Young Writers Society

Hook-Up Shoot-Up: Adonis Begonia heads off to work in the afternoon. As he approaches the club, he is met by his roommate, Pace. Pace leads him inside, where Adonis meets with a regular client who offers to pay extra for him not to get with other women. He accepts her offer. Later that night, Pace heads back to their shared apartment to take the heroin Adonis's client has given them. Adonis sticks behind, hoping to break his agreement and take another client.

Ashes, Ashes: Quinn Averly spends a day wandering around the city and taking in the sights, without actually being himself.

Monopoly Man: Orion Alloway is found with slit wrists in an alleyway and dragged to a hospital, where he fights with a police officer who wants to know his identity. He is in desparate need of a liver transplant. After a week or so, he caves in and mentions his boyfriend, ex-girlfriend, and their living situation with a baby. The officer calls these people. The police tell him that his boyfriend, Dawson, is coming to the hospital with Orion's parents, but he is not at all excited about the prospect. He insinuates another attempt in the future.

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Ash Stymest as Adonis Begonia


Wynston Shannon as Orion Alloway

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He hasn’t heard his real name in a year. Maybe longer. How long has it been since he landed on the street? It was just after his dad went to jail. He ran. Out-of-the-way clubs in Las Vegas aren’t particular about age when they hire their employees. They are, however, big on presentation. The persona was his first lie.

There were days before Adonis Begonia. Hopefully, there will be days after. Too bad they’re not in view. Everything he experiences now is in segments. He’s not even sure if they make sense next to each other: just bits and pieces of reality.

Adonis heads down the street on his way to work. Vacationers and natives brush against his bare arms, but he can hardly feel their touch. At some point, his skin stopped responding to human contact. That doesn’t bother him. It just makes his job easier.

“Hey, sexy!” a man outside a casino cat-calls. “How about a ride around the block?”

He could use the money, but he needs to get to his job for the real bucks to be raked in. Adonis ignores the man. That man, and then several drunk women. A father. A bouncer at another club. Some random dude with a handful of freshly scratched lottery tickets. Not important.

“Hey, Adonis!” Pace greets him by the door. He’s Adonis’s roommate. While the two of them do not share memories, fears, or dreams for the future, they do share several bags of heroin per night. Friends in addiction. At least Pace is always happy to see him at work.

“Hey,” Adonis responds.

“Your octopus is here.”

“Yeah, she always is.”

Pace gestures for Adonis to come inside. “I’m thinking I get the Appletini Lady tonight. She pays well. And you’re going to get your regulars, right?”

“I’m going to do what I have to.”

“Okay. She’s in the back, when you’re ready.”

Adonis laughs without humor. “I’m always ready for some cash, Pace.”

“Yeah, I guess we are.” Pace raises his eyebrows at a man across the room, who licks his lips in response. “I’m going to see if this guy can pay well.” Paces heads off the in the direction of the man, before leading him away for a kiss or two and maybe a lap dance. Nothing drastic. Just money.

Adonis makes himself comfortable on a barstool for a moment. He blinks. Time goes missing. He's learned to accept that he's not going to remember.
--
Miss Roth is one of Adonis’s regulars. She’s one of the younger clients, the kind that still believe they can find something lasting and loving with a club prostitute. How adorable. Adonis would tell her that it doesn't work like that, but the money adds up handsomely. He’s gone to many a party with her as a significant other. Of course, a paid significant other.

“Going my way tonight?” Adonis asks. He took the time to apply eyeliner in the subway station. It was a good decision. He bats his eyelashes.

“Depends. Have you upped your costs?”

“Nah, baby. Not for you.”

Miss Roth furrows her eyebrows. “Not for me?”

“Two hundred fifty an hour. Like always. For my favorite.” He darts in, pressing a palm against her chest. Her heart rate skyrockets. “Are you up for anything?”

“Aren’t I always?”

“True.”

Adonis knows where Miss Roth wants them to go together. Her apartment. It’s not that far away from his, but it’s definitely better quality. She’s rich. Her apartment has two bedrooms, a den, a kitchen, and two bathrooms. There’s a pool out front. Sometimes, after he’s done the unspeakable, Adonis likes to go for a swim to clear his head and wash the scent of her perfume from his body. And he’s slept on her couch dozens of times. It’s a blue pull-out, and she supplies real feather pillows.

“We’re going—” Miss Roth begins.

“—home.” Adonis takes her hand. “I know where you live. We’re going to your home.”

“It could be your home too, if you—”

Adonis shakes his head. “This is my job, remember. I work.”

“You could be live-in.”

“I don't do that kind of thing.”

“I know.”

He knows that she knows. She makes the suggestion every single time they meet. They go to Miss Roth’s house. Blink. Time passing.
--
What happens behind closed doors stays beyond closed doors. That’s rule number one. The only things Adonis carries with him back from Miss Roth’s apartment are the ghosts of the woman’s palms along his chest and back. Nothing more tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

Miss Roth loops a protective arm about Adonis’s waist. Adonis lets it happen. When she’s in a good mood, sometimes this client throws in another bill by mistake.

Back to the club. Back to the dancers. He can’t remember what happens on the way, but it probably doesn't matter. Nothing really matters anymore.
--
“Just a little longer.” She presses her body against his, and they’re kissing again. Just inside the doors to the club. He’s not sure how she tastes. That was something he used to notice right away. When he kissed Pace for the first time (women with fetishes paid to watch), Pace tasted like watermelon and mint toothpaste. It wasn’t a bad flavor. His first client tasted like vodka. Adonis almost wishes to kiss those people again, to see if he’s lost his senses. Miss Roth gives him a pill, something small and pink. He dry-swallows it. Alcohol splatters his shirt, and Miss Roth realizes her time is up.

She backs away from him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Ask the bartender for Adonis Begonia. I’ll be here.” Adonis winks.

Miss Roth moves to leave, but hesitates. “Will you wait for me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will you promise not to take any other clients? Just me?”

Adonis spots Pace across the dance floor, making out with a bleach-blonde woman in a silver cocktail dress. Pace always looks happy. How many clients does he take on a night? Adonis only services his regulars and a couple others for trivial things.

“I can’t afford to be selective.” Yeah, and he can't even keep track of a day. He must get with dozens of people that he doesn't even remember. He sits down on one of the fine leather couches.

“But if I pay?”

Adonis is about to deny her, but pauses to think. Maybe he can milk this for more money. He needs it, after all, to keep up with inflation in Las Vegas.

Miss Roth caves way too quickly for someone of her status. “Never mind. Forget I bought it up. I’ll see you tomorrow, yes, at the usual time?”

Adonis makes his decision. “The price might be an issue next time, though, if you want me to wait for you.” He’ll let her think that she’s his one-and-only. How stupid is that woman, that she’s willing to believe a teenage prostitute will only take her on as a client? Some of the people he meets are so stupid.

Miss Roth smiles and tucks several more hundreds into the waistband of Adonis’s pants. “I don’t doubt it. I hear you’re pretty popular. Say… two thousand more? You can’t take more than two clients a day, right?”

“That will work just fine.”

Miss Roth nods. Then, almost as an afterthought, she notes, “Your eyes are beautiful.”

Adonis laughs and runs his fingers below his eyes. Under the neon liner, they truly are beautiful. One is the color of an evening sky: dark blue with interspersed gold flecks. The other is a chocolatey-smooth brown. Heterochromia is a selling factor. Bless the genetic lottery. “Thank you. See you tomorrow?” He waggles his eyebrows.

Miss Roth gives a nervous giggle before sprinting towards the doors and heading down the strip.

She’ll be back.

And she’ll never be his one-and-only.

Adonis spots Pace once more, kissing a young adult with hair dyed blue. The patron can’t be more than twenty-five years old. Someone fresh to the club life. He probably wants to live it up now that he can. In a couple years, he won’t be here ever again.

Adonis feels no guilt in separating him from Pace.

“Hey, shift’s over. We can go home.”

“Finally.” Pace heads to the bar to grab his coat.

Adonis knows he keeps talking. But his mind goes blank.
--
“You’re telling me you don’t find any pleasure in it at all?”

Now Adonis sits at the bar with Pace. They both have drinks. The box in which they keep their money sits between them, unlocked. Adonis has a handful of cash. Did Miss Roth give him this much?

“No.” Adonis fiddles with latch on the box before inserting his salary. He hands it to Pace to take back to their shared apartment. “I don’t like sex. I do it to get by.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“No.”

“Huh.” Pace runs a hand through his disheveled curls. “Didn’t think that was possible. Well, I’ll see you tonight.”

“Don’t wait up. I’m gonna pick up another client, maybe score a high-class hotel bed. Rent’s due on Saturday, remember.”

“How could I forget?”

The club lights pulse in rhythm with the blaring music. Epileptics beware of the Intrigue II. Adonis closes his eyes to the flashing and gropes for the counter to steady himself. What was in that pill that Miss Roth gave him? Has he been poisoned? No, it must just be the weather. He always loses time.

Pace lights a cigarette. “Anyway, I’ll be headed out. How much did she give you?”

“A bag.” Adonis fishes the package from his backpack. That’s one thing Miss Roth has going for her: she has drug connections. She introduced heroin to him the first time they met up. After that… the stuff kept him going.

“Cool,” Pace says. He catches the bag when Adonis throws it his way. “All mine, right?”

“All yours,” Adonis confirms. “I’ll bring more tomorrow. See you then.”

“See ya.” Pace stuffs the bag in his pocket and trudges out onto the street. He pulls up his hood against the chill of the night wind. Winter never hits very hard in the Strip, which means every little gust is frigid for Vegas’s residents.

Adonis returns his gaze to the bar and scans it for other potential buyers. The rich men want to get it without their wives finding out, meaning they head for beautiful hotels with lavish decorating. Middle-class men might take him home, or perhaps to a motel. Lower-class folks do it in the back alley. For women, it’s almost the same, except they like to kiss more than grope. Imagine that. He spies a man wearing a suit staring his way. Perfect. Adonis waltzes his way over to this next guest. Maybe he’ll have a pillow tonight.

