"Give it up, Ethan."

Derek's voice echoed off the narrow walls of the alley behind Greenfield Middle School, low and deliberate, the way a boy speaks when he's learned cruelty from someone older. He stood with his arms crossed, blocking the only exit to Maple Street, his broad twelve-year-old frame casting a long shadow over the cracked pavement. Behind him, Travis leaned against the dumpster with a grin that showed too many teeth, tossing a pebble from hand to hand like he was waiting for a show to start.

Ethan held Lily's hand. He could feel her small fingers trembling inside his grip, and he squeezed once -- a signal that meant stay behind me. She pressed her face into the back of his jacket.

"I don't have anything," Ethan said.

"Liar." Derek took a step forward. The alley smelled like wet cardboard and the grease trap from the Chinese restaurant next door. "Uncle Ray gives you twenty bucks every Saturday. It's Saturday. Hand it over."

"That money's for groceries. For me and Lily."

"Groceries." Derek snorted. He looked back at Travis, who laughed on cue. "You hear that? The orphan's playing house. Buying his little sister juice boxes with Uncle Ray's charity money."

"Our dad's not dead yet," Ethan said quietly.

The words sat in the air like something fragile. Because the truth was more complicated than that -- their father was dying, had been dying for months now in the oncology ward at Greenwich Hospital, his body hollowed out by the cancer that had started in his lungs and spread everywhere else. The doctors had stopped talking about treatment plans. They'd started talking about comfort. About time.

Derek knew this. Everyone in the family knew this. It didn't make him gentler.

"Not dead yet," Derek repeated, savoring the words. "But close enough, right? Close enough that you're living in our house. Eating our food. Sleeping in our guest room like a couple of stray dogs Uncle Ray felt sorry for." He stepped closer. "I think stray dogs ought to earn their keep. Don't you, Travis?"

"Definitely," Travis said. He was eleven, smaller than Derek but meaner in some ways -- the kind of kid who pulled wings off insects not out of curiosity but out of a focused, patient pleasure. He pushed off the dumpster and flanked left, cutting off the narrow gap between the wall and the recycling bins.

Ethan calculated. He was thirteen, tall for his age but thin, all elbows and sharp angles from months of meals he'd given half of to Lily when no one was looking. Derek outweighed him by thirty pounds. Travis was wiry and fast. Two against one in a dead-end alley, with a seven-year-old girl clinging to his jacket.

The math wasn't good.

"Just give us the twenty and you can go," Derek said, almost reasonably. "It's not like you need it. Uncle Ray feeds you. You've got a roof. What do you need money for?"

For the bus fare to the hospital, Ethan thought. For the vending machine in the waiting room, because Lily won't eat the cafeteria food and she needs something in her stomach during the three hours we sit by Dad's bed on Sundays. For the notebook I'm saving up for because the one I have is full and I need somewhere to write things down, to keep track, to plan.

He said none of this.

"I'm not giving you anything," he said.

Derek's expression shifted. The pretense of negotiation fell away like a mask he'd grown bored of wearing. He closed the distance in two quick strides and shoved Ethan hard in the chest. Ethan stumbled back, his sneakers scraping on the asphalt, but he kept his footing. He kept hold of Lily's hand.

"Ethan--" Lily whispered.

"It's okay," he said. It wasn't.

"Here's what's going to happen," Derek said. He grabbed the front of Ethan's jacket and pulled him close. Ethan could smell the Cool Ranch Doritos on his breath. "You're going to get on your hands and knees. You're going to crawl from here to the end of the alley. Like a dog. Because that's what you are, Ethan. A stray dog that my dad took in because your dad was too stupid to buy health insurance."

Ethan's jaw tightened. A hot wire of fury ran from his stomach up through his chest and into his throat. But his face stayed blank. He'd been practicing that -- the blankness. The ability to absorb a blow without letting anyone see it land.

"And then," Derek continued, "you're going to give me the twenty. And then maybe I'll let your sister walk home without tripping her."

Travis laughed. He was closer now, circling behind them, cutting off retreat completely.

Ethan looked at his cousin. Really looked at him. Derek's eyes were small and pleased, the way they always got when he had someone cornered. He was enjoying this. Not just the money -- the performance. The demonstration of who held power and who didn't.

Ethan understood power. He'd been studying it since the first day they'd moved into Uncle Ray's house, when Derek had "accidentally" knocked Lily's plate off the dinner table and Uncle Ray had said nothing. He understood that power wasn't about being right. It was about having options. And right now, backed into an alley with his seven-year-old sister behind him, he had none.

He started to lower himself.

"Ethan, no!" Lily's voice cracked. She pulled at his sleeve with both hands, her small face red and furious. "Don't! Don't do it!"

"Lily, it's fine--"

"It is NOT fine!" And then, before Ethan could stop her, Lily Mercer -- seven years old, forty-two pounds, wearing a secondhand dress with a rip in the hem that Ethan had tried to sew closed with dental floss -- launched herself at Derek like a small guided missile.