We were out in the backyard, Richie and I, playing badminton. The boundaries were a couple of trees, a stone walkway, and the edge of the brick patio. I was twelve and my brother fifteen. I don’t know why I was playing with him, given how competitive he could be, how ruthless and cruel. I’d wanted to go to the library, but he badgered me until I gave in. He called me a bookworm and said I was afraid he’d kick my ass. All true. He always won, and not once did he take it easy on me. If I was stuck way over on one side of the court, he would line drive the shuttlecock into the grass at the other end, raise his arms, and crow like Jimmy Connors at the U.S. Open. When I won the occasional point, he’d curse and swing his racquet at an imaginary version of his little brother—swish swish swish, and I was dead. Once, after I’d struggled to win three points in a row, he launched his racquet at a tree and cracked it in half. Good thing the badminton set came with four racquets because he broke another one by pounding it on the ground after I’d tied him at 15. He beat me 21-15 that day after digging out the one remaining racquet from the closet. 

Today I was down 16-1, and Richie beamed with his typical combination of glee, superiority, and contempt. This being September, the sun had already made its rapid early-evening slide behind the house. Inside, our parents sat in the kitchen with their after-dinner drinks, and I could easily imagine them snorting, between sips, at their older boy’s triumphant outbursts:

“Yes!”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”
“You suck!”

Richie had won ten volleys in a row. But this time, after he served, I lunged and barely popped the birdie back over the net, and it landed in-bounds. 2-16.

“You got lucky!”

My serve. I was pretty good at it, when I got the chance. I rarely hit the net or served out of bounds. Richie stood near the net, ready to slam the birdie back at me, possibly directly at my face—one of his favorite strategies. It’s hard to return a shot aimed between your eyes. 

I hit a pop-up over Richie’s head, and he had to hustle. He got to it and connected, but the birdie wobbled out of bounds. 3-16.

“Crap!”

The yard was now completely in shadow, and the air had turned chilly. The light in the kitchen window shone yellow and warm, and I wished I was in there with my parents, or better still, at the library.

“Hurry up, nitwit,” Richie said.

I served to the exact same spot, which he wasn’t expecting. He got there and eked the birdie over the net, but I was ready and slammed it at his feet before he could react. 4-16.

“Piss!”

I won three more points before Richie scored with a line drive aimed at my crotch. He laughed when I flailed and knocked the birdie out of bounds. 17-7.

“That’s why it’s called a shuttlecock,” he said, pleased with himself, before winding up and serving directly into the net. 8-17.

I won the next four in a row. The curses flowed. Richie finally scored when I slipped and whiffed at another line drive. 18-12.

I could sense him growing more and more frustrated, which was my brother’s main weakness. I could only beat him at something—poker, ping pong, HORSE—if he got angry at himself. It was as if the anger made him less coordinated, both physically and mentally. And lately, he’d been pissed off about a lot of things. School made him mad, our parents made him mad, his friends made him mad—and I certainly made him mad. 

“You’re going down, boy,” he said, preparing to serve. He hit a high floater, and I set up to return it. The birdie seemed to take a full minute to come down, and as it fell, Richie screeched like a pterodactyl, trying to distract me. But I managed a clean rope of a shot to the far edge of the court, and he couldn’t get there in time. 13-18.

He scooped up the shuttlecock and shot it at me like a bullet. When I walked back to serve, I smiled, knowing I now had a chance.

The day before, while horsing around in the yard, Richie had asked me to catch him in a trust fall, like we used to do when we were younger. One of us would stand in front of the other, facing away, and fall backward, trusting the other to catch him. 

“Me first,” he said.

We hadn’t done trust falls in ages, and I wasn’t sure how this would go—Richie now stood about six inches taller than me and twenty pounds heavier. He waited longer than I expected, trying to throw me off, which was what he used to do when we first played this game. “Come on,” I said, and he finally fell back. Somehow I managed to grab hold under his arms before he could land on the ground, and with a grunt I pushed him back up to standing.

“Your turn,” he said.

I stood in front of him and felt his presence right behind me. When we were younger, I would dread the backward fall—I was never sure if I could trust him to catch me—but Richie had always been there. 

“Ready?” I said.

“Absolutely.”

I shut my eyes and fell. I immediately knew he’d stepped away—I could sense him disappearing. My butt hit the ground first, then my elbows, and, finally, my head. It didn’t hurt that much on the grass, though I scraped my elbow enough to draw a little blood. But I did experience a momentary sense of shock, the way I felt once when, in the dark, I’d misjudged a step and went sprawling. Richie laughed and laughed, and I ran inside so as to not cry in front of him.

