Casper was not a violent child.  As a toddler, he went to preschool with a superman knapsack packed with his teddy bear and extra diapers that he was prone to using.  Once he went to kindergarten, Casper outgrew the diapers but not the bear, a staple of his character that made him an easy target for ridicule.  On the bus, he would clutch the bear and look out the window, counting the trash on the side of the road that people had forgotten to throw away. 

When he wasn't in school, Casper took swim lessons and played baseball.  He had tried hockey, but couldn't get comfortable on skates.  He was a quiet child but easy to talk to. 
By the time he grew up, Casper had outgrown much of his childhood.  The ridicule hadn't lasted long, and he bore no scars from the pain.  Casper had friends and a girlfriend, a pretty one, Elise.
Casper thought that he loved Elise.  He loved her long blonde hair and her dark eyes and her soft skin.  He loved her laugh and her generosity and her wit.  He was so sure that he loved her that he even told her so himself.
"I love you too, C," Elise responded.
But of course they didn't.

Casper's first taste of violence was on the baseball field.  Casper had just scored the tying run but the umpire disagreed, and Casper's coach ran onto the field to prove him wrong.  After hearing a slew of words that he never had before, Casper's coach picked up his fist, the umpire moved out of the way, and the final moments of Coach K's punch resonated against Casper's cheek. 
He didn't cry.  He looked up at his coach with tiny, glowing eyes.  Coach didn't know what to say.  Then, Casper's mother ran onto the field, scooped him up, and signed him up for a different team.

With Elise, Casper learned just how much louder actions spoke than words.
“Elise!  Don’t walk away from me!”  He latched onto her arm so tightly that it would leave a bruise that would cause her to wear sweaters for days to come.  She didn’t want to hate him, but it was becoming easier every minute. 
“C, let me go,” she pleaded. 
“Tell me you’re not going to walk away.”  She hesitated.  “Tell me you’re not going to
walk away!”  She jumped, shook her head rapidly back and forth. 
“I’m not.  I promise, I’m not.”  He pulled his hand away and she ran, as fast as her beautiful long legs that he loved would take her. 
“Elise!”  He caught up to her, another bruise.
She was crying now.  Her hair fell into the tears on her face as he grabbed her and spun her around.  He hit her because he could, because he felt that he needed to, because she wouldn’t listen.
“Casper, please.  You’re hurting me.” 
“Why won’t you listen to me, Elise?”  Casper remembered the first time he ever faced violence.  “Listen to me!”  He shouted in her ear.  Then he punched her, the same way that he had been punched himself before he even knew why people would do something like that. 
She called out and he let her go.  She dropped to the ground.  She was wounded now; she wouldn’t be able to cover these bruises with sweaters.  Her face and her arms were painted red, her eyes were painted with fear and her heart was painted a color she could not even fathom.  Elise was not scared of much, but she was scared of the boy that she loved. 
He knelt next to her.  He pushed her hair off of her face and she shuddered, turned away.  He kissed her.  He tried to show her that he loved her even though he didn't know how to tell her anymore.
“Never leave me,” Casper whispered to her, and when she wouldn’t look at him he took her face in his hands and made her.  “Never leave me,” he repeated. 
Elise saw in Casper what had first drawn her to him.  She believed for a moment that he cared about her the way that he used to.  She thought she could forgive him; maybe this wouldn't be so hard to forget.
Still, she didn’t respond to his pleas because she didn’t know how.  She didn’t believe that she loved him anymore, but to tell him that was a thought that she couldn’t face. 
Casper took Elise’s hand in his and squeezed it tight; an act of love, not of violence. 
“I’m not broken anymore,” he said.  She looked up at him with sad, glowing, heartbroken eyes not so different from a pair that Casper had once had.
“You might not be broken but you’re not fixed yet."  Her hand slipped out of his and fell to the ground.  Elise stood slowly.
"You're red," he said, rising with her. 
"I'm broken now."  She kissed him because she could, because she felt that she needed to, because he wouldn't listen. 
"I'm not violent.  I never was," Casper said as she walked away.  "I love you."
And this time, he was sure that it was true.