Miss Roth, in the meanwhile, has made her way back home for sure. Obviously, she didn’t recognize the face on the Missing Persons poster on the subway.

HAVE YOU SEEN ME? JULIAN CUSP, AGE 18.

Not like it would do her any good. He’s never going home.

There are days when you wake up outside of your own body. You think it should surprise you, but doesn’t. You rise from the sleeping bag in the homeless shelter with little effort, only to look down and find that you left your skin behind. It’s an inconvenience, nothing more.

A couple cots down, a man plays a violin. It’s his fault that this happened to you. You devote a small section of your consciousness to hating him.

It takes you a half-hour to rouse your body. You sing a lot of Green Day.

You tell yourself to write this development down in your journal, the one that Dr. Newman told you to keep, but your arms won’t obey. Oh well. Save it for later.

The workers at the shelter don’t ask questions. You leave.

Your body is a lot less adventurous than you. After all, it needs to worry about mortality. You follow it down the street and around the corner, even stop to eat breakfast with it at the café. Neither of you digest anything. It heads for the subway station, so you trail behind. Subways are scary. There was that one story where a lady got killed on a subway. Dangerous stuff. Your body is a fifteen-year-old boy, but serial killers have varying tastes.

Down you both go, down the stairs. Into the earth. There are so many other people, but you get to float above them. Above everything. It’s weird, being underneath the ground and yet above the general populace. Something’s out-of-touch.

Don’t
think
about
it.

Thinking about it only makes you sad. Sadness shouldn’t be able to touch you when you’re like this. You devote your attention to the beautiful girl who gets on the subway next to your body.

“Hi, Quinn,” she tells it. “You write anything recently?”

Your body probably gives an answer, but you formulate your own in your head. “No, I haven’t written anything. Medicine kills my creativity.” Because she shouldn’t refer to your body as Quinn. You are Quinn. Only you are Quinn.

“That’s okay,” she says.

You remember her face, but your body asks her to repeat her name anyway. She does. There’s something in her smile, something sweet, something childlike. You must ask this every time you see her. And of course you know why. You’re too busy thinking through the complexity of your own mind that you forget to catch what she says. It’s fine. Your body will remember.

The girl kisses your body on the cheek as she rushes for her train. Your body dawdles. Now that the girl is gone, there is no reason for you to hang out with your flesh if you don’t have to. Your body can spend the entire day riding around on the subway. You can’t. You go down to the fountain near the park where all the birds splash around, and talk with them.

“Haven’t you brought us bread?” they ask.

Except, you haven’t.

And even if you had, how could you throw it to them? You’re not in your body.

“I’m sorry, birds,” you tell them. “I don’t have anything for you.”

“That’s okay,” they reply. “Bring something later.”

You make a note in your head to take food to them when you awake in your body once more. Maybe they will like spice cake. Maybe they will like the taste of the ground Lithium pills you were meant to swallow with your breakfast that morning.

Or maybe they won’t. It’s a toss-up.

“Have you seen anything especially beautiful today?” you say, trying to strike up conversation once more.

“Yes, yes. We saw a couple get married,” a bluebird quips.

“Very young couple,” adds a pigeon. “Too young, if you ask me. But her dress was truly gorgeous.” The pigeon sounds like your mother. You’ll tell your mother about the pigeon.

“Anything else?” you ask.

“There was a store playing lovely music down there. Something by… what’s that man’s name… Mozart! I wish I was alive when he was. Such piano! Such violin!”

“Yes, Mozart.” You glide into the fountain to get closer to the birds. “Mozart is wonderful.”

The other birds join in a chorus of different languages. “Sí! Mozart es bueno!”

“Mozart er godt! Han har på seg gode klær også!”

You can translate those birds because of the website you were using before your diagnosis. What was it called? Ah, whatever. You learned Spanish and Norwegian. An odd combination. Why do the birds speak specific languages that you know? They must know you know them.

There’s another question you must ask. “Are you all from very far away?”

“No. We come from very close. America is a melting pot, is it not?” The birds stop answering you after that. You are disenchanted with the birds.

There’s a man with a powerful voice belting a solo inside a nearby building. He’s just a grainy picture on a discount TV screen, but you are drawn to him anyway. You watch how he inhales and exhales. It’s like there’s fire inside his lungs. He closes his eyes to hit a falsetto note, and you close your eyes with him.

Focus is a heck of a drug.

You can’t even recognize your own face on the next television set over as your family desperately tries to find you. They talk about your medication, how you shouldn’t be without it.

They’re wrong, though. It’s your body that needs the medication. And since you’ve escaped it, you have no need. You can drift onwards forever. Maybe someone on the subway will report your body to the police, and they’ll bring it back to your house safe and sound so you can use it once you’re back inside. Maybe. So many maybes. Or, they might not find your body. Doesn’t matter to you at all. At this point, you’re at least seventy-percent sure that you’re already dead.

That’s it! Someone killed you. Again. Those people, the people you told your mother were coming. They killed you. Finally. You showed her.

The screen-man’s name is Brian. Everyone on TV loves him. You might want to go meet Brian.

Somebody else enters the shop behind you. Their voice is raspy and thick. You cannot stay here with their voice overlapping with Brian’s. They complain about a DVD not working properly on their player, and the shopkeeper attempts to explain to them that their player doesn’t work for Blu-Ray disks. What even is Blu-Ray? You can’t stick around. You need to leave.

The scent of candy drags you down yet another street.

When you were little, your father used to get you these things called “circus peanuts.” You didn’t know what they tasted like then. Heck, you still don’t know. But you want to taste them. They were unnaturally orange and chewy, getting caught in your braces and stuck to the roof of your mouth. Like peanut butter, except not peanut butter. Without any peanut at all.

Good times.

You want to signal for your body to join you outside the store. Marshmallows and chocolate-covered pretzels occupy the display stand, along with a sign written in a fancy calligraphy font. For your sweetheart, on Valentine’s Day, or any day. And another: Show her how much you care! Do you have a sweetheart? Yes, of course you do. You must. After all, the girl at the subway station kissed your body’s cheek. Yes, she’s yours. Does she know that you’re dead? Yes, of course she does. You will buy her some chocolate tonight.

In the meantime, there are more pressing matters to attend to. You locate the jar filled with circus peanuts somewhere off to your left. Simple enough. But gummy sharks, and butterflies, bears, and worms… how will you ever decide which one that you want? You check your pockets for cash. Oh wait, you don’t have pockets. They’re with your body. No money. Well. You absorb the smell anyway. Stores can’t charge you for smells.

A child outside screams with delight. He holds in his hand a bag of M&M candies, waving them tantalizingly over his comrades. They all seem happy. You will play with the child now.

“Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posies!”

Posies, yes. Your sister plants flowers in the window box that dangles over the road below. She likes poppies and Black-Eyed Susans. You like tulips. Your body was allergic to begonias. Thank goodness you’re not tethered to that loser anymore.

“Ashes, ashes…”

Ashes. When you sat outside your house after that fire, bits of your bedroom were raining down from the window. And they looked like snow, so you danced underneath them. Your mother pulled you away. Why would she do that? Fire… marshmallows… circus peanuts! You really should have bought some circus peanuts. Why didn’t you buy any?

“We all fall down!”

Such a fun little game, one that involves sprawling on your back. You’re certain you’ve played it before, but at the same time you’re not. Your brother… what is his name? Or, what was his name? You don’t have siblings anymore because you have ceased to exist. Of course. Why do you keep forgetting that? Brother… maybe Michael? Maybe he’s still alive.

No, his name is Bartley.

The children spin in circles as they warble their upbeat chant. The child drops his M&M bag.

“Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”

They crumple on the cobblestone path, giggling all the while. You fall with them this time. And you don’t laugh. Somewhere far away, an ambulance speeds through the intersections to get to the subway station entrance. Maybe your body’s there.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Why is it always maybe?

What you would give for a single day without any maybes.

A smoker outside your favorite bakery exhales a darkened breath. Even from where you lie, you’re sure you inhale it too.

Some days, you wake up outside your own body. Some days, you won’t get that body back.

The streets are really cold at night, unless you carry around three bottles of alcohol and an unopened package of Vicodin. Oh yeah, and that razor blade in your back pocket. Because of what you’re going to do.

I don’t remember ever feeling the chill of the outside air as I walked down the alleyway. I don’t remember feeling anything at all. Not even the blinding pain that should have come from my wrists. Or anything after that. Just… complete and utter numbness. I stared at the blood splattering against the wall, counting the seconds I had left until everything would stop—and then I wasn’t counting anymore.

That should have been the end of it.

Sucks to be you, doesn’t it?

Here I am, in the hospital, and all that anyone could muster to send me was this empty notebook. Fucking useless. I gave up writing before I went away. I flip through the first few pages, but it’s not like I can make myself like it. The police aren’t good with presents, apparently. Fuck the police.

They don’t even know who you are. You didn’t tell them.

They’re lucky.

They saved your sorry ass when you were face-planted on the pavement.

They should have let me bleed out.

Yeah, I think they’re getting that by this point.

I’m sorry.

But maybe if you weren’t so fucking frustrated all the fucking time…

Ideal.

…you could actually call your friends and tell them where you are. Your family. Go home. They miss seeing you, I bet.

Not after what I did.

Of course they still miss you.

Why are you so nice sometimes?

You’re a fucking asshole if you think that’s nice. Just because they miss you doesn’t mean they like you. Missing is just a sense that something which used to be permanent is no longer there.

There it is.

I sit up a little bit as a man in a mint green scrubs enters the room. My head feels like it’s floating, but the rest of my body feels like hell. Literal hell. I must groan, because the doctor jumps.

“Oh, you’re awake!” He’s so excited at the prospect. “What’s your name, son?”

I think for a minute. “Lexington Smith.” It sounds more convincing than my actual name. After all, what kind of fucking dickhead names their child Orion Alloway?