I remembered this incident just before serving, and my anger seemed to have the opposite effect on me than it did on my brother. It traveled from my heart into my arm, giving me the strength to pound the shuttlecock far over Richie’s head, but not too far as to be out of bounds. He didn’t stand a chance. 14-18.

“You dick!”

I scored three more points: Richie returned one into the net, hit one out of bounds, and whiffed one. On my next serve, he barely returned it, but the birdie hit the top of the net and tumbled over. 19-18, Richie. He was just two points away from winning.

“Now,” he said, grabbing the birdie off the ground and fixing me with a mad stare, “you die.”

I couldn’t believe I’d almost caught up. But if I lost the next point, I’d have to win the following two just to stay alive. (You must win by two points in badminton, a stupid rule.)

Richie backed up to the edge of the brick patio and stared at me for a moment. I had come to know that stare lately. It said, Do not cross me.

He held out the shuttlecock, dropped it, and swung. Thunk. He caught it at the edge of the racquet and the birdie wobbled out of bounds. 19-19, my serve.

Richie went to pound his racquet on the ground but thought better of it. Without saying a word, he picked up the birdie and whacked it toward me. He then positioned himself and waited for my serve. 

“Come on, ya little turd,” he said. 

My heart felt too large as it pushed up against my ribs. I wished my parents would come out to the back porch—not so they could witness my potential victory, but so they could protect me if I managed to win.

My serve sailed over the net, Richie returned it easily, and we volleyed for what felt like an hour, back and forth, almost lazily at first, with no attempt to make each other run too far, and then Richie slapped one deep to my left. Somehow I reached it and popped it just over the net, and he barely managed to get under it and launch it high into the air before scrambling back to better handle my inevitable slam. I raised my racquet for the power shot, but when the birdie finally dropped, I barely tapped the thing so that it inched over the net and fell like a dead sparrow. 20-19.

“Fuck!” Richie cried. I waited for my father to show his face in the window, but he and my mother must have retired to the den to watch TV.

“You suck!” Richie added.

I didn’t respond, didn’t even grin, though I felt jubilant inside. And terrified. Should I lose the next three volleys on purpose? I was quite capable of doing so, and of making it look natural. But I wouldn’t lose on purpose. I wanted to win. 

Richie, jittery and jangly, waited for my serve.

I bulleted the birdie over the net, and Richie shot it straight back at me. He’d hit it so hard, all I had to do was hold out my racquet and the shuttlecock pinged back over. He returned it off to my left, and I backhanded it toward the opposite corner. Richie barely arrived in time to send the birdie down the line. For a second I thought I’d lost this point, but I stretched and managed to pop it over. Surprised, Richie was slow to move. He charged forward and dove, his racquet just able to scoop the birdie up and across. But now he lay flat on his belly. I knew I had him. I reached the shuttlecock easily and swatted it over him. We both watched it land a good two feet in-bounds.

21-19!

I looked down at Richie. He looked up at me. I glanced toward the house behind him. I’d never make it past him to the door. I had only seconds.

I ran.

Behind our house lived the Caserta family. I tore through the narrow opening that had been worn down by foot traffic between the hedges that separated our backyards. The Casertas’ terrifying German Shepherd, Otto, barked from a window as I zipped down a hill into the Conleys’ yard next door. I followed a path alongside their house to their front yard and 22nd Street. Not sure which way to go, I hesitated before turning right, toward Logan Avenue. I didn’t once look behind me, but I could hear my brother huffing back there and the slap of his Converse sneakers on the sidewalk. From the sound of it, he was about twenty yards behind. 

At Logan Avenue, I turned left, heading toward the 25th Street branch of the public library. They were open until eight, but I didn’t know what time it was now. I prayed the doors were not locked. 

My brother was athletic, but I managed to stay ahead of him past 23rd and 24th Streets. Twenty-fifth was a busy thoroughfare, and I knew I might need to pause to let cars pass before crossing. If that happened, Richie would catch me for sure, so I resolved to turn right if necessary and head down to Market Avenue, a major road where there would be plenty of witnesses in case Richie caught up and started whaling on me. 

Luckily, traffic was light, and I shot across 25th toward the library. I saw several cars in the parking lot and a couple of bikes where I would park my own when I visited. I yanked open the  front door leading into the vestibule with its flyer-clotted bulletin boards and then entered the second door into the library proper. Not once had I looked back.

