She hit him square in the midsection with her head, driving her skull into his soft stomach with the full force of her running weight. Derek let out a surprised wheeze and stumbled backward. Lily grabbed his arm and bit down.

"OW! What the -- get her OFF me!"

Travis lunged forward. Ethan didn't think. His body moved before his mind caught up, and he drove his right foot into Travis's stomach with everything he had. It was a clumsy kick, more desperation than technique, but it connected solidly with the soft flesh below Travis's ribs. Travis doubled over with a sound like a punctured balloon, his face going white, and collapsed against the recycling bins.

Derek flung Lily off his arm. She hit the ground hard, skinning her palms on the pavement, but she was already scrambling back to her feet, her eyes wild, her teeth bared. There was a red mark on Derek's forearm where she'd bitten him, the skin not quite broken.

For a moment, the alley was still. Derek looked at Travis, groaning on the ground. He looked at the bite mark on his arm. He looked at Ethan, who was standing with his fists raised, breathing hard, and at Lily, who stood beside her brother with her small hands clenched and her chin jutted out like a terrier facing a bear.

Something in the calculus of bullying shifted. Two-on-one was easy. Two-on-two, when one of the two was a feral seven-year-old who bit, was less appealing.

"You're both crazy," Derek said. But he was already backing up. He reached down and yanked Travis to his feet. "Give me the money."

"Come and get it," Lily said.

"Lily." Ethan's voice was steady. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out the crumpled twenty-dollar bill, and tossed it on the ground between them. "Take it."

Derek snatched it up. "Freaks," he spat. Then he turned and dragged Travis toward the mouth of the alley. At the corner, he stopped and looked back. "This isn't over. When we get home, I'm telling Dad you attacked Travis. See what happens then."

They disappeared around the corner. The sound of their footsteps faded.

The alley was quiet.

Lily's composure collapsed all at once. Her face crumpled, her shoulders shook, and she sat down on the dirty pavement and cried. Not loud, theatrical crying -- the silent, shaking kind, the kind that comes from a child who has learned that making noise brings worse things.

Ethan knelt beside her. He pulled her into his arms, and she buried her face in his chest. He could feel the wetness of her tears soaking through his thin jacket. He could feel the fine tremor running through her whole body. She was so small. She'd always been small for her age, but lately she seemed to be getting smaller, as if the world were pressing down on her and compressing her into something hard and dense and breakable.

"Your hands," he said softly. He took her palms and turned them up. The skin was scraped raw, tiny beads of blood rising through the abrasions. He blew on them gently, the way their mother used to before she'd left, before it was just Dad and then just Uncle Ray's grudging charity. "We'll wash these when we get home."

"I hate them," Lily whispered. "I hate Derek and I hate Travis and I hate Uncle Ray's house and I hate--" She swallowed the rest. Even at seven, she knew there were things you weren't supposed to say out loud, like I hate being alive or I hate that Dad is dying.

"I know," Ethan said. He rested his chin on top of her head. Her hair smelled like the cheap shampoo from the dollar store, the kind that came in a bottle shaped like a cartoon fish. "I know, Lily."

"Are we always going to be like this?" she asked. "Are people always going to be mean to us?"

Ethan closed his eyes. The alley was dim and cold. Somewhere above them, a bird was singing, the notes bright and oblivious. He thought about the twenty dollars that was supposed to buy bread and peanut butter and the bananas Lily liked. He thought about his father in the hospital bed, his skin the color of old paper, his voice barely above a whisper. He thought about Derek's face, the casual pleasure of cruelty, and the waiter at Uncle Ray's country club who'd looked right through Ethan like he wasn't there.

"No," he said. The word came out harder than he intended, edged with something that didn't sound like a thirteen-year-old boy. "No, Lily. We're not always going to be like this. I'm going to become so strong that no one will ever dare bully us again. No one. I promise."

Lily pulled back and looked at his face. Whatever she saw there made her stop crying. She nodded once, solemnly, as if a contract had been signed.

Ethan wiped her tears with his thumb. Then he stood, pulled her to her feet, and they walked out of the alley together, into the gray Connecticut afternoon.

Six months later, their father died on a Tuesday.

It happened in the early morning, before the sun was up. A nurse called Uncle Ray's house at 5:47 a.m. Ethan knew the exact time because he'd been awake already, lying in the narrow bed in the guest room he shared with Lily, staring at the ceiling and listening to her breathe. He'd heard the phone ring downstairs. He'd heard Uncle Ray's footsteps on the hardwood floor. He'd heard the low murmur of conversation, too faint to make out words but clear enough in tone. There are certain frequencies that carry grief.