JC glared at the 3rd grader who was laughing at him.  The kid had his little cult of personality at his back, more focused on the feared leader than the supposedly hated enemy, and they laughed at the kid’s version of wit and biting insults.  JC pulled himself to his feet, slowly, trying not to watch Ted navigating the playground behind them while knotting a rubber jump rope around his fist. 

“You’re starting something you’ll regret,” JC said quietly. 

“I’m not afraid of your spooky family,” the kid laughed. 

“It’s not something I’ll do,” JC said, “It’s what you’ll do.  Again and again and again.  This moment.  This response.  This casual cruelty.  It doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t erase that your father resents you for cutting into his alone time with your mother.  It doesn’t erase the coolness in his words when he talks to you or the naked resentment that makes him work late to avoid having to put you to bed.  It doesn’t erase your mother crying because she wasn’t supposed to be a mother.  It doesn’t make you not alone.

“But this moment will happen again.  The pattern you start today will continue.  You’ll find yourself, a teen ager, a young adult, an old man, doing this same empty, useless ritual.  You’ll trap a wife with some promises of a future you can never deliver on, and when she’s just about to leave you’ll pick a fight with someone just because you’re bigger, and the emptiness will go away for a second.  But you’ll still be alone. 

“You’ll die, your children too busy with their own lives to make time to visit, and you’ll pull yourself up on your deathbed and pray to God for someone smaller than you to come along.  You’ll pray for some victim to help you feel like you’re not alone, and you’ll feel the need for some petty cruelty so strongly in your chest it’s like someone is making a fist around your heart.  The moment will pass, because there is nobody.  No target.  No distraction.   You’ll have to sit with the hideous pattern of your life and see that it was for nothing.  You’ll die alone.” 

The kid hesitated.  The others were trying to parse JC’s prophecy as Ted came up behind them.  “Die alone of old age,” Ted growled, “Or touch my brother again.”