees
and lifted their arms in worship.
Now you understand the talent
of a firearm. But perhaps
you’re unaware of the force
fueling its seductiveness.
Sometimes you hear a whisper
fall over your shoulder,
but then you turn to search
for the source, find nothing
but landscape behind you?
So then you tell yourself
it was just a case of hyperactive
imagination, convince
yourself that sentiments
don’t materialize out of thin air.
But the truth, at least as I like
to tell it, is that the voices
who speak to you from inside
your head have taken up
permanent residence there.
Some shout warnings, prodding
you to take cover, flee,
or brandish a weapon.
Others murmur, haunting
you with poetry.
Like me.
A few of those rumblings
inside your brain
aren’t make-believe at all?
What if they could be the inspired
ramblings of an alien
creature, not flesh and bone,
but rather the embodiment
of a raging primordial power
dwelling within your synapses?
What if it’s my murmuring you hear?
I am the voice of Violence.
You know me. You do.
I’ve made my presence clear
though you may pretend otherwise.
We need each other, you and I.
We’re conjoined. Consider, if you will,
the notion that a similar symbioses
is in play with regards
to the oft embraced theory
of daily communion
between man and a higher power.
I am nothing
without you.
Nothing but energy
in need of a vessel
capable of action,
and an intellect
able to form and follow
through with a plan.
Often, you will ignore
my pleas, feign deafness.
Ah, but I am relentless.
I know you can hear me
and sooner or later
you’ll heed my call.
Unarmed,
we are formidable.
High tide
chewing into the sand.
Oh, but weapon in hand,
we are inexorable.
A tsunami battering
the breakwater.
reviews from Booklist:
"A compelling, page-turning story."—Booklist