The library was one large room with the main desk in the middle. On three sides stood orderly rows of bookshelves where I’d lose myself and all track of time whenever I could. The place was blessedly quiet. All I could hear as I staggered toward the periodicals section near the front door was the frantic pounding of my heart. Miss Laura, the librarian, watched curiously as I sat and tried to catch my breath. She was a skinny older lady who always wore her hair in a bun and a cardigan sweater over her dress. I waved to her, attempting to be nonchalant despite my wheezing, then turned my attention to the door. I waited, one minute, then two, but Richie did not enter. I thought of vampires unable to pass the threshold of a church. 

The clock read 7:47—thirteen minutes to closing. Would Richie wait outside for me, like a patient lion watching for an injured antelope to wander off from its herd? Able to breathe now, I walked over toward a window. There, by the bike rack, paced my brother, arms across his chest, gazing up at the sky. He looked mad—not in an angry way, but a crazy way, as if I’d stolen his wallet or his Who albums rather than beat him in a game of badminton. The sky was turning dark, and I wondered if our parents had noticed our absence. Probably not. They were likely waiting for The Flip Wilson Show to start.

“Attention, attention,” Miss Laura announced over the PA system. “The library will be closing in ten minutes. If you need to check out books, please come to the front desk now. Thank you.”

As several people lined up to check out their books, I wandered over to the cinema section and read about Stanley Kubrick for ten minutes. I’d recently watched Paths of Glory on TV. Apparently, while directing 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick wore the same style of clothes every day so as not to bother with yet another decision. 

When the fluorescent lights flickered, I joined Miss Laura at the door. She shut out the lights and removed the keys from her purse.

“Did you ride your bike, Carl?” she asked. 

“No, I walked.”

In the vestibule, she locked the inner door. I hoped that, at least for a moment, her presence would stop Richie from pouncing on me when we left the building. But when we pushed through the outer door, my brother was nowhere to be seen. 

“It’s getting dark,” Miss Laura said. 

The sky had turned a dark blue, and the clouds glowed pink with the light of the set sun. I hoped my parents were too engrossed in the TV to notice that the streetlights had turned on.

“Will you get home okay?” Miss Laura asked.

I wanted her to offer me a ride, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. “Oh, sure,” I said. “It’s only a few blocks.”

“Well, all right then,” she said, smiling. “G’night, Carl.”

I watched her walk to her car at the far end of the otherwise empty parking lot. As she pulled away, I expected Richie to leap out from around the corner of the building, but nothing happened. I crossed 25th Street and headed up Logan Avenue, shivering from both the chilly night air and the dread of the inevitable attack. TV light flickered in living rooms, bats darted overhead. Every time I passed a tree I clenched myself in anticipation. I turned up 21st Street and, at our house, walked cautiously up the driveway to the side door. I saw no one.

Inside, I heard the TV from the far end of the house. I walked slowly through the dining room, the front entryway, the living room, still waiting to be pounced upon. In the den I found my parents and brother watching Flip Wilson dressed as Geraldine. My father laughed loudly, an infectious laugh that almost made me smile. 

My mother glanced over and said, “Where’ve you been, sweetie?”

“The library,” I told her, knowing she’d approve. She nodded and turned back to the TV.

Richie lay on the sofa. He laughed along with our dad and—very purposely, I felt—avoided looking at me. I considered joining them, but then I’d have to ask Richie to make room for me. He knew that it would be hard for me to ask, which was why he lay across the entire sofa. 

I went upstairs and read The Hobbit, brushed my teeth, got into my pajamas, and climbed into bed. At nine o’clock, my mother tucked me in and switched off the light. I lay wide awake listening to her and my father turning the pages of their books. From next door I could hear the tinny thump of drums and bass from Richie’s headphones. It seemed like I was now finally safe from my brother. Still, I couldn’t sleep. Not because I felt afraid, but because I felt jazzed from the amazing sense of accomplishment: I had beaten Richie at badminton! It was like a movie in which the underdog claws his way from certain defeat to victory with a combination of athletic prowess and psychological strategy. That final, game-winning volley over Richie’s prone body—I relived it over and over.

Then, just as I started to drift off, I felt a cold hand clutch my ankle. I shrieked, my heart almost stopping cold. Richie had slowly, stealthily crept along the floor into my room, leaving the music playing in his room as a decoy, and reached under the blankets to grab me.  I sat up, and in the deep, black quiet that followed, heard a cruel giggle recede in the darkness toward the open door. 

CHRIS BELDEN is the author of two novels, Shriver (Simon & Schuster) and Carry-On (Rain Mountain Press), and the story collection The Floating Lady of Lake Tawaba (New Rivers Press).