Venomous

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IT IS MY firm belief that if I ever smoked crack, my mother would sniff the air, glare at me, and ask me why I was smoking crack. The Mom Sense gives all mothers an internal gauge that reads what kind of trouble their child has been up to, and how badly said child is gonna get it. So it’s no surprise to me that the minute I get home, even though I’ve been trying to be quiet and discreet, my mother calls out my name and walks into the living room to see me, bloodied and broken, slumped against the door frame.

“Oh my God! What happened to you?”

No talk. Face hurty. Maybe later. Her hands grab at my shirt, but I keep moving, brushing them off as I go.

“Honey, what happened? Are you all right? Let me see, let me see, oh my God, sweetie, tell me who did this to you and I-”

I put up my hand to signal that this conversation is not meant to happen yet. Once I make it to my room, I slam the door behind me and gimp over to my dresser so I can see my face in my mirror.

Well, holy fucking shit.

I’m all fucked-up. Like, Rambo fucked-up. Girl-who-survives-the-entire-horror-movie fucked-up. My lower lip is split in two different places. My left eye is a swollen mass of swirling blacks and blues, accentuated by a small scratch that had decided to bleed profusely down the side of my face. Small brownish bruises line my neck, each one a marking from where Casey’s fingertips had dug into my throat. There’s blood, snot, sweat, and tears all over every part of my face, some even clumping my hair together, turning its usual mangy blond to coppery and festering (man, I love using those two adjectives as a self-description). One lens in my glasses frames is slightly cracked but still usable, and has managed to stay in its frame, which counts for something, I’m sure, in some fucking ridiculous karmic way. It’s like a bus hit my face.

I heave a sigh through my bloodied mouth, and the air rattles through my lungs and rasps out dry. A shell, a husk, a shed snake’s skin. I just feel sagging flesh on aching bone. An out-of-service machine.

In the bathroom, I dampen a washcloth and get to work. The minute it touches my face, stinging nettles stab my entire head. The pain registers in the back of my brain, but just barely, not enough to make me care. The cloth and my face trade colors: My skin is revealed as pale and sickly, while the cloth turns a dark, chunky brown. It reminds me of chum.

When I finish wiping down my mug, my wounds don’t look half as bad as they did before I cleaned myself up, but they’re still bad enough. The eye still looks hideously ballooned, but the cut above it isn’t visible in the least. One split in my lip seems gone already, but the other is ragged and swollen enough to present a problem. The bruises on my neck, though, stand out like a forest fire. I wouldn’t give me a quarter if I saw me on the street.

My mother, arms crossed and face tight, greets me as I crack the bathroom door. I try to force a smile to let her know that I’m okay, but my entire face screams in pain, so I just sort of grimace like a moron.

“I want to know what’s going on, dammit,” she says. “You don’t just come home looking like that, slam the fucking door in my face, and not explain to me what’s going on. JEsus-MaryandJOseph, Locke, look at you.”

My brain’s pilot light comes on, and I think of an appropriate response. “It’s nothing, really. I’m all right.” Good one.

“Get out here this instant and tell me exactly what happened to you. It’s like…”

“Do I have to?”

“Do you-” Her face softens suddenly, and my heart shatters. “Locke, honey, please. Look at you. I’m so scared. What happened? Who did this to you? You don’t have to be afraid, you can talk to me about this.”

“Got in a fight. Look, let me get a few hours of sleep. Please. And then I’ll tell you all about it. Every last detail. Just…I’m exhausted.”

Finally she shakes her head and turns back toward the living room. “Fine. Go to sleep. We’ll discuss this when you wake up.” Her voice lets me know that I’m in deep, deep trouble. Big surprise.

The sheets feel cool and soft on my body, compared to the roughness of everything else. I wrap and tuck until the whole bed is a cocoon, a comfort burrito with a scrumptious Locke core.

As my head sinks into my waiting pillow, I reach out for the venom, the constant presence that’s been my companion for too long now. The venom sighs and waves me away, as though exhausted.

Long day. Good work. Kudos, buddy.

Everything’s poisoned, I think. You ruined it all. My friends, my family, it’s all been tainted, turned to shit. This is your magnum opus, isn’t it?

I told you not to thank me. Not to get too comfortable. All I needed was an even playing ground, an amount of equality. And all that took was a little hope. Once you were lifted up, it was just a matter of waiting for the downfall.

