I always finish work an hour before Aubrey does. It used to mean finding something to kill time for that hour before she got home to let me in. But for the past two weeks, I’ve had a key. Because for the past two weeks, I’ve “officially” moved in. The day after we talked, told each other how we felt, I went to the bank and withdrew the cash I needed for rent, as well as rent and bills for the past few months I’ve been staying here. When I gave it to Aubrey, she said she always wanted to make love on a bed of cash. So… that’s what we did. I kind of feel bad for anyone who has to handle that cash from now on, because seriously? Body fluids are no joke.

I park my truck in our garage and leave the door open so I can bring in the trash, check the mail, because I’m domesticated as fuck.

Bills.

Bills.

Bills.

I can’t believe she never made me pay this shit before. Now I know what Destiny’s Child were whining about all those years ago. I am a trifling, good-for-nothing brother. A motherfricken’ scrub. Wait, that wasn’t even Destiny’s Child.

Whatever.

Among all the bills is a single letter, no name, just the address. No stamp either. I pocket the other mail and drop the trash can, my eyes narrowed when I rip open the envelope. Inside is a photocopy of what looks like a police report and a photograph. I look at the photograph, and my stomach turns, my heart stops. My breath… my breath doesn’t exist.

I am nine years old, and the leather cracks beneath my weight…

“No.” My eyes are frantic, as frantic as my mind, my heart, and I don’t want to read this… don’t want to know…

My hands shake, turn to fists.

I blink hard, see red.

Not red.

Scarlet.

Missing teeth and crazy hair and too many freckles… “No,” I breathe out. “No…”

I tap my pocket, but my reprieve isn’t there. She hasn’t been for months.

I run to the garage, check behind the stereo on the bench where I used to keep my stash.

Nothing.

I am nine years old, and the leather cracks beneath my weight. The car still smells new, even though I’ve been in it for months…

I grasp my hair, my heart pounding.

“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!”

The letter’s still in my hand, and I find an old lighter, set it ablaze and watch it burn, burn, burn on the concrete floor. If it doesn’t exist, it won’t be true. Can’t be.

My stomach churns, and I know what’s coming.

I run into the house, search every pocket, every corner, every hidden space.

Nothing.

Then I run back outside and bypass my car, too worked up to drive.

I am nine years old, and the leather cracks beneath my weight. The car still smells new, even though I’ve been in it for months. The dash is gray. I can barely see over it. In the pocket of the door, there’s a tube of hand lotion. It’s pink. I wonder who it belongs to. “Are you all buckled in?” he asks, looking down at me…

I throw up at the memory of his voice, all over the front lawn, then I sprint the few blocks to Denny’s house. My hope answers, his eyes narrowed at me.

I try to catch my breath. Can’t. “You still dealing?”

“You still using?”

“Watcha got?”

“Whatcha need?”

I need something to settle my heart, my thoughts, my nightmares. “I need Mary.”

Logan’s truck is in the garage when I get home.

The roller door’s up, which is strange. He never keeps it up because he stores his work tools in some new, fancy toolbox that’s just begging to be broken into. The trash can is by the mailbox, and the mailbox is open.

I enter the house, call out to him.

He doesn’t respond.

I go through every room in the house.

He’s not here.

I call his phone.

He doesn’t answer.

Sweet Mary.

She’s the same as she’s always been, but nowhere near strong enough.

I’m four joints in and sitting on Denny’s couch, my body numb, but my mind won’t stop. This bitch used to be able to make me forget, take the agony away. She’s forgotten about me… about what I need from her.

You left me, Logan.

“I didn’t.”

“What?” Denny asks, and I shake my head.

You left me for her.

I shake my head again.

You’re nine years old…

“Shut up!”

It’s so easy to mess with you, to screw with your mind. That’s what happens when you think you can replace me, Logan.

“Shut. Up!”

“Dude,” Denny says, pulling on a bong. He exhales a ribbon of smoke, and I watch it float up, up, up. He points to me. “You’re trippin’.”

“I’m fine.”

I wrap Mary in her home—Rizlas provided by Denny—before I even finish the joint between my lips.

“Slow down, man. You’re hitting it too hard.”

“I’ve paid you, right?”