Like a constellation. So beautiful, so pure. You’re about as pure as—

As pure as the air in China, I get it.

“Lexington Smith?” the doctor writes something down on a clipboard. “We weren’t even sure that you were going to wake up. Officer Brady Lawton and his group brought you in here a couple days ago. You’re very lucky.”

“Very.”

“Um.” The doctor crosses to my bedside. “I suppose that I should tell you what we have to do here, Lexington. Your liver is failing, probably due to extraneous alcohol consumption. It’s far beyond saving. You’re going to need a new one.” He pauses. “We would like to know some more about you. will you be on a database at any hospital? Previous injuries?”

“I drove my car off a bridge,” I supply, which is true.

And to think, Dawson wanted to come with. He’d have been riding shotgun. Ouch.

“Oh dear. Well then, we’ll run a search.”

He turns to leave, but I lift a hand. “Why are you searching?”

“We’re going to find your parents, okay, Lexington? You need a liver transplant. We need parental consent to do this surgery.” He shows me a page full of words that I can’t make out. “Your guardians have to sign this before we can put you on the transplant list. Where are your parents?”

“Like I fuckin’ know.” The pain in my abdomen is acute, but I’m able to distance myself enough from it in order to breathe normally.

You deserve to suffocate, you piece of shit. You deserve to feel all this pain. This is nothing compared to what you made them feel. Don’t you remember, Orion? Don’t you remember?

Of course I remember.

Dawson was a nice boy. And Barrett was a nice girl.

They were the best.

And what did you do to them?

The only thing I’m capable of doing.

That’s right. You did the only damn thing you could. Might as well have killed them, huh? That’s what you should have done. You fucking idiot. You should have let Dawson join you on the trip off the bridge. Why are you so fucking stupid? And now you’re too much of a pussy to even kill yourself correctly, yet you still won’t go back to see them. Fucking asshole.

I know.

I’m sorry.

“Lexington?” the doctor asks. “Lexington, are you in pain?”

“Yes,” I respond, arching my back. “Yes, yes it hurts.”

“Can you show me where?”

I point to the place where my liver rests, just below a few layers of skin, and then a little lower. It pulses. Fuck, I can feel the pain like a drumbeat.

“Okay. It’s going to be okay. We can’t wire painkillers through a compromised liver, but we’re going to do our best to make you comfortable. Okay, Lexington?” It’s like the man has an odd fascination with my fake name.

“Okay.”

“The police will work hard to find your family. Where are you from?”

Have to think fast again. “Chattanooga.”

“Okay. We’re going to look into it. For now, just try to go to sleep.”

“Yeah.”
--
I used to think about how things had gone before I ran, things involving sitting in empty classrooms while my teachers were dishing out important information. One year ago, I was in school. Making top grade. Spending time with the school’s councilors after lessons.

Such a smart boy. Always going to be the top of his class.

Yeah, well my class wasn’t shit.

They miss you. You know they fucking miss you.

Like Europe misses the Bubonic Plague.

I know how it goes.

You should come with a warning label.

Yeah, I’m aware.

Dawson probably only liked you because you were so smart. You fooled him, huh? Made him sit around and make sure you didn’t hurt yourself.

And Barrett.

Yes, and Barrett.

See, when I was dating Barrett (I told her what was coming, I really did) she was there for fucking everything. Warning label ignored. She was there for the first attempt, when I got my stomach pumped because of those pills. She was there the second attempt, when I had a seizure because of a massive amount of vodka. She was even there the third attempt, when I didn’t eat or drink anything for five days and pretty much keeled over.

She was only absent once, when Dawson and I had our first argument, which landed me in the psych ward of the hospital for a week.

Well, then and now.

Do I even wish she was here?

No, you can’t wish that. Not unless you fucking hate her. Because you figured out you were dating the wrong person. Remember? Hey! You found Dawson. Remember? Remember what you did to the both of them?

I know. I know. I know.

I’m sorry.

“Hey, bud.” It’s Brady. Brady-fucking-Lawton, from the police force, pulling me back into the present. The same Brady Lawton who apparently dragged my bleeding body out of an alleyway at three in the morning.

“Fucking shit. Just… leave me the fuck alone. Fuck.” I honestly don’t mean to be cursing so much, it’s just those stupid chemicals in my brain that control my word flow and like to fuck up what I want to say. Fuck, that’s another fucking curse word. Fuck.

“Wow.” Brady will not be so easily deterred. “I take it you’re not in a good mood today.”

“Hell yeah I’m in a bad mood.” My voice has more defeat then anger, so I trust Brady will understand. “I’m sorry. I can’t stop cursing.” That’s only the tip of the iceberg.

“It’s chill,” Brady says. “Tourette’s, huh?”

Yeah, let’s just mention that.

“Yeah.”

“So…” And the conversation drags. Brady promises at least fifteen times that he’s going to come back to see me every single day, but I’m not sure I want that to happen. He talks about sports and movies. I tune him out. I curse a little bit. He cursed back, after asking my permission.

And so we continue, for days.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is an awkward transition, and I'm trying to fix it right now.
--
The staff who worked the shift during the time I was found. All of them. They stand in the doorway with a bright purple sign. Get Well Soon!

“Hey! How are you doing?” Brady Lawton asks. He comes over to sit in the chair by my bed. I roll over to face him, but not because I really want to talk. “We all figured we’d come down for a visit, just to see if you’re okay.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re our favorite teenager.” Brady smiles. “We saved you.”

“Yeah, I guess you did.”

The group in the doorway applauds.

So happy that they picked up a teenager. Wow, the world has really gone downhill.

They devoted a lot of time to me.

Their happiness relies on an underlying feeling of pride and heroism.

Fuck off.

You wish it were that easy.

“Um, also…” Brady reaches into his coat pocket and roots around for a while. He pulls out a slip of paper with several lines of type. I don’t like type. Type is too fucking formal. “On the matter of your parents…”

“I told you my name. Did you find them?” They shouldn’t have. I used to live in a warehouse in Carson City with several other guys. Two were dating, and planned to take the last name Smith in order to escape. Lexington was my favorite battle during the revolutionary war. If someone nearby happened to have a son named Lexington Smith that was missing at the same time as me, than damn.

“No.”

You knew they weren’t going to find anyone. Give them your real name and let your parents find you. Give up.

No, can’t do that yet.

Just let them find you. Either go back, or die. Let them find your body, so long as they find you.

Fucking no.

“Anyway, the others have to get back to work. But I need to ask you a few more questions.”

“Ask away,” I tell him. “I’m an open book.” Brady nods at his coworkers, and they leave the room. It’s a little unsettling to be alone in a room with a buff dude and a rom-com in the background. I try to ignore the beeping of the machines around me. It makes it feel too much like a crime show.

“Lexington.” Brady stands up, blocking the TV. “I know that’s not your name, okay? I need you to tell me your real name, so we can get you a liver. Please? Can you do that for me?”

“Lexington is my name,” I insist. “Lexington Smith. My parents are Dawson and Barrett Smith. We live in Chattanooga. I’ve been running for a long time.”

The officer shakes his head. “Not Lexington. Not Chattanooga.”

“It’s the truth.”

“No it’s not.”

“Please believe me.”

Brady sighs heavily. “Listen. We can run dental records and DNA and fingerprints if you refuse to tell us. Lexington Smith doesn’t exist, we know he doesn’t. C’mon. Please give me your name. Otherwise, you might die.”

I’m sure I’ve lost, so I drop the ruse. “That was the original goal, wasn’t it? Most people don’t drink their liver into oblivion and then slit their wrists if they don’t want to die.”

“Yeah, well I saved you.”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

That’s the thing though. Everyone’s always going to being doing stuff for you. You’re always going to owe them more than you can easily repay.

Fuck debt.

You can’t get rid of it.

You think I don’t know that?

“But I did. And you’re not going to make me have done that in vain, are you?” He’s playing the guilt card. I already have enough guilt to sink Titanic.

“I planned on it.”

“Tell me your name.”

I sit up in the hospital bed. My eyes must be jaundiced by now. The whites will be all yellow, like I used to watch on those medical TV shows. Scary. I can use that to my advantage.

“Alright, Brady. You’re so sure that I should live?”

“Of course I’m sure. Tell me your name so that we can get parental consent for this surgery. You need the surgery. Plus, at this point, you’re a missing person. Missing persons should be returned to their families, shouldn’t they?”

“I don’t have a family.”

“Yes you do.”

He’s right, kind of. I did have a family. I had a mother and a father, two sisters, one brother. Three dogs, one cat, one fish. I gave them up in a heartbeat, taking on a new role. Then I had a son. An ex-girlfriend. A boyfriend. Had to fuck that up though, huh? Had to fuck that up. So I might as well not have a family. “No. I ruined that.”

Brady laughs and shakes his head. “It’s never as bad as you think. Your family loves you.”

No, they don’t fucking love you anymore. They miss you, sure, but they don’t love you. How is Barrett doing, do you think? Is she okay? That baby always did have your eyes. Is Dawson still helping her raise your child, or did he leave when you left?

No, not Dawson. Dawson’s too good of a person to leave.

Then what? What is he doing?

He’s probably still there. Doing a whole lot better. Without me around to mess crap up.

You’re just going to leave him there?

What choice do I have?

Dawson’s eyes were always prettier than yours.

“You don’t know what I’ve done,” I say finally. “I’ve done a lot of messed-up stuff within my limited lifespan.” And I have, I really have. Most of it is stuff I would never want to say to anyone. But that’s the thing about dying: all you have to do to gather the strength to do it is tell someone. One confession, one frightened look, and that’s it. You can attempt again.

“I have a kid,” I admit. “Marlon. He’s two years old. Completely deaf. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. His mother is Barrett Jennifer Markson. She just turned eighteen. Complete saint. We live with my boyfriend, Dawson Beck Shea. He’s nineteen. That’s the closest I have to a family. No parental consent.”

The officer sits down in the rolling chair by my bedside. “What about your parents?”

