Morning hits sideways, thin light sneaking through the papered front windows, dust motes doing slow ballet in the beams. Scottie wakes all at once, brain thudding against her skull like it's trying to kick its way out. Her mouth tastes like she licked a copper pipe and chased it with old fries. She's tucked in, really tucked in, the blanket folded under her shoulders, corners anchored, like someone built a fort out of fabric around her.

It's exactly how Chris used to do it when she was five and fevers broke her into pieces, tight enough to feel the boundaries of her own body. Warm seeps into her chest, unwelcome and immediate. She ignores it on instinct, stares at the tin ceiling until it stops swimming.

The shop is quiet except for... whistling. Not good whistling, not melodic whistling, but enthusiastic whistling that believes in itself too much. She turns her head and finds the perpetrator: Adrian by the battered counter, measuring coffee into a machine that looks like it lost a bar fight in 1999 and learned nothing. Mask is off, for now, meaning she gets the full effect of his perky, open face and that Boy Scout concentration. He's dressed exactly the same as last night, because of course he is.

On the floor near her couch, Chris sleeps on his side, one hand curled near his face, the other sprawled open like he lost an argument with gravity. His pillow is an old pizza box. On top of it, someone (Adrian) has placed a folded t-shirt like a pillowcase, which doesn't change the fact that it's still a pizza box. His helmet sits on the glass display case like a chrome moon, catching light and throwing it back at the room in shards.

Scottie's skull tries a different drumbeat, boom, boom, boom. She presses the heel of her hand to her eye socket, like maybe she can massage away the hangover and the memory that wants to stand up at the same time.

"Good morning!" Adrian stage-whispers, which is to say he speaks in a normal voice and thinks whispering with his hands counts, "Coffee? I make excellent coffee. It's... strong."

"If you say percolating, I'm going to vomit on your boots," Scottie croaks.

"Dripping," He corrects, delighted, "Like a champ."

The smell is heavenly and aggressive. He brings it over, holding it like an offering to a wrathful god. Up close, he's freshly scrubbed and stupidly awake. Offensive.

"Why aren't you hungover?" She asks, suspicious.

"I hydrate," He says, dead serious, "Also, I have superior liver genetics. It's not a brag. It's science."

She narrows her eyes.

"Sip test," She warns, and takes one careful mouthful. It tastes like asphalt and angels, "Okay. Fine. You win."

"Thank you," He says, then leans one hip against the busted drum. "Also, hi. It's nice to see your eyes open. They're... you know," He rotates his hands in vague circles, "Like... good."

"You're flirting with a corpse," She says, taking another sip, "Congratulations."

"I would never flirt with a corpse," He says, scandalized, "That's illegal."

She snorts and then immediately regrets it as her brain ricochets. Emotion swells at the edges, raw and embarrassing now that alcohol isn't sandbagging the flood. It's nonspecific: grief and anger and relief braided with a thread she won't name yet. Her vision blurs. She blinks hard.

Adrian's smile wobbles. Panic flickers across his face like a brief electrical storm. Feelings are not his lane. He looks around for an adult, but the only adult in the room is asleep on a pizza box.

"Um," He says, valiant and doomed, "Fun fact: did you know more people are killed annually by cows than sharks? Cows! They're just... pushing you over. Like bullies. Only... bovine."

She barks a laugh, half-sob, half-genuine.

"I need to shit," She announces, because she is who she is and also because it gets her out of the room without negotiating tenderness.

"Great," Adrian says, recovering like he just nailed a presentation, "Let me know if you need emotional support... or a squatty potty, I could do that."

She gets up slow, knees creaking, blanket sliding to the couch. The leather jacket is her pillow; she throws it over her shoulders on autopilot. Her boots find the floor with a thunk.

In the bathroom, she locks the door and turns the tap on, water sputtering then committing. She stares at her face: mascara smudge, split lip, a smear on her jaw that she hopes is dried coffee and knows isn't. She splashes cold water, again and again, until her skin stings. She breathes. In through the nose, out through the mouth. She's done this in court hallways, in CPS parking lots, in the alley behind Denise's kitchen when grief arrived disguised as the sound of frying oil.

"Okay," She tells the mirror, "Okay."

