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Johnny likes small things. He remembers being five years old and sitting on the porch, examining the dirt with a keen interest that only a child trying desperately to ignore the sounds coming from inside could. He’d never been good at staying still and quiet like they’d preferred and he’d long since learned that protesting in the ways typical children did was going to get him nowhere fast.

So he adapted. He studied the world around him. The way dust settled into the worn grooves of the dilapidated floor boards in his living room, the track of a small insect carrying a twig or a spare crumb of food twice its size to a hole in the ground. He’d imagine what it would be like to crawl into that tiny hole, to have a world of tunnels underground that he could explore and navigate. They’d be full of twists and turns that only he understood, expert that he’d be at them. He built a world in his mind, each addition more fantastical than the last.

A beetle had a small button on its back now. Johnny knew he was poor. He wasn’t destitute – they had food and a roof over their heads – but inside his father was screaming at his brother for having lost a button. D’av insisted he didn’t care, it was just a stupid button, and the unmistakable sound of a hand striking skin echoed against the hollow walls.

It was silver, catching the dying light of the sun as it slowly crept across the floor. The night before he’d seen D’avin stomp across the hallway towards their shared room, anger flushing his cheeks. He didn’t know what they were fighting about; he never knew. D’avin tried to protect him from most of it. But he remembered watching his brother tear off his shirt and tossing it angrily to the side, then the clink of a button that’d popped off. He watched it roll on its edge until it hit the wall, bouncing back a bit before flattening against their worn rug.

D’av had stared at it, chest heaving with rage he didn’t know how to channel. He picked up the button and tossed it out the window. D’av gave him one final, defiant glare.

“Fuck. Them.”

The beetle found his hole, his escape, button still balanced precariously on its shell. Johnny listened to the rise in pitch of the voices inside until the shining silver disappeared below ground.