“They didn’t like that I wanted to give up my dreams for Barrett, Dawson, and Marlon. Which is fair, because all I did was fuck up their lives.”

“Because you wanted to be there for Marlon?”

That’s not the fucking reason. No, you don’t give a shit about Marlon. You’re just in love with the both of them. I know you. Dawson and Barrett, whose hearts beat for you. Don’t fuck with me.

“I guess so.”

“Then what’s so wrong?”

“No parental consent.”

Brady pulls his phone from his pocket and calls someone else from his department. “Do you know a Dawson Beck Shea in Salt Lake City? He’s living with a girl named… Barrett? Yes, Barrett Jennifer Marx.” I shake my head, so he clarifies. “Markson? Markson. Sorry. Salt Lake City, Utah. There’s a baby, too. Marlon.”

Idiot.

“There’s more, though. I can’t go back there.”

The officer looks up. “Abuse? Was it an abusive relationship?”

“No, no. Not abusive. Just…” I strain for the words to say. “Well, maybe abusive. But not because of them. Everything’s my own fault.”

Yes, everything is your own fault. You almost killed your baby. You broke Dawson’s heart. Everything is your own fucking fault.

“We’re going to get your boyfriend’s number, okay? We’re going to find your family and get you this transplant. Things aren’t as bad as you think, I promise.”

They are, though.
--
The police tell me Dawson answered their call on the first ring. He’s bringing my parents down to see me as soon as possible.

“They’re on good terms now,” Brady says. “Dawson and Barrett patched it up with your parents. And they understood your illness at the beginning. Nobody blames you for anything. They love you, Orion.” What the fuck is it with people here and saying my name? “They want you to get better. They’re coming to take you home.”

I suppose he expects me to be happy. I mean, I should be happy. So I smile for him, because he’s smiling, because smiling seems to be the right thing to do. I don’t mention the fact that the voice inside my head sounds identical to Dawson’s. I don’t mention that I haven’t been on my pills for fucking weeks, how I’m not sure how I’ll react when I see him.

Or even the fact that they forgot to confiscate my Vicodin.

Some things are better left unsaid.

Cassiel hugs the walls on her way downtown. The pocket knife in her back pocket digs into her spine, but that’s the way she likes it. Just enough pain to remember it’s there. She checks her damaged Hello Kitty watch. Eight fifteen. This watch is on its last legs, but at least it’s still accurate.

Her next payment is due in roughly ten hours. She has ten hours to make seven thousand.

Figures.

The best targets for pickpockets hang around the Intrigue II in the center of the Las Vegas strip. Its frequent customers enjoy making a display of the money they have. The women are a little more subdued, probably because they feel the threat of rape (ironic, to be raped outside a club where you pay for sex), but they’re not beyond wearing their bulky diamond earrings and expensive coats. Cassiel used to work at the Intrigue, as a bartender. She quit. It was a mistake, of course. It’s much easier to rob people when you offer the promise of a kiss.

She listens in on the conversations of the passersby.

“No, we can’t afford to spend another night here.”

“But we already rented the hotel!”

“We can afford the hotel, but not your gambling. We’re going to stay in tomorrow night. Just us in the hotel.”

“Are you implying—” The woman is cut off by a kiss. Cassiel angles her head away, so as not to intrude on their privacy. She feels no guilt and taking the money the couple planned to waste tonight from the man’s back pocket.

The Intrigue is pretty exclusive as far as clients go, so there’s a long line of people by the door. Cassiel could get a little closer, but why risk blowing her cover? It’s early in the night. She’ll stop back around there later, when all of the patrons are drunk and staggering to their taxis. Yes, then is the best time. Any cash they have on them at the end of night will have either been won or wagered, meaning they’ll never miss it. She takes a few steps before breaking into a sprint, heading for a café away from the clubs.

How she ends up in a puddle on the side of the road, she isn’t exactly sure. There was a car, hurdling across the street… she dove for cover. She must have. Cassiel brushes beads of water from her clothing, and looks up to see a man holding out his hand.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but could I get you something to eat?”

What can she say, but yes?

She skimps another hundred off of the cash register in the café while the man isn’t looking, but he only seems interested in buying her dinner. She wonders how much money he has on his person. Is it enough to fill up Brooklyn’s glass jar? Enough for Brooklyn to stay where he is? Seven thousand dollars is a lot of money. How did she come up seven thousand short?

“What’s your name?” the man asks, once they’re seated at an out-of-the-way table.

“I’m David Evans. I work at a church in town.” He gestures vaguely down the street with a hand. “I try to help out those who live along this road. You’re the youngest I’ve seen.” When Caz sets her backpack on the seat next to her, he reaches across and pulls it over to the seat next to him. “I don’t want you to run away too fast,” he explains. “You’ll get it back when we’ve talked.” From anyone else’s mouth, the words might have sounded like a threat, but Cassiel can’t detect anything malicious in his tone. She isn’t afraid.

“My name is Caz,” says Cassiel, without thinking much. She startles at her own words. Only her older brother calls her Caz, and she hasn’t seen him since the money was last due.

“Caz?” Mr. Evans laughs. “That is a beautiful name. Is it short for anything?”

“Cassiel.”

They pause to stare, sizing each other up.

The waitress stops at their table to take orders. Caz decides she would like a plate of cinnamon roll pancakes (that totally has nothing to do with the fact that they’re the most expensive things on the menu), whereas Mr. Evans orders a burger. The picture of grilled cheese on the menu looks amazing, so Caz orders it, too. She wonders how high the bill will be.

“How did you get out here, on the streets like that?” Mr. Evans asks as they wait. “On the side of the road? Is there somebody I should call to come and get you? Our church will take you under their wing, I assure you. We’ll help you get back to your family.”

“I’m with my family,” Caz replies. “We all live together, in a tent under a bridge. There’s nobody to go back to.”

“Well then, I’m sure our church will house your whole family. We’ll help you all get back on your feet. So, just you and your parents, then?”

“No parents. Just siblings.”

“How many siblings do you have?”

“Several.” Caz tugs on the backpack straps with her foot, but Mr. Evans holds fast. “I should get back to them. They’re little.”

The waitress comes by with their food. She furrows her brows as Caz dives into her pancake stack with reckless abandon, but Mr. Evans waves her away. The waitress must know him, Caz decides. He must be a regular at this restaurant. She eyes the cracked plastic covers over the chairs, sizes up the foam spilling out from between them. This place isn’t very popular, is it? Maybe it is, because these cinnamon roll pancakes are the best she’s ever tasted.

“How many siblings do you have?”

Caz swallows a hurried mouthful. She can feel it as it goes down her esophagus. “Six.”

“And you live under a bridge?”

“Not all of us. Not Brooklyn.”

Mr. Evans pours himself a cup of coffee from the pot on the table. An odd combo, coffee and a burger, but to each his own. “And who is Brooklyn?”

“My older brother.”

“Why does he live separately?”

Caz finishes the last of the pancakes and hurriedly moves on to the grilled cheese. It pales in comparison, but still tastes better than anything she’s eaten in the past four years. “Brooklyn has cancer. It’s in his bones, his blood, everything. He wouldn’t survive out here with his chemo wrecking his immune system.” She’s being very open towards this man, she knows it. But hey, priests and pastors are supposed to be safe. If he wanted to hurt her, he wouldn’t have taken her here.

“Oh. So he is getting treatment?”

“Not really. He thinks he is. We can’t pay for that kind of thing right now. We’re just keeping him comfortable. Maybe we’ll get him into hospice eventually.” Just keep talking, Caz. The truth works for now. When it stops working, make something up. The longer you talk, the more you can ask to eat.

“The church—”

“—can’t do anything to help,” Caz interrupts. “Monetarily, I mean. He’s terminal. Might as well be dead already. The last thing we want is to pump him full of chemicals and have him immobilized for the rest of his sorry existence. We tell him it’s chemo, but it’s just a lot of painkiller. But it’s expensive. He doesn’t deserve to be out on the streets.”

Mr. Evans needs a moment to process all of this news. He takes a big bite of his burger. “Brooklyn is older than you.”

“He is.”

“And the rest are younger, I assume?”

“Yes.”

“What are they called?”

Caz jumps internally. Maybe she can score a meal for her siblings out of the deal. “Maya, Gabriel, Lexus, Cindy, and Wyatt. Wyatt’s four years old. He shouldn’t be alone for this long. I have to bring him food.”

Mr. Evans crinkles his forehead. “What do you have for him?”
The pocket knife feels heavy in Caz’s pocket. Whatever you’ll give me, I suppose.
“Nothing much. Gas station cereal, stuff like that. I buy it on my way home.”

“You’re raising a family on gas station cereal?”

“I guess so.”

“Are they okay?”

Caz shrugs. “Okay as they’ll ever be.” She beckons the waitress over and asks for another stack of pancakes and an omelet. Mr. Evans doesn’t protest, which he shouldn’t, so she continues to eat as they arrive. Neither one of them talks for a long time.

Finally, Mr. Evans breaks the silence. “Where is Brooklyn? Maybe I can go help him.”

Now it’s time to go.

“He lives with Kay. Down a couple avenues.” Caz yanks the bag out of Mr. Evans’ hand with her foot. The shock of her story must have made him loosen his grip. She shrugs it onto her shoulders. “She lets him sleep in her basement.”

“But what about you?”

“She lets him stay there, and we…” Caz chokes. “… drift around. And pay as much as we can. Please, sir. I have to get going.”

“Take me to your brother.”

Caz shakes her head. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m only supposed to come round when I have the money. Thank you for dinner, sir, but I have people I need to take care of.”

When she turns to leave, Mr. Evans must spot the opened package of condoms in one of the pockets. He grabs her arm.

“Don’t turn to prostitution. None of you. It’s too dangerous. You could be killed.”

“We know,” Caz says. “Clients get pissy when they see you with other clients. Heard the lectures plenty of times. Not like anyone’s given us anywhere to go. Thank you, mister. I have to get to my brother. Need to pay his rent really soon.”