When she steps back into the main room, the volume has gone up. The team's back, boots and voices and the smell of Harcourt's soap that somehow always registers even when the room stinks like old amps. Murn is already talking with his hands, small, precise movements that make more sense than he says aloud. Adebayo is carrying a tote bag that clinks; Economos is rummaging in the dorm fridge for anything that isn't sad.

Adrian's mask is back on. He pops to attention when he sees Scottie, then remembers himself and pretends to be cool. It's not convincing.

Scottie stands with her hands wrapped around her mug and the worst part of last night punches her behind the ribs: the clatter of a bowl, a soft cough of a shot, Dylan's body folding like paper, and, God, something small and black and wrong pushing its way out of a human head. She swallows bile.

"What the fuck," She says to the room. No preamble.

Murn nods once, as if she answered a question correctly.

"Butterflies," He says. He gestures to the counter where Economos has set up a laptop and, horrifyingly, a specimen jar. Inside, preserved in clear fluid, something glossy floats, wings like oil slick, mandibles sealed, "We don't know how many."

Adrian helpfully adds, "They also have teeny tiny tongues that unfurl like party blowers. It's gross and also kind of festive."

"Dude," Harcourt warns.

"What?" He says, affronted, "I'm painting the picture."

Scottie stares at the jar, at the thing floating, feels her stomach lurch. She puts her mug down, in case her hands decide to throw it, "So he was... what? For how long?"

"Three months, at least," Economos says, eyes sliding away because even dye-beard can read a line when it's flashing neon.

She nods, slow. The timeline fits: the blender, the amber smear, the way his kisses had tasted a little like something she couldn't name. The way he'd been so intent this morning about cops and PR. She's angry enough to burn a hole in the floor and also relieved in a shape that makes her feel monstrous. The quiet life had been a lie anyway. Chaos, she thinks, and the word doesn't scare her.

"Okay," She says, jaw set, "So they're here. You're hunting them. You killed my... him? It? Whatever pronouns butterflies use," She swallows, "I want in."

"No you're not," Chris says, immediate, like a spark on oil.

"Yes I am," She fires back, without heat. A fact.

"No. You're not."

"Chris," She gives him the look that used to precede bad decisions and great stories, "I'm in."

"You are a civilian," He says, like the word is sacred, "You are not trained."

" So it's my fault that the sperm donor with a mullet just happened to be a raging misogynist?"

"This isn't a game," He snaps.

"I know," She says, something like exhaustion in it, "Believe me, I know."

Adebayo lifts a hand, "If we're taking a vote--"

"We're not," Murn says, deadpan.

"We are," Harcourt says, surprising everyone including herself, and leans back against the counter, "Because she's going to do whatever she wants anyway. Would you rather that be with us watching her back, or on her own with a vendetta and Google?"

Chris points at Harcourt like she stole his bike, "Huh?"

Harcourt shrugs, "She handled last night without screaming her head off. She didn't faint. She's stubborn, which in this line of work often translates to still standing, " She tilts her chin at Scottie, "Don't make me regret it."

"Y'all," Adebayo says, chuckling under her breath, "this woman did not blink at a literal bug crawling out of a skull. I'm just saying."

Adrian raises his hand so high his shoulder crackles, "I vote yes times a thousand. She's very brave and very competent and also her jacket is cool. And if she joins then I can be her... colleague. Safely."

Economos lifts his hand, too, "In."

Chris whips around, "You? Even you?"

Economos shrugs, the world-weary IT guy who stumbled into a horror franchise and decided to commit, "She doesn't call me dye-beard."

Scottie blinks, then turns to Chris, deadpan, "I'm sorry... he calls you dye-beard?"

"Because he dyes his beard," Chris says, triumphant, pointing, "Look at it!"

"At least he can grow a fucking beard," Scottie says, aiming straight for Chris's dignity.

Chris recoils, "That was not cool!"

"Neither are you!" She snaps, and it feels stupid and teenaged and perfect.

Adebayo starts laughing, silently. Harcourt almost smiles. Adrian places his hands over his chest like he's watching art.

Murn closes his eyes for a second, a man negotiating with fate and caffeine.

"This is not how we recruit," He says to the ceiling, and then looks back at Scottie, "You understand the risks. You don't know the half of them. You do this, you do what I say."

