Page 101 of Beneath the Stain

But that didn’t mean….

Mackey pulled out his phone as he sprawled on the couch and listened to the silence of Trav doing paperwork upstairs. Hey there—Tony was still in his phone! Well, it had been less than two years—why not?

His first try got a discontinued signal, but Mackey had Tony’s home phone, and he tried that one.

A young woman answered—probably Tony’s sister, who was a few years older and had left town.

“Yeah, is, uhm, Tony there?” God. Social awkwardness. Could you beat it after a yearlong absence from someone’s life?

“Tony?”

“Yeah, is this his sister? This is, uhm, Mackey Sanders—it’s been a while, but—”

“Tony, uhm, passed away.”

The words sounded hesitant and a little hostile.

“Passed away? He was like twenty. I mean, I know I been gone a while, but Jesus, I gotbusy—what do you mean passed away?”

“My mother got worse, and… he was here alone with her, I guess. He… well, he killed himself—”

“How?” Mackey’s heart thundered in his ears, and he realized he was unconsciously digging in his pocket for the little prescription bottle that he hadn’t lived without for over a year.

“Does it matter how?” she asked bitterly. “You got to go away and be a big rock star—yeah, don’t think I don’t recognize the name, Mackey fucking Sanders! Youleft—did you think he’d just bewaitingfor you,piningfor you when you got back?”

“I asked him to come with me,” Mackey snapped, because he remembered it, remembered Tony’s first look of excitement when Mackey brought it up. Mackey had almost read his mind then: the thrill of leaving home, of not being the only out gay guy in Tyson, the sheer stinking joy of going somewhere elsebesidesthe place they grew up.

Then Tony’s pretty, latte-complected face went slack with self-imposed misery.I can’t, man. My mother. She needs me.

“The hell you did!” the sister shrieked. Mackey didn’t even know her name. “Why wouldn’t he—”

“Iaskedhim!” Mackey shouted, because he had, and because Mackey may have dropped a lot of fucking balls, but dammit, he hadn’t dropped Tony. Not on purpose. “I asked him—and he didn’t, becauseyouwere out of town andhewas all she had. Man, I’m a lot of fucking bad things, but I tried to get him out, do you understand me?”

“He was playing your fucking CD when he hung himself, do you know that?” she asked.

“I didn’t even know he was gone!” Mackey said. “If you thought it was my goddamned fault, couldn’t you have called me and told me he was gone? It would have been a fucking plus to come to his fucking funeral, you bloodless whore—you ever think ofthat?”

She started to cry. He heard her big rollicking sobs, and he screamed and chucked his phone across the room. It hit a glass on the kitchen counter, which fell to the ground with a crash and a tinkle, and Mackey stalked across the room to clean it up. He was throwing glass in the trash, blood dripping from three separate cuts on his hands, when he heard Trav on the stairs.

“Mackey—are you okay?”

Mackey looked at his shaking hands, the blood, felt the knot of pain rediscovered at the pit below his heart, and realized that no, he was not okay.

“I need some fucking Xanax,” he snapped, throwing the last piece of glass in. Oh God. He did. But he wasn’t getting any. He wasn’t getting any Xanax, because he didn’t have that crutch, did he?

“You need some—Jesus, Mackey, your hands!”

Mackey reached blindly for the paper towels and roughly scraped off the blood.

“I need some coke,” he muttered, although the Xanax would have been better. He turned blindly and ran past Trav, because heknewwhat to do to make this go away, and it wasn’t Xanax and it wasn’t coke, and it wasn’t vodka, although none of that shit was in the house anymore, was it?

He blew up the stairs and into his room. His running clothes were still on the hamper because he hadn’t straightened up, and he stripped in record time, ignoring Trav, who was standing in the doorway, helpless, staring, and unsure.

Physical activity creates natural endorphins—and it provides structure as well as tiring you out, all of which help you with rehabilitation.

So Doc, you’re saying I’ll be too tired to get high? That was part of the reason I got high in the first place.

Well, if you get some real goddamned sleep, Mackey, the PT won’t send you screaming for coke.