A laceration requiring sutures.

Blunt-force injury to the ribs.

I did not fight him — I covered my head and waited for it to be over, because there was no version of fighting back that ended well, and because some cold, calculating part of me had already stepped outside the pain and begun counting.

And the whole time, his mother stood over us and cheered him on, calling out for him to hit me harder — a detail I want you to hold onto, because a security camera held onto it too, and it is the single most expensive sentence Noreen Ashcraft ever spoke.

I have thought since about that cold, counting part of me, because it frightened people a little when I described it later — the idea that I was calm in the middle of it.

But it was not really calm.