Denny sighs. Nods.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Nothing, man.”

On the couch opposite me, Denny’s roommates sit, watch me take control of Mary like the whore she is.

A half hour later and I can’t get that picture out of my mind, out of my goddamn eyes. I pull at my hair, frustrated.

This is what happens when you abandon me, Logan.

My head rolls to the back of the couch, and I try to focus on the lights reflected from the television, try to see something other than scarlet. It doesn’t work. I close my eyes. That doesn’t work either.

You’re nine years old, and the leather cracks beneath your weight…

My phone rings: Aubrey’s ringtone.

I reject the call.

It rings again.

I shut off my phone.

“That your girl?” Denny asks.

I blow out a breath, feel the full effects of Mary control every muscle, every move. Why can’t she control my thoughts? “It’s not working,” I mumble.

Denny laughs. “You need something stronger, bro.”

Yeah, you do, Mary agrees. Have you met my friend Acid?

By midnight, concern and anger wage war on my emotions. I pace the kitchen, my phone gripped tight in my hand. I stopped trying to call him a few hours ago, when every call went straight to voicemail. Panic swirls in my veins, scratching at my flesh from the inside. I stop to attempt a calming breath, right before I hit dial on my phone, bring it to my ear.

Tom’s voice is quiet, short. “Aubrey, everything okay?”

“Hi, I’m um…” I’m pacing again, chewing on my thumb.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart? What happened?”

“Did Logan— was he… was he at work all day?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because he hasn’t come home. I mean, he has, but…”

Through the phone, I hear Tom shift, as if he’s getting out from under the covers. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know, Tom. His car’s here, but the garage door was left open, and it’s like... It’s like he was here and then he was gone, and I don’t—” I break off on a sob, fear overtaking all other emotions.

Tom stays quiet a moment too long. Then: “Did you kids have a fight?”

“No,” I tell him, certain. “We didn’t have a fight or even anything close to it. I don’t know what happened.”

“Okay,” he says. Then repeats himself. As if he’s speaking to the both of us. “Look, Logan—he does this sometimes. Disappears for a few hours and doesn’t come home until the middle of the night.”

“He does?” I ask, my heart slowing.

“He’s never done this around you before?”

“Never.”

“I’ll get in my truck, drive around a bit, see if I can find him. If I do, I’ll send him right home to you, okay?”

“Okay, sir… yeah.”

“Aubrey?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Please try not to worry,” he tells me, but I can hear it in his voice; he’s as worried as I am.

* * *

I spend the next few hours the same way I spent the last few. Pacing. Worrying. Frustrated. At 4:30, my phone rings. I jump for it, praying it’s Logan. It’s not.

“Anything?” I ask Tom as soon as I answer.

“No. I take it you haven’t heard from him?”

“No.”

He exhales into the phone. “Let me make a few calls. You stay put in case he shows up. Stay by your phone, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

Dark turns to light, and I’ve flipped the house upside down looking for any clues as to where he might be. At this stage, I’d almost be happy to find another girl’s number in any of his pockets. I’d call the number, calmly, and ask if he was with her. I just need to know that he’s okay. That he’s not dead in a gutter somewhere. There are no numbers, no signs of other secrets he might be hiding.

I call Tom at 6:30, when I know Logan usually goes to work. Tom isn’t at the site, but Lucas is, and there’s no Logan.

Not at 7:00.

Not at 8:00, 9:00 or 10:00.

By lunchtime, my stomach is growling, begging for food.

Eating is the last thing I can think about.

I run through the past few days in my head, try to come up with reasons why he might just up and leave. There are no reasons. No answers.

At two in the afternoon, there’s a knock on my door. I pray for Logan, but he has a key. He’d come right in. Because this is his house. Our house. Lucas and Laney look as worried as I feel. Laney hugs me. “Have you heard—”

“Not a single thing, and his phone—”

“Goes right to voicemail,” Lucas finishes for me. “I know, I’ve been trying all day.”

Laney says, “Lucy and Cameron checked out his shack. Cam even took a bolt cutter to the lock on the shipping container. It doesn’t look like he’s been there for months.”

“The twins went through video footage of the security cameras around the house and by the front gate,” Luke tells me. “He hasn’t been there.”

