“Of course.” Rem shook her head in disbelief. “It’s a miracle this girl is even alive, she had so much shit in her veins.”

“What was it?” Lukas said. “Mod restraint?”

Rem snorted derisively. “I wish. Try mod acceleration. That’s some seriously sick shit.”

“Self-inflicted?”

“Unlikely. Se all of these thin little scrapes on her arm?” She pulled back the girl’s left sleeve. “Probably from resisting, if the drug was administered via needle. And if it’s the drug I think it is, then it would’ve had to have been injected with a needle. Plus, look what what she’s wearing on the same arm.”

Lukas glanced at it. Three watches. “A shifter.”

“That’d be my guess. And I can’t think of any shifters crazy enough to want to see more than they already do. Mod restraint would show differently, and she doesn’t have any of the symptoms of the hard restrainers that you’d use a needle for.”

“So the drug is – “

” – probably crimson, yeah. Forcibly administered for an extended length of time. Maybe a couple weeks. We’d have to get lab tests done to know for sure.”

“But you’re not bringing her in?” said Lukas.

“Depends.” Rem fixed the doctor with a sharp stare. “Can you fix her?”

“Probably. I can do the work, at any rate, but naturally there’s a chance of her dying from overdose.”

“So get going.”

He rolled up his sleeves and placed his hands, palms downward, just above the arm with the watches. “Why do you want me to do it, anyway? Because friends or not, I’m charging for this, and since I’m willing to bet she can’t pay, that means you’ll be getting my invoice. It’s not going to be pretty.”

“So I’ll charge it as a work expense or something. I’ve got good reasons.”

Lukas raised an eyebrow sardonically. “And they are…?”

Rem ticked off points on her fingers. “One. I’ll be able to keep an eye on her myself. Two. Easier access for questining. Three. If whoever’s responsible for the unwanted mod acceleration shows up to get her, those sad sacks in Recovery wil just hand her right over, little government shits that they are, and I need this kid. She’s going to know a hell of a lot about crimson.

—

The first thing Kitey saw was the ceiling. It was pretty unimpressive, so she probably wasn’t in heaven. Then again, it wasn’t on fire or made out of human skulls, so she didn’t think she was in hell, either. Maybe purgatory had boring ceilings. Or maybe – somehow – she was alive.

Kitey sat up. She felt pretty alive, mostly, although her arm was a little numb. Glancing down at it, she sighed. The watches were still on. Good. She wasn’t sure if whoever had picked her up would know to keep them on. Then she immediately tensed up. If they kept them on, they probably knew to do so. Unlikely that they would keep them on and work around them, because the arm was awkwardly bandaged, and it would’ve been much easier to do a better job had the watches not been in the way. So they knew she was a shifter. Alright. They could just be incredibly benevolent.

Or they could want to use her.

She was three steps away from the bed when collapsed. Her leg. She had probably been right to assume that something had happened to it during the fall. Well, she could move on it, sort of. Leaning heavily against the wall, she inched her way towards the door.

No one in the hallway. Which was good, because she had to practically drag herself down it. Her heart was pounding violently, maybe from residual traces of the drug. Kitey licked her lips nervously and turned the corner.

“I just set that leg; you break it again and I’ll break you.”

If her leg had been better, she would have run, but even turning around was challenging. The man who had spoken was tall but wiry, his blonde hair pulled tightly back into a severe-looking ponytail. He laughed at her obvious fear.

“I won’t really. Seriously, though, sit down. I’m tired. I don’t want to have to fix you again.”

“‘Fix?’” repeated Kitey. “You’re a fixer?”

“So you know your mods. That makes sense.” He watched Kitey shield her left arm, subconsciously but defensively. “I have no interest in you as a shifter,” he said. “I am, however, being paid a hell of a lot of money to keep you alive, so sit.”

The room had a few couches and chairs. One was occupied by a much younger man whom she hadn’t noticed, careful as she’d been trying to be. Kitey sat down as far away from both as she could, cautiously. “Who are you?” she asked the tall man.

