It is a bright sunny day. Spring is fading into summer and the air has that crackling heated feel. The day is going to be too hot, the air thicker than one would expect in May. School is still in session but if you can manage to get off the island before it starts, there isn’t a lot they can do about your absence. The sun is barely over the horizon when they meet up on the pier. The boys are shoving each other, their laughter matching the rhythm of the waves and the sparkles of sunshine on the water. They don’t notice that she is too pale until she collapses.
…
It is one of the bad days. Sometimes she can get out of bed, walk around a little, sit outside and let her brother or her boyfriend bring her an ice cream cone. On those days her smiles are brighter, the tension eases along the lines of her mouth and the set of her shoulders. Today, everything hurts. Her bed is uncomfortable, her sheets too scratchy. There is nothing on T.V. Her brain is fuzzy and disconnected and for a few minutes it feels like she is missing a leg. The prickly feeling has begun in her abdomen and she knows she won’t be able to keep anything down today. She shouts at her brother, and her smile for her boyfriend is bitter and tight. But they let her writhe and rail, and when her boyfriend’s hand settles on her stomach she feels a little bit less like she might explode.
…
There is always a baseball bat within arm’s reach these days. He hasn’t seen his parents in approximately 96 hours. Not that he’s been counting. It’s been weeks since he’s seen his sister and at this point he’s not sure that he’s ever going to see her again, and what kills him a little is the look on his best friend’s face when he thinks no one is looking. They both miss her. But only one of them thinks she’s getting out of this alive.
…
“Luke…?”
“Don’t.”
“Luke.”
“I said don’t.” And Luke, who just unloaded an entire round of bullets into Dex’s sister, into his own girlfriend, turns around and walks out the door. There is something gritty and hard and primal about the stiffness in his movements – as though he has nothing left but violence anymore. And Dex knows that isn’t true, knows that in a few days Luke will have shoved this moment into the darkest corner in the places he never goes. But Dex sort of wishes he wouldn’t. Wishes that instead, he would explode so that Dex doesn’t have to.
…
By the time Luke has stopped waking up screaming in the middle of the night, Dex has developed a death wish. He’s not really sure where it came from, not really sure why he (who has not lost the love of his life) has become the hopeless bitter one. He waits for Luke to yell at him, to tell him he’s being a selfish bastard trying to take the one thing from his best friend who started out with nothing and already lost most of it. But Luke doesn’t and Dex thinks that maybe thwarting Dex’s wishes is the only thing that’s keeping Luke from dying too.