“Just—don’t. It was on the news. Some lady killed a boy. Julian Cusp or someone like that.”

“I’m aware.” Caz thinks about the boy, from when he worked at the Intrigue with her. One blue eye, one brown. Black hair. Intricate tattoos winding up his arms. When they dragged him out of the Intrigue basement, she couldn’t recognize him.

“And you don’t care?”

“I care as much as I can, but I care more for Brooklyn.”

Mr. Evans takes a wad of dollar bills and shoves them into Caz’s hand. “Get inside. Get warm. These streets are freezing at night. I’ll be back to help you all, I promise.”

“Thank you,” Caz replies. She doesn’t believe him.

She goes back to her tent under a bridge, where her siblings are crowded, and puts all of the money into Brooklyn’s jar.

While in progress on his twelfth trip around the sun, Mateo Boveri, his older brother, and his two younger siblings hightailed it out of the group home in which they lived. Of that much, police were sure. They made it all the way to Bellagio fountain, where Mateo was stopped by a patron of Le Cirque Casino. Witnesses said that Mateo argued with the person. Then, the whole family left in a huff. The youngest of the Boveri children, Alice, voided her stomach into a bush on Sands Avenue. The vomit contained blood, macaroni, and alcohol.

After that, all the investigators had to go on was the phone call.

“911, what is your emergency?”

Mateo’s voice embodied horror. “Um—um. You have to send someone.”

“Sir? Is anyone hurt? Do you need an ambulance?”

“No, no, it’s not that—Alice!” Something scuffled on the end of the phone line. A fight, maybe.

“Sir, who is Alice? Is Alice alright?”

Something scuffled once more in the background. Once. Twice. Mateo responded in a whirlwind. “No, no, no she—” Something unintelligible. A noise like feet against pavement. “—someone here and you have to send somebody please send somebody and—” More gibberish. “—say you sent them but A-Plus and Radiohead—” There was a harsh intake of breath.

Mateo cut off.

“Sir?” the operator asked. “Sir, where are you? Who is A-Plus? Who is Radiohead?”

There was no answer. Mateo Boveri was gone.

The first thing Officer Keefe did after hearing the news was visit the group home. It was a sturdy brick building about a half-hour’s drive from the Bellagio fountain, covered in winding ivy and scattered damage from what might have been bullets. The home held about two hundred kids. She gathered the full names of Mateo and his siblings to make up the posters.

MISSING: Mateo James Boveri
MISSING: Dominik “Radiohead” Boveri
MISSING: Elias “A+” Boveri
MISSING: Alice Nadia Boveri

Over the phone, Mateo referred to his brothers by their nicknames. Why did he use their nicknames? Why didn’t he use Alice’s nickname? The other children in the home gave their testimonies about Mateo, what they knew and what they didn’t. There was a lot they didn’t know, it seemed.

“He planned to leave two weeks from now,” Helena Rose promised. “He told me. They were headed for Carson City. There’s a group of people living in a warehouse up there, other escapees. I don’t know why anyone from any hotel would be angry with him. He was a whiz at poker, though.”

A worker at the home pulled Officer O’Keefe aside after this confession. “Disregard what she says. She’s a pathological liar.”

So the officer did.
--
Flash forward two years.

A sixteen-year-old boy, later identified as Elias Boveri, landed in the Emergency Room of a Chicago hospital. Three fingers on his right hand were reduced to infected stumps, as if somebody had severed them and sent them with ransom notes. His hand was blackened from lack of blood flow. Even sections of his hair were sawed off, exposing the irritated and burned skin beneath. That wasn’t what was killing Elias, though. His lungs shut down, probably due to some sort of poison in his system.

Several girls, who were out for a night on the town, spotted him and called the ambulance. Even after the nurses admitted him into the hospital, they refused to leave his bedside.

“He's our charge now, isn’t he? We brought him here. We have to see if he survives.”

When the police arrived, the girls were only too happy to help. One, named Alexia, gave detailed accounts of the position of his body. His eyes were open, she noted. The whites were red with blood, but the irises remained blue. Blood splattered the walls on either side of him, although it did not appear to be his own.

“There’s one more thing!” she yelled to the investigators as they thanked her for her cooperation. “There’s one more thing! There was another kid. With black hair and blue eyes. Freckles. He was there too. Then he ran away. Just… ran.”

This description fit Dominik Boveri. The other children were still out there.

Elias’s attending did the best he could to minimize the wild clotting and bleeding going on in Elias’s chest, but even a chest tube failed to drain the liquid surrounding his heart. It was almost as if a section of Elias’s lung got up and left. He flatlined in the elevator on his way to an operating room. It’s impossible to shock a flatline back into sinus rhythm. An assisting doctor performed CPR for twenty minutes before pronouncing him.

Elias Boveri died in Northwestern Memorial Hospital at two AM on December eighteenth.
Officer O’Keefe pulled the cold case file from her cabinet, turning through the first couple pages. One child dead, another running, and two others unaccounted for. She wanted to call someone, anyone who might know anything, except, who would she call?
--
Another year forward.

A body washed up on the beach in California. Jane Doe. Her skin was burned clean off, or maybe the ocean had done its job. Her head was gone, leaving only the floor of the pelvic bone to tell the coroner she was female. No dental records, nothing for CODIS, nothing for the fingerprint database. The police decided to run a mitochondrial DNA test, and matched the bones to the little girl an investigator suspected they belonged to.

Alice Nadia Boveri.

Alice was born with a kind of spinal curvature that aided in her identification while ensuring that her parents could not care for her properly. Without the medication and physical therapy to keep her joints moving as they should, police didn’t expect that Alice would still be alive after so long.

The FBI decided it was time to get involved in the case, so they sent the bones to a forensic anthropologist in Washington, DC. They made some calls. The Boveri children became a matter of top importance. Forensic fingerprint analyzers dusted for prints along the bag that covered the body, other agents tried to make out the faded logo on the plastic. They came up empty.

Forensic anthropology could only do so much for investigation. The body had been burned, but it wasn’t bad enough to scorch her skin away. The body was in the ocean for at least a month, but not a lot longer than that. So Alice had made it without her pills, for almost two years.

No witnesses came forward to say they saw the body wash up on shore.

The Boveri case went cold again, no sooner than it had opened.
--
Dominik Boveri, affectionately known as “Radiohead” by his siblings and classmates, had a deep affinity for music. He enjoyed all different kinds: rap, rock, pop, jazz, and classical. Fifty-percent of his belongings were CDs. It was someone’s job, at the beginning of the case, to sift through each and every one and look for clues, although they spent a great deal of time listening with no success. The only fingers to touch the brittle plastic cases were Dominik’s.

Two years after the FBI confirmed Alice’s death, Dominik’s old music teacher received a letter in the mail. It consisted of a retro audio tape. When played, the tape raised more questions than answers.

“Tell me your name,” a voice said at the beginning. It sounded robotic and forced, obviously hidden by a voice-changing program.

Dominik’s voice responded, uncorrupted. “Dominik Boveri.”

“How old are you?”

There was some shuffling in the background before Dominik responded. “Eighteen.”

“Can you play me your song, Dominik?”

The audio quality patched in and out, like a sailor struggling for his sea legs. Dominik’s voice was hollow. “Yes.”

“Good,” the voice quipped. “Play the song.”

The rest of the tape filled with violin music, light and sweet. The melody flew like a butterfly from any speaker the police tried to play it from. Later, FBI database would discover that the song was Bach’s Chaconne from Partita in D minor. It would have taken years to perfect. Years of military-level practicing, life’s devotion to a single song.

When Dominik left the group home, he’d never played violin before in his life.
The music teacher sent the tape to the FBI in concordance with the case. They dusted it for fingerprints and found a perfect set, as well as DNA on the envelope in which the tape was sent. However, the fingerprints matched none in the database. The DNA matched nothing in CODIS. And, they didn’t have any suspects to compare the samples to.

Over the next week after the recovery of the tape, Dominik’s music teacher received every single CD Dominik owned. In the last package, one of the CDs bore a set of scratched GPS coordinates.

The FBI found Dominik Boveri in a house at those coordinates. He was alive, but only just. Whoever took him and his family away from the Bellagio fountain that night did their job admirably. Instead of giving a detailed description of the kidnapper and killer, Dominik curled up at the foot of a king-sized bed and resumed throwing up blood. A set of puncture wounds on his forearms revealed the true tragedy. Dominik was addicted to heroin.

Some other poison lurked in his system, just like the poison in Elias’s. There was nothing that anyone could do to keep Dominik alive, so a nearby hospital pumped him full of painkiller for the last five hours of his life.

Time of death: eight-fifty PM.

Officer O’Keefe once more pulled the case file from its place in her filing cabinet, turning it over and over in hand. She went through the testimonials she gathered. She made connections, or at least she tried to. Nothing seemed to work out. Nothing made sense. Everyone close enough to the Boveri family to be angry with them had no possible way to hide them for this amount of time.
--
Here’s what the police knew: Whoever did this did it slowly. They poisoned Elias. They burned Alice. They addicted Dominik to their drug of choice before teaching him the violin and then poisoning him. Whoever they were, they still had Mateo. Alice vomited into a bush on Sands Avenue on the night they disappeared. Someone accessed Dominik’s CD collection. Dominik was there when Elias died. It was all part of an elaborate code, it had to be.

Right?

Six years after his original disappearance, one year after Dominik’s death, Mateo Boveri checked into the Carson Tahoe Health emergency room on a gurney. His breath came in weak gusts, and he barely had a pulse. While the ER docs fussed with wires and tubes to fill his body with life-giving oxygen and medication, they didn’t have time to worry about the man who carried him through the glass doors and into the fluorescent lights. That man didn’t stick around.

Mateo James Boveri, eighteen years old, became the only surviving Boveri child. There wasn’t a scratch on his body. Besides an intense allergic reaction to peanuts, he remained totally unscathed. The FBI put this in as the final piece of the puzzle. They kept looking for hints. Officer O’Keefe, who assumed complete control of the case, sent everyone out on a wild goose chase to catch the culprit. They never found out who it was, because they looked in the wrong places.
--
What happened that night?

