Darcy’s waving at me like her car’s broken down on the side of the road and I’m the first motorist she’s seen in an hour. She’s on the phone with someone, and after a second, I realize she’s on my phone with someone.

“Here he is!” she chirps as soon as I’m close, and doesn’t wait for a response from the other end before holding it out to me, eyes wide.

“IT’S YOUR BROTHER,” she stage-whispers so loud that everyone in Aunt Sadie’s hears.

Oh, fuck.

I take the phone as the cherry pie in my stomach turns to lead, every muscle in my body tensing. Eli and I talk the second Monday of every month, and I’ve never gotten a good call from him on any other day.

“Eli,” I say, trying to sound casual. “What’s up?”

“They moved me up the valley,” my little brother says, his voice flat and affectless. Even though he’s sounded like this for three years now, ever since he got to prison, it’s still deeply weird.

“Up the valley to where?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure I already know the answer.

“North D.”

I turn and walk out of Aunt Sadie’s, Darcy still wide-eyed behind me, the bells on the door clanging as they smack against the door.

“The fuck did you get moved to supermax for?” I ask, my voice rising.

“North D ain’t supermax, it’s regular max,” Eli says. Still flat, like he’s explaining how to pour concrete.

“Answer the question.”

“These assholes came after me,” he starts. “I don’t know, man, I wasn’t doing nothing and out of nowhere these three fuckin’ cholos—”

I shut my eyes, because prison hasn’t exactly made my idiot brother less racist.

“—Come up and, you know, they start talking some shit like hey gringo, you know I like white ass-pussy—”

“Spare me the soap opera and tell me what fucking happened.”

There’s a pause. I can practically hear the wheels turning in Eli’s head.

“They came for me but I had a shiv because this other guy’s been making noise about how he don’t like me, and I gotta protect myself—”

“You stabbed someone?”

Silence.

“He still alive?” I ask.

Now I’m standing on the curb, facing into the street, watching the cars go by. I feel oddly detached, because it doesn’t exactly surprise me that Eli’s gone and stabbed someone.

Fuck, I wish it did. But I don’t think anything he does can surprise me anymore.

“It was self-defense, man, they was comin’ at me and what was I supposed to do?”

“Did you fucking kill someone else or not?”

“Nah, that fuckin’ asshole is still alive, and his fuckin’ friends are all probably laughing their asses off right now, about how they started some shit and I’m the one who got caught? Fuckin’ sneaky sons of bitches, that’s the thing, in here all the Mexicans stick together and all the Blacks always stick together but the second us white men start sticking together, it’s—”

“Are you getting charged?” I ask, cutting off his next racially-themed rant. “Is that why you’re calling me, so I can pay for your lawyer some more?”

“It was fuckin’ self-defense, man, and they’re trying for assault with a deadly weapon and a couple other things, and you know all that is bullshit,” Eli says. “I got a right to defend myself. Even in here I got that. They came at me.”

Just like that, anger flares through me, hot and black and poisonous. I have to take the phone away from my ear for a second, and I swear to God I almost pitch it into the street as hard as I fucking can.

Nothing’s ever been Eli’s fault. Not according to him. None of the shit he did as a teenager, stealing cars to joyride or smashing up store windows just because he could, usually fucking high or drunk or both.

When he got busted for assault and did eighteen months inside? Not his fault. He was totally being framed, according to him, because the police were out to get him. Nevermind that there was fucking security video footage.

There was video footage during the robbery, too, the one where he held up a liquor store with his idiot buddy, probably out of their minds on meth, and Eli beat the owner with a tire iron. He died later. Eli swore the tape was tampered with somehow, and now Eli’s in prison for twenty-three more years.

But it’s not his fault. It’s just that everyone’s out to get him. It’s always been that way.

“Does Mom know?”

Now I’m pacing back and forth, anything to get the anger and frustration out of my system. The bells on the door jingle and Darcy comes out, arms folded across her chest, and looks at me questioningly.

I look away.

“I ain’t told her yet. What’s the point?”

“She should know where to visit you.”

“She’s not gonna know the difference.”

“You should still fucking tell her.”

Eli snorts.

“Yeah, sure,” he says. “I gotta go. North Delano. My cigarette money’s low, too, if you don’t mind.”

“You have to be fucking kidd—”

“Bye,” he says, and there’s a heavy click on the other end of the line. I’m left standing on the sidewalk, staring at the words CALL ENDED, my knuckles white from gripping my phone so hard.

I’m shaking, I’m so fucking mad. The only thing that keeps me from throwing my phone into the brick wall or into traffic is the fact that Darcy’s standing right there, watching me, and she looks nervous.

So I shut my phone off. I put it into my pocket, and I don’t even punch this fucking wall though I want to. I don’t pick up the weathered wooden bench and throw it into the street, like I want to.

“How’s Eli?” she finally asks.

I just shake my head and start pacing back and forth again, because I have to do something.

“That bad?”

“I fucking can’t,” I say, cracking all the knuckles on my right hand. “That fucking goddamn asshole, he calls me and then he acts like—”

I pass by Darcy again, still pacing, and she grabs my forearm, and any other time it would be like a lightning rod to my dick but I’m so fucking pissed at my brother that I just stop and glare at her.

“You’re shouting,” she says.

“Good, everyone can know what a shitshow my—”

Darcy puts a hand over my mouth. I’m so surprised that I stop shouting, I stop pacing, and we just look at each other. Her hand is small but strong, her fingertips calloused.

