[Reaction]
[School isn't that long ago. He can remember fifteen, no problem. Eight years, but it ain't feeling like eight years. They're compressed and Dylan's on the way to the look-out with the smell of pine and clean air and the spread of asphalt under his sneakers. His hands are in the pockets of his hoodie and his head is ducked under the hood, and he remembers wipe-outs good. He remembers feeling like faking it until you got it down, it ain't different now. Gets the feeling of being on edge. Over somebody, instead of a fight.
He can feel that too. The tension over his skin (her skin?) that feels tight. Like something's gonna blow if you step wrong. Didn't know that feeling at fifteen but he's got it down now. The constriction in your throat. The flinch. Can feel the right-wrong-rightness of it all too. The burden of it, the way he's carrying it around like loose change in the back pocket at the skate-park, the bruising. The pride, even if you're getting beat.
Dyl knows how it feels when you make lists about a person. He had lists. Winced, over the rail thing. Winced but the laughter was the aftertaste and when he picked himself up from the floor, underneath the trees (way to fall on your ass, Michaels) he's still feeling the wrong-rightness of it, of being fifteen and knowing shit you didn't know before and knowing a whole bunch of shit you still gotta find out.
The bruises, man. This town has a lot of fucked up families. He doesn't have personal experience of getting beat on. Not before. There's a dividing line. But not girls and not kids. His jaw feels tight. There's something lurching around underneath the surface, something that ain't meant to surface this time of the month. It's another thing for the doc to note down, but he's not thinking that.
Mostly he's thinking, who the hell is the guy who hit his kid. And if he's still in town, maybe he shouldn't be.]