brian dodges punch

  For a moment everything seemed to hang in place. The door was open, Carl standing there and Brian off to the side, his face perplexed — he had been thinking about the woods when it happened — and Susan and Haley on the ground, blood all over Haley’s face and Susan moaning, holding her knee.
  ‘‘What—?’’ Brian turned back to Carl just as Carl took a swing at his head. Had it connected fully, Brian thought, it would have torn his head off. Dodging before it caught him, he missed the total force of the blow, but even then it struck his shoulder and knocked him slightly back and down on one knee.
  Then things came very quickly. Haley was blinded by the blood in his eyes but Susan saw it all and still didn’t believe it.
  ‘‘Something happened,’’ she said later. ‘‘Something happened to Brian — Carl just disappeared. .’’
  In that instant Brian totally reverted. He was no longer a boy walking into a pizza parlor. He was Brian back in the woods, Brian with the moose, Brian being attacked — Brian living because he was quick and focused and intent on staying alive — and Carl was the threat, the thing that had to be stopped, attacked.