Always poisonous, I think, yawning. Nothing changed, it just looked different. Fuck you.

You probably have a concussion, you know. If you go to sleep, you might not wake up.

Maybe that’s for the best.

I let my eyes, heavy and irritated, close softly.

Sadly, it’s not my time, and after a few hours of dreamless black sleep, my eyes click open again. My wounds, now rested, have been given time to be sore and uncomfortable. I roll over and feel everything from my scalp to my toes scream bloody murder. I lift my arm to scratch at the cut above my ear, and everything from my fingertips to my shoulder blade becomes a bag of rusty nails and shattered glass. Well, at least I can feel real pain again. Good to know. Christ, this SUCKS. Every movement is torture. I want to fucking die.

Lon sits at the kitchen table when I enter. He’s reading a comic book, and he does a double take when I come into the room: looks at Batman, looks up at me, looks back down to Batman, and then gapes at me like I’m a circus freak.

“Holy crap!”

“Language,” calls my mother from the other room.

“Hey,” I mumble as I sit down at the table with the speed of an octogenarian.

“What happened?”

“Got in a fight.”

He laughs like it’s not really that funny. “With what, a bear?” My mom snorts approving laughter toward my little brother. Being the subject of ridicule is, in this case, tolerable. “Are you okay? I can get you some ice…”

“I’m fine. Just a little sore.”

He tilts his head sideways, fascinated by my face. “Wow…I’ve never seen a real black eye before”

I lean forward. “Wanna touch it? Softly, though.”

Just as he reaches out to feel my swollen face, my mother enters the room and slaps his hand out of the air. “Leonardo, honey, will you excuse us for a second? I need to talk to your brother.”

Your brother. Oh man…

Lon nods to us, and then in a blur he’s in his room. My mother goes about tidying some things up in the kitchen before she slowly takes Lon’s seat and lights a smoke. When she doesn’t offer me one, I take it upon myself to spark up. I haven’t had a cigarette in way too long, and my throat has finally stopped aching from being choked. A minor blessing.

“So,” she snaps, “want to explain yourself?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I have time,” she says, taking a deep drag from her smoke. “And so do you.”

“This is gonna be unpleasant, you realize.”

“I’d have never guessed.” She shoots a smoke ring in my face. “Talk.”

I spew, starting with Renée telling me about Casey’s love for Randall and ending with me chasing my girlfriend to a taxi, with all the drama and bloodshed in between. No emotion crosses her face the whole time; she just nods every so often to show me she’s listening. I leave out certain parts of the whole ordeal-the night spent at Renée’s place, the fight with Terry, things like that. By the time I wrap the story up, we’ve motored through three cigarettes each, with no finish line in sight.

“Okay,” she says, little ghosts of smoke escaping her mouth with every new syllable. “So you and your friend beat each other half to death because you revealed something about your friend. All this while your girlfriend was there. That nice girl I met earlier today.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

After a moment of contemplation, she looks at me with death-ray eyes. “Christ, Locke, I don’t even know what to think anymore.”

Thank God for my bout of apathetic emptiness, ’cause otherwise I’d be cursing out my mother right now. “Wow, no Mom sympathy? Can I at least get a bowl of Chicken and Stars out of this, maybe a glass of choco-”

“I mean, he’s your friend,” she says, shaking her head. “He’s someone you care about. I mean, Jesus, I don’t blame you for telling Randall about how Casey feels-he’s your friend too, I know, and he was upset-but even if your friend who…who has angries like yours is the first person to throw a punch, you hold back. You don’t beat up your friends. You turn the other cheek and forgive them for being stupid or selfish or wrong. Being in someone’s life means overlooking their faults sometimes and being the bigger man, not retaliating against them.”

“That’s very Christian of you.”

“It’s very HUMAN of me!” she bellows, and jabs the lit end of smoke at my face. She’s close to tears. “This isn’t about philosophy or faith, it’s about basic human treatment! You don’t DO this! To anyone. Have you seen yourself in the mirror?”

She’s got a point. “Okay, yeah. I look pretty…”

“Hideous? Gruesome?”

“Oh, thanks, Mom, you’re a peach.”

