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had gotten him out.
    They spent that entire weekend watching Sunny’s father’s movies in the attic, thrilled by the fact that their ages were far lower than the numbers framed in red on the front of the cases, gorging on chocolate and long sherbet straws. On Bobby’s insistence, Sunny fetched what toys he had from the cupboard in his bedroom. All of them fitted inside a battered shoe box, which Sunny opened with a sickly mixture of dread and embarrassment, stalling as he peeled back the lid. But Bobby, unlike any friend Sunny had invited home before, never commented on how dated the few toys were, or that some were held together with sticky tape. In his hands the green plastic soldiers came to life, and eventually even Sunny stopped seeing their missing limbs.
    Neither mentioned how reluctant they were to part when Bobby slowly gathered his things and prepared for the short walk home.
    â€œI can protect you from those boys at school,” Sunny said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI can stop them.”
    â€œNo, you can’t.”
    â€œI can. I can walk with you to and from school every day. I could come to your house and collect you in the morning, and afterward I can walk you all the way home.”
    â€œNo,” Bobby said, knowing that he didn’t want Sunny to meet his father, “that’s something we definitely can’t do.” They shook hands again. “But thank you.”
    Sunny ignored his mother’s pleas to go to bed. That night he watched Terminator 2: Judgment Day . The indestructible metal skeleton, coated in a faux-human flesh, protected the boy, John Connor, at all costs. He had an idea and immediately began taking notes. In order to execute it properly, it would need to be done in three separate phases, otherwise he would probably die. Having his entire skeleton replaced with steel in one single operation was, by any standards, too ambitious.
    The next morning, Sunny waited by the tunnel. He found that, like all his ideas, his enthusiasm for it had diminished as quickly as the paint had dried in the weekend sun. All of his ideas, that is, but this new one, which he knew he’d see through to the end no matter what as long as he had a little help.
    When Bobby arrived, Sunny beckoned him from the bush. As he came closer Sunny saw that his shirt was again covered in mud, and that a mixture of snot and tears had blurred the dirt on his cheeks. A solitary droplet of blood glistened in his left nostril.
    â€œWhat are you doing here?” Bobby said, forcing his foot flat on the ground to stop his leg from shaking.
    â€œI have a plan, and I need you to help me with it,” Sunny said.
    â€œWhat kind of plan?”
    â€œTo protect you.” He opened his mouth to say that he didn’t need protecting, but no sound emerged. Sunny stepped out from behind the bush in time to catch Bobby, who sobbed with force enough to send ripples through them both. “I’m going to become a cyborg.”
    Even through his anguish, Bobby struggled to stifle a laugh.
    Reckless as it may have been, Phase One had nonetheless gone as hoped. Sunny positioned two chairs in his garden, resting his right leg across them. They placed sandbags on either side of his ankle to hold the foot in place, then laid a sleeping bag beneath him as a rudimentary crash mat. Bobby rolled up a towel so tightly that it creaked and pushed it into Sunny’s mouth, who clamped his jaws shut. Just as they had practiced, Sunny nodded three times to let Bobby know that he was ready. The third nod was Bobby’s cue to leap off the shed onto Sunny’s leg, snapping both the tibia and fibula clean in two. The jump was swift and accurate. Birds fled the echo.
    Sunny pretended that he had fallen from the shed and landed awkwardly. The surgeon told him it was one of the cleanest breaks he had ever seen. Sunny thanked him, confusing everyone in the operating room.
    With steely resolve, Sunny soldiered