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“Playing fake dealer? Rolling addicts for extra cash?”

“Prove it,” I snapped. “Or get the fuck out of my face.”

We looked at each other. My eyes pounded.

All of a sudden, my backpack felt almost unbearably heavy.

“I just worry about you, Rohise,” Leo said, finally. “You can take care of yourself, I know that. You always have. You always will.”

Damn straight, fat boy.

Adding, after a pause: “But at the end of the day, I still find myself worrying about you. A lot.”

I opened the door. Quick tic pulling my smile up on one side, lop-angled, like the reaction to some psychic stink.

“So don’t,” I told him. And left.

* * *

I still don’t know who did this to Rennie. Anyone could’ve—I mean, it’s not like I was watching; I don’t even really know what was done.

You see your little brother sweating, tossing and turning. Hissing like an unfixed cat under every blanket you have. He can’t eat, can’t get out of bed, can’t get near a window, or the pain makes him cry tears of blood. A week ago, he was just another lanky teen geek, so obsessed over movie shit like whether or not Antonio Banderas does his own stunts that he’d wave his hands in the air and start to stutter. Now he looks brutish, full-grown and all filled out, big enough to frighten.

And you sit there and wonder why all of this would have to happen to him, not you—you, who are responsible for his whole sad, sick semblance of a life, and always have been.

Sometimes, early on, I would get these abrupt moments of clarity, and I’d think: He’s just crazy, and I’m making him even crazier by acting like I can solve his problems. ’Cause after all, living on Queen West don’t mean the world is actually full of vampires.

But get this:

On the first day, his gums started to bleed.

The second day, he puked up most of his teeth.

On the third day, new ones started coming in, calcium whiteness slicing up through puffy pink flesh. Serrated, triangular, packed in double rows. Like a shark’s.

And I can still see the look on that plainclothes pig’s face when Rennie took out his voicebox with a single, juicy bite, like he was eating a peach. Came by the morning of Day Number Four to hit Jos up for money; he wasn’t there, but I was. So down came Officer

Friendly’s fly, and down I went with it—‘til Rennie came padding up behind in that filthy bathrobe of his, so quiet the guy almost didn’t notice what was happening. Except that it hurt too much to ignore.

His feet drumming on the tiles, flopping in Rennie’s hug, screaming soundlessly. His shirt turning red.

And Rennie sighing, satisfied at last—like he’d just popped his cherry, and couldn’t wait to do it again at the earliest possible opportunity.

Jos went to jail for what happened in his kitchenette that day, and I never said a thing about it. Premeditated murder, twenty-five to life. Which I guess seems pretty cold, on my part.

I know this much, though: He wouldn’t have been a damn bit of help to either of us, and Rennie would probably just have ended up killing him too. So in a way, he got off easy.

Easier than me, that’s for sure.

* * *

By the time I got home, my scalp was crawling. I felt like I could’ve fried eggs on the top of my head. The TV was still on, strangely enough; Rennie, even more strangely, lay jumped in on himself before it—pungently robed, freshly-dried and sleepy-eyed, half-submerged by his own long limbs. I threw my keys in the corner, turning the bag of bed sheets inside out all over him. He made a noise that might have indicated protest, had it only been a little more conscious.

“Move over, Rennie,” I said, flopping down on the futon’s edge. Methodically shucking and chucking jacket, boots, jeans, bra. Then, still receiving no reply: “Move the fuck over, Rennie. Now, not later.”

He squirmed lengthwise, as if scalded. I kicked enough of the rest of him out of my way (lightly, gently) to slide in beside him, pull the sheets as far up as they could possibly go and curl up there in the red dark, breathing slowly, holding my head. Hoping the next thought I had wouldn’t be the one to finally make it shatter.

A minute or so of blessed silence. Then, tentatively: “You okay?”