Caleb stared at the gravel.
“I don’t.”
I nodded. “Then don’t be.”
His mother blinked. “I thought this was supposed to help.”
“It won’t if he’s dragged in like a sack of feed.”
Caleb looked up.
For the first time, he seemed interested.
His mother’s face crumpled with frustration.
“I don’t know what else to do.”
There it was again.
The sentence under every adult argument.
I don’t know what else to do.
Ms. Lin stepped forward gently and asked if they wanted to talk by the fence.
Caleb said no.
His mother said yes.
That meant no.
So we all stood there in the awkward truth of it.
Then Buster stepped out from behind me and blew warm air toward Caleb’s sleeve.
Caleb jerked back.
“Get that thing away from me.”
Emma stiffened near the tack room.
Buster stopped.
He did not push.
He did not follow.
He just stood there, head low.
Caleb’s eyes went to the scar on Buster’s hip.
“What happened to him?”
“People,” I said.
Caleb’s mouth twitched.
“Sounds about right.”
He stayed fifteen minutes.
Then twenty.
Then he picked up a brush.
Not because his mother told him to.
Not because I asked.
Because Daisy had mud on her neck and Caleb apparently could not stand looking at a job half done.
Emma hated him immediately.
Not quietly either.
“He’s mean,” she told me after he left.
“He’s hurting.”
“So is everybody. That doesn’t give him permission.”
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”
She crossed her arms. “Then why does he get to stay?”
That was the question that split Second Gate right down the middle.
How much space do you make for someone whose pain comes out sharp?
How do you protect gentle kids without throwing away the difficult ones?
At what point does compassion for one person become cruelty to everybody else?
I wish I could say I had a clean answer.
I didn’t.
Caleb came back the next day.
He mocked Robbie’s boots.
Robbie laughed too loudly and then disappeared behind the hay stack for ten minutes.
Caleb rolled his eyes when a girl talked about being anxious around Gospel.
Mason stepped toward him.
I stepped between them.
“Outside,” I told Caleb.
He smirked. “What?”
“You and me. Now.”
We walked out behind the barn where the old tractor sat under a tarp.
Cold wind moved through the pasture grass.
Caleb shoved his hands into his pockets.
“You kicking me out?”
“I’m deciding.”
His face changed fast.
Too fast.
There was fear under the smirk.
Good.
Not good that he was scared.
Good that I could finally see something real.
“I didn’t do anything,” he said.
“You did plenty.”
“Everybody here acts like they’re made of glass.”
“Everybody here is trying not to break.”
He looked away.
I took one step closer.