“LOOK at you! This is the face of what these spasms of anger are gonna lead to if they keep going on! You look in the mirror one day and you see this stranger with a busted-up lip and a dazed look in his eyes, and you want to know who he is and how he got there! Don’t, honey; Locke, you’re so much better than that. Come on.”

She pulls hard on her cigarette and then, with a flourish, jams it into the ashtray. Her mouth opens as if to say something, but then she just goes quiet and shakes her head again. Finally, with nothing else to say, she stands and starts getting dinner ready.

“So, that’s it?” I say. “What do I do, Mom? There’s no way to fix this. The venom’s ruined everything. I don’t know how to go back.”

“No, you know what, enough of this,” she says, waving me aside. “I officially divorce myself from this issue. Until you’re ready to get yourself together, I’m not listening to any of this venom bullshit. I love you to death, Locke, and I always will, no matter what, but enough is enough. You want to be a thug, go for it. You want to get better, work on it and then talk to me.”

“Mom, please,” I say. Now I’m the one close to tears. “I don’t know what to do.”

“That makes two of us,” she snaps, and turns to leave the room. “Start thinking.”

The next day is Sunday, thank God, so I hole up in my room and recuperate. It’s not as bad as it sounds. I get most of my homework done and manage to replace my Band-Aids every couple of hours without making my wounds reopen (lucky me). My mother doesn’t try to baby me either, just announces when food’s ready and reminds me that I have a meeting with Dr. Yeski the next day. The military vibe goes on all day, with my mother playing the general and Lon playing the spy who peers at me over chairs and couches to get a good look at someone who’s taken a decent beating. And all I can do is laugh and think, Man, I wonder how Casey looks.

Somewhere in the evening, out of both loneliness and worry, I call Randall. When he hears my voice in response to his greeting, he sighs.

“How are you? How’s Casey?” I ask.

“Casey is, thankfully, not in the hospital,” he says, his voice heavy with the fatigue of having to tell this story over and over again. “Things were shaky for a little bit, ’cause he kept coughing up blood, but we think it’s just blood he swallowed over the course of the fight. I imagine you did the same thing. You knocked one of his teeth loose, though. I talked to his mom and dad, and they’ve decided not to press charges. You’re lucky for that.”

“You two have talked?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you…I mean, did you…was, uh…”

“Spit it out.”

“Are you with him?” I spit out.

“No, of course not. Don’t be stupid. Just because he’s in love with me and I’m taking care of him doesn’t mean that I’m going to fall for him. That’s hideously offensive to both me and Casey.”

“My mom called me hideous last night.”

“What can I tell you? Small world.”

I wait for him to answer my other question, but there’s only silence. “So, how are you?”

“Do you actually care?”

“Of course.”

“I’m tired and I’m hurt,” he says. “I’m sick of everyone overlooking their own feelings in favor of appearances or other people’s feelings. This thing was so blatantly indicative of how fucked-up we all are that there’s no point in trying to move on right now. This boil has been coming to a head for a while, and now that it’s been opened up, we need to let the infection run dry. Until then, you’re all on friendship probation. Don’t come to me for advice or instructions, because I’m all out of ideas.

“How’s Renée doing?”

“I don’t know, she hasn’t been answering my calls.”

“Do you think she’s okay?”

“No.” The response makes me feel cold and stupid. “I’m not her fucking boyfriend, Locke,” he spits. “None of this is my doing, and it’s not my job. If I were you, though, I would prepare for the worst. Beats me why, but carnage is one of her turnoffs.”

“I’m really scared, Randall. I don’t know what to do.”

“Good.”

“You think she’s gonna dump me?”

“I would.” A pause. “I have to go. Take care of yourself, Locke, because at this point, I don’t think you have anyone coming to your aid.”

I decide to give Renée a call. I owe her that much. Randall’s wrong: I am her boyfriend, and I fucked up royally, but no matter what’s happened, I love her, and I know she loves me. I have faith in her. In us.

“Hello?”

“Renée?”

Click.

Okay. Let’s try that again.

I prepare myself for the shots of fire in my veins contrasting with the blood rising to my face, but the venom seems like a background presence now. It’s definitely still there, but the actual attacks seem to have ceased.

There’s crying in the background when the other end picks up. “Who is this?” says Andrew.

“Andrew, it’s Locke. Is Renée there?”

