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firm on the bottom of the pool, and said over his shoulder, “Okay. You can look if you want.”
    I began to lift up his shirt over his back, slowly, deliberately, like the rising of a curtain; and the scene it revealed was almost too much to bear.
    His back was a battlefield.
    Discolored flesh over old scars. I remembered stories about how they used to punish sailors by dragging them under a ship from one side to another across the rough, barnacle-encrusted hull. Keelhauling, they called it. Brewster looked like he had been keelhauled. Not once, but over and over. It wasn’t just his back, either, because the marks extended around to his stomach and chest; and after I had pulled his shirt over his head and free from his arms, I could see a few marks on his arms as well. Although I couldn’t see his legs underwater, I imagined theyhadn’t escaped the devastation either. I hadn’t noticed it when he’d stepped into the pool; but then, I hadn’t been looking.
    I rarely feel true hatred toward anyone, but right then I despised the author of those wounds, glaringly written across his body like blunt hieroglyphics.
    â€œWho did this to you?”
    â€œNo one,” he said. Why did I know he would say that?
    â€œYou need to tell someone. The police, social services—anybody! Is it your uncle?”
    â€œNo! I told you it was nobody!”
    â€œIf you won’t go to the police, I will!”
    He turned to me, furious. “You said to trust you!”
    â€œBut you’re lying to me! I have to trust you, too, and you’re lying, because things like this just don’t appear out of nowhere!”
    â€œHow do you know they don’t?”
    I took a deep breath and clenched my teeth. I didn’t want any of the anger I was feeling to be directed at him. “If your uncle beats you, it will never stop if you don’t do something about it.”
    Rather than answer me, he turned to Cody, who was now standing just a few yards away, chest-deep in the water.
    â€œCody, does Uncle Hoyt beat me?”
    Cody seemed scared. He looked to Brew, then to me, then back to Brew again.
    â€œIt’s okay,” Brew said to him. “Tell her the truth.”
    Cody turned to me and shook his head. “No, Uncle Hoyt’s afraid of Brewster.”
    â€œHas he ever hit me, even once?” Brew asked his brother.
    Cody shook his head again. “No. Never.”
    Brew turned to me. “There. You see?”
    Although I still didn’t entirely believe it, there was an honesty in Brew’s eyes. So I had to look for another explanation. The only other logical explanation was something I didn’t want to consider, but I had to. And I had to ask.
    â€œThen…do you do it to yourself?”
    â€œNo,” he answered. “It’s not that either.”
    I was relieved, but I still knew no more than before. “What then?”
    He glanced at his brother, then around the pool, as if there might be someone nearby who’d hear what he was about to say. But we were all alone.
    Finally he took a long look at me and shrugged, like it was nothing.
    â€œIt’s a condition,” he said. “That’s all—just a condition. I bruise easily, and I’ve got thin skin. I always have. Sorry to disappoint you, but that’s all it is. A condition.”
    I waited for more, but that’s all he offered. I do know that people with low levels of iron in their blood tend to bruise easily, but it just didn’t ring true. “You mean…like anemia?”
    He nodded. I could sense immense sorrow in that nod. “Something like that.”

17) CONUNDRUM
    Things were more strained than usual at dinner that night, but it could just have been that my senses were on high alert. Things around me had become confusing; I didn’t know if I could trust my own perceptions anymore, and my thoughts were preoccupied with Brewster.
    My parents, who used