"Yeah, yeah," She says, "You're the boss. I can follow orders. I can also ignore them when they're dumb."

"Love the honesty," Adebayo murmurs.

Chris throws his hands, "We are not just, she's not--"

"Raise your hand," Abebayo says.

Scottie's eyes flick over the room, Adebayo's soft solidarity, Harcourt's hard respect, Economos trying not to preen, Adrian vibrating like a tuning fork, Murn's controlled exasperation. She finds Chris last. He looks like a man holding onto a cliff edge with his teeth.

"Chris," She says, softer, "I need this", The truth floats there, unadorned, "I can't go back to pretending. Not after last night. Not after the last... ten years. I'm good at living in ruins."

He stares at her. Something in his face loosens, the jaw unclenches a millimeter, the eyes shiver. He looks at the helmet, at the couch where she slept with her mouth open and snored like a baby chainsaw, at the jar with the thing that wore a man and fooled them all. He spreads his hands, defeated and still trying to save one thing.

"Fine," He says, like it hurts, "But you don't go anywhere without me."

Scottie lifts her coffee in a salute, "I wasn't planning to, brother."

Chris' heart nearly leaps out of his chest.

Adrian claps, delighted.

"Team activity!" He announces, "We should get matching jackets."

"No," Four people say at once.

Murn exhales, the sigh of a man whose morning just got longer, "Smith, both of you, wash up."

Scottie glances down at her wrists, the rusty crescent under her nails.

"Right," She says, and sets the mug aside. The hangover is still there. So is the ache. But something else hums under her skin now, tuned to a frequency she recognizes: forward.

She heads toward the back with Adebayo. Chris follows, helmet under his arm, glaring at Adrian as he passes. Adrian waggles his fingers in a tiny wave and then spins to Economos.

Harcourt watches Scottie's back a beat longer than she needs to, then pushes off the counter.

In the bathroom, Scottie scrubs the last of the red from the webbing of her fingers and meets her own eyes in the mirror. They're still hers. They look awake. Chaos, she thinks again, and doesn't flinch. When she comes back out, the neon OPEN sign is still lying to the room, but for once, the lie fits. Her skin hums, her tongue tastes like a battery, and her hair feels like it slept in a drawer.

"I need a shower," She says, already standing, already eyeing the dark smear of road dirt on her knees.

"I can help with that," Adrian says immediately, way too eager, hands popping up like a volunteer in a doomed magic trick.

"You're not helping," Chris cuts in, stepping between them before his brain catches up to his body, "I'll take her to my place."

Scottie tips her head, "Oh? We doing brother–sister spa day now?"

"Shut up," He mutters, embarrassed, protective, both.

Adrian, undeterred, jingles a set of keys he definitely shouldn't be that happy about, "Car's warm."

"Shotgun," Scottie says over him, already snagging her jacket from the arm of the couch.

"Scottie--" Chris starts, hand out, father-brother reflex flaring.

She sticks her index fingers in her ears and sings a single flat note, "La-la-la can't hear you."

Adrian beams like he's been handed a trophy, "Democracy in action!"

They pile into the beater sedan: Scottie slamming into the front seat, buckling in with the clack of someone who's learned not to negotiate with asphalt; Adrian at the wheel, mask off now, curls everywhere, grin probably illegal; Chris squished behind Scottie, knees eating the back of her seat, helmet on his lap like a complicated lunchbox.

Adrian starts the engine and the car coughs, then remembers it's alive, "Okay, where to? Your place for Operation Shower or--"

"Swing by my dad's on the way," Chris says, already bracing for the argument he knows is coming, "He's got a helmet I can use in all this."

Scottie's shoulders snap up like a marionette's jerked by a bad puppeteer. She whips around in her seat so fast the seatbelt locks, "Absolutely the fuck not. I'm not going back to that house."

"It's five minutes," Chris says, palms out, "In and out."

"My answer is no."

Adrian, helpful as a car horn in a library, adds, "It could be the X-ray one or the sonic boom one or the breathe-underwater one, which is useless here unless your dad's installed a moat. Has he? That would be cool."

"Adrian," Chris groans.

Scottie presses her palms to her temples, breathe-breathe-breathe. The hangover pulses behind her eyes like a low siren, "You want me to just... sit in the driveway while you go shopping in the Racist Batcave?"