“That’s my line,” the man snorted. “I’m Dr. Adrien Lukas. Guy over there is Ark. And you are…?”

“Kitey.”

“You got a last name, Kitey?”

“Probably.”

Lukas looked at her. “I honestly can’t tell if you’re being a smart ass or if you just don’t know.”

She shrugged.

Lukas removed a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, glared at them for a moment, and then swore and tossed them aside. “I’m supposed to quit the damn things.”

“Um, can’t you…?

“I know I’m not affected, but apparently it sets a bad example. Besides, second-hand smoke. I’m guessing you don’t need any of that.”

Kitey felt hers eyes starting to wander down to her arm but snapped her gaze back to the floor in front of her. She had a nagging suspicion that the man Lukas had identified as Ark had noticed.

“You wondering why you’re here, Kitey?” asked Lukas pleasantly.

Hot panic surged into her stomach. The door wasn’t too far away.

“You’d never make it,” said Ark. It was the first time he had said anything, and she was a little surprised by his voice; it was soft, almost childish.

“Ark’s a friggin’ mind reader,” explained the doctor. Ark shot him a look.

“A mind reader?” said Kitey.

“He’s an empath. You know, feels other people’s feelings?”

“Oh,” she said. There was an awkward moment of silence. Then, “So why am I here?”

Ark sat up. “Rem.”

“She here?” asked Lukas.

“Yeah. And she’s in one hell of a foul mood.”

He’s not, though, and I have to get the hell out of the room because it’s too creepy seeing your twin hanging there, swaying in the breeze. This is probably what it feels like to look at yourself dead, and it’s freaking me out.

The first thing to do is search for a suicide note, because that would be typical Nathan. Sure enough, I find it on the kitchen counter. That was pretty nice of him; he left a note on the counter so Mom and Dad wouldn’t freak when they walked into his room and saw their son all dead and dangling from the ceiling. I probably would’ve seen it first, too, except I was too excited and I didn’t really think about it; I just wanted to get to his room to see if he’d actually done it.

The note itself is typical mushy Nathan garbage. It’s all, “Don’t blame yourselves,” and “I’m so sorry,” and all that half-assed sentimental cop-out bullshit. I can’t respect anyone’s decision to kill themselves, and especially not Nathan’s, because the guy had it so damn good. Captain of the football team, straight-A’s, president of student council, hot girlfriend, accepted all over the place at any school he wanted. Everybody loves him. Well, they loved him, anyway. He would’ve been homecoming king for sure. That’s what my best friend Jake told me, that everyone wanted my brother to be homecoming king. Natalie would’ve been queen, probably. Jake said there was even a campaign going on, already, but Nathan didn’t know and even if he did he wouldn’t have tried to win. Besides being perfect and smart and athletic and lucky, Nathan was humble, too.

The little shit.

Okay, well, the suicide note’s going to have to go. I rip it in half, and then into quarters, and then into eighths, and I keep ripping and ripping until its confetti. Funeral confetti. Then I turn the faucet on full blast and run the pieces down the garbage disposal, just for good measure.

Next is the hard part. Mom and Dad saw us at breakfast, so they knew what Nathan and I were wearing. This means that we have to trade clothes, which isn’t so bad for Nathan because he’s dead. But I have to wear a dead guy’s clothes, and that’s creepy. I shudder when I put his shirt on. It’s a polo, too. Makes me feel kind of strangled.

Now that that’s done, I’m basically ready. The only thing I get a little hung up on is the replacement note, because suicide notes aren’t really my thing. But I jot one down, just a couple sentences, to keep up appearances. Who knows? Maybe, deep down, I’m really a sentimental kind of guy.

I’m sorry. It was too much. Don’t blame yourselves.

Love,

Morgan

—

It’s the best funeral I’ve ever been to.

It’s a funny thing to say, sure, but everyone wonders, right? “Would anyone care if I died?” “Who would show up to my funeral?” “Would people cry?” And suddenly all these questions are being answered for me.

