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“I need not to see you for a while, Rennie,” I said. Calmly. Clearly. “I need to be alone. I need to be the fuck away from you.”

“Ro,” he said, as I opened the apartment door. Then: “Ro, wait up!”

But I didn’t.

Didn’t look back, either.

* * *

I never figured it out, not until they told me. Twelve years old and six months gone, and I thought I was just getting fat. I actually used to worry about shit like that—back before I discovered how easy it was to lose weight, as long as you kept yourself too high to have an appetite.

Oh, Rennie, my baby. My big baby boy. Too self-obsessed ever to ask why they would’ve waited so long between kids, or how that second kid could even have been conceived, seeing how Mom was doing a month for contempt of court at the time.

You were the one thing our Dad ever gave me that I wanted to keep. And if you were still above ground, maybe I could tell you how it felt when they pulled you out of me—that mind-numbing full-body spasm, that inadequate wishbone snap. How half of me wants to fold you deep inside my ribcage, to hold you tight and never let you go, but the other half of me wants a written guarantee you’ll never try to crawl back up in there again.

Love me, Ro?

Like a rock.

. . . me too.

I smiled to myself, mirthlessly, as the Bay St

reet crosswind drew tears that froze on contact.

Because that’s the way it’s always been between us, little brother mine. That I love you, more than I love my own heart, my eyes, my life. And you love me too, as much as you can love anybody—which is to say, almost as much as you love yourself.

* * *

I came back Sunday night, to find Leo had already been by sometime late Sunday afternoon. Was still there, in fact.

All over.

Rennie looked up as I came in, covering his mouth with blood-gloved hands.

“Oh, Ro, I fucked up.”

A definite understatement.

“You fucked up,” I repeated, tonelessly. “That’s right, Rennie. And I fucked up. By letting you fuck up.”

He crawled towards me, away from that thing on the bed. The big red thing that no amount of laundry was ever gonna get rid of, this time around.

I dropped to my knees, taking his face in both hands, aiming it up at mine. Looked into corpse-yellow eyes dim with tears of fear and self-pity. Heard him whine, plaintive:

“I’m sorry, Ro, I’m sorry, I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”

“I know.”

“You went away. I was upset. I . . . got excited.”

“I know, Rennie.”

He moaned and dug his head into my shoulder, leaving a stain. I just hugged him, letting the rest of his body print my clothes with streaky crimson.

“Just don’t leave me, okay?” he asked. “Don’t ever leave me again, okay?”

“Oh, Ren,” I told him. “Oh, baby. I’ll never leave you, baby, don’t you know that by now? I’ll always take care of you.”