"It's not-- Okay, it is racist and it is a Batcave," Chris concedes, "but I'll be quick."

"No," She says again, but the word comes out thinner. The car's already moving. Adrian merges with a little too much optimism. Evergreen slides by: the laundromat with the broken A, the church with the sign that says GOD SEES YOU (in jaunty font), the bench with Dylan's mustachioed smile. She looks away.

"Also," Adrian says, signaling enthusiastically for a turn no one else on Earth would have signaled for, "just so everyone knows, I'm choosing to remove my mask in here because family vibes, but if we get pulled over, I'm putting it on, because tickets are for civilians."

"God," Scottie mutters, "You're like if a golden retriever became a tax write-off."

"Thank you," Adrian says, taking it as intended praise.

They pull onto Chris and Scottie's old street and the temperature in the car drops twenty degrees. The houses are the same, small, worn, defiant in the way of things that survive by refusing to admit they're dying. And then there's his house: the upside-down American flag flapping its insult at the wind, the old oil slick on the driveway, the porch where a cardboard box once sat with a red-faced baby inside it like a dare.

"Why does your father have an upside-down American flag on his lawn?" Adrian asks, horrified curiosity turned up to eleven.

"I don't know, dude," Chris says, eyes locked on the door, "It's a Deep State thing."

"Or your dad is a racist wack job," Adrian offers, reasonable for once.

Scottie doesn't look at either of them.

"Or," She says, voice low, "both."

Her knuckles go white on the edge of the seat. She stares dead ahead, lock-eyed with the mailbox across the street like it's the only nonviolent thing left in the world.

"Oh, yeah?" Chris snaps, some reflex in him needing to point somewhere else, "Your dad left your mom for another dude."

"Hey!" Adrian says, stung.

"He did."

"Yeah, and they're deeply in love," Adrian says hotly, chin up, surprising steel under the cheer.

"I doubt it. You know, I think he's just pretending to be gay to get away from you."

Adrian blinks, processes, grimaces, "Okay, maybe! But what does that have to do with anything?"

"I don't know," Chris says, already opening the door, "I thought we were talking about dads." He leans into the front and puts a hand on the dash, halfway to touching Scottie's shoulder and thinking better of it, "Stay here. I'll be back. You want anything, Scottie-girl?"

She could cut him with a line. She could claim the last word. Instead she says nothing. Her jaw clicks. That one old name creeps under her skin, detonates softly.

"Back fast," He says, and jogs up the walk.

The door opens. The house breathes him in.

Adrian drums his fingers on the wheel, glances at Scottie, tries to rearrange his face into something that isn't his regular face, "Sooo. Fun fact. When I get stressed, I narrate. For example: Adrian sees a very angry woman looking straight ahead and chooses to respect her space. See? Respect."

She stares. If looks were license plates, his would be revoked.

He pivots, "Do you want gum? I have gum. Do you want to vandalize the flag? I have... a lighter? No, I don't. But I have a sharpie."

She almost tells him. Chris is bi. He sounds like a homophobe because-- The sentence hits the bars of her teeth and backs away. She won't make a confession out of her brother to make a point in a car that smells like old french fries and bad dads. She swallows it. Keeps staring at the mailbox.

"Okay," Adrian says to the dash, softer, "I'll be quiet."

He makes it fourteen seconds. Then he pops his door, "I'm just gonna, if he's taking too long, sometimes he's distracted by helmet features. They're like toys for him. I'll hurry him up."

He bounces out, jog-trotting up the walk, and slips inside like a raccoon that knows it belongs everywhere.

The moment the door shuts behind him, the car goes too quiet. The house breathes at her. She makes the mistake of letting her gaze slide right, just a little, just enough to catch the porch. The light fixture with the cracked lens. The dent in the railing where a teenage boy's shoulder once hit when he got shoved. The paint scraped raw near the knob where a bolt had too much practice.

Her chest tightens. The sound in her ears becomes a high whine. She tries a grounding trick she read in some pamphlet once, five things you can see, four you can feel. Flag, mailbox, porch light, weeds through the concrete, my hands. She can't feel her hands. She opens and closes them and they're mitts that belong to someone else. Her vision tunnels to a little circle with the flag inside it. The air goes weirdly thick; every breath skims the top of her lungs and refuses to go deeper.