Actually, the answers are a little surprising. There are a lot of classmates that I remember giving me shit all the time, even back in grade school, when they stole my lunch. There’s even a few of the guys who always called me a fag in gym. And some of my teachers are here, the same ones who just last week chewed me for “not applying myself” and “slacking off.” And skipping. Sometimes I’d skip. But that was “Morgan.” I’m “Nathan” now.

Natalie’s here. I’d always hoped Natalie would come to my funeral, although there’s this little irritating though in the back of my brain that she’s probably only there to support “Nathan,” not because she cares that “Morgan” is gone or anything. Jake’s here, too. He’s crying. I feel kind of bad, but what can I do? “Morgan” isn’t coming back just because one person misses him a little.

I also feel guilty about my parents. How could I not? I do have a conscience. But suicide makes everyone unhappy. My school’s going to be pissed. It kind of ruins home coming, a little, which is only two weeks away. Maybe they’ll have forgotten me by then. Or maybe they’ll make a speech about me. That’d be a riot.

It’s hard not to laugh when the priest reads my eulogy.

—

During the next two weeks, people give me a lot of space. Nathan’s friends don’t really know how to deal with “my” death, and even Natalie’s a little weird. But it’s fine. They’ll only be like that until I’m over my brother’s death, and I plan to be over it as soon as it’s socially appropriate to be over it. Keeping up appearance and all that. Even my teachers are cutting me some slack with the grades, but with Harvard or Princeton or Stanford or whichever Ivy League school I want in the future, it’s easier to do homework. I don’t do half bad, either.

The only real problem is football. I’ve never been great at football – probably why I was always a second-string wide receiver. But not Nathan, and since I’m Nathan, as far as they know, I have to pick it up a little. I’ve thrown another pass straight over Ken Mosley’s head when Coach blunders over. I know it’s Coach even from behind, because he always has this cloud of spearmint around him, even if he’s not chewing gum. Mosley doesn’t complain about the pass, but Coach is concerned.

“Listen, Nate.” Coach always called Nathan “Nate.” “Listen,” he starts again, but he can’t really figure out what he’s going to say, or how he’s going to say it. He stumbles a little over a few of the words, and then gives up. “Keep at it,” he says vaguely, and then he heads over to scream at Luke Garman for awhile. Coach is a real character.

I pitch another one to Mosley. It touches down a good fifteen yard in front of him.

The drive home is pretty nice because it means I can finally listen to what I want. Nathan liked country, and only country, and that’s been the hardest part of being him. I can’t stand country. When I’m in front of other people I’ll play a little for show. But on my own, I listen to whatever I want. Even rap. Nathan hated rap.

Mom’s car is in the driveway when I pull up to the curb. I find her in the kitchen, looking for her purse. “Hey, sweetie,” she says, reaching over to ruffle my hair. “How was school?”

“Okay. I think they’re going to retire Morgan’s number.”

Mom puts her hand up to her mouth and presses the back of her fingers against it. She does this whenever she’s being emotional. “Oh. Oh, well, that’s… that’s…”

“That’s nice of them,” I offer, and she takes my lifeline gratefully.

“Yes. It’s really nice of them.”

I can see her beginning to tear up, so I say the first thing that pops into my head. “Are you and Dad coming to the game on Friday?”

“Of course,” she assures me, resuming the hunt for her purse. “Wouldn’t miss it. Oh, and you’ve got a dentist appointment on Thursday.”

My stomach suddenly gets all cold and tight. Panic. The dentist will know. The records won’t match up and they’ll know I’m not Nathan. Shit.

“Alright,” I say. It’s not that big of a deal. I mean, I can just say I went or something. And I’m almost out of high school, anyway. I’ll just get a new dentist and tell them my old one lost my records. That sounds pretty believable. Probably it happens all the time. For now, I’ll just blow it off and hope my parents don’t notice.

He liked number two pencils. He did not like anything but number two pencils. He refused to write in pen because it smeared – presumably he had had a bad experience with ink and some important document or favorite shirt – and no one knew the reasoning behind his stark hatred of mechanical pencils. What was more, he only liked sharp number two pencils. There was a plastic pencil case in his room devoted entirely to the storage of an array of  the brightly-colored pencil sharpeners that he employed tokeep his pencils dangerously sharp. There was even a mounted pencil sharpener on his desk, though it went vastly unused due to its immobility.