Mateo Boveri, age twelve, left the group home at around seven-thirty AM “for school.” He brought with him his older brother, Dominik, age thirteen, his younger brother, Elias, age ten, and his younger sister, Alice, age eight. They set off towards the streets of Vegas, to meet with a family friend who offered to watch over them.

When they arrived at the fountain, the friend, a patron of the nearby casino, told them he changed his mind about fathering children.

“I don’t have the time,” he explained to Mateo. He handed over a bottle of vodka and enough cash for the children to get a meal that night, in hopes that it would bridge the gap between them. Mateo took the handout, but argued with the man for several minutes before stamping off in the opposite direction.

In order to avoid being detected, Dominik and Mateo agreed that they needed to split up. Dominik would tag along with Elias, whereas Mateo would take care of Alice. They parted ways rather quickly, without saying goodbye, leading Alice to drinking a bit of the vodka and getting sick in a bush on Sands Avenue.

Mateo spotted the blood in Alice’s vomit, and all at once remembered her need for the medication. He used a public pay phone to call nine-one-one.

“Um—um. You have to send someone.” He wiped his nose furiously, imagining the horror awaiting Alice when she returned to the group home.

“Sir? Is anyone hurt? Do you need an ambulance?”

“No, no, it’s not that—Alice!”

His sister ran down the block, hiding in the awning of a shop window. “Don’t tell them to take us back, Mateo. Please don’t. We need to go.”

“Sir, who is Alice? Is Alice alright?” The pay phone featured crappy audio. Alice crept out from the behind the awning and took off at a sprint down the road. In order to stay of the line, Mateo couldn’t follow her. He needed to make these last seconds quick.

“No, no, no she needs her medicine and I don’t have it. I’ve been told to call this number if I’m in trouble. She’s running from me and you have to send somebody please send somebody.” He paused, looking up and down the street. “I’m not going to be here when you come, but she won’t get into any cars unless they say you sent them but A-Plus and Radiohead—” Alice disappeared around a corner. He lost her. There was no choice but to drop the phone and make a mad dash. He did.

Some things are just things. Not everything is connected. Elias distributed drugs for members of a gang in order to earn some money for himself and Dominik. Dominik soon got in on the business, picking up heroin. They hitched a ride to Chicago and started dealing to bigger crowds. When Elias sampled the merchandise, namely, an unlabeled package or purple-ish powder, the effects weren’t pleasant on his body. When the gang found out, there was nothing to quell their wrath. Fingers and hair were chopped off. Elias Boveri, gone.

Mateo couldn’t catch up with Alice, who fled and lived on the streets. She ended up working at a seaside resort. Being only eight years old, dangers came with the job that the owner didn’t like to cover. When Alice was caught in an overheated boiler room and killed, he did his best to make her unidentifiable and dumped her into the ocean, so as to avoid charges of child labor. Alice Boveri, gone.

Dominik, already addicted to heroin, found his way into a seedy part of town in which lots of struggling musicians lived. Another musician utilized Dominik’s “natural affinity” to violin by dangling the promise of more drugs over Dominik’s head and using the boy to earn him money. He insisted on twenty-four seven practice. Dominik made a recording of himself playing the violin to confirm that he was improving. His owner insisted that his voice be covered. When he heard how beautiful it sounded, Dominik asked that the recording be sent to his old music teacher. His owner obliged. Later, Dominik decided to send his entire music collection to his music teacher, because the heroin addiction would never leave and his talent could never be complete. He left his location on the last disk, never expecting that the police would find him alive. It didn’t matter anyway. He’d already ingested the last of the stolen purple powder. Dominik Boveri, gone.

And Mateo, the last man standing, was the only one to make it to Carson City. Hey, Helena was right. He lived with the kids in the warehouse, until an allergic reaction to peanut butter sent him to the hospital.

There was no killer. There were bad people, but no killer. And thanks to the Boveri children, no one will ever know that fact.

Mitchell used to play the piano. It shouldn’t be a notable fact, but it is. It’s one of the clearest things I remember. Ever since he was three years old, he had his fingers poised artfully over the polished keys. When his mother died, all of the money from her life insurance went towards intense lessons. No funeral. By the time he was eight, he could play Mozart. When he turned twelve, he’d developed a fondness for Charles-Valentin Alkan.

I played the piano too, back then, although nowhere near as well. Sometimes, Mitchell would ask me to play the upper string of notes on a particularly complicated piece. My part required one hand. His needed both. Somehow, I always managed to miss more notes than him.

“It’s perfectly fine,” he told me when I apologized. “Perfectly fine.”

“No it’s not,” I insisted. “Look how simple those notes are! I should be getting them no problem!”

“There’s no shame in requiring a learning curve,” he said. Then he would launch into the next elaborate composition on the page. His brain was wired for music. He knew where each fingertip belonged and where each note fit into the bigger picture. My mind was more word-oriented, so that I saw the elegance of the printed phrases before establishing that an a meant my pinky had to push on a key.

The rest of our friendship continued in a similar fashion: Mitchell achieving and me pulling by as average.

Mitchell was set to graduate at age seventeen with a four-point-oh GPA. Although he only went through three years of high school instead of the compulsory four, he’d satisfied all of the necessary requirements to leave earlier. He set his sights on the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, which only accepted eleven percent of applicants. Eleven percent. The chances of him making it into the school at such a young age were slim, but Mitchell enjoyed beating the odds. He received a full-ride scholarship.

The most notable thing I did at the age of seventeen was quit the track team and audition for the school musical. Neither one garnered much happiness.

“Keep your chin up, huh?” Mitchell joked with me. “You’re going to get out of here after one more year. There’s so much to do in the world, so much to do. You’re going to do so much.” He was so optimistic that it kind of made me sick.

“So much crap, yeah,” I responded. “It’s easy for you to tell me I’ve got a future, with your music scholarship and your fancy High-Tops. I have nothing.”

“Don’t diss my Converse.”

“Sorry.”

“Trust me.” Mitchell threw his arm around my shoulder. “There are infinite possibilities for your life. Heck, you’ll probably be more successful than I’ll ever be.” He dropped his eyes to the grass, and for a moment I could glimpse something disconnected inside them. But it was gone as soon as it surfaced.

In early March, I walked to Mitchell’s house in the rain. When I got there, Mitchell sat on the front porch with a bag of frozen peas held against his ear. He got up quickly as I approached, waving his arms. The side of his head was bleeding.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but you can’t come over here anymore. Um… um…” He panicked. I’d never seen Mitchell Clarke panicking before. “Go back home, Noah. Go back home.”

“You’re bleeding,” I observed dumbly.

“It’s my fault. I—I fell down the stairs. It’s all my fault. Please, go home.”

Any sensible person would have stayed with him until they understood what was wrong, but I prided myself in being the least sensible person ever. I turned around and walked straight home as told. When we texted that night, Mitchell let me know that he ended up in the ER.

“I’m going to be deaf in my left ear,” he said. “I need to be more careful.”

I, terribly oblivious me, replied like it was a lighthearted subject. “Yeah, you don’t want to lose your music scholarship.”

After that night, several followed throughout the month. Once, Mitchell fell off of his bike. Once, he tripped while roller-blading. Once, he accidentally burned himself while trying to roll a joint. The last one caught me off guard; I was not aware that Mitchell smoked. He didn’t seem to be the kind of person who did that sort of thing. The music scholarship was everything to him, and he would not risk it on a whim or in pursuit of a childish fancy. Still, I said nothing.

In April, Mitchell checked into the psych ward of Brynn Marr Hospital after yet another ER visit. It was his seventh “self-inflicted” wound within thirty days, so the nursing staff couldn’t ignore the possible implications. No sooner had he signed the papers than Mitchell entered a funk. His therapist couldn’t convince him to eat or to socialize with any of the other patients, nor could he pressure him into playing the piano again. That’s what put him there in the first place, after all. The piano. Mitchell placed his hand firmly against the keys and slammed the lid of his baby grand right on his fingers. At least, that was what he told the doctor. They healed admirably; the memory didn’t.

“I did it to myself,” Mitchell repeated to anyone who asked. “I felt angry, and I did it to myself. It was no one’s fault but mine. I’m a sick person.” He droned it like a mantra. You know when you repeat a word so many times that it stops sounding real? He did just that. His therapist must have cracked through the lie within a week of his admission.

I talked to him on the phone after two weeks. “How are you doing?”

“Better,” he said. “I’m not going to let this happen again.”

“Let what happen again?”

“This.” Something shuffled on the other end of the phone, meaning Mitchell was probably gesturing to the white walls surrounding him. “I’m not going to let him hit me again. I’m not going to let anyone hit me again.”

I’m not sure when I noticed, but as soon as he said those words I realized that I’d known for a long time. It was like a sunset, in the fact that you see that there are two colors blended together but you can’t point out the line between the two. I knew that my best friend had become sad in an ombre sort of fade, but I couldn’t think of when. I just knew.

“Your dad’s been hitting you?” I asked.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

The rest of our phone call was mindless banter, mainly so that I could process everything he’d said previously.

“One-way trip,” Mitchell whispered into the receiver at the end of our time. “One-way trip.”

When they released Mitchell Avery Clarke from the Brynn Marr psych ward, he left with a social worker. They promised to take him into a stable home. By stable home, they meant the first home they could find within five minutes of the hospital. I visited within eight hours of his release, with my electronic keyboard in tow. I learned the Minuet in D Minor specifically to show him that I wasn’t a total noob at the piano. Maybe it would cheer him up.

He sat next to me on his crappy mattress in a cluttered bedroom. The parent went out for the night, or something like that. “I haven’t played in so long.”

I handed him the piano, and he ran his fingers over the keys. I expected to hear something beautiful ringing out from under his practice hands, but his skin never touched the plastic.

“I’m sorry. I can’t play anymore.” He handed the keyboard back.

By this point, I was absolutely sure that there was no light left in the eyes of Mitchell Clarke. Everything after that moment felt like talking to a shell.

I offered to leave him my car one night, so that he could go out and pick up a suit from a rental place for the day he hadn’t been able to shut up about before March.

At around eight-fifty on the eve of his first day at college, Mitchell Avery Clarke drove my 2009 Chevy Spark off of the bridge that connected the Outer Banks to the mainland. Just like that.

He didn’t need to run in order to run away.

One-way trip.

But see, it was important. He used to play piano. The Mitchell I first became friends with was always centuries ahead of me. Something inside him got stripped away. Where there used to be music, all I found was silence.

You don’t need to run to run away. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be willing. You just need to leave those who care about you. And that’s exactly what I did. What I’m doing.

“Ian Jude Delgrat,” the officer told me. “That is your name.” And I liked it just fine at first, but really, I’d much rather be Dean Sullivan Thorne.

“If you like your life, kid, you’ll stick to this.” Yeah, but life sucked.

“If you want to help them convict the man who killed your sister, you will do this. Do this for her.” Yeah, but there’s not much you can do for a dead girl.

Pippa was my older sister. She got home from work most nights around ten, and the two of us would watch NCIS reruns into the wee hours of the morning. Pippa called it our family time. Mom was usually in bed by this point, but on Fridays she stayed up with us for a special movie.

It wasn’t Friday.

I set up the TV like I was supposed to, but Pippa didn’t come home right away. When she did… her boyfriend… and then…

No more Pippa Thorne.

Just like that.

When the police got there, I was sitting behind the couch in utter disarray. They took me to the hospital. Did rape tests. Poked and prodded my body until it could no longer sustain any pressure at all. I told them that I didn’t remember being hurt at all by the killer, but they insisted. Turns out, there was some reasoning. My rape kit came back positive. Jason must have knocked me out.

Huh.

And then it was this, a new name, a new style, a new hair color. A new job, in Las Vegas. Not on the Strip, just a little further off. In a candy store, wouldn’t you know it? Selling ice cream and candy. We get dozens of crazies every day here, yet I am absolutely sure they all look normal when compared to me.

“Ian!” calls my boss. “We’re packed today. Do you think you can make a little more of the ice cream than usual?”

“Yes,” I tell him. “Just the basic recipe, correct?”

“You’ve got it.”

“I’ve got it covered.”

And the days continue. I don’t like the days. I want to go back to New Orleans. I want to forget about everything that happened to land me here, every last second, even though I know that I can’t forget it if I am to testify.

There are the things I like to remember, like the taste of my mother’s biscuits and gravy in the mornings and the scent off of the Gulf. I remember the beignets at the café Du Monde, which was always so crowded with patrons. I remember the rows of pralines in tourist traps, the stark difference of candied nuts and alligator sausage. And Bourbon Street, with its flashing lights throughout the night… I can recall it so clearly. Memories like that never seem to fade.

I can’t get the image of Pippa’s body out of my head. I want it out.

Normal people would get grief counseling or something, but not me. Never me. I work at a candy store that also sells ice cream, catering to the rejects of the Las Vegas Strip as they stagger in with their high heels and cocktail dresses. I am Ian Delgrat, and that’s just fine.

It’s late in my shift, Saturday night. The rush has died out by now. All we get are strays after ten o’clock. Not sure why, now that I think about it. I suppose they get here by wandering more than deliberate actions. It’s at this point in the night that Bryce turns on his Pandora station for Radiohead, cranks up the volume, and goes to make more ice cream in the back machine. He loves Radiohead. Probably owns all of their albums in record form as well as on CDs and digitally. Not like it matters.

Creep comes up first on the playlist, its haunting first chords drifting across the tile floor.

You know who else loved Radiohead? Pippa. My breathing gets a little quicker, maybe a little uneven.

“I understand if you have to take a break. For your anxiety attacks. I get it.” Bryce shoots me a supportive smile. “I used to have those all the time. Take whatever you need. I can cover.”

“Thanks.” I move to sit down on a metal folding chair. The noises in my brain rise to a dangerous crescendo, so I do my best to dial them down into nothingness. Maybe if I hadn’t eaten beforehand, the hallucinations wouldn’t be so vivid. Yeah, that’s it. I won’t eat before work next time.

“It’s no problem,” Bryce responds. “Should I turn off this song?”

“No, no. It’s your favorite. I’ll be fine. I can work in a couple minutes.”

“Like, I said, take your time.”

The ice cream maker begins to make a weird noise. A red light in its upper corner blinks impatiently.

“Again?” Bryce wrinkles his eyebrows. “Hm.” He goes to fix whatever the problem is. I cradle his head in my hands. Creep isn’t a bad song. It’s a great song. I can do this. I can stick it out.

I will not let that tiny section of my brain control me.

It’s not the song that makes me sad, though, that’s the thing. That’s the worst problem. I can listen to Creep for years and years and like it, and I don’t get upset. But if I imagine her voice singing, picture her lips forming the words, then I crumble. It’s not everything that makes me sad, it’s her. And unlike Creep, I can’t flip a switch and get rid of her. My sister. My secret.

“Bryce?”

Bryce opens the side compartment on the ice cream machine and runs a spatula along the cooling system. Globs of sticky goo come off of the metal. “Yeah?”

“Can I tell you something?”

“As long as you’re not confessing your undying love.”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Then I’m cool.” Bryce smacks a metal tube in the ice cream maker with the scooper. Nothing happens. The machine makes an angry noise is response.

“It’s kind of serious, and you need to be sworn to secrecy.”

“This is sounding like a confession of sexuality or a confession of murder. I don’t know which. Please do continue.”

I clear my throat. “You need to promise me.”

He rubs his left hand against his jeans until he is satisfied that all of the ice cream is off, then extends the hand for me to shake. “Yeah, man. I promise. What is this about?”

Breathe, breathe, breathe. There’s a lock on your door, so breathe. There’s nothing he can do right now except try to pick the lock, and you’re useless if you’re hyperventilating. Breathe. He followed you home. He’s probably waiting outside your apartment right now. Waiting, waiting, waiting, so you need to think, think, think. Breathe.

Okay, you need a phone. Did Jonas leave his? No, he needs it when he goes to work because it’s dangerous out there. You’re finding that out, aren’t you? Okay, not the time for an I-told-you-so. You need to find a phone. Wait! There used to be a home phone, when Julian still lived here with Jonas. After his death, Jonas might’ve removed it to make room for Tripp’s things. And your things too, of course. The baby’s room! The phone was in the room that will soon be your baby’s room, because that’s where Julian used to do his “thought-purifiers.” You didn’t even live here yet, but you laughed at him for needing to purify his thoughts after working long hours at a strip club. Funny the things you understand now.

Focus! The baby’s room. Go there.

Good. The phone is here. It’s not plugged into anything, it’s just lying in a box on the floor next to the crib. You will survive to see your baby in this crib. Put one hand on your stomach, that’s it, just to make sure the baby is okay. Of course he’s okay. He’ll be okay so long as you’re okay. You have to find the notch in the wall that the phone plugs into. It could be behind on of the dressers, behind a stack of boxes full of Julian’s things, maybe even in the closet. This home phone is ancient. Does it even have service anymore? If it doesn’t get service, you’re screwed.

There’s the hole, plug it in. Your breathing is picking up again. Slow it down, breathe in breathe out, calm down, and focus. This is it. Once you have the phone plugged in and hear the dial tone, you can call the police and get the help that you need. They might send you back to your family, though, and— No. You need to make this call. For the good of the baby, and yourself, you will make this phone call. The police might arrest Jonas for having heroin in here! They might take Tripp away, take him back to the ratty trailer where you found him, being abused by the ones he loves and refuses to mention! No, you won’t let them do that. You won’t let them do that, because Tripp is as much yours as the baby you carry inside of you. Tripp isn’t going anywhere without you in tow.

Dial tone! Oh, thank you God. Thank you so much. 9-1-1. But be as quiet as possible. He’s outside, he’s waiting for you. He’s waiting.

The operator picks up. Tell her what you need. “There’s a man trying to break into my house.”

“What is your name, ma’am?”

Should you tell them? If you give a fake name, they can’t take you back. Jonas has Pace, Julian has—er, had—Adonis, Tripp has Sagittarius. It’s only fitting that you should have a fake name of your own. You’re wasting time thinking! There’s a hand jiggling the doorknob, you can hear it. Tell them your name and go hide somewhere that’s reasonably safe. Get a weapon, if you can. Take the phone into the closet with you. Down on the floor. Should’ve grabbed a knife, but the kitchen is too close to the front door. Tell the lady your name.

“I’m Viola Santiago.”

“Where are you, Viola?”

Think, think, think. Where are you? “Apartment 322 at Sunset Pointe.”

“Do you know who is trying to get in?”

“No, I’ve never seen him before.” That’s a lie. Tell this lady the truth. Tell her that Jonas owes him drug money, because Julian is no longer around to get a stash for him. Julian, Julian, Julian. The father of your baby. If you tell her, it will almost be like you’re saving future Julians from addiction.

If you don’t, though, Tripp might be safe here. They might not take him away.

Don’t tell her.

“Okay, ma’am. Stay on the line with me. Where is this man trying to get in?”

Um. The front door, right? You have a back door on this apartment, too, don’t you? Which doorknob is the one that’s shaking? You’re in the closet. You can’t just hop out and check. “The front door.”

“Ma’am? I want you to find somewhere to hide. We’re going to send the police.”

But you’re already hiding. “Thank you, thank you so much.”

“It’s all going to be okay. I need you to be as quiet as possible, and stay on the line. They’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes. Ma’am?”

That’s too long to wait. Fifteen minutes is always too long. When that woman, that horrible Miss Roth, started mutilating Julian, and that red-headed girl called the police, they said they would be there in less than fifteen minutes. You were there, you were there. So much good it did him. She sliced down the lines of his tattoos with a sharp knife, like one might cut a slice of meat for consumption. He bled out in two minutes. You were there for him, until those last seconds, where the only parts of him that still held life were his eyes.