My stomach drops at their news, and I cry into my hands. “Where the hell is he?” I sob.

Laney takes me in her arms again. “We’ll stay here with you until we find out something.”

“Have you checked his truck?” Luke asks, and I shake my head, rush out to the garage with them right behind me. We search through his car frantically, looking for any clues. There’s nothing there.

Laney asks, pointing at the floor by Logan’s workbench. “What’s this?”

I make my way around the car to see what she’s pointing at. Ash. Not the normal kind I used to find back when Logan smoked every night. There’s more of it, and it’s thicker. Lucas squats down, runs his finger through it. “It looks like burnt paper.” He looks up at me. “Do you know what it is?”

“I have no idea.”

At 5:26 in the evening, Laney’s phone rings and we all jump at the sound. “It’s Misty,” she says. Her stepmother. The town’s Senior Deputy. The one who was there the day Carter was here.

“Oh God,” I breathe out, the worst possible scenarios running through my mind.

Laney answers, but the news Misty has for us is neither good, nor bad.

It’s nothing.

* * *

Leo comes home from campus, and that’s when I know it’s bad. That this isn’t one of Logan’s episodes where he disappears for a few hours and comes back as if nothing happened. Leo’s presence in my house replaces Luke and Lane’s. He enters with a bag of food from the diner. “Dad said to make sure you were eating.”

“Could you eat if you were me?”

“I can’t even eat, and I’m not you,” he sighs out. His eyes are red, raw, tired. I wonder what I must look like. “He’ll be okay,” he tells me. “He has to be.”

“How do you know?”

His throat rolls with his swallow, then he sighs. “I don’t, Aubrey. I’m sorry.”

Day turns to night, again, and I can’t stop the constant tears filling my eyes or the constant dread filling my soul.

Leo sits in the armchair.

I sit on the couch.

We watch our phones.

Watch each other.

We don’t sleep.

Can’t.

I ask, “Does Lachlan know?”

“Not yet. We don’t want to worry him until we know.”

“Until we know what?”

He rubs at his tired eyes. “I have no idea. I’m just trying to stay positive. Aren’t you?”

I cry harder.

He gets up to sit down next to me and holds me through every sob, every inconsistent beat of my heart.

“God, Leo, I’m so worried.”

“Me too,” he says. “Fuck, Aubrey. Me too.”

I wake up in the back seat of a moving car, and I have no idea how I got here. Denny’s driving. His roommate is in the front passenger’s seat. Next to me is a girl: hair darker than dark, longer than long. Black denim clings to her legs, white tank, black leather jacket. Her window’s down, and she’s smoking a cigarette, blowing cancer out the window. She turns to me, smiles. “Nice to see you’re still alive,” she says.

At her voice, my head throbs.

It takes a minute for me to register who she is. Charlie. A brat through elementary school, a troublemaker through middle school. By the time she was expelled from high school, she’d been suspended too many times to count. Her most infamous ordeal included an attempt to set the school on fire. She’s me on steroids, minus a dick. “I thought you left town,” I mumble.

“I did. Now I’m back.” She offers me a drag. I decline.

I attempt to stretch my legs, but the car is too fucking small, and every muscle in my body rejects the movement. “Where the fuck are we?”

Denny chuckles. “You said you wanted to go with us.”

“Go fucking where?” I reach into my pocket, feel Mary’s needy grasp light hope into my lungs, and I no longer care where we’re going, just as long as I have my bitch by my side.

“Acid’s a trip, huh?” Charlie asks.

I spark the tip of my joint and roll down my window. Then I pull Mary inside me, my head rolling when I feel her warmth cover me, her legs wrapping around me.

Isn’t it good to have me back, Logan?

“So good,” I mumble.

Charlie giggles. “If you think acid’s good, you should try ecstasy,” she says, dropping a bag of pills on my lap.

“I’m good,” I tell her, staring down at the pills.

Mary laughs right in my goddamn ear, cynical and sinful. You don’t want to be nine years old forever, do you, Logan?

As soon as Leo gets the text from Logan, he tries to call him, but his phone’s already off again.

At least we know he’s alive.

At least there’s that.