Erin read almost everywhere she went, and this trait wasn’t limited to sitting or standing still. She particularly appreciated the way people tended to jump out of her path when she walked around with her eyes on a book, although every so often some joker would try to rip the book out of her hands. But that was high school for you; or, specifically, that was Bedford High School.

“Stand still.”

“I am standing still.”

“You’re bouncing up and down. That’s the opposite of standing still.”

“The opposite of standing still is probably running – ” she began, but Jake cut her off.

“The point is, you’re not standing still. And stop biting your cheek, too. I didn’t realize you were so nervous about the audition.”

“I’m not!” she insisted.

There was a few minutes’ pause while they watched other scholarship hopefuls file past, instrument cases in tow. Jake glanced over at Megan. “Stop biting your cheek already!”

“Fine!” She stopped.

He barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “I can tell you’re just biting the other side.”

“There’s no way you can tell that.”

You know, the kind where the sky is dark newspaper gray, sort of dingy, like it would rub off o your hands if you touched it too much. Rain is coming down like it’s from an Arthur Conan Doyle novel. And sitting on my bed is my own personal Watson. Actually, that’s not exactly right – I’m probably the sidekick today.

“Come on, Vi,” my best friend nags, sprawled across my comforter and staring, wide-eyed, at the ceiling, “Let’s do something.”

Len has two unusual hobbies, thinking and doing. I say “unusual” because no one does either of these things quite like Len. Len will try almost anything at least once; in fact, I am beginning to suspect that this may be his goal. The spectrum of this “doing” encompasses almost everything, from knitting and baseball and rollercoasters and unicycling and cooking and everything in between. He gets a kick of out experiencing things. And when he isn’t doing, he’s thinking. I don’t mean just thinking to himself while walking along or sitting in class; I mean staring into space and tuning everything else out and really thinking.

But today, for Len, is a “doing” sort of day.

“You do realize it’s raining, right?” I say.

“I know.”

I let out a sigh. Rainy days make me lazy and tired, but Len is the only person I know who is more stubborn than me, and he’s just going to keep wearing me down until I agree to some crazy scheme. “Alright,” I concede, “what did you have in mind?”

This had probably not been considered until now. Len thinks for two seconds, and then, definitely, states, “Laser tag.”

“Okay.” That actually sounds pretty fun. The last time it rained, we hung out underneath the bridge trying to catch fish. Len caught a few little ones – he threw them back, obviously – and he came really close to catching this giant frog that we call “Goliath,” but all I caught was a really grody cold.

Len pulls out his cell phone. He was the first in our group of friends to get one; he has absolutely no sense of direction, which terrified his mother back in middle school.  “I’ll call Pants and Carly if you’ll call Gabriel.”

“What about Nate?”

Len raises is eyebrows. “Is that okay?”

“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” Len gives me a look, and I feel compelled to justify my response. “We didn’t even date for that long. Seriously. We’re still friends. Besides, we wouldn’t want to break up the group or anything.”

Len shrugs and returns his attention to dialing. His silence is maddening, so I lean over, hook an arm around his shoulders, and give him a killer noogie, the kind my brother taught me how to do when we were little.

1. Tissue paper flowers
2. Wrap presents
3. Decoupage things
4. Scrapbook
5. Make wreathes
6. Give it to a cat to play with
7. Make confetti
8. Write things on it
9. Make a [wedding] centerpiece
10. Make paper mache projects

Idea to write about: make a wedding centerpiece.

——-

Len is sitting at the dining room table amid a mountain of pastel tissue paper. “Whatcha up to?”

Len doesn’t look up. “I’m making your mom a centerpiece. For the wedding.”

Mom is at the table next to him with a tremendous stack of invitations. I didn’t realize we even knew that many people. “I saw it in a magazine today while I was waiting at the dentist, and I thought I’d put him to work on it.”

“Mommm…” I start, but Len shakes me off.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind. Besides, she’s paying me in cookies.”

“Freshly baked, too, if you want them, Vi.” Mom slaps an invitation down on the table. “There. That’s the first one. I love the little silver ribbons, but damned if they aren’t a pain in the ass to – Oops! Sorry, Vi.”

“It’s not like I haven’t heard it before, Mom.”

“I know, dear, but one day when you have kids you’ll understand.” Mom is always saying stuff like that.

I help myself to a few chocolate chip cookies and sit down to watch Len work. I am always watching people do things, and Len is my one of my favorite people to watch because he gets really absorbed in whatever it is he’s doing. Usually, he doesn’t even notice me watching. The centerpiece isn’t even half-formed, but already there are these delicate, tiny little roses and leaves. Len is really very impressive when it comes to things like this, or anything that requires him to use his hands.

“So how is Mr. Daniels, Ms. McCay?” asks Len, and I nearly fall out of my seat because normally Len would never say something like that. He’s not rude or anything; it’s just that, usually, he doesn’t try to initiate conversation.

I think Mom is a little taken-aback, too, because it takes her a minute to answer. “Ben? Oh, he’s doing well, thanks for asking, Len.” Len still can’t call Ben by his first name yet, but Ben calls him Len and everything. Len has always hated it when people, usually teachers or adults, insisted on calling him Lenard, and you could tell that Ben scored major points with Len by not even asking what his nickname was short for.

—

“So I guess we’re done, huh.”

“Guess we are.”

I can feel my mouth scrunching up and I’m hating that it’ll give me away. He picks up on it, of course, and it makes him softer. “You wanna… talk, or something?”

My eyebrow arches on its own. “Talk?” My voice is positively scathing, it’s acid, it’s poison, it’s molten lava. My stomach is knotted up and curled around on itself and feels hot, hot and angry. I feel poisonous. “You want to talk?”

“Yeah. …No. Maybe?” He can’t decide which one will make me happy, which is especially ironic, since he didn’t much care about that these last couple of weeks. Why do I never listen to other people? They knew, they knew that this was how it was going to go down. They knew. I know because they told me.

“Which one is it?” I snap impatiently. I don’t feel at all like myself. I am some raging volcano goddess looking to smite somebody down. Maybe just anybody, like a Greek god would. Hera would have turned him into a tree or something by now.

“Look, Violet, I don’t want to fight with you.”

“…when you could be macking on Claire. Yeah, I kinda figured.”

Nate pulls a face. “That’s not what I mean!” His calm is starting to wear thin, and it makes me want to push harder, to work at that chink in the armor until it shatters.

But I don’t.

Because suddenly, stupidly, of all things to remember, and of all times to remember them, I’m thinking of that time Nate was on the curb in the rain waiting for me, and he kissed me like me meant it, and it absolutely melted me. At the time. And now all I can think of is how no one, no one, is ever going to share those memories with me ever again.

“Vi?” he says, and I nearly cry.

So I walk away.

All this makes him a little infuriating to drive with under normal circumstances – almost never does he get to drive when our group of friends goes somewhere (or if he does, it’s because we have a lot of time to kill or don’t care if we arrive an hour late) – but when I’ve been drinking, the last thing I want to see is scenery blurring past my window or a series of near-death experiences making my life flash before my eyes. Len’s driving is so comfortable that I almost always fall asleep in the passenger seat.

“I’m glad you don’t drink,” I tell him again. He smiles.

“Glad I’m appreciated.”

“Hey, a shooting star!”

“That was an airplane.”

“It wasn’t. I’m wishing on it, so it’s a shooting star.”

“If you say so.” Len gently, gently guides the car through a right-hand turn in the subdivision. “You need the wish or something?”

“Yup.” I’m vaguely aware that the next sentence will probably be a bad idea, but I want to tell someone, and so I do. “I know it sounds stupid, but… Well, it’s about Nate.”

“Oh.” That’s all Len says.

“You don’t think it’s dumb?”

Len doesn’t say anything for a while, and I can tell it’s because he’s thinking. “Well,” says Len, after a pause that almost makes me forget what my question was, “no, I don’t think it’s dumb. You guys definitely have great chemistry. Better than most people’s, probably.” There’s another pause, but it’s not as long; Len looks more sure of his next sentence. “I just don’t think you guys have ever made a good couple, for all that chemistry.”

That one hurts, a little. I know it’s just Len being Len and giving a super-blunt opinion, but it still hurts. Just a little, though. “But, but don’t you think we could, this time?”

There’s another pause. “What’s different this time?” It sounds harsh, but he’s not being doubtful, exactly; Len just honestly wants to know what’s changed. No judgment.

The thing is, I don’t really know if anything’s changed. “Maybe nothing. I don’t know. But he’s driving me absolutely crazy with this whole Claire thing. I don’t like her very much.” I suspect, at this point, then Len is stifling a giggle, but this may just be the vodka talking. “I wonder why he likes her so much. Is she more attractive than me?”

Len seriously considers this. “Nope.”

“Really?” I’m pretty flattered.

“Violet, I’m being serious here, Claire is pretty. But you’re definitely cuter.”

“Oh.” Somehow, that seems different. “But she’s more beautiful, huh.”

“No, she isn’t. You’re pretty drunk, huh?”

“Yeah.” I lay back contentedly. “Len, you should find a nice girl. Or guy.” I turn abruptly to face him. “Are you gay?”

He doesn’t burst out laughing or anything, but he also doesn’t seem offended. “I don’t know. Maybe? I don’t think so. I’ve never really met anyone I’m attracted to like that.”

“But you want to find somebody?”

“Not particularly. I’m pretty happy like this.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m pretty happy, too. Only I still… I miss Matt.”

Len nods. “Yeah. I know.”

—

I’m thinking mostly of the Venetian Festival in Charlevoix. My best friend and I used to ride the Gravitron until we were absolutely certain that we were going to be sick all over the street. We never were, though, and the next year we’d ride it even more. We were crazy back then, I guess, or else we just really knew how to have fun.

I went again this year, with Erin, which was my first time back in ages, only it wasn’t the same. I didn’t think it would be because it never is, but I mean it really wasn’t the same. Not even a little. For one thing, the Gravitron wasn’t even there, and the games all looked totally stupid. So did the rest of the rides, mostly, except I went on this one that played really loud, awful music and spun in a million little circles. Erin loved it. She’s always loved those kinds of rides, or else she’s loved tormenting me with them (I’m not really sure which she derives greater pleasure from, but just in case she really likes tormenting me, I always make sure to ham it up a little when I complain about them). Actually, I felt pretty sick afterward, which was sort of like “the old days,” except that I only rode it once. Yeesh.

I try to make it a point not to go back to places for purely nostalgic purposes, because I’m only ever disappointed. I read that somewhere, once. I think it makes a lot of sense. If you go to a hill or a yard or a house or a town or some other place just because you’re feeling nostalgic, you’re only ever going to be disappointed because things change. That’s life. When you go back, the hill won’t look nearly as big as it used to in the days you learned to ski there by hanging desperately onto a stretch of rope that’s whizzing right through your mitten-ed hands while your parents try, patiently, unsuccessfully, to coach you; the backyard you grew up in will have a pool in it instead of a tree house with a trapdoor; the house where your neighbors lived will be stripped of the various knicknacks they once possessed and the people you loved who lived there will be gone; the city will have gutted the park where you rolled down the hill until you were dizzy, and destroyed the bandstand where your father used to play his trumpet with the rest of the family listening from a picnic blanket, and gotten rid of the cement fish pond in front of the bandstand that you always stuck your hands into to try to touch the fish. Things like that change. And sure, you can go back and remember the things the way they used to be, but the changes will seep into your mind and affect your memories, and it’s gross and wrong and it corrupts your imagination. This way, not seeing the changes, I can go on remembering playing shuffleboard with my brother and Craig, our old babysitter, and not have to bother worrying about how there isn’t actually a shuffleboard court anymore.