Chapter 1
Shane Pegoraro
My head pounded and the inside of my mouth tasted like an old sock, or at least the way an old sock smelled, one that was buried at the bottom of a gym bag for about three weeks and had started to mold too. I groaned and sat up, slowly, because my head spun, and my stomach heaved. I sniffed and moaned, glancing down at myself. My eyelids felt crusty and strange. At some point last night I’d worn a beer, and the stench was making my stomach unhappy. My white T-shirt was stained brown, and something that looked like red spray paint spotted my jeans.
What the hell? These clothes weren’t right, because it was winter. I was sure I’d left the house last night in a red V-neck sweater I’d kept from Carter’s clothes yesterday after West invited me into the room they had shared to sort through them.
West, tall and with dark week-old scruff on his face, was handsome in a way I could barely stand to look at these days. He had a sharp chin and nose, but they worked for him, even if he looked serious most of the time. He was so full of life and vibrant, in jeans and a Bulls sweatshirt, and Carter was a husk in the hospital bed. We were at Walnut Creek Hospital to say goodbye to Carter, but he hadn’t been able to say anything back to us for almost a month. The doctors were going to remove the machines keeping him alive.
“It’ll be okay. We’ll get through this,” West said, his rich voice quiet like we were in a library. His sharp eyes were a bluey-brown that Carter insisted on calling violet, even though I’d never heard that was an eye color someone could have. I felt so cold and alone when Mom and Dad walked in.
Dad wouldn’t look me in the eye. Mom cried. They huddled together, and I wanted to go to Mom, but one look at Dad, and the red tint to his face as he stared down at Carter, kept me from going to her.
The doctors filed into the room, and apology squinted their smiles and eyes. They took out the tube in Carter’s throat. The nurse arranged his head on the pillow. He had on a knit hat to hide all the ugly bumps and scars from his many surgeries over the past year. His blond hair hadn’t grown back. He told me so many times he would beat this. He’d been lying. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t feel anything. I was by myself now. West held Carter’s hand while he dragged in some rattly breaths. A few minutes later, Carter seized on the bed and stopped breathing.
West had been a mess while we went through Carter’s things.
I’d been a zombie—unthinking, unfeeling.
While I shifted through Carter’s nice suits and shirts in the closet, we’d both avoided looking each other in the eye and acted extra manly, but as soon as I was in my room down the hall, I’d sat with a pile of Carter’s clothes in my arms and let the tears fall. He was only thirty years old. It wasn’t fucking fair for him to be dead—wasted away, stuck in the ground.
Carter and West were my rocks. They’d let me move into their house two years ago, after I came out and Dad had a huge problem with everything. He’d been mostly okay with Carter, but now that he had two gay sons, he wasn’t handling it well. Mom couldn’t calm him down. It was a nightmare. Carter and West had rescued me, and less than a year later my brother came home with the bad news that the migraines he’d had his whole life were caused by tiny spreading tumors in his brain.
“But don’t worry. The doctors say they can operate, and I’ll be fine.” Carter smiled while West stared at him with eyes so big, I worried they would pop right out of his head.
My brother was not fucking fine.
He had one surgery and then another and then another and then radiation, and then the doctors had said he was done for, and yesterday, holding a pile of his old clothes in my arms, that had just been the end for me. If he didn’t need his sweaters and shirts and suits, and the fancy belts he wore into his office, then he was really dead.
Last night I had cleaned myself up and put on my best clothes, pocketed my fake ID, and sneaked downtown to my favorite club, Black Out, to… well, black out. Apparently I’d managed to do it, too. I was just happy to be on winter break at college right now because there wasn’t a chance in hell I could go to class this way. I was certain I’d met my friend Teddy and a few others out last night. I glanced up and froze.
Bars in front of me. They were solid, shiny steel. I cast my gaze around the room. White-washed cement-block walls. I glanced down. Questionably clean white sheets on a paper-thin mattress and no pillow. Carefully I stood with my stomach still churning. The floor stayed still under my feet, so I shuffled to the bars and looked out. Why the fuck was I in a jail cell? Nearby, to my right, sat a wide wooden desk, and a cop slouched in a chair, his head bowed over a magazine.
“Excuse me?” I groaned and held my head after I spoke, trying to fight off a stab of pain that ricocheted from my temples all the way down my neck.
“Hoo, boy, you up?” The cop grinned at me. Silvered temples on top of the dark blue New Gothenburg police uniform made the man look like he could actually help me. Older men always seemed like they knew so much more about life than I did, and right now, I was glad it wasn’t someone my age sitting there. Immediately I felt a little better.
“Uh….” I shivered and crossed my arms over my stomach. “I guess you could call this up. Um, how much trouble am I in?” Curiously, I rested a hand on the cold metal in front of me. I’d never been in jail before.
“Well, you’re going to Judge Tamaki later this morning.”
Frowning, I stared at the cop. “On a Sunday?”
He dropped his magazine to the desk and laughed. “You really tied one on. It’s Tuesday, kid. And you’ve been in the drunk tank since last night. I wasn’t sure you didn’t have alcohol poisoning, but your breath never went weird, so we let you sleep it off.”
I stared at him. “Two days? I lost…. Like, an entire forty-eight hours? How?” My stomach dropped and I gagged, slapping my hand in front of my mouth.
He leaned back in his chair. “You tell me. You were scooped off the sidewalk downtown, in front of St. Peter’s. No one has any idea how you got there. The beat cops probably saved you from hypothermia or frostbite. You’re not old enough for this kind of trouble, kid. What’s eating you?”
I shrugged and leaned my forehead against the bars. They were so solid, and there was nothing I had to do in here. I almost didn’t mind it. Stuck in a cell, it didn’t matter that Carter was gone.
“My brother died. He died a couple of months ago, but he was a research psychologist. He donated his body to science, or whatever, and we just held the memorial Wednesday night. About a week ago, I guess, if I really lost two days. That’s all.”
A look passed over the cop’s face, maybe sympathy, and he frowned. “You sit tight. I’m going to make a phone call.” With that, he stopped paying any attention to me and picked up the phone handset from the cradle on the desk in front of him. My stomach roiled, and I spotted the toilet in the corner of my coffin-sized cell just as I realized everything in my stomach was about to reappear. I hustled over there and hit the floor with my knees. The next hour, or maybe longer, passed that way. I wasn’t sure if it was my body rebelling against all the booze I must have poured into it, or if talking about Carter had set me off.