red-headed android

I don’t feel happy anymore. The best I can do is feel lucky, and there aren’t a lot of lucky days. Today’s a lucky day, though, because I only hear my first lie at four in the afternoon.

“Hey, lil bro? Tell Mom I’m going to church.”

I put my controller down to mime checking my non-existent watch, look back at my brother over my shoulder, and give him my best shit-eating grin.

“Hey, that’s a new record.”

“On what?”

“Longest-time-to-first-bullshit. Ooh, lemme call Guinness, they’ll love this!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

I drop the smile. I got him mad, so I don’t need it anymore. Besides, it was fake in the first place. Makes me sick just wearing it.

“Usually, you tell your first lie at like, 8 AM, just after I wake up. But today you waited until 4 PM. That’s a new record.”

He stares at me like I’m an idiot. I follow up, condescending, like some kid prodigy on TV. I really lay on the nasally voice, the facial expressions, everything. I even pretend to push up my glasses, even though I don’t wear any. It’s got to be perfect.

“You only go to church on Sundays. It’s true, technically, there is a Saturday mass, but if you leave now, you’d get there an hour before it starts. Therefore, the only logical conclusion is—”

He storms over. I know it’s coming, know I’m asking for it, but I still tense up, still break character. When he slams his fist into my face like I’m his personal punching bag, I’m still a scared kid and not a proud little shit-disturber, happy to get hit—so it’s the shame that makes me cry after, and not the pain. I worked so hard to earn that one and I still couldn’t take it like a champ. I gotta get better.

“Fuckin’ tell Mom.” he snaps.

I sit in the bathroom until the redness goes down so Mom won’t ask any questions. Then, I do as I’m told. I’m good at that. I remember everything everyone ever told me to do, and I do it. That’s why Dad got his meds this morning. Everybody else forgot that if he doesn’t wake up by 7:30, he can’t switch the IV bag out himself, so one of us has to do it, or it’ll mess with the dosage on his meds and there could be complications. Little stuff like that is what makes me a model son. Still waiting for my award.

Complications. Complications, complications, complications, god, it makes me sick, it makes me sick when it’s stuck in my head, I hate that word. I hate it. I hate hearing it from empty lab coats as an excuse for what they did to him.

We could sue, but we can’t afford a lawyer. That’s what Mom keeps saying, anyway. Once, she said it with a new Prada bag sitting on the kitchen table, and she looked me in the eye when she did, daring me to say something, to do something about it.

Because she did hire a lawyer, and the hospital did pay out, and nobody ever told Dad. Not even me. Not even me, when I had the chance, because it’d break his heart and that’s about the only part of him that’s still working.

I threw that gaudy overpriced piece of shit in the creek out back of the school. Slept in the yard for a month. It was fucking worth it.

Dad never found out. He thought I was out late with friends, not out back laying in the dirt. That’s another lie. I don’t have friends. I have kids who pretend not to see me when I come in the room. That way they don’t have to put up with my jokes or all the chatter about anime or whatever other worthless bullshit is gonna come out of my mouth. That’s what I’ve got. People who’re forewarned. People who know who I am.

It’s better if no one knows who you really are.

Right, Mom?

“He’s going to church again?” she snaps.

I nod.

What am I going to do? Accuse him of lying? That’s how I get grounded. Or have something else taken away. Maybe the shitty, beat-up old Xbox that’s about my only distraction from all of this. Maybe being allowed to go outside. Maybe lunch for a week. It’s not worth it. They can lie to each other all they want. I’m just the messenger. It’s not like it’s me. It’s not like it’s my fault. I’m a victim. I love being a victim. It’s so convenient. I take the blame for everything that happens in my whole life, to me and my family and everyone, but at least I never have to blame myself—because I’m just a victim, right? That’s what really matters. I’m making off like a bandit, if you think about it.

“Ugh. I can’t believe it. Well, who’s going to watch your father?” she says, her voice steadily rising.

“Um, you, right?” I say, as small as I can, like maybe she won’t hear me. I shouldn’t be scared to say it. It was her own schedule. She stays here with him today so I can go to practice. We worked it all out a week ago.

Not that that was ever going to matter.

“I am? Nuh-uh. No way. I asked your brother to do it so I could go out tonight, and now I hear that he’s going to church? I thought he only went to church on Sundays. I guess it’ll just have to be you.”

I sit there on the beat-up old chair at our beat-up old kitchen table in this drafty, decaying house, staring at the diamonds on her ring.  Eight of them, pristine and cold and pure and out of reach. I only sit there for a second. It just slips out. I feel like apologizing before it even hits my lips.

“But I have skate practice tonight and…”

“But what? But nothing. Be there for your father. That’s final.”

I’m expecting the voice, the one she whips out to cut me with every time I do something wrong, but it still feels like ice on my skin. My throat closes up. My hands shake. Apologies spill out of my mouth like vomit.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’ll—”

“He’s dying. He’s dying, ——

She says my name. I hate it when people say my name. It’s like a slur, one of the vile ones, one of the ones you won’t even whisper to yourself, only it’s aimed at me. Me and no one else. There’s only one person in the world worthy of being called something so humiliating and so acrid and so crass and it’s me.

—don’t you love your own father? You ungrateful piece of shit, do what I tell you to. You’re staying home. And that’s that. And tell that brother of yours to ask next time before he makes plans on the weekend.”

That’s what the schedule’s for, Mom.

I don’t say that part. I can’t, because my voice isn’t working. I wish I could. Then I’d have to clean the septic tank or the oven or my brother’s room or something. I love chores. They give you so much to do that you forget to look at yourself, forget to think. That must be what drugs are like. I wish I could just do drugs about it all, but I’m broke. Besides, drugs put my dad in a bed full of tubes, so I kind of owe it to him not to.

There he is. In the side room, laid out like a piece of old furniture waiting to be donated to Goodwill or carted off to a junkyard. He sleeps a lot. It’s the chemo. Or, I don’t actually know if it’s cancer or not. Mom won’t tell me. If she told me, I might find out what he actually needs. Then we’d all be on the same page, and if we’re all on the same page, someone might get ahead of her.

That’s what life is. A big race, and if nobody knows what you’re doing or who you are or where you’re going, if you can make people too afraid to follow you or talk back to you or even look at you, then you’re winning. You’re in the lead. It’s all about how many people are afraid of you. And if not that many people are afraid of you? Hey, if it’s even one person, then at least you aren’t in last place, right?

I’m in last place. Or, no. Dad is. We’re both forgotten playthings swept under the rug of life and left to slowly fade away covered in dust and bugs, but I’m young and I’ve got good skin, and he’s rotting from the inside out and barely remembers his own name.

There. Look. You’re not dead last. That should make you happy. Why aren’t you happy, you ungrateful piece of shit?

I switch out the IV bag, mechanically. Slowly. You have to savour it. It’s a chore, a chance not to think. But the hard part comes right afterwards. The part you do have to think about. I always stutter at first, always hesitate looking down at his face. It’s not a wrinkled face, not an old worn-out face, not a fat face or a thin face or a face with some horrible chunk taken out of it. No scars, no holes. A few grey hairs, maybe, but he’s not that much older than me. What, twenty years? That’s nothing.

He’s just a person. When he stopped talking most of the time, it was like he stopped being Dad, and now he’s just a person. Not that much older than me. Sitting in my house in cold storage, waiting to wake up, only he never will. At least, that’s what they keep telling me—so I guess I’ll never know if it’s true.

We used to be able to talk about everything. Now, it’s just me. It’s me who can talk about everything to this mannequin that lies there, not even giving me the basic decency of judging me, not even listening—but if I ever stop talking to him then he’ll never get better. Talking helps him. So what if it doesn’t help me? So what if it hurts? Better to talk to him about it. Better to dredge it out of my stomach and wallow in it alone in this room with that look on his face staring back at me, so neutral, so calm. It’s better than letting it fester inside me. That’s how you get hurt. That’s how you decide to hurt yourself. To go through with it.

And he does wake up. Sometimes he does wake up, and I’m six years old again and we’re out in the peach orchard picking out the best ones, and we talk so freely that we forget everything we said by the time we’re back in the car heading home. Just him and me and the day slipping by so quickly, into the past, never to be seen again. True and forgotten and real.

I wish I remembered more of it. Being a kid. Now I’m something else. I hit high school and suddenly everything about how they always treated me makes sense. I get it now. I can tell when they’re lying. I can read between the lines. I know they’re angry and I know I’m an easy target and I know it’s just what they’ve always done. I know sometimes I deserve it. I know that if they ever stop they’ll have to face that it was always wrong, and so it’s easier to keep going. I understand everything, just like everyone always promised I would when I ‘grew up’.

They didn’t tell me there’d still be nothing I could do about it. They left that part out.

Nothing I can do except sit and talk to him.

I talk about everything. My voice drones on and on and on for hours, into the night. I eat dinner right there next to him, talk through mouthfuls of food the way he and Mom always told me not to, because who’s gonna stop me? Not you, Dad. You can’t even judge me anymore. You can’t push back on anything. Mom says everything I do is wrong and you don’t care what I do. Nobody’s telling me what’s right.

Nobody’s telling me what’s right, Dad. My friends can’t because I don’t talk to them about this, not after last time. With Caleb. Oh, Caleb’s not your best friend anymore? Yeah, he quit talking to me because I was being too ‘emo’. And like, Dad, you have to understand, kids these days don’t even say ‘emo’ anymore. That’s how alien it was to him. He had to grab slang from before we were born. That’s how much of a freak I am. Time-traveler. Don’t belong here.

At least you’ve got skate class, right, son? Nah, Dad, coach said she’d kick me out if I kept being a no-show. She’s kind of a hardass, too, so she probably meant it, which means I can’t go there anymore. It’s not like I was gonna be an Olympian or anything. Don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s not your fault you’re a vegetable and I have to stay here instead of living my life.

I blush hot, all by myself in the middle of the night, at how vicious that sounded. At how much it sounded like a wish that he’d just die, just then.

I talk about bullshit for a while, after that. Video games and crap. Until he wakes up.

It’s always the same. The look around. The few heaving breaths. The smile. That’s where the familiarity ends. It’s anyone’s guess what he’ll say after that. This time, I get lucky. He doesn’t recognize me. I don’t have to hear the fucking name again.

“What were you saying?”

“Nothin’.” I reply.

“Where’s Theo?”

My brother. Gee, I don’t know, where is Theo? Sure would be nice if he’d told me. Or anyone.

“Uh, he’s not here, Dad.”

“Oh, it’s… it’s you.” he says, and he looks up, and his eyes light up to see me. Not joy. More like confusion. Not wonder, not amazement, not some miracle that’s going to bring him back to life. He sees me, but he doesn’t. I’m not stupid enough to think he’s just going to come back one day.

We stare at each other, and I try not to cry, try to tell myself that it’s all false hope. It doesn’t work. My body’s telling me to be honest for once, to feel something. I shut it out with all the strength I have, but my eyes stay wet.

“Is that Hello Kitty?” he asks, gesturing with a weak finger at the pins in my hair.

I roll my eyes.

“You wouldn’t get it. It’s… it’s ironic.”

He smiles blankly. “How’s Theo? Are his grades getting any better?”

No. Of course they’re not. He doesn’t care about school, just his friends we never get to see and all the other hidden secret things he’s substituting for his real life. Or maybe Mom and I, we’re the bad dream, and all the stuff he doesn’t tell us is his life. Who cares? He’s dead to me.

Dad’s still waiting for an answer.

“Yeah, Dad. All Bs.” I say, as proudly as I can muster.

He smiles, and we talk about the Super Bowl for a bit, even though it happened two weeks ago, and I agree with him that yeah, the Vikings are finally gonna get it this year. Then he’s asleep again. Might never wake up.

Everything we said to each other was fake, and I remember every word of it. Every word. And yet, no matter how hard I try to remember those day-long conversations from back when we were a family, no matter how true they still ring in me all these years later, I never can. How cruel is that?

Theo wakes me up. Must’ve fallen asleep on the couch again.

“Hey. Hey, the car’s in the shop.” he says, urgently, like he’s late for something, like he’s trying to get out of the room as fast as possible.

“What? What car?” I say, bleary-eyed, reaching for the light and finding nothing but couch because this isn’t my room.

“The car. My car.”

“You mean Dad’s car.” I snark. It was, before everything. What’d you do, total it drunk driving? That’s about what it’d take to disrespect him any further, and I know you’re going for the high score.

He rolls his eyes and scoffs. For the first time, I can see that there’s someone with him. A girl, I think, standing just out of sight behind the door like she doesn’t want me to see her. I smirk and wave and she vanishes.

“Just tell Mom it’s in the shop.” Theo says.

“What happened?”

“Check engine light was on.” he says, sarcastically.

“Hey! No, what really happened? Mom’s gonna…”

He ignores me. I call after him, the same thing, but he’s gone. They’re both gone. That’s what lying is. It’s not believing someone exists. It’s not believing they matter, not believing they deserve anything. Lying is just the polite way to say all that. That you’re empty, that you don’t have a soul, that nothing you know or do or think will ever matter. It’s one level up from pretending someone doesn’t exist.

Like you just did, Theo. Guess I’m one more step behind you in that big race of yours.

Morning. Breakfast. An hour passes. Two. No sign of either of them. Maybe I’ll have the whole day to myself. Just me and Dad, chilling out at home, pretending either of us are still alive.

It doesn’t last. Obviously.

“Where’s Theo’s car!?” Mom asks, bursting through the door.

“It’s in the shop.”

“What do you mean, it’s in the shop? What happened to it?”

I swallow. I think about it for a second this time before doing it. If it’s my choice, it makes the hurt afterwards feel better. That way, there’s a reason. I did something to deserve it.

Here goes.

“I don’t know, Mom, because Theo didn’t tell me.”

She’s about to respond, but I cut her off before she can start.

“My guess is that he was out with his new girlfriend and got drunk, and hit a cyclist or something, and now he wants to rub the dents and the bloodstains out so you’ll keep on thinking he’s the perfect son and not a shitty, abusive loser who—”

That’s as far as I get. The rest is the same old story. My voice locks up as soon as the screaming starts, and I’m ungrateful, and I’m the loser, and I’m the abusive one, and Theo would never do something like that, and it must be my fault somehow. And, and, and. I get numb after a while, sitting there, trying to stay still and not fidget and not cry because that would make it worse. At a certain point, you’re just waiting for the punishment.

It finally hits. No phone for a month. She actually rips it right out of my pocket. Hey, I got off easy! What does she think I do all day, text my little friends? It’s for doomscrolling only these days, lady. Great pick. Don’t even know me well enough to hit me where it hurts. The one part of being a mom you’re naturally talented at, and you can’t even manage that.

Snark all you want, it won’t make you feel any better. I’m still numb in my room for an hour and a half, fighting the urge to go back down there and apologize some more, trying to get my head back in order, my emotions lined up in a way that’s sane. There’s so much bullshit in my life that even I’m bullshit now. Getting blamed for something you didn’t do and saying sorry for it, that’s bullshit. Staying here when there’s nothing for you, that’s bullshit. Pretending everything’s fine instead of calling the police, that’s bullshit.

What would they do? They don’t care about some kid from the suburbs whose family’s mean to him. They have to deal with people who can teleport and read minds. It’s not like I’m even getting abused bad enough for social services to do anything about it, either. What, a bruise here and there? I fell on the ice skating, Mom says so and Theo says so too. I’m just some basket-case kid looking for attention because Daddy’s not around. That’s what they’d say.

I have to live with that. It’ll only be a few more years before I can move out. That’s not that much living to do. It’s not that hard.

That’s what I tell myself. More bullshit. Nothing but bullshit.

I’m in the middle of getting cursed out in Russian for misplacing my turrets when the alarm goes off. Boring server anyway. I tell my teammates to fuck their respective mothers over voice chat, log off, and go downstairs to switch out Dad’s IV again.

And it’s a minefield. Go figure.

“…because it’s important, okay? It’s for volunteering.”

“What kind of volunteering do you need three hundred dollars for? This is about the car, isn’t it?” Mom snaps.

“What did that little shit tell you about the car!? There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just in the shop, the check engine light was on! What, did he tell you that just so you wouldn’t do me a favour when I needed it?”

Walk faster! I get out of arm’s reach of Theo and past the threshold just in time. He never touches me when I’m in Dad’s room.

“He told me you crashed it.” Mom says, crossing her arms. Theo stares daggers at me, and my heart pounds, but he doesn’t come any closer.

“Well, he’s a fucking liar. You know that. I need the money for volunteering, it’s for church, I have to go like, in thirty minutes.”

Ignore them. All you have to do is switch out the IV. You can just wait it out. Thirty minutes at most before he has to leave—for whatever he’s doing, it’s sure as hell not volunteering. You can wait it out. You’ve got a chore to do.

You’ve always been the best excuse I could ask for, Dad.

As if in response, he wheezes. Shit, is he waking up? Maybe that’ll shut them up. Maybe they’ll finally have some shame.

He wheezes again, then again. Like…

Like he’s choking. Like something’s wrong with him. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

I switch out the IV as fast as I ever have but nothing changes. What’s wrong with him!? Why didn’t anyone ever tell me what was wrong with him!? I try to lift him off his back but nothing changes. He’s like a sack of bricks. Dead weight. I check his pulse and it’s slow. His breathing’s irregular.

“…it’s not such a big fucking deal, I know we have tons of money!” Theo says.

“It’s not your money. You have your allowance, why can’t you be happy with that?”

“Call an ambulance.” I say over my shoulder.

“Because I need the money right now! It’s just one time! This is the first time I’ve ever asked for something like this.”

“No it’s not! Last month, you—”

“Last month, he asked you for money! I didn’t tell him to do it, why would I do that?” Theo says, pointing at me. Pointing, but not looking.

It’s like I whispered it into the wind. Like I don’t exist. I sit there, breath quickening, watching my father choke to death for a few more seconds before I work up the courage to turn around.

“Call an ambulance! Something’s wrong!”

“Call the fucking ambulance yourself!” Theo shouts.

“I can’t! Mom took my phone! Someone, please, just call an ambulance!”

“Oh, he’s fine. You just want attention.” Mom snaps.

“Theo, he’s gonna die!”

“Shut up!”

That’s when it comes for me. It splits me in half like a lightning bolt, and I break open, and it all spills out of me at once like a flood, sticky and bright and burning. Napalm. Napalm from my heart. It’s not anger. It’s the same, but cleaner. Anger sucks me down into shame, shuts my throat, turns my limbs to putty. Anger doesn’t belong to me. Having it means stealing. Having it means being an irredeemable little dirt stain just like they always tell me.

This isn’t anger.

It can’t be anger, because every shred of me down to the last atom is crying out the same thing.

I deserve this.

I scream, louder and longer and uglier than I ever have. I scream and I curse and I scrunch up my face and I spit out awful teenage half-sentences full of the worst vitriol I can think of, and I tell them what they are and what they’ve done to me and Dad. It’s a rant, an epic, a crashout to end all crashouts, and it keeps going and going and burning brighter and hotter and… and… and…

And by the time my breathing is under control, I’m staring at a cup of toothpicks, falling. I think I hit it in that first second of the outburst, but it’s still falling, somehow. Frozen in the air, a still life.

I wipe the snot off my face with a hand whose shaking is finally slowing, and I look at the toothpicks, and then I look up at Mom, and Theo.

Frozen. Dad, too. Frozen. I can feel the thing freezing them. No. It’s not like that. Nothing’s freezing them, but something’s keeping me warm. A shell. A coat. I can hear the scream and the hatred and the insults and the… the wrath, bouncing around inside this thing. This blanket around me. Keeping it warm.

The burning thing that I vomited out of me aligns like iron filings lining up to face a magnet. It’s part of me now. I clench my skinny fists and stretch the muscles in my back and it moves with them. All those voices crying out to me earlier—they’re silent, now, but I can make them sing again.

I look at Dad, to make sure he’s okay for now. Still frozen.

Now for you. Mom. Theo.

All the iron filings in me whisper, first low and then roaring, pounding in my ears.

You deserve this, they whisper.

I cast my warmth over the pair of them like a net, and time swims forward again and they gasp.

“Yikes, what was that sound? Ugh. Why can’t you just…”

Theo’s voice trails off. Trapped. I look him in the eye. Somehow, I know what’s going to happen.

“Why can’t you just let me do whatever I want to you? Seriously, what do you care? You’re gonna kill yourself soon, right, so why are you making my life difficult on top of that?” he says.

Mom gasps again.

“Theo, that’s an awful thing to say!”

“Nah. Nah, Mom, that’s the… most honest thing he’s said all week.” I say. My voice doesn’t sound real. It’s like it’s from a movie. Too smooth. Post-processed. I should be a wreck.

“I like this Theo better. Hey, you know what I’d love to know, big brother? What do you need that money for?” I continue.

“I have to pay the mechanics to fix the car. I was driving high and clipped a telephone pole, ripped one of the mirrors off. I could’ve died. Meena too. I… I was just too ashamed to tell you, Mom.”

He blurts it all out without even thinking, his lips moving involuntarily, and all the time, I watch his face. His eyes bulge, bug out with rage. His hands twitch like he wants to clasp them over his mouth. Terror ripples across his face. Before he’s even done speaking, his wide eyes are fixed on me. Like I’m a monster.

He didn’t want to say any of it. But I can see it with my third eye, Theo, the fire coating you. Truth, burning like floodlights.

You’re the monster. Let’s see how big and bad you are now.

“Who the fuck is Meena!?” Mom asks, and Theo fires back, involuntarily, a puppet.

“She’s my new girlfriend. We met last month, and she’s great. Doesn’t care that I’m not going to church anymore, hooks me up with weed, the sex is amazing. The minute I graduate, I’m going to move in with her and leave you here to take care of your preserved corpse and your loser kid.”

He enunciates calmly, every word conversational, even as he claws at his throat with his strong hands, trying to stop himself from speaking, smother his vocal chords into submission. He doubles over and glares at me, the same look as always.

Oh, you’re gonna hit me again? Sure. Go ahead. I don’t know what this thing setting the world on fire is, what part of me was strong enough to spew it out, but I know you can’t touch me. Never again.

“Oh, really? That’s how you feel about me? Well, that’s good, because I already had Mr. Muratovic cut you out of your father’s will. So that’s all wrapped up, then.” Mom says.

It sounds so smug, but mentioning the lawyer—that’s when the fear sets in for her. That’s when she realizes what’s happening. What I can do. What I’m doing to her. To both of them.

She never would have mentioned the lawyer. Not in a million years. Even if she did, she would pretend to be ashamed of it. Pretend that it was hard for her. She’d never gloat. Never gloat to her favourite son that he was on his own and it was her fault, that he had no one to rely on in the world anymore.

The truth hurts, doesn’t it?

“What?” Theo says. I can feel the pain in his voice from here. I shut my eyes, smirk, and knock over a few more dominoes.

“Is that what you were doing last night, Mom?” I ask, angel-sweet. You know. A good boy.

“No. Actually, I was out seeing your friend Nick, from the track team. We met just after you quit, like the disappointment you are.” she says.

“What!?” Theo says, his voice cracking. “He never told me—Mom, did you two…”

She nods. “Mm-hm.” Her face is contorted into a desperate mask of raw terror. She wants to wake up, wants it all to be a nightmare, wants to go back to a time before she ever confessed.

I didn’t get to wake up, Mom.

“You.” Theo spits at me. “You’re one of those freaks. Like you see on TV. A fucking cape. You’re triggering, aren’t you? That’s what this is, you’re triggering, you’re making us say things we—”

“Go on.” I say. He can’t see it—I barely can—but the fire holds him like a lover, swallows his skin, turns him radiant like molten glass. Crushes him, closer and closer.

“Making us tell the truth.” he chokes out.

“Yeah.” I say, flatly.

He lunges at me, fists outstretched, drool dripping down his face from sheer anger. Suddenly, the warmth between me and the world, the truth-coat keeping me safe and cozy inside it, flares with life. Instinctively, I draw back into it, leaving him frozen mid-tackle, trying to reach me, beat me to a pulp.

I step a little to the left, trace his path with my eyes, and envision the fire burning away the space between him and the wall.

When time comes back, there’s a sickening crack and thud as his face crushes through the drywall and smashes into the wood behind it. He rolls on the ground, groaning, clutching his nose. Blood seeps from between his fingers.

“Shit! Alright, go on, torture us! Yeah, just like all those other horror stories, right!? What are you gonna do, skin me alive, for what, for being a shitty brother!? You’re worse than me. Fuck, you’re worse than Mom. Come on, what are you waiting for, just use your powers to—”

I cut him off.

“Theo,” I say, crouching down to be at eye level with his beat-up face, ignoring Mom’s sobs in the background, “I don’t care.”

I stand up, and gather the shell into me, wrap it around my shoulders like a blanket. He lies there, contorted, frozen mid-tantrum, as I walk over to Dad and throw it around him, too.

He’s still wheezing. Still choking. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but these shots next to the bed have to be good for something, right? Or they wouldn’t be here. An ambulance isn’t going to make it in time, and even if it did they’d never be able to get him out of here with everyone else in the house freaking out.

It’s cold and awful and bleak. He’s never felt closer to dying than now. It’s a scary thought. A horrifying one. But what am I going to do—delay? This is his last chance, even if I’m not a doctor, even if I don’t even know what this stuff does. And that’s the truth.

Besides, we have fire. We have time.

I jam the syringe into his neck and push down on it. He spasms and his eyes go wide.

Heavy breathing, me at his bedside. My mother frozen mid-scream staring at us.

He wakes up, fully. I wipe tears out of my eyes and pray, to God or whoever, I don’t care, that he recognizes me.

“Champ?”

He does.

I smile. Air rushes out of my mouth in what would be a laugh if I weren’t crying.

“Dude, you haven’t called me champ since I quit playing hockey.”

“You’re still my champ. Hey, um… what’s going on?” he asks.

We both look around at the frozen chaos around us. For a second, it almost feels like he can see the coat, see the halo of swirling truth around me.

“I got superpowers. I figured I’d work up the courage to kill myself before it ever happened, cause, I mean, I’m not that lucky. One in fifty thousand, right? But… I guess I’m that lucky.” I say.

I try to smile, but I can’t hide it. I meant it. I’ve been stealing his pills, waiting for the right night. It could’ve been today. He can hear it in my voice, that I meant it.

He doesn’t say anything. He just pulls me into a hug.

Eternity passes by, in our shell, in each other’s arms. The world waits.

We part. He scratches his scruffy beard and makes a face.

“I’ve been out for a long time, huh? What’d you give me?”

“This.” I say, shoving the syringe towards him.

He grimaces, sighs. He used to be a nurse. That’s the saddest part. He could’ve helped us help him, and no one let him.

“Son, this isn’t good for me.”

The feeling that comes next is new. It’s not that I try to hold back tears and fail—it’s that I can’t. I start crying without even having a chance to stop it. It happens. Like snowfall. Like sunset. Out of my control.

“Are you going to die?” I choke out.

“Yeah. But… I was gonna die anyway. ‘S terminal, I just… I just never told you kids because you had so much to deal with yourselves, and I didn’t expect it to get bad so fast. They oughta lock that doctor up.”

I try to get my breath under control.

“Are you mad at me?” I ask, eyes shut, expecting more hate, expecting him to be even more furious than I was. His whole life, ripped away, for what? For this, for his family to tear each other apart like animals all around him? He has to be furious. He has to be. And it’s my fault for not calling someone sooner, for retreating into myself, for never standing up for him, for—

“Of course I’m fuckin’ angry, champ, but… not at you. Never at you.”

Any other day, any other person, any other place and time in my whole life and I would never believe him. Not now. Now, I’m a wound, and truth is bleeding out of me, golden and glimmering, and my whole world is sticky and burning with it, warmed through by it.

No one will ever lie to me again.

He doesn’t hate me. He doesn’t even blame me. I didn’t do anything wrong.

He rises from his bed—maybe something he could always do, no one ever told me. He puts on some clean clothes and shaves, and all the while, I’m mute. I don’t want to tell him what happened with the others, not if he doesn’t want to hear it, and it looks like he doesn’t want to hear it. But when we walk out the door, I can’t help but—

“The others—what happened was—”

“Don’t you start.” he says. “I’ve seen triggers before at the hospital. There’s barely a mark on you, and if you’re not scared for your life, if there’s no violence bearin’ down on you, what it takes for a person to trigger… to turn like you, without that… I don’t want to know. I don’t want to hear what happened, cause I know it’ll hurt. I just want to spend one more day with you.”

I beam, and cling to his arm, and shut up.

It’s a cold day out, but in the coat, we’re both warm. We gawk at workers cutting down tree branches, leaves and wood chips hanging in the air. I touch one, and it falls to the ground. We pass by dozens of cars as we walk down the middle of the highway. Dad makes fun of the guy eating a sandwich with one hand and driving with the other.

“I can’t believe you’re telling jokes.” I say. It’s true, like everything is now, even though I’m laughing too.

“The hell else am I gonna do?” he asks, and I shrug, and I tell him some jokes. He doesn’t laugh at the Russian ones, so I feel like I have to tell him where I got them. That lasts an hour, me talking about how this dumb new video game about dwarves in space is putting me in touch with all these basement-dwelling Soviet weirdos.

We’re right at the edge of the peach orchard when he finally decides how he feels about my online buddies.

“Make some real friends.” he says, with fatherly disappointment, and I promise him I will, and that’s the end of it.

It’s magical, knowing that everything I say is true, never doubting myself, never tasting the acrid shame that coated my liar’s tongue when I pretended to be a human being instead of… whatever I was before. It fills me up with light. The August sun above us should be jealous.

I’m whole again. I’m at the orchard, with my father, and time is standing still.

It stands still for an hour more. Okay, a day, maybe, I guess. A century. I couldn’t tell you. My life spills out of my mouth piece by piece, the floodgates gone, every insecurity and triumph and weakness and joy laid bare, and he listens. Just listens, like he was always so good at. But this time, he talks. This time, he asks. This time, someone is there to tell me what’s right.

He asks some things I didn’t think he would.

“So, Hello Kitty?”

I laugh.

“It’s not that deep. I just… I thought of the most childish thing I could slap onto myself and fuckin’ did it. It’s not even my idea, she’s a whole fuckin’ subculture, man. You know. A… a talisman, I guess.”

“That’s a big word.” he says, jokingly.

“I pay attention in history class. I just pretend to be a burnout. Anyway, she’s a… she’s a talisman. Like… I’m not going to be ashamed of who I am, no matter what you think, and here’s the proof. I’m a… teenage boy wearing a Hello Kitty hairpin, so… fuck you. Like I said, it’s not that deep.”

“I’m proud of you.” he says.

I look up at him from among the roots of the peach tree and smirk.

“I know. That’s what kept me going. Cause… cause it’d make you sad if I left. A-and you ever woke up, and I wasn’t there.”

The smirk breaks and my lip trembles. When I’m done crying, he asks again.

“What’s that one? ‘Nother talisman?”

I glance down.

“Oh, it’s just a pride pin. I’m, uh, bisexual.”

“Means you like boys, too.”

“Yeah.”

Wow, this conversation is way easier than I was expecting it was gonna be. I figured I’d be having it with Mom. She wouldn’t hate me for it or anything—she’d just make a big deal out of it, like everything else she ever found out about me. I guess wearing the pin was just a way to find some more punishment. Like everything else.

Now, though? It’s true. That’s all I need.

“Me too.” Dad says. I almost choke.

“What?”

“Yeah, knew since middle school. Never told your mother, she’s the jealous type. Never thought I’d ever tell you, either. It’s pretty amazing, this thing you’ve learned how to do.”

We stare at the death-still frozen Sun for a moment. The cold is creeping in through my truth-coat, the fires burning down.

“So… this is all of it? Everything? Make people tell the truth, give yourself some time to think about it?” he says.

He’s wrapping his arms around his shoulders now. He’s cold, too. The eternity’s ending. The fuel’s running low. I wipe moisture from my eyes as I answer.

“I’m sure I’ll think of something else to do. But… yeah, right now, that’s all I want.”

He nods.

“You got anything else you want to tell me?”

I wrack my body and scour my skull for something, anything, another truth to let spill, more fuel for the fire. Something I want him to know. Something make the dream last. I ask the iron filings who screamed so loud—my soul, my powers, whatever they are, whatever they were—to find something new to say with their magical voice, but they’re silent.

Because it was me speaking when they spoke. And there’s nothing else to say.

There’s nothing. It’s over. I’ve laid myself bare.

“No.” I say. It’s the hardest no of my life.

He hugs me one last time, and lays down in the grass in the orchard, and doesn’t get up.

I reach for my phone, and it’s gone. Right. Confiscated. Shit.

Hitchhike home. This bitter-looking, cigarette-smelling old man in the driver’s seat, he catches me sobbing—hard to hide when you can’t lie—and…

And he reaches over, and puts his hand on my shoulder, and says “Miss, it’s gonna turn out alright. You’ll be okay.”

“I’m a boy.” I say back. “I just dress like this.”

He shrugs.

“Well, even so, it’s gonna be alright.”

Shake the mud off my shoes. Open the door. Step inside.

Sobbing from the kitchen. Sounds like Theo.

There he is, fresh burns and scratches on his face, nose still broken. There’s Mom, blood pooling underneath her head as she lies there on the tile, unconscious. Or worse.

I walk over, reach into her pocket, and pull out my phone.

“Please. Please, you gotta help me. They’re gonna throw me in jail.” Theo says.

“Oh, really? What’d you do to deserve that?” I ask, eyebrows raised.

“Take something seriously for once—”

The muscles in his neck strain. Surprise and guilt spread across his face. He looks up at me, confused.

“Why can’t I say your name? What the fuck kind of freak are you? What’d you do to us? What’d you do to me!?”

“You know that’s not my name, big bro. Not after what you did to it. That’s it, you know. That’s what I can do now. You know, deep down, that I won’t answer to it. That it’s… not… me. You can’t say it, because it isn’t true.”

He sobs some more. The fire warms my wet skin through. My world’s embers spring back to a blaze as the truth between us roars life back into them.

“What did you do to Mom?” I ask.

“She was gonna call the police on me. Over the car. And Dad, cause I didn’t stop you from taking him. And… and… and I… I couldn’t… it was a mistake, it was a mistake, I didn’t mean to… but she threw the kettle at me and I just got so angry that I…”

I kneel down next to him and smile as I dial 911.

“Uh-huh. I get it. I know you’d never lie to me, big bro.” I say.

“What are we gonna tell them when they get here? What are we gonna tell the ambulance, and the cops, and—”

I lay a hand on his shoulder, and his desperate raving stops short. For a moment, a look of relief crosses his face.

It fades as I shrug and smile back at him, and shifts to horror at my reply.

“The truth.”