“You’re gonna get us banned from Aunt Sadie’s,” she says, in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice. “Can you hang on one more minute, and I’ll be right back?”

She takes her hand off my mouth without waiting for an answer, and a prickle of disappointment travels through me, even as my brother’s dumb voice echoes through my head.

“Yeah,” I say, and Darcy turns and disappears into Aunt Sadie’s.

I get back to pacing. People on the sidewalk look at me weird, not that I give a shit. I don’t even know why I’m so pissed, because what the fuck do a few more years in prison mean for Eli? He’ll be forty-five when he gets out already, his twenties and thirties lost to orange jumpsuits, solitary confinement, stupid grudges against other prisoners and making toilet wine.

I just wanted something else for him, I guess. I wanted him to want better.

Darcy reappears a few minutes later, and I’m still pacing and fuming. She’s got a whole pie in an aluminum tin, plastic lid, two plastic forks.

“Come on,” she says, walking past me, and I just follow her. I don’t know what the fuck else to do.

When we get to the car I unlock it. She puts the pie in the back seat and turns to me.

Then she grabs the keys out of my hand.

“Get in,” she says, pointing at the passenger seat.

“You’re not driving.”

“Yes, I am. Get in.”

“You’re not on the rental agreement, you can’t fucking—”

“I don’t give a shit, Trent, and you’re not driving like this so get in the fucking car.”

I hold out one hand for the keys. She crosses her arms over her chest, keys tight in one hand, and glares at me.

“You’re not driving like this.”

“Like what?”

“Pissed about your brother.”

“Darcy for fuck’s sake I don’t need you to fucking nanny me right now, I just need to fucking drive back to the fucking hotel, and—”

She opens the driver’s side door, gets in, buckles her seat belt, and looks up at me, both eyebrows raised in her so what are you gonna do about this face.

“Motherfucker,” I mutter, and walk around the car. Darcy’s stubborn as a mule and she can be impossible to argue with sometimes, and besides, I haven’t fucking got it in me right now.

Anyone else? Fuck ‘em. But she’s my weak spot and I lose every argument we have.

She starts the car and drives out of downtown Tallwood in silence. After about five minutes we’re deep in the woods, on some winding two-lane road, the thick blue-green-gray pine forest surrounding us, the sound of wind whispering through the trees, and I feel myself start to unwind.

“Are we going back?” I finally ask.

“Nope.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

I hate secrets and surprises, but I let her have this one. No harm in it, right?

We drive for a few more minutes, and there’s nothing but forest and road, the occasional driveway to a house deep in the woods. It’s astonishing how easy it is to get away from civilization here, how little time it takes before there’s no other sign of human life.

I take a deep breath, because I’m still fucking angry but I don’t feel so dangerous any more. I don’t feel like I might just see white and hit something, then realize thirty seconds later that I’ve done something awful.

I’m not afraid of much, but I’m afraid of myself.

“He stabbed a guy and got moved to a maximum-security prison up the valley,” I finally tell Darcy.

She steps on the brakes and looks over at me quickly, her blue eyes worried.

“Oh, shit,” she says softly.

I tell her everything. She already knows the backstory, of course, but she just listens as she turns off the main road and onto a gravel one, the rental car bumping over ruts. After half a mile or so the gravel ends, and she pulls into a wide spot, then kills the engine.

“Come on,” she says, getting out of the car, still moving a little gingerly.

I don’t argue. I gave up arguing with Darcy, and I just follow her out.

The sound of the wind is even louder here, and it takes me a few moments to realize that it’s not wind, it’s rushing water.

Right at the edge of the little parking area is a huge, steep cliff, a river below about sixty feet down. There’s no fence, no warning signs, nothing. There are a few spindly trees, but nothing strong enough to stop a car from going over.

Darcy points at a rock. It’s about the size of my head.

“Throw it in,” she says.

I look at her. She looks at me.

“Come on. Throw the rock into the river.”

I almost protest. I’m still in a bad fucking mood, and I’m tempted to tell her that I don’t want to throw fucking rocks into fucking rivers, I just want to go back to the hotel, but I’m already here.

“You’ll feel better,” she offers.

I don’t think it’s true, but I pick up the rock anyway.

“Over your head,” Darcy says. “Really launch that bad boy. Maybe yell while you do it.”

I heft it once. It’s heavy, and I walk until I’m about a foot away from the edge, then lift the rock over my head.

This is fucking stupid, I think.

And I hurl it downward, straight into the river, where it makes a deep, satisfying kerfloop noise. Darcy looks over at me, a smile around her eyes, eyebrows raised.

“This is dumb,” I tell her, and bend to pick up another rock. This one’s even bigger. I throw it into the river even harder.

The splash is even more satisfying.

“So dumb,” Darcy says, crouching to pick up a rock as well. I watch her cautiously from the corner of my eye as she lifts it over her head and chucks it downward, but she’s fine.

We both watch as it splashes into the river, and without speaking, she bends and picks up another one.

“Try yelling,” she suggests.

She doesn’t have to suggest it twice, and I shout at the top of my lungs as I propel the next rock down, watching it tumble end over end until it hits the water. Fuck this feels good.

“Aahhhh!” Darcy shouts, picking up one more and holding it over her head. “Aaaaauuughhhhh!”

She launches it down. It falls in the river. We’re both breathing heavily, but this might be one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever done.

“You feel any better?” Darcy asks, pushing her hair out of her face.

I pick up yet another rock.

“I’m getting there,” I say, then shout as loud as I can and chuck it on down.