Leo calls Tom, who calls Misty, who calls Laney, who calls me.

And I have no one to call but my mom.

She shows up a few hours later, followed closely by Lucy. We sit silently at the kitchen table that Logan had made me, the table we spent days sanding and staining in the garage, laughing and dancing and happy to just exist together.

I pick at a knot in the wood until my fingers ache.

“Aubrey,” Mom whispers, covering my hand with hers.

I look up at her, but she’s barely visible through my never-ending tears.

“What are you feeling, honey?”

I inhale a shaky breath, because breathing through this level of heartache feels impossible. “I feel… selfish for feeling insignificant.” I get to my feet, start pacing. “He contacted Leo, who doesn’t even live in the same house or the same fucking town!”

“Leo’s his brother, Aubrey,” Lucy says, her tone full of pity. “And they’re very close.”

“They don’t live together!” I cry. “They haven’t planned a future together! He has to know! Logan has to know that I would worry about him, that I would—” I break off on a sob, drop my head in my hands. And for a moment, just one, I let anger overpower concern, let the single emotion control me. “He knows I love him! And he doesn’t care about what he’s done or how it would make me feel! If he didn’t want to be here with me, he could have told me! He didn’t have to run away like a fucking pussy!”

“Aubrey,” Mom says, now on her feet, trying to console me.

“No, Mom!” I shake my head, keep her at arm’s length. “I knew this would happen. I knew it. I knew it was too good to be true. He asked to move in. He told me he loved me first. I did everything I could not to push him away. Everything. Because I wanted him to stay, because I didn’t want to lose him. And now…” I can’t breathe through the pain, through the constant stabbing in my chest. I cry and I cry. Mom’s arms are around me, and I fall into her, unable to stand. My sobs are loud, my tears fat, each one landing on her shoulder. My body shakes with agony. I can barely breathe, barely speak. “He’s gone, Mom. He’s gone even though I tried. I tried so fucking hard to keep him. And he’s gone…”

I’m in Myrtle Beach, in a random guy’s house, on a random strip of road, surrounded by random people. The music blares, pounding at my eardrums, and the walls are moving, warping. I’ve spent the entire day with Mary between my lips, letting her fill my mouth with her pleasure. She tastes so damn good, and I can’t fucking get enough. We’re back to the way it was, the way it should be. We use and abuse and set each other off just to bring each other down. Up and around and around and around, but always high. Always.

I leave the dark bedroom where I’ve just had a fucking four-way with her and her friends, Acid and Ecstasy, and I’m so fucking high I can barely walk, but I don’t care.

Who needs to walk when you can fly?

There are too many people in such a small space and just enough drugs in my system to tolerate it. Denny’s in the kitchen, drinking straight from the keg, and Charlie’s in the living room, tapping on her phone with a bank card. Three lines of coke stay put on her screen when she looks up, catches me watching her. She smiles, motions for me to join her on the couch.

Mary takes my hand, leads me into the room.

“I don’t mind sharing,” Charlie tells me.

“And I don’t mind taking.”

She snorts two lines, passes it over to me. I finger the rolled-up Benjamin and close my eyes. Scarlet upon scarlet upon scarlet.

When I’m done, I rub my nose, sniff the leftovers on my hand. Charlie climbs onto my lap, her warm hands pressed against my nape. She scoots closer, closer, closer, closer. Her cunt’s on my cock, and she licks up my neck, whispers in my ear, “I’ve wanted to fuck you since high school.”

I push her off of me, watch her fall to the floor. “I have a girlfriend.”

I sit in the middle of my bed, my legs crossed, my entire body and mind begging for some form of stillness. It’s been three days. I don’t remember sleeping, but I’m sure I have. At some point, after hours and hours of worrying and waiting and anger and more waiting, something has to go numb, right? Numb enough to sleep?

Mom’s still here.

She’s the only one left.

Surrounded by white drapes, I stare up at the canvas, hanging over our bed. At the words You + Me.

I remember when I’d asked him to hang it. It was about a week after his grounding had ended, and he’d spent every night of that week with me. I’d sat right where I’m sitting now, staring up at him. He was shirtless, in sweatpants, and I kept making him move it from side to side, not because I wