Knockknock-knock-knockknock.

  Talon. Our knock. The window.

  I rolled over. I hadn't seen him in months. Unlikely, I thought, burrowing into my pillow. A dream.

  The knock came again: two-one-two.

  I sat up, squinting, trying to see in the dark. Normally, it wouldn't be unusual to see Talon crouching behind my bedroom window in the middle of the night, his dark brown hair pstered to his face from the dripping rain. We'd done this since we were about seven. A curved willow grew beneath my room, its thick gnarled branches twisting up to rest nearly at my windowsill. On the other hand, Talon's room was on ground floor, so although it was technically easier to gain access to his window, it was far less exciting.

  I reached over to flick on my mp. My arm clock told me it was one twenty-two in the morning.

  Talon hadn't knocked on my window like this for some time. Yet he was here, rapping gently with his knuckles, motioning for me to let him in.

  I climbed out of bed, adjusting the tangled colr of my Six Mile River Secondary t-shirt. Still bleary-eyed, I pulled up the window and held a finger to my lips to indicate quiet.

  Talon threw one leg over the sill and then the next, his big brown eyes scanning my face earnestly. He shook his head like a dog, trying to get the water out of his shaggy hair. He smelled like beer. I could tell now that he was very drunk.

  He closed the window behind him and wobbled.

  "Whoops," he said, "I'm almost drunk."

  I reached over to steady him. "Yeah," I said, ughing a little. "Nearly there, I think."

  "Sorry," he said, looking down at his sneakers, his deep voice in a whisper. "My shoes are all muddy."

  "Don't worry about your shoes," I said. "It's so good to see you. What's going on? Are you okay?"

  When he looked up at me from beneath his hair, my stomach flipped with excitement. We hadn't meaningfully talked for nearly half of our senior year. It was May. The st time Talon and I spoke more than a few perfunctory sentences to one another was back in November. His attendance at school was dodgy and sparse. The bck t-shirt he wrote—Titus Andronicus, one of his favorite bands—clung damply to his too-thin frame.

  He sidestepped my question. "It's cold out there."

  "You're soaked," I said. "It's pouring. You want some pajamas? You can crash here. Are you wasted? Were you out?"

  I heard my own rambling but couldn't stop myself.

  Instead of answering my questions directly, Talon leaned forward and pulled me into a hug. I held him tightly. He buried his face into the crook of my neck. He was shaking, but I couldn't tell if that was from the cold or something else.

  "Hey," I said gently into his soft hair.

  "Hey, Ry."

  "What's the matter? Why haven't I seen you in months?"

  He started to say something, but his voice caught. I brought him closer to me, which was not an easy task considering I was only a few inches taller than him. Through his shirt, I felt how skinny he was; he'd always been lithe but now he seemed fragile. Up close, he smelled so strong that it stung my nose. He was crying softly now, shoulders shuddering. His presence was bewildering—him coming here after us not talking for so long and showing up drunk—but welcome. Comforting my best friend came naturally.

  When he didn't answer, I guided him to the edge of my bed. "Let's sit," I said.

  Talon rested his forearms on his knees and held his fingertips to his temples. The mp cast a muddy yellow glow over the right side of his face. "I can't do it anymore," he said.

  "Can't do what?"

  Talon let out a noise somewhere between a groan and a whimper. He gave a slight shake of his head.

  "Are you cold?" I whispered. I grabbed the throw bnket tossed haphazardly over my desk chair and pulled it over his shoulders.

  "I don't know how to say it," he said.

  "Say what?"

  Rain thundered down outside; I hoped it would drown out our voices and that we wouldn't wake my parents.

  "You'll think I'm gross," he said.

  I almost ughed. When it came to Talon, I was powerless. "I won't," I said firmly.

  "I don't want him to come in my room anymore," he said. "I don't want to live there anymore. I don't even want to be alive."

  Talon extended his left forearm and used his right fingers to trace faint vertical marks along his wrists. Vestiges of scars; I knew them well (or thought I did) but they took on a more harrowing meaning now.

  I felt suddenly sharply awake. "What happened?"

  He looked at me, unfocused. His eyes looked bigger than they usually did; in fact, they looked haunted, the skin beneath them blue like bruises. "I just want it to stop."

  A chill ran down the back of my neck. A part of me knew where this was going.

  The Michaels' lives were intertwined with ours. In my child's memory, Talon's father, Stephen, was a shadowy giant. He was a muscur, broad-shouldered man, with dark hair and stubble. He had lines across his forehead, mouth, and eyes, his skin dotted with sun damage from working long days in the hot sun. Stephen was a contractor, a handyman. He was a drywaller, a furniture mover, a ndscaper—whatever the job called for. Even as a kid, I understood Stephen as fundamentally unknowable. He was not predictable to me the way other parents were, although I never voiced this discomfort to my own parents. In some ways, he was like my own father: nurturing and knowledgeable, albeit less strict or rigid than Mom and Dad. His ability to expin school concepts trumped my father's; he possessed an innate knack for teaching. In those moments, he was patient and open. Stephen sat with us at the Michaels' kitchen table while we worked through fractions, geometry, and ter, algebra. When we were small, he taught us how to ride without training wheels. His rge, assured hands sat on my shoulders, guiding me. Many early mornings Stephen walked us to school or let us ride, increasingly squashed together as we grew, in the cab of his truck. Sometimes he pretended to swerve in the road—Talon and I would hang on to each other, nervous but ughing. Good with his hands, Stephen fixed minor issues in our home my entire life: showing my dad how to readjust with the hinge on our front door, repcing the kitchen faucet when our O-ring busted, even helping redo the roof at church.

  But there were strange incidents that left me uneasy. Stephen drank too much, a habit I recognized as young as nine or ten. Some days his drinking was manageable; other days he was moody, and he reeked. He snapped at us easily and in a very specific way, mostly when pns abruptly shifted. On more than one occasion, we heard Stephen's muffled sobs on the other side of the main floor bathroom. And there was always—what? Some shift in the air when it was only me, Talon, and Stephen, as though they occupied some space I could never quite breach.

  "Is it your dad?" I said.

  Talon was quiet for a long time. He sniffled and wiped his face into the shoulder of his t-shirt.

  "Tal?" I said.

  He leaned against me and nodded.

  "What's he doing?" I said. "You can tell me anything."

  "I'm drunk, Ry," he said. "Maybe I should go."

  He started to get up, but I lightly grabbed his forearm and pulled him back down. "No, stay. Please."

  Talon adjusted the bnket and brought his thumbnail up to his mouth and began to gnaw on it. Even in the dim lighting I could see the sore, ripped flesh around his nails. "You won't tell anyone, right?" he said.

  The moment felt momentous. I wanted to make sure I didn't fuck it up or scare him off.

  "I won't tell anyone," I said.

  "Promise? You have to promise me."

  "I promise."

  Talon studied my face. Against his will, his left eye half-shut—a sign that I knew meant he was extremely drunk. "You swear on your life?"

  I held out my pinky and he wrapped his around mine.

  "I won't tell a soul," I said. "You have my word."

  His hands dropped to his thighs. "I don't want him to do it anymore."

  "Do what?"

  "I'm going to say it fast," he said. "I don't want to say it again."

  I braced. "Okay."

  "He hits me sometimes," he said.

  My heartrate crept up. Fshes of Stephen entered my mind: the way he'd torn down Talon and Dean's bunkbed systematically but irately when Talon wet the bed again; him screaming at an young police officer when we got a speeding ticket coming home in grade six; Stephen waking us up in the middle of a sleepover at thirteen, the low and angry way he spoke to Talon, his hands gripping Talon's wrist.

  Talon leaned close to me, his beer breath strong. "Do you have more alcohol?"

  I shook my head. "No, I—oh, wait." There was a bottle of gin stashed beneath my boxers. Marty secured it for us five or six months ago and I hadn't touched it since, disliking the strong taste, even masked by chasers.

  I grabbed what was left of the mickey and pced it in Talon's outstretched hand. Obviously, I didn't want him to get drunker—he seemed on the verge of passing out—but I also didn't want him to lose his nerve and stop talking to me.

  He removed the cap and took a gulp. When he was going back for a second drink, I grabbed the bottle again.

  "That's it for now," I said, and then added, "Can you tell me the rest now?"

  "You'll look at me differently," he said.

  "No way." (I hoped I wasn't lying.) "Impossible." I'd tried to sound lighthearted and pyful, but I couldn't slow down my heart.

  With his fingertips, Talon doodled on his own knee, biting hard at his lip.

  "Tal?" I said.

  "I'm working up to it," he said, closing his eyes briefly. When he spoke again, his words came out rushed: "Okay, it's just—he hits me, like I said. But also, he touches me."

  My chest felt cold and hollow.

  "And—and—um," Talon said. "Most of the time, he does other things, too. Worse things. I don't want to say it. Do you know what I mean?"

  "I think so, yes," I said quickly, not wanting to make room for any doubt or uncertainty on his end. If he didn't want to expin, I wasn't going to push it. I felt stiff and alert but completely out of my element.

  Stay calm, I thought. I wasn't like Casey, though, who always knew the right things to ask, how to steer a conversation. I was good with theory, with analysis, with scientific rigour; coming up with the right thing to say on the spot was a weakness of mine. Get more information, I told myself. Come up with a pn.

  "Is it still happening?" I said.

  Talon pulled the bnket up around his neck. "Yes."

  "How recently?"

  Beside me, he stiffened.

  This week? I thought. And then, horrified, another consideration: Tonight?

  "Don't say anything!" he said, his voice rising.

  "Shh," I said, gncing at the door.

  "You promised," he said, and he was crying again now. "Not your parents or Rachel. Not the guys. Especially not Marty. Please, I'll die if you talk about this."

  "Okay," I said, trying to sound noncommittal. "I'll—"

  "You swore on your life," he said desperately. His worried expression made him look younger than seventeen.

  "I won't tell," I said again.

  "Once we graduate, I'll leave, and it won't happen anymore," he said.

  "Let's get under the covers, you're shaking," I said.

  I helped him into my bed and climbed in beside him. I shoved the gin bottle into my nightstand, rattling an old photo us guys in my backyard: me, Talon, Marty, Casey, and Rob, arms entangled. Before it could tumble and make a sound upon impact, I steadied the frame.

  I tugged up my duvet and spread the throw bnket over top of both of us. None of this felt real. My earliest memories involved my greatest passion: wanting to be a doctor. Each time a parent asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I was steadfast in my answer. All those school assignments where you're asked to fill in a future profession, I wrote: medical school, doctor, helping other people! But now I sat with Talon in the semi-darkness of my room, thigh to thigh and shoulder to shoulder, and felt far away from that theoretical vision of myself.

  "When did it start?" I said.

  Talon ran a hand through his hair and pulled his knees up to his chest. "Um. Can I have more of that gin?"

  "No, I don't think so," I said, trying to sound kind but firm, "you're pretty drunk already."

  Part of me hoped he'd snap out of this, that he'd turn on my bedroom light and ugh in that delightful way he had (head tossed back, eyes squeezed shut) that made my entire nervous system jump alive and tell me this was all a joke. But what would the joke be? Still, that would almost make more sense to me than what he was describing.

  Talon sighed. "It started when I was five," he said. "Almost six, I guess. After Mom died."

  I remembered Mia with her little tufts of brown hair, colorful bandanas around her head, her sweet smile lined with premature wrinkles from chemotherapy.

  I nodded and hummed as reassuringly as I could.

  "Um, he'd make me say this—this mantra. Over and over."

  "A mantra?"

  "In front of my mirror," Talon said, his eyebrows furrowed. He was annoyed, as though I should understand what he meant.

  Mom and Dad forced me to attend both Dad's church and youth group, to pray and study my Bible, to be dutiful and get good grades. But those were only normal parental demands; they'd never made me say a mantra. Besides, a mantra about what? For what reason?

  "Never mind," Talon said. "When Mom died, that's when it started. I thought he was comforting me. Or maybe he was, I don't know. It wasn't so scary at first, I guess. He was gentle. I missed Mom. We talked about her and then he held me and then it changed."

  I was trying to think of something to say so he wouldn't cm up, so he wouldn't try to go home again.

  "This is stupid," Talon said. All of his words came out smooshed together. "I shouldn't tell you this. It's dumb."

  "This isn't dumb," I said. "I'm gd you're telling me."

  "There were rules," Talon said, "things I couldn't say, things I couldn't tell. Stuff I did to him and stuff he did to me." He wiped at his damp cheeks with the back of his hands.

  "Right," I said, "things you didn't—things you didn't want to do. Things he made you do?"

  "He's not a bad dad," Talon said sharply. "He didn't make me."

  I'd overstepped. Back to neutrality. "Okay," I said. "Sorry."

  "He didn't mean for it to hurt," he said. "I thought that me and him… we did things together, and I thought I understood, but then it changed, and it changed again."

  My heart felt physically sore. Never in a million years did I think Talon would tell me something like this. I wasn't following his vague statements but also didn't want him to stop talking, so I held back my follow-up questions.

  "I think Dad's scared," Talon said. "He doesn't want me to leave."

  "Leave?"

  "Six Mile River." Talon paused. "You know I don't like it, right?"

  "Six Mile?"

  "No, my… what I do with my dad."

  "Yeah," I said. "Of course. I know you don't." Maybe echoing back his words was the best way to move through this situation.

  With his thumb, he rubbed at his eyes. "Ry?"

  "What is it?"

  "I'm tired."

  "Sleep if you can," I said. "We can talk more in the morning."

  Again, I adjusted his pillow and the duvet. He curled towards me, his hand resting under his cheek. I rubbed his damp shoulder and what I could reach of his back until his breathing became regur. I lifted my hand from his body. Reeling, I y wide awake in the dark. My entire body tingled with alertness. This was too much to take in. This was too much. Okay, no: think of this like an exam, I told myself, back up, get yourself sorted, comb through the information, draw a conclusion.

  Premise one: Talon emerged in my room, drunk and crying, overwhelmed and wanting to confide in me. Premise two: Talon's father was abusing him. Premise three: Talon needed the abuse to end and wanted to die if it didn't. This tter premise burned acidic in my gut. Talon had handed this secret to me—this enormous, impossible secret—and asked me to hold it. I couldn't fumble it.

  This revetion was almost impossible to accept. And yet… it also made a certain crude sense. In a rush, my mind began connecting patterns. Hadn't Talon shown up at my house and to school with purple-blue bruises, swollen lips, semi-shut eyes? All with pusible accompanying stories to expin them away, all infrequent enough over the years so as not to be completing arming. A resistant voice in my mind said: sure, Stephen could be a bit of a snap show and even kind of an asshole, but was he capable of this? He was a father. Fathers didn't hurt their children.

  Maybe Talon's lying, I thought.

  Gently, so as not to wake him, I eased out of bed. My t-shirt clung to my back, my skin cmmy from adrenaline. From my window, I peered right to watch Talon's house. In the darkness, beneath the downpour of rain, it looked like any other home: benign, neutral, safe.

  I knew Talon—knew him more than I knew anyone. More than Marty, Casey, or Rob. Talon didn't lie. That wasn't who he was.

  It's the truth, I told myself. Everything he told you.

  I gnced back at my bed where he was sleeping, lips lightly parted, brow furrowed even in slumber, his damp hair across his forehead. Now what? Was it my duty to call the police, inform the authorities? What he'd just told me was—it was a crime, right? But what exactly had he told me? He hadn't said words I heard on TV and in ads. He didn't say molestation. He didn't say sexual assault. He didn't say—

  Don't scare him off, I thought, let him sleep. The rain came down hard and fast.

  I y next to Talon for a long time—nearly two hours—trying desperately to figure things out, to parse through the moral and ethical questions this raised, and eventually fell into a restless asleep sometime close to four.

  I woke five minutes before my arm. From downstairs, I smelled Mom's blueberry waffles. I yawned and rolled over. My head pounded; I felt like I'd skipped sleep for a week. Only when my hand collided with damp sheets instead of another body did I remember that Talon should have been there.

  I snapped up in bed. Beneath my window, three muddy sneaker prints colored the cream carpet.

  "Fuck," I said to myself.

  I grabbed my cell off the nightstand, intending to call Talon, but I already had a text.

  Talon: thanks a lot, Ry! let's hang soon. i'll text you

  The text read strangely detached considering the weight of what he told me st night. The words came back in a heavy rush: A mantra. Hitting. Touching. Worse, unnamed things.

  "Promise? You have to promise me."

  "Ryan!" Mom shouted from downstairs. "Breakfast's ready! Hurry up."

  "Coming!" I called.

  I pulled on a sweater and jeans and spshed water on my face.

  "It started when I was five. Almost six, I guess. After Mom died."

  I opened my phone again and searched for Talon's name.

  Me: Walk to school with me?

  Downstairs, Mom dished up waffles. Dad sat next to Rachel at our kitchen table, a quaint round table covered in an old-fashioned runner that Grandma Ul knit when I was small. The table was pushed against the wall, in front of our bay window with the daisy curtains. Pulled back, the window offered a perfect view of Talon's house. Instinctively, my eyes darted outside—but his house looked how it usually did, unchanged.

  "Morning, dork," Rachel said. She swallowed the st gulps of what I knew was coffee with two sugars.

  My family sat around our table, oblivious to st night's earth-shattering news. Unmoored, I stood for a moment in the archway between the hall and the kitchen. Talon and I loved the Lord of the Rings and, inexplicably, I thought of that story now, of what it meant to return somewhere you once knew intimately. I saw my family anew, almost, as though assessing them would bring me back into their world. Dad wore a button-up and a worn cardigan, dark blond hair styled neatly, as usual, combed and parted. Mom had passed along Danish genes, fair and blond, to me and Rachel, as well as her blue-grey eyes. The kitchen (and the adjacent hallway) was crowded with family portraits from nearly every year since I'd been born. Also, an arming amount of framed scripture: pretty backgrounds hung in mahogany-stained frames with looping quotes about Godliness and prayer. Everything was the same. They were unchanged, but I was not.

  I thought, You need to ask them for help.

  Rachel frowned at me. "Are you alive?"

  Dad peered at me over his readers, newspaper in hand. "How was your sleep, Ryan? You look tired."

  "I know something that might cheer you up, honey," Mom said. Her hair was pulled back into a tidy bun.

  Rachel grinned at Mom.

  "What is it?" I said, distracted. Here I was, heart pounding maniacally, and they all looked the same. Normal. Intact. You can tell them. They'll know what to do. I sat down.

  "Oh, nothing major," Rachel said. "Just a little old letter."

  Mom pulled a thick mani envelope from the kitchen counter. She tucked it under my pte.

  "Wait," I said. "Is this—?"

  "Open it, open it," Rachel said, reaching up to tighten the scrunchie around her long ponytail. "Come on, I'm dying!"

  "The mail came ten minutes ago," Mom said.

  "Longest ten minutes of my entire life," Rachel said.

  Talon fshed before my eyes: sitting on the edge of my bed, shoulders slumped, looking skinny and exhausted but beautiful. And now this. The whipsh was almost too much. Mom slid a steaming waffle onto my pte and passed me maple syrup, blueberry compote, homemade coconut whip. The dish looked impeccable; it smelled sweet and floral. But my stomach was tight.

  Dad watched my face. He removed his reading gsses and gestured at me to open the envelope.

  "Well?" he said. "'No procrastination. No backward looks. You can't put God's kingdom off till tomorrow.'"

  "Gospel of Luke," I muttered.

  "That's right," Dad said, smiling. "9:62."

  From November through January, I applied to eight universities. The guys and I fit in applications whenever we could. We took our ptops to school and to Beans and to each others' houses, proofreading each others' work. Marty and I were competitive as always but did our best to be supportive. UC Berkley existed in my mind as a lodestar, the only path I wanted. I'd been accepted to four schools so far and my parents were thrilled—but those were my safe picks. I thought I knew where today's letter was from.

  "Is it the one?" Rachel said, standing up to look over the table, her ponytail almost nding in my food.

  "Rachel," Dad said. "Manners."

  She sat back down. "Well, is it?"

  I turned the envelope over and saw the circur golden logo first: The University of California, Berkeley, 1868. In the left hand, the address, San Francisco Bay Area. The world narrowed to a fine point. I submitted this application on December thirteenth at 11:37 pm after reviewing it several times. I ensured my reference information was accurate; double-checked my transcript was uploaded correctly; read and reread my essay on responsibility. That Friday night had seemed like one of the biggest evenings of my life. Now I struggled to understand how hitting submit felt so crucial.

  Dad reached into the old Tupperware container at the edge of our table, rifling through the small stack of stamps, a green pen, pencils, and the handful of estic bands; he handed me the letter opener.

  "I'm nervous," I said. I added the rest before Dad could cut in "But I guess the worst they can say is no, right?"

  Dad nodded. "And son, you know whatever it is—whatever the answer—it's God's will. We've prayed for months now. If it's a no this time, it might be a yes soon." He leaned across the table, tilting its axis slightly, and ruffled my hair. He hadn't done that in years.

  Rachel shot me a double thumbs-up. Mom stood anxiously behind her chair, gripping the wooden back. Regardless of if God had any say in it (I wasn't so sure tely about all of that), I figured I might as well rip off the Band-Aid. No point in stalling. I pulled out the letter and unfolded it gently. Only months ago, I'd wanted this more than I wanted just about anything in my life. Holding my breath, I willed myself to look down.

  Dear Ryan N. Cloud,Congratutions! We are pleased—

  I read that word again and again—Congratutions!—and it hammered against my chest each time. Unadulterated joy rippled through me.

  "Holy shit," I said. "I mean—sorry—wow."

  I grinned. I didn't need to read the rest of the words on the page; relief flooded me.

  "Did you get in?" said Rachel.

  "Yes!" I said, eyes shooting down the page now, hunting for schorship information, confirmation of my success.

  Dad reached over and gripped my shoulder, eyes shining. "Remarkable," he said. "Just remarkable."

  Mom gripped her apron, lip trembling. I knew what was coming.

  "Mom, don't," I said. "It's—"

  She burst into tears. "Oh, honey." She dabbed at her eyelids with her fingertips. "It's just that I always imagine you the way you looked when we brought you home, all plump and tiny. Even then, you were so solid, so sturdy."

  "As if he already knew what he wanted," Dad said. He cleared his throat.

  Mom held a hand to her mouth. "And now you're—now you're going to university and—" She shook her head and dipped her head back, trying to contain her tears. "And now you're on your way to San Francisco. You make us so proud."

  "Well, he should decide after he's received each offer," Dad said. "Be strategic, son. You use one school's offer against the other's funding package. You understand?"

  "Dad," Rachel said. "This is the school he wants."

  "It's important to weigh all opportunities," Dad said.

  Mom waved her hand, still trying (and rgely failing) to get a handle on her tears. "You've worked so hard all these years. Let's have a special dinner tonight to celebrate."

  Rachel lit up. "Dominic's? Please, this is Ryan's dream school!"

  We never went to Dominic's. If I'm paying that much for a steak, Talon's father would joke, I better hear it screaming in the back first. Talon's dad. Talon. The shock of st night hit me sideways, cutting through my excitement. I gripped the letter, thinking.

  "We'll go to Dominic's," Mom said. "Pre-med!"

  "Biochemistry," I said automatically.

  "A celebration is certainly in order," Dad said. "Why don't you invite Talon?"

  Rachel nodded enthusiastically. "Bring him."

  "We haven't seen him in a while, have we?" Dad said. "You two used to be joined at the hip." Dad took the letter from me and began scanning for salient information.

  "Did something happen between you two?" Mom said. She sat now, half a waffle in front of her. Her freckled cheeks were still damp.

  "No," I said. "Nothing. We're good." Obviously, they hadn't heard anything st night. "Yeah. Good idea. I'll go over and see what he's up to."

  "You've received funding, too," Dad said, still reading. Under his breath, he repeated: "Remarkable."

  Despite shoveling my stack of waffles in my mouth in record time, breakfast felt like the longest meal of my life. I helped tidy up the kitchen with Rachel and then headed across the street to Talon's. The air was cool, rain still spritzing, low mist hovering near the mountains. After Talon's older brothers, Griffin and Dean, left for other cities and new lives, the Michaels' house seemed empty and barren. When Mia passed, grief seemed to swallow the pce whole. Before, Talon's house looked pretty. Mia handcrafted stunning, intricate Christmas ornaments out of carefully chosen, frugal craft supplies. She tended a nice garden at the side of the house filled with white flowers. Hydrangeas maybe. Now the pnter box stood empty, overrun with wilting dandelions and bugs.

  Before knocking, I hesitated, trying to get some sort of ominous feeling from the pce. But this was just Talon's house. I'd been here a million times, knew the cracking yellow linoleum in the kitchen, knew his pilling couch, their big television high up on the wall. Abstractly, I understood abuse could happen anywhere. But I always thought you'd have some deep, intuitive knowledge that someone you cared about was being hurt. What did my ck of gut feeling say about me?

  I knocked. No answer. I rang the doorbell three long times and was going for a fourth when the door opened.

  "Hey," Talon said, voice low.

  "You left without—" I paused. "Your lip. What happened?"

  I reached forward to grab his face, but his hand met mine and he pushed it away. He looked exhausted and still smelled faintly of beer. He wore a bck zip-up hoodie over the same band shirt he wore st night and bck denim. His usual outfit. But his hair was pushed back from his face, not sitting in its typical spot, and his lower lip was a swollen, bloody mess.

  "Speak a little quieter," Talon said.

  "Sorry."

  "I said I'd text you," he said. "We can hang out ter."

  "Later? What about school?" I tried to look over his shoulder. Was Stephen there? "What you said st night—"

  "I was drunk. Please. I wasn't making sense. Can you just forget it?"

  I stared into his eyes. "Are you telling me you didn't mean anything you said st night?"

  His eyes didn't waver. "Yeah."

  "Ah," I said. "Got it. Well, I guess I'll just tell my dad about that little lie and—"

  Talon's face darkened.

  "Come inside," he said.

  The first thing that hit me was the smell: sharp and alcoholic, something sour. Second, I saw Stephen. He was slumped deep in the cushion of the couch. Initially, I saw only his back, his dark and oily hair, and his arm flopped over the arm of the couch. His mouth was open, and he was snoring lightly, his eyes closed. An empty beer bottle sat inches below his limp fingers. Talon didn't flinch when we walked past him and around the staircase towards his room.

  Man, when was the st time I'd been here? A year, at least. His room looked rgely the same, albeit messier: his digital piano shoved in one corner, bck stand dusty; acoustic guitar next to it, looking a bit worn; some photos of he and I and the rest of the guys; thick fantasy books stuffed into his two low bookshelves and scattered here and there; clothes lying around; a partially consumed six pack of Budweiser; his bed undone. Over his desk was a rge glossy Priority Three poster, the fuchsia-haired frontman—Lev Oscar—screaming into a microphone.

  "What's that smell?" I said.

  "I don't smell anything." He gnced over his shoulder to see if I was watching. He kicked a gold condom wrapper, one side torn, under his bed. I pretended not to notice.

  I lowered down on his messy bed, trying to find a clean spot to sit. "Listen. We need to talk about st night."

  He ran a hand through his hair and choked out a ugh which sounded startlingly more like a sob. "You promised. You promised you wouldn't say anything."

  Here he was, standing in front of me, with a bruised lip and nervous eyes. The fact that he'd told me at all was a marvel, wasn't it? Sometimes people never spoke up about this kind of thing. Sometimes they kept it hidden for their entire lives. (And sometimes, a voice said sharply, people die.) We didn't break promises to one another. We never had. It was us against the world. Even Marty and the guys knew; me and Talon were always the pair, always the teammates, always the duo.

  "I won't say anything," I said finally. "But I need answers. Where have you been for months?"

  Talon started biting at his pointer finger. "Huh? Here."

  "But you've barely been at school. The guys and I text you and—"

  "It's senior year."

  That wasn't an expnation. "So, you just stop coming to css?"

  Absently, Talon reached up to prod at his sore lip. "I don't know if I'm going to graduate anyways. So, what's the point?"

  "You will. You're smart." I looked around his messy room, trying to refocus the conversation. "Why don't you stay with me?"

  He looked surprised by this offer. "I've got to stay here."

  "Why?"

  "I just do."

  I stood up. "It smells in here. Like rotten fucking fish or something. You need to get out." I thought of Stephen slumped on the couch. The bottle near his hand and four or five more on the coffee table. How did I reconcile the man I knew with what Talon told me st night?

  "I can't just leave, unprompted." His voice was lower than usual. "You don't understand."

  "What don't I understand?"

  "Everything."

  I pced a hand tentatively on his shoulder. He flinched. "Can you try to expin?" I said.

  "I'm afraid that if I try to leave, he'll… do something bad to me. I need to wait a little while longer. This—" He gestured at his lip. "—is for me being at your house."

  "What?" I said sharply.

  "He didn't mean to hit me so hard."

  "But he meant to hit you?" I said, sounding harsher than I meant.

  He swallowed. Talon telling me this now—sober, broad daylight, morning—made it seem realer.

  "Come with me," I said. "We'll tell the police. They'll protect you."

  His eyes widened and he shook his head. "No. No police. Let me deal with it. It was hard enough telling you some of it."

  "Are you kidding me?" I grabbed his hand, but he didn't look at me. "What if the situation was reversed? What if?"

  "I don't know," he said. "But I wouldn't force you to do something against your will."

  I ughed sharply. "Okay. You're right. I'll let you stay here with that fucking monster, and just live my life. I'll wave to you when I see you and you know—ask how you're doing when we bump into one another. Then, when I see your face all over the internet with the headline Teen Found Murdered, I'll shrug and go: you know what, though, I didn't force him to do anything against his will."

  Talon ughed a little.

  "This isn't funny," I said.

  "It was a tiny bit funny." He pointed at his cluttered desk with a shaking finger. "Pass me that, will you?"

  I sighed but obliged, reaching for an unopened Budweiser.

  "Okay, how about this?" I said. (He sipped at the beer, using the uninjured side of his mouth.) "Come with me and my family to dinner tonight. We're celebrating. Mom and Dad invited you. Rachel wants you there, too. You come with me to dinner, I won't bug you about leaving, and I won't make any more threats. Fair?" He opened his mouth, but I held up my hand. You need to buy time, get him alone, think about this for more than five minutes. "No, seriously. No negotiations. Dinner with us or I'm saying something."

  "You're being a dick, Ry. I thought you might just listen. You gave your word."

  We stood in silence for ten or twenty seconds. I didn't relent; I simply watched him. Talon's face was held tightly, his arms stiff across his chest. I couldn't tell if he was angry or contemptive or sad and this not knowing bothered me. I walked over to his piano and brushed my fingers across the gritty keys. I had only the faintest idea about how to py, of course, but Talon's mom began teaching him when he was young. Before treatment made her too weak, she occasionally pyed with our church.

  "Do you still py?" I said.

  When Talon didn't answer, I turned. He finally met my eyes.

  "Sometimes, yeah," he said. He hesitated and then pointed toward the guitar. "I've been pying that more tely."

  Talon's fingers drifted again to his lip.

  "Let me take a look," I said.

  He didn't answer, but he seemed receptive; I tilted his chin up. His lip was actively bleeding, but not from the outside.

  "This might hurt a bit, but I have to pull your lip down, okay?" I said. "Squeeze my hand."

  He did so as I pulled carefully on his lower lip, revealing a rge red and yellow gash by his lower gums. Tooth colliding with tissue. He winced.

  I convinced him to come with me back home so I could at least stitch it up. I had lifeguard training and first aid. This was what I was good at: leadership, taking charge, fixing. I saw Talon's hesitancy but also a certain relief, something bendable and open.

  "Text your dad about dinner," I said. "I'm sure he won't mind."

  Talon looked down at our hands. Both of us gripped tightly.

  For a long moment, Talon thought. I had zero clue how to handle what he'd told me. But I had to bank on the fact that, despite my ck of knowledge or authority, he came to me. He trusted me.

  "Fine," he said quietly, his hand still in mine, "I'll come."