“Holy shit, Vinetti, I am going to fucking kill you tomorrow.”

“Andrew, please-”

“I asked for one thing, Vinetti. One thing. Keep her happy. Your ass is mine.”

“Andrew, there’s more going on here than you-”

“See you tomorrow, kid. Gonna bite off your fucking head.”

Click.

That was productive. Guess I’ll give her a night to think about things.

When I see Andrew outside school, I decide that my give-Renée-a-night-to-think idea was about as ineffective as my tell-Randall one. His friends hang back around him, waiting to see what his first move will be. They all look nervous. And stupid. It’s a sea of huge pants and stocking caps, huge jackets and attitude. Terry stands off to one side, shooting me a look that’s supposed to say that he’s not afraid of me, only his face looks like it was run through the dryer one too many times, and I know why.

I reach Andrew and stare up into his stony expression. We’re inches away. The air seems to vibrate around us.

“Should we go to a courtyard or park or something?”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “Pardon?”

I shrug. “I’ve never been in, like, an official school-yard fight. I figured, y’know, they’d form a circle around us”-I motion to his fan club-“and we’d pace around for a while until you smacked the shit out of me.”

He examines my face and sneers. “Looks like the queer beat me to it, though, huh?”

“Yeah, the queer did a number on me. You wanna go talk?”

“Yeah,” he says, waving his friends away. “I’ll talk to you guys later. Me and Locke are gonna have a chat. Omar, tell Doc Raymond that I had a family thing to deal with and all that.” Terry snorts and makes a comment, which I’m pretty sure includes “motherfucker.” Andrew and I trudge toward Broadway. I light a cigarette and offer one to Andrew, but he turns it down.

“I thought you smoked.”

“I blaze mad trees, man, but don’t smoke the bogie.”

“Oh. Right.”

“I smoke weed,” he enunciates for my benefit, “but I do not smoke cigarettes. Jesus, watch some MTV, it’s like you were raised in a fridge.”

“Sorry. Guess I’m not as ‘stupid fresh’ as you are. Maybe I should hang out with ghetto idiots.” There’s silence, so it’s apparent that I’m doing the pursuing in this interaction. “How is she?”

“She’s not good,” he says, peering pensively into the distance like a Calvin Klein model. “It’s like something just broke in her, and everything in her head just sort of went disordered, right? Like it got all stirred up together.”

“Has she talked to you a lot about it?”

“Nah. Most of the time, it’s like she can’t even think of the words. She opens her mouth and says one or two things, and then starts crying.” He looks at his hands and rubs them together. “Not taking her meds no more either. It scares the shit out of me. I mean, she needs to take her medication or else she just…ahhhh. I worry, Vinetti. I worry.” He looks everywhere but at me. I don’t blame him.

“I’m really sorry, Andrew.”

“Ah, y’know…I’m not happy with you, kid. Blood has a lot of impact on my sister, and from what I heard…Fuck, look at you, it was obviously a bloody match. I think seeing two people she loved and trusted drawing so much blood from each other was just an overload. I think she’s scared that if she puts her faith into anyone, they’ll only end up hurting each other because of her. And it all results in big ol’ pools of blood, every time.”

Andrew was so much more comfortable in my mind as an idiot bully. His eloquence only makes him scarier. Still, I find myself walking steadily beside him, a cold numbness spreading through my arms, legs, face, and chest. It feels good, I suppose, in that I’m really beginning to consistently feel things again, but it also feels hideous in a way that the venom never did, all the guilt and pain without any of the fiery hatred that sent me zooming fist-first into the fray. I do realize, though, that it isn’t a truly-numb numbness like I’ve been feeling recently, just a chilling numbness. Which, I suppose, counts for something.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m so sorry, Andrew.”

“I told you, it happens.”

I light another cigarette with the butt of the one I was just smoking. If there was ever a time to chain-smoke straight through a pack, it’s now. Andrew looks at me disapprovingly and says, “Son, that shit’s gonna kill your ass so quickly.” Then he smiles like a goon and adds, “Though probably not before the faggot or myself do, apparently. I have to tell you, the urge to destroy you is so fucking intense, but seeing you only fills me with pity.”

I can’t help but chuckle. Again I make a mental note: just felt something. It’s strange, keeping my emotions logged, but after a period of pure nothing, it’s nice to be able to recognize an active feeling. “Yeah, well, you should see him.”

“Yeah?” He seems genuinely interested. “Did you kick Casey’s ass?”

I shrug. A surge of weird macho pride hits me. “Well, yeah. He knocked me unconscious, though.”

He chortles. “Man, if I’d done that to either of you, I woulda been put down for a hate crime, but just ’cause you’re both psycho little freak kids, you get off scot-free. I’m surprised. That kids looks jacked.”

“Hey, now. I still have your sister to deal with.”

His face darkens. “Okay, well, maybe not scot-free. But you know.”

“I didn’t know I was allowed to smoke in here,” I say, lighting my cigarette.

“Only patients are, and even then, only certain patients.” She puts an ashtray in front of me and stares with a look of slight concern. It’s a refreshing change from her usual blank face. “I suppose I should see the other guy?”

“What?”

“Must’ve been a nasty fight.”

I hiss as the lungful of smoke enters and exits my mouth. “My friend Casey,” I say softly. “You remember him?”

“The gay kid? With the…” She glances at her notepad. “The black, right? The other venomlike impulse?”

“Right.” I rehash the story in complete, blood-soaked detail.

Dr. Yeski nods slowly. “Wow,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“It’s been a rough couple of days for you, I take it.”

“You have no fucking idea.”

“You talked to…Randall, right? Have you talked to him about this?”

“A little bit. He’s taking a step back from the situation, says he’s sick of being our friend if we’re going to behave like this.”

“Sounds reasonable. How are you feeling about how this all played out?”

I shrug. “It all makes sense.”

“How so?”

“Well, the venom acts both as a current for rage and as a poisonous entity,” I explain. “Everyone I come in contact with gets hurt, poisoned. But things were beginning to go well, and I was starting to realize how great life could be if I somehow quieted the venom, or learned to control it, but I just played into its plan. I thought I had gotten a grip, but instead I just learned to make the venom part of my personality. Once it was on equal footing with me, it could take every good thing I’ve gathered in my life away from me in one fell swoop.”

She stares at me for a bit, silent. “You don’t think that circumstance was a part of it? This can’t have all been the venom’s doing.”

“Why not? That’s the power of the venom. It’s my Mr. Hyde. It’s clinical and evil.”

“But it’s also a part of you. Maybe you let the venom come to the surface and get ‘equal footing’ with you because it needed to come out in the open.”

“Everyone thinks that,” I say. “Randall, my mom, Renée-they think I enjoy hurting other people. This isn’t within my power. It’s something darker than me. It’s manipulative.”

“You’d be surprised how many people assign personalities to parts of themselves that they can’t accept-”

“I can accept it,” I bark, “I just don’t like it. I want to be rid of it, once and for all.”

“Then you’ve got to work,” she says. “No one can come in and cure you, Locke. There’s no deus ex machina here. If you want help with your feelings, you need to show those around you that this help will lead to something. So far, it seems like you’ve gone behind their backs, lied about what you’re actually experiencing. It must confuse your friends quite a bit.”

I snort. She has a serious point here, but it’s still shrink talk. “Well, at least someone’s giving me advice.”

“Not advice. Just my opinion. Right now, someone else telling you what to do is the last thing you need.”

Class crawls by at a snail’s pace on Tuesday, considering the insanity of my nonacademic life. The idea of paying attention to my history professor is absolutely meaningless. With the introspective nightmare I just went through, the views on Napoléon coming out of the graying little man in front of me just don’t hold that much true significance. Randall jots notes down halfheartedly, but I can tell he’s thinking the same thing. Part of me wants to get up and just scream that this has nothing to do with real life, that we didn’t care and really shouldn’t have to. For the first time that I can remember, I think about the universal teenager-versus-school question: Why should this matter to me? Will a serious knowledge of the cotton gin help with my unstable relationship with the woman of my dreams? Will learning that Napoléon and Hitler made the same stupid mistake change the fact that this weekend, I pulped the face of one of my best friends? This is all very interesting, but it has no bearing in my world. Who gives a fuck?

The minute class is over, I go to my usual smoking spot on the steps outside. Randall’s waiting for me. His eyes sag with exhaustion. Sleep has not been a part of his life lately. When I sit down, he mumbles, “And how’s the venom today?”

Hearing him mention it is odd. It’d always been my taboo subject, and now it’s a point of order. “It’s on and off. One minute I hear it commenting on my life, and the next I’m trying desperately to speak to it and getting no response.” There’s a silence, so I jump on it. “Randall, I’m so sorry. A million times, I’m sorry. I owe you so much more than this.”

He waves me aside and lights his cigarette. “Well, Saturday was certainly the worst I’ve ever seen you,” he says. “Maybe the venom just ran its course, like a disease.”

“That’s what I figured, that there was one last gasp and then it was dead, or at least retired. The other day, though, talking to my mom…I don’t know, maybe I’m doing this wrong. I’m the venom’s host, so it has to be within my control. But I’m not feeling angry or upset lately, just hopeless. I just want a sign that it wasn’t all a bunch of bullshit, that there’s actually something more to me than a…toxic concept. I want to feel something true.”

“Okay!” chirps Randall, and puts his smoke out on my neck.

My insides whirl. There’s a blur of coat and hair and collision, and the next thing I know I’m crouching on top of Randall, teeth gritted, one fist raised and the other behind his head clutching a handful of hair. Randall’s got a smug look on his face, and his breathing is ragged but calm. I make a little cry out of my throat when I try to talk. There’s none of the sweeping vengeance, none of the seeing red. This isn’t a war. I’m crouched on top of my best friend, ready to punch him in the face. And I’m fucking TERRIFIED and really don’t want to hit him.

This is pathetic. I feel sick.

“If you’re gonna hit me,” he coughs, “then fucking hit me.”

“STOP IT,” I cry, more sob than bellow. “You ENJOYED that.”

He smirks. “Yeah, I took a little pleasure from it, considering the shit you pulled this weekend. What of it, Stockenbarrel?”

I sit back on my haunches, frozen, unable to move or scream. I keep waiting for the pounding heat, the raw power, but there’s nothing, only embarrassment. Christ, my neck hurts.

Randall sighs and climbs to his feet. “Welcome to human emotions, Stockenbarrel. They’re not fun, they’re not cool, and you have a lot of fucking catching up to do.”

He sits down next to me, and I’m grateful for it.

When Casey answers the phone, he seems genuinely surprised that I want to see him. We make arrangements, and I walk over to his house.

He answers the door, and I can’t help but wince. He looks bad, just as bad as me, if not worse. His lips are crazy swollen, and there are bruises lining his cheekbones. There’s a scab on his chin surrounded by a thick purple bruise, probably evidence of my boot. Every step and movement is deliberate and careful. It’s like we’re two old men, hobbling around the room, nursing our war wounds. Sooner or later, one of us is going to start reminiscing about a nurse.

His apartment is much nicer than I would have guessed-stone countertops, white walls, simple-yet-elegant carpeting, a distinct change from my lived-in crunchy home life. His bedroom has a bit more character. The walls are a deep navy blue, and the furniture has sort of an art-deco feel to it. The only light is one that hangs from the ceiling, the type that you always see in cop dramas, hanging over the interrogation table. Casey takes a seat at his desk in one of those basic swivel chairs.

We both look at our feet for a few minutes, and then I look up and try to smile.

“How are you?” It sounds plastic and forced, I’m sure, but it’s the only thing I can think of.

“Sore,” he says, and then looks at me. “I’m sorry about your eye.”

“I’m sorry about your mouth.”

“It’s fine. You didn’t knock any teeth out, though one of them’s loose.”

“I know. I talked to Randall.”

“My folks aren’t going to press charges,” he says. “What about yours?”

“My mom figures this is my fault, and I should fix it myself. Besides, neither of us is in the hospital, it doesn’t seem that necessary.”

“Right.”

There’s a pregnant pause. Both of us want to speak, but neither of us know how to put it.

“Look,” he finally says, “I’m sorry about how everything went down. Just…with my whole cover blown, it was like the black was the only thing that made sense, and I bet you know what that feels like. But you’re not getting out of this, Locke. I will not let you out of this. You fucked up badly, and being sorry for something like this doesn’t make it any better.”