You might die like Julian.

Breathe. If your breathing gets too loud, the man will know you’re in here and he’ll skin you. This man knows the layout of your apartment. He knows the locks, probably even possesses a master key for all the rooms inside. Jonas only changed the lock on your front door recently, for this exact reason. No time to change the others now, is there? You can’t stay on the phone with this woman any longer. You’ve got to call Tripp, tell him goodbye, tell him you’re sorry. Hang up now. Hang up on the operator.

That’s an awful idea. If you stay on the line, she can tell you what to do.

“Ma’am?”

Hang up.

Good. You’re going to call Tripp. 702-468-1097. Pick up, pick up, pick up.

“Hello?” His voice is as soft and sweet as ever. Memorize it now, before you never get to experience it again. The jiggling on the doorknob just stopped… and now it’s coming from much closer. Did the man pick the lock of the first door? Maybe he moved around to the back. Yes, he moved around to the back. Keep your breathing controlled, now, and talk to Tripp.

“Hey. How are you?”

“I’m fine. What is it? Viola?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Hey. Where are you now?”

He’s taking too long to answer. He must be at the club. Always at the club! No, it’s necessary. Now is not the time to get upset with Tripp about how he earns the money that keeps him out of a trailer with his abusive family.

“At work. Do you need something?”

There was a bang. You just heard a bang. Do you know what that means? It means that the man is inside your house. You still have ten minutes of the fifteen to get through, and that’s way too much time. No point in even hiding, is there? Hide for the baby’s sake, please.

“Can you talk to me?”

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“Viola, where are you? Are you okay?”

Another bang. He’s here, he’s here. Okay. Kyrie eleison. Shoot those final prayers to heaven. The police will find your body, anyway. They’ll find your body. You can hear him, crashing through all the other doors. He’ll be in this room in a minute, in a second…He’s going to open up the closet.

“Viola?”

And what is that? Shiny, glint of metal… it’s a gun it’s a gun it’s a

Boom.

“Viola?”

Tripp Michaels has had his fair share of significant others, since the beginning of time. There was Michaela Thomas in first grade (huge stoner now), Cassiel Clements in third (not sure where she went), Jade Dent in eighth (high-school dropout), Henrietta Rollins and Katie Becket in tenth (they’re still friends), and Jacey Callahan in eleventh (not on good terms anymore, but still a decent girl). He’s dated the top nerd and the head cheerleader. He’s dated the captain of the mathletes and the record-breaking swimmer. None of those relationships have hurt him irreparably. On the contrary, they’ve helped him grow as a person. He had his first kiss with Olivia Markus underneath a swing set. The first time he put his heart into kissing someone, it was Ariadne Mirza at his first Homecoming dance. On the first day of his senior year, he found himself kissing Savanna Loreto. Quite the ladies’ man, if he did say so himself.

He doesn’t say that anymore.

He stands just inside the entrance to the bar, where dozens of patrons flock. They wave money in his direction, even though he’s wearing a thick winter jacket over his more risqué attire. I’m clearly done for the night. Can you please leave me alone? It’s hard to just dismiss them, though. In fact, he got this job because the person who held it originally was murdered by one of these folks. He bides his time by the door.

“I’m done, I’m done,” he says, attempting to push through the crowd. “Come back tomorrow, and I’ll show you a good time. But for now, I need to get home.” The crowd persists, so Tripp motions for security to help him get out. It’s like this every night.

Once he’s out on the street, Tripp pulls out his phone and checks the weather. More snow is coming. He’s been done with all the snow since November, but it keeps falling! How can global warming exist in this frigid wasteland? No matter, no matter. He checks the time, three forty-two AM. Thank goodness, thought it was later. He takes a couple deep breaths, keeps walking, and recites his rules in his head. If you recognize someone, never look at their face. They might recognize you.

They do.

“Tripp!”

Don’t look back. They’ll think they’ve misidentified you.

“Tripp?”

Don’t look back.

“Tripp, it’s me. Elizabeth!”

It’s a client. They always think that he’ll remember them by name, but he never does. Don’t look back at her don’t look back at her.

“Tripp!” the woman calls a final time. Tripp doesn’t answer. As soon as he thinks he’s out of her line of vision, he quickens his pace. Move faster, move faster! Most of the clients don’t call him by his given name. They prefer to use the name of the sexy persona he takes on in order to distance himself from the necessary impurity. Sagittarius. When a client takes the time to learn his real name, it’s because they’re a borderline stalker.

Tripp Michaels has had his fair share of stalkers, too.

He heads down a couple avenues to get to his final destination, calling a cab at the end of one. You can spare the cash, just this once. You earned more than normal tonight. And if you need more, you can always take an extra client next week. He’s due at the arts district in two hours, but until then he’s got plenty of time to complete his testing. Tripp checks his breath. He pops a couple mints like Ibuprofen, almost choking on their sharp coolness. What do you want to do about it, huh?

“Where are you headed?” the driver asks.

Tripp leans back against the leather interior of the car. It smells like women’s perfume and sweat, a sickly intoxicating aroma. It makes him sick inside. “Sunrise Hospital,” he tells the driver.

Most times, when he takes a cab, the driver attempts idle chit-chat. The usual crap, about kids and dogs. Sometimes, the creepier ones talk about work. His work. Those kind of people comment on his outfit and hairstyle and the glitter on his cheeks, as if he tried to end up as a prostitute in a Las Vegas club. News flash: he didn’t. He hates them. But this driver is totally silent, which somehow makes the drive worse. Tripp fiddles with the keys in his pocket.

“Um, where are you from?” Never thought there’d be a day where I’d be making small talk.

The driver doesn’t answer immediately, only stares down the road and regards the street signs coldly. When he does answer, it’s gruff. “Baltimore.”

“Really? So am I.” Tripp searches his coat pocket for his ID, the real one. He thinks better of it. “Of course, I’ve been in Vegas for upwards of five years now—” It’s been less than one. “—but I still think of it fondly. When did you leave?”

“Listen, I appreciate your craving for genuine human connection, but I’d much rather drive in silence. I hope that’s okay with you.”

“Yeah.”

Back into the quiet. It just gives you time to think, huh? Think about something.

It was Viola who told him to get tested. She used to live with a much older boyfriend in Carson City, until an affair-ish thing with the late Adonis led to a bun in the oven. When she moved in with him, she used to talk about the old boyfriend all the time. He had AIDs, she’d say. He lost a ton of weight. He was always tired, and he didn’t want sex, and she didn’t want sex, and everything was so messed up that she didn’t know what to do with him. Tripp wasn’t there for most of that time, but he hears about it.

Viola makes sure he hears all about Adonis and the old boyfriend. So he’s getting tested for HIV.

The cab pulls up outside the hospital, and Tripp gets out. He brushes off his coat. Hopefully he doesn’t look too much like a pick-up. How the heck did you end up here? He goes through the sliding glass doors and into the crisp, cool whiteness of the medical profession. The cab driver forgot to ask for payment. Whatever.

Tripp signs in at the front desk. Sagittarius Michaels. Here for an HIV test. The waiting room is standing-room-only, but it doesn’t bother him. He stands. He waits. Someone walks by him, absolutely covered in deep, red blood. It’s disgusting. When the doctor calls his name—or rather, his alias—he proceeds to the back room to receive the test.

A woman, who introduces herself as Dr. Hale, takes a sample of his blood.

“Vitiligo,” she comments, brushing the spotted tone of his skin. “Are you on any medications to slow it down?” Tripp hasn’t ever thought about it before. Heck, he didn’t even know the condition had a name.

“No,” he says.

“Any medications at all?”

“No.”

“Anything illegal?”

Tripp thinks of Jonas back at the house, dosing up on the heroin he used to share with Adonis. “No, I can’t afford that kind of thing.”

“Good, it’ll ruin you.” Dr. Hale talks with a kind of laid-back security and friendliness that Tripp hasn’t ever experienced with a stranger before. Maybe that’s why she’s a doctor.

Once she has gathered the blood and prepares it for testing, Dr. Hale tells Tripp that he can wait for his results in the waiting room. They shouldn’t take more than thirty minutes to complete, which is a relief because Tripp needs to get to the art district.

He knows his prognosis by her face when she calls him back into the exam room.

Make them work for it. Make them earn it. Character is built through hardship. Make them suffer, to make them stronger. Tripp can hear it on this crazy, never-ending loop in his head. Suffer, stronger, suffer, stronger, until the two must be together in order to make sense. His father lived by that principle until it sent Tripp running away with a mouthful of blood and enough bad memories to sour milk. He could’ve sworn he’d left it with the house. Apparently not.

“There are treatment options available,” Dr. Hale begins, but her voice dies away as Tripp stares up at the ceiling. He feels around in his pockets once more for the keys to his apartment, the apartment that his entire salary feeds into, the apartment so filled with crap that his immune system is sure to take him down in a month tops. Might as well throw out that key. What the heck does he do now? Where does he go now?

“Mr. Michaels? Mr. Michaels? There is treatment available.”

Tripp isn’t listening. He rises from the plastic chair and heads down the stairs. Past the front desk. Into the night. He needs to explain some things to some people. He needs to sort things out.

Tripp Michaels has had his fair share of ailments, since the beginning of time. There was chicken pox in first grade (he still has scars), a UTI in third (worst week of his life), shingles in eighth (the most awful pain he could imagine), two broken ribs and a fractured skull in tenth (thanks, Dad), and Lyme disease in eleventh (ticks are everywhere). He’s had almost every bone in his body broken at one point or another. None of those conditions have hurt him irreparably. On the contrary, they’ve helped him grow as a person. He had his ER visit after drinking bleach by accident. The first time he seriously injured himself, it was with a knife while he was chopping up chicken for a stir-fry. On the fifteenth day of his senior year, he found himself in the hospital with a broken thumb. They used to call him invincible. He always came back, no matter the diagnosis.

Guess they can’t call him that anymore.