Not here. Not now. Her mind is reasonable. Her body flips the table.

The seatbelt bites as she fumbles it loose. She doesn't register the door handle so much as find herself on the other side of it, stumbling into hot daylight. The asphalt heat licks up through her thin soles. She sucks for air like there isn't any. The world tilts left. She aims for the middle of the street because it's the only flat thing and her knees give; she hits with her palms first, then the rest of her, and for three seconds she thinks of a little girl being dragged by her hair down a hallway, and for three more she hears a gunshot and a body drop.

The door bangs open. Chris comes out at a dead sprint, a duffel bag slung over one shoulder. He takes in the picture in a single, brutal inhale, his sister on the asphalt, hands splayed, the breath not going in, and the duffel drops with a thud. He's there before the bag stops moving, dropping to his knees so fast his own palms skin on the grit.

"Hey, hey, hey, Scottie, hey," His voice pitches itself high and ridiculous, the way it did when she was five and the world was a thing you could distract. His hands hover, then touch, one between her shoulder blades, one bracing her arm, "You're okay. You're okay. It's just air being a dick. Air's a dick sometimes."

She wheezes. Tears don't fall; her eyes are desert. Her body shakes like it thinks movement can finding breathing for it.

"Little sips," He says, demonstrating, over-exaggerated: sip in, sip out, like he's drinking pretend tea out of an invisible cup, "Like, like mouse breaths. Ninja mouse. Remember ninja mouse? He stole cheese from-- Jesus, never mind," He glances wildly around, as if he can find a solution under a car, "You want gum? I got gum. Or a snack cake. I stole a--" He pats his pockets and produces, through some miracle of Peacemaker logistics, a squashed pack of Funyuns and an uncrushed cherry Ring Pop. He holds them up like talismans, "Treat?"

Her hands are shaking too much to push him away. Her brain can't decide if she wants to laugh or kill him.

"Okay, not food," He backpedals, stuffing the offerings into his vest, "Hug? No hug? Half-hug." He shifts, makes himself small and broad at once so he's a wall she can lean against without admitting to it. He starts talking, God help them both, and the words fall out like shrapnel from a century-old grenade, "Don't be hysterical, it's, not that I mean hysterical like a lady thing, just, words are dumb, you're tough, tougher than most guys, than people, I mean people; you're fine, you're okay, you're fine--"

Somewhere under the nonsense is a rhythm she recognizes: the stupid patter he used to pull her out of thunder and darkness. He points with two fingers and croaks, "Follow my hand. Okay? Ninja mouse, look. In... out."

He drags the air, loud enough she can hear it and match it, and she does, because he asks, because his hands are warm and his shoulder is stupidly solid and the asphalt is a real thing and the flag is just cloth.

Adrian jogs back from the house, sees them, and stops short like he hit a force field.

"Okay," He says very softly, palms out, mask in his hand instead of on his face, "Okay, I'm not helpful here," For once in his life, he means it literally and stays at a respectful distance, hovering like a high-strung hummingbird.

A minute is an hour and a blink. Somewhere inside it, the vise loosens. Air slides a little farther down. The ringing in her ears recedes just enough that she can hear the bugs in the grass and the stupid flag and Chris breathing like a human foghorn to keep time for her. Anger catches up and latches on like a hook. It's easier to be mad than scared; she's practiced.

She shoves at his chest, not hard, not gentle.

"Get off," She rasps, voice wrecked.

He rocks back onto his heels, hands up, "Yeah. Okay. I'm, yeah."

She forces herself upright, palms blackened, knees burning. She staggers once, and Adrian is there without being there, ready to catch her and not catching her because he read something in a book once about letting people stand.

"Don't ever bring me here again," She says, to the street, to the flag, to the man kneeling on the sidewalk who is trying so hard to be a brother he's tripping over the parts of himself that are that man's son.

"Okay," Chris says immediately, as if agreeing now can erase the last five minutes, "Okay. I'm sorry. I just, I had to grab the, " He gestures at the duffel like it explains anything.

"Helmet?" She spits, wiping her face with the heel of her hand, "Congratulations."

He flinches, "I'm trying."

"I know," She says, and the two words land like a slap and a blessing, both. She stares at the house one last time, lets it look back, and then tears her gaze away so hard it hurts, "Get me out of here."

"Yeah," Adrian says, already moving, already opening her door like it's something he can do right, "Shotgun again. Forever, if you want."

She slides into the seat, buckles with hands that still shake. Chris grabs the duffel, slings it over his shoulder, and jogs to the back, climbing in without complaint this time. As Adrian starts the engine, Scottie stares straight ahead, knuckles white on the armrest, and breathes through her nose in precise, measured sips.

Adrian takes the corner smooth, one hand light on the wheel like he's driving a parade float instead of a beat-up van that smells faintly of gun oil and fryer grease. Scottie has her boots up on the dash, heels knocking a dull rhythm against the glovebox. She's still a little gray around the edges, strands of hair stuck to her temples, but she's upright and breathing. Chris is wedged in the back, duffel bag at his feet, helmet thumping his shin every time Adrian taps the brakes.

Chris fishes out his phone like he's hauling a weapon and jabs Murn's contact. It rings once.

"What the fuck, Murn?" He explodes the second the line clicks, "The only way to get the cops off our tail was to frame my dad for what I did? It's my dad, man! Jesus! Did you ever have a fucking dad? No! No! My dad's in jail, I'm going to see him. Oh, yeah? Well, fuck you, man! You people only fucking care about yourselves anyway!"

He stabs the screen and kills the call so hard his thumb squeaks. The car fills with raw silence. Scottie stares at her knees, then at nothing, then at everything at once. Something shifts behind her eyes, math she hates: So he didn't kill Annie. She's not surprised; the cruelty she knows from Auggie isn't tidy. It's personal. He didn't murder that girl. He murdered Lamar.

Adrian's mouth quirks up, helplessly pleased, like a dog who just saw a stick. He can't hide it.

Chris catches it in the rearview, "What?"

Adrian shrugs, still smiling, "Just, I told you those people weren't best friend material."

Chris breathes through his nose, tension leaking, "You were right." He swallows once, like the next words aren't built for his mouth, "Hey, I'm sorry, man, I wasn't more compassionate about you being tortured and everything."

Adrian flicks him a quick glance, then the road, "Aw, get out of here! Are you kidding me? Come on, that's... that's stupid, dude. I... I was being stupid."

"No, I was," Chris insists.

"Pinky toes aren't that important," Adrian offers, magnanimous.

"Yeah, you were being weird about that," Chris says, a ghost of a grin.

"Yeah, I was. Sorry," Adrian says, and means it.

A beat of quiet. Scottie lets the tiniest smile show, a sliver of sun through boarded windows. Maybe, maybe, Chris can still move. She leaves the thought alone before hope can make a fool of her.

"Hey," Adrian adds, glancing between them, "Do you want me to take you to the jail to see your dad?"

"No!" Scottie barks, the word out of her mouth before her brain can sand it down.

"Yeah," Chris says at the same time, stubborn as a scar, "Even though I know he's a racist."

Adrian tilts his head, "Shouldn't you kill him then?"

"Yes," Scottie snaps, reflex.

"No! I'm not gonna kill my dad," Chris says, horrified and offended, like Adrian just suggested microwaving a puppy.

"Why not?" Adrian asks, genuinely curious, not a trace of malice.

"Because I love him," Chris says, voice softening at the edges in a way that makes Scottie want to bite something.

"For fuck's sake," She mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"Spoiler alert, I don't think she loves him," Adrian stage-whispers.

"My dad and I both hate crime," Chris says defensively, "It's the only thing we agree on, and he makes me stuff, okay?"

"Sure. Yeah, no, I mean, my dad never made me anything," Adrian says, breezy and bruised at once, "He was too busy off pretending to be gay just to get away from me."

They laugh, the weird kind that comes out like a cough because it has nowhere else to go. The car rolls past a stretch of Evergreen that looks exactly like itself: peeling paint, a chain-link fence trying to hold in a yard that doesn't want to be held, a bus bench with a smiling realtor. Scottie looks away fast before she can see the angle of the grin and remember the blender on the counter, the amber smear, the dull thud of a bowl hitting tile.

She glances up at the rearview at the same time Chris does. Their eyes meet in the little rectangle of glass. There's a whole box of photographs in that look, and none of them are printed. He sees her now the way he used to see her when she was five and hiding behind the couch, cheeks damp, fists balled, waiting to hear the latch on a bolt. He remembers the sound her tiny cries made against the bathroom door the night he couldn't get up and she couldn't get out. He remembers her carefully smoothing a Hello Kitty bandage onto his palm after Auggie smashed a bottle there, her brow furrowed like a surgeon's, the way he secretly loved that stupid pink cat because it meant she had something to give him.

Scottie sees him with the old outlines and the new dents. She remembers the way he'd fold himself around her on that shitty mattress so the blows would land on his back first. She remembers the way he'd make up dumb stories till the storm in the trailer blew past: ninja mice stealing cheese; eagles with human jobs; a raccoon who ran for mayor. She remembers, too, the empty space where he was supposed to be when she was sixteen and a boy bled out on asphalt and she chose a new last name for herself that day even if the paperwork didn't change.

They hold the look until it begins to sting. There's love in it. There's grief. There's a canyon with a rope bridge somebody set on fire and both of them keep trying to cross anyway.

Adrian clears his throat, oblivious to canyons, "Do county jails let you bring an eagle for moral support? Asking for a friend."

"Shut the fuck up!" They snap in perfect unison, like a harmony they didn't rehearse.

Adrian blinks, "Cool, cool. No eagle. Copy."

He rolls to a stop at a light. The van ticks and sighs. Chris leans forward a bit, hands on the headrest of Scottie's seat.

"We're still going?" He says, but it's a question.

Scottie watches the crosswalk signal blink a white stick figure and then count down. 12... 11... 10... Her forehead finds the cool window. The glass smells like old Windex and new dust.

"Whatever," She says, and closes her eyes.

Adrian takes the next right. The car hums, a low animal. Scottie feels the vibrations through the seat, lets them rattle her bones into place. On the floor by her feet, a cherry Ring Pop wrapper glitters in a sunbeam like confetti from a party nobody planned. She nudges it with her boot and thinks about how, when she was a kid, the only three ways Chris knew to make anything better were food, a hug, or acting like a complete idiot until she laughed. It wasn't therapy, but sometimes it was enough to make it to morning. Sometimes that's all getting better looks like: the next hour. The next breath.

Behind her, Chris is very quiet. Quiet is not his native language. He's looking at her profile, the stubborn set of her mouth, the way she keeps the window at her temple like an ice pack. He hasn't felt this particular ache in a long time, the one that says protect her and you already failed at the same time. He wants to cry and he wants to crack a joke and he wants to throw the car into a U-turn and drive until the map runs out. He wants to hug her so hard his arms bruise. He wants to be a man the way Auggie never was, and every time he reaches for it, he can feel the bad wiring in him spark: the bullshit he absorbed, the words that come out wrong because they were fed to him with dinner and belt leather. He shoves it down. He is not good at that.

Adrian, who can tolerate silence for perhaps half a minute before he begins to itch, rummages in the console and triumphantly produces a pair of sunglasses shaped like guitars.

"Does anyone want... no? Okay, later," He says, and puts them on his own face, checks himself in the rearview, nods like, yeah, that's a man who makes choices.

The jail hunkers out by the highway like a cinderblock idea of order. Chain-link. Sodium lamps humming over concrete. A sign that says VISITATION with an arrow that points to a door that could be any door. As they turn into the lot, Scottie's shoulders climb. She doesn't open her eyes, but something in her posture remembers fluorescent lights and bad carpet and waiting rooms that smell like disinfectant and old shame.

Adrian eases into a space and kills the engine. The sudden quiet makes everyone's breath louder.

"You sure?" He asks, voice gentler than he usually remembers to keep it, "Last chance to bail and go... I don't know. Eat pancakes. Punch a tree. I'm flexible."

Chris rests his forehead against the back of Scottie's seat, just for a second, "I have to see him."

Scottie opens her eyes, finally, and watches a pair of officers through the windshield, their silhouettes doubled in the glass. She thinks of Annie Sturphausen, a name with no face for her, laid over Lamar's like tracing paper. She thinks of fairness and justice and how sometimes you have to pick the least filthy thing within reach and call it a choice. She tips her head until it taps the window twice, her own little ritual, a promise to herself she can't quite phrase.

"Whatever," She says again, smaller this time.

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