“Of course, but, Case-”

“No. Shut up. Let me finish. You’ve gotta understand, I’ve known Randall for…forever. And it took me a long time before I realized how I felt about him. It was hopeless from the beginning, so, whatever, I convinced myself that it wasn’t anything big, that I was just lonely and horny. It wasn’t that, though, not hormones and confusion but LOVE, bottom of the heart. So I couldn’t tell him. Occasional attraction is one thing, but love…Tell him that, it would change everything. And no matter what you say now, there’s going to be that change in our friendship, the change that you started. Randall and I will NEVER be the same friends we were. I overreacted, yeah, and things will get better, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be perfect, or AS GOOD. That’s the last thing I wanted, was for Randall to have something else to, I don’t know, write a song about, right?”

“Right. That wasn’t my intention.”

“’Course not. None of us expected a kid like you to come into the picture, for better or for worse. I didn’t, and I doubt Renée did. But you showed up, and suddenly I had a comrade, and Renée had a lover, and none of us realized that we were sitting on top of a big tower of mystery and lies until you hopped up there with us and the whole thing collapsed.”

“Sorry I ruined your romantic conspiracy.”

“You didn’t ruin anything,” he says. “Everyone’s to blame, no one’s to blame, yadda yadda yadda. But no matter whose fault it was, you screwed up, whether you knew it or not. It was a mistake, but the intentions behind it weren’t noble. I don’t know how I feel about you anymore, Locke, but I will say that you have some apologies to make. Me, I’m flexible. I can bounce back from this. But Randall and Renée both love you, and you don’t currently deserve that love. Neither do I, for that matter. You do realize how much they care about you, right?”

“Yeah, I have an idea.” I puff heavily on my cigarette and try to fill Casey’s room with smoke. His ceiling fan makes it quiver, then disappear in a flurry of thin wisps. “So what’re you going to do now?”

He takes a minute and then smiles sadly. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m going to try and make a strategy about this. No more plans and hiding and conspiracy. Just take everything one step at a time and have a good time. Drink a little more. Meet some boys, get on with life. We’ll see where we end up after this, as friends. I like you, Locke, but after all of this, I don’t trust you. Even more, I don’t trust myself around you.”

I keep my head down, trying to contact some of the venom, the dark bond that made us friends. It’s gone, though, tossed away by Casey in favor of common sense, and I can’t blame him. The venom and I are alone in this one, back where we started.

One left to go.

I TURNED off the faucet and rolled up my sleeves. The razor felt cold in my hand as I pushed my fists into the warm water filling the sink. My eyes went up to my reflection in the bathroom mirror: Locke Vinetti, superhero, protector, brother, friend. Take a good look, you miserable bastard.

“I’m giving you to the count of three,” I said to my reflection. “Then I cut myself to ribbons and die, and something tells me that’ll piss you off.”

No change. I pressed the blade’s edge to my wrist.

“One.”

Nothing.

“Two.”

The mirror seemed to vibrate. I closed my eyes.

“Three.”

I opened them and there it was. The song of the city personified, my dark power-the venom. It was horrible, spidery, like a mass of shadow trying to imitate a real person. About eight glossy eyes stared back at me, glinting with just the slightest hint of crimson, blinking in random sequence.

“Leave.”

“Who are you to give orders to me?”

“I want you out, you hear me? Leave me and never come back.”

“Did that thing from the future frighten you? You’re Blacklight. You don’t need to be afraid of anything.”

“Just leave. I can be Blacklight without you.”

Laughter boomed throughout the bathroom. “Idiot,” snarled the thing in the mirror. “Blind, sad little boy. The city’s song is always present, but the only way you harness it is through me. I am the doorway, the conduit. All you provide is a host, a being to make my power tangible.” Its eyes flared bright. “We can do such things together, Locke. Your brother? Renée? Forget them. Humans. They want a weak, usable version of you, but I love you just the way you are. We can do whatever we want. Steal and kill and rule. Sounds fun, huh?”

I pressed the razor down harder. Ignore it. “Go now.”

It stared at me for a second and muttered, “As you wish.” It slunk off my form, twisting and scuttling until it got to the bathroom door. It turned and stared back at me through the mirror. “Enjoy your decision. Have fun living and dying as nothing special.”

It slipped under the reflection of the bathroom door, and it was gone. I’d gotten rid of it, finally, for good. I was no longer a monster, a superhero; I wasn’t outstanding or different.

It took me far too long to take the razor off my wrist.