Page 45 of The Beginning and End of Everything
He will not die.
He will not die.
A rabid kind of desperation falls over me, driving each push until I hear his ribs crack. Still, I keep going. Thirty compressions, two breaths.
Thirty, two.
Over and over, until my arms ache, and my lungs strain from the effort. His skin has now gone pale and waxy, and realization dawns on me like a sledgehammer straight to my heart.
Connor’s gone.
My best friend. My brother.
I finally close his eyes and break. My soul is being cleaved in two, and it hurts more than anything I’ve ever experienced. I just sit there—I don’t know how long—holding his hand, living in denial. I don’t want to leave him, but the longer I sit here, the more real it becomes, and the more danger I’m in. So I push to my feet and climb over the body of the final soldier before throwing the door open to get out of the vehicle.
The second my boots hit the sand, I start walking, stripping my vest, helmet, and jacket as I go. I don’t know where I’m going or why. I don’t think I care anymore because my last reason for anything just died.
So I just…walk.
24
Brandon
January 2015
The roar of the crowd reaches me from the end of the corridor, their cries echoing along bleak, concrete walls.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ring: The one. The only. Brandon The Breaker Blaine!
That’s my cue, and every time I hear it, my stomach bottoms out. I can’t fight under my real name. Brandon O’Kieffe died in Afghanistan, alongside his best friend, Connor Blaine. The Breaker isn't real. He doesn’t exist. He’s an apparition I became in order to survive.
I pass through the doorway, into the stripped-out basement of Larry’s Pub we call The Pit. This is the dark and dirty underbelly of London, where the corrupt and nameless come to trade punches, to draw blood, and to cash in. A place where there are no rules, only a winner and a loser.
The regular drunks and gamblers shout and wave handfuls of cash through the air while chanting:Breaker, Breaker, Breaker.
I ignore it.
I ignorethemas I duck through the ropes and into the pitiful square of bloodstained concrete that serves as a ring.
My opponent bounces on the balls of his feet, then punches the air. He laps up the cheers while I stand with my arms loose at my sides, waiting for the ding of the bell to sound.
This moment, right here, is all I have any more. It’s all I’m good at. I tune out the shouting and screaming, the commentator’s voice crackling over the microphone until the only sound is the steady pounding of my own heart. In this moment, nothing outside of this ring exists, and that makes it a strange kind of salvation.
The bell rings, and he comes at me like a train, swinging twice. I duck easily before throwing a right hook. My fist makes impact with his cheek with a loud smack. There’s one perfect moment where he staggers back and sways for a second. Then it’s over. He goes down hard and is out cold.
The room explodes. The referee steps toward me and reaches for my arm, but I turn and walk out of the ring, straight to the exit in the corner that leads into the storage room.
I both love and hate to fight. The power in the moment of a win is always overshadowed by the shame I feel afterward. I was supposed to be better than this rage—my father’s rage. I was supposed to be more.
I’m almost done unwrapping the tape from my hands when Larry bursts into the room and slams the door behind him.
“You gotta give the crowd a fight, boy!” His southern drawl booms around the small space.
I glance up without much thought as Larry grabs an aluminum chair from the corner, spins it around, and straddles it. He rests his thick, ink-covered arms along the top, and I stare at the tat of the topless hula girl smoking a joint on his right forearm.
I don’t know what more he wants from me besides a win. “I fought, didn’t I?” I take off my shorts and pull on a pair of jeans.
“That ain’t no fight." His glass eye drifts in the wrong direction, and it makes it hard for me to take him seriously. "It's a fuckin’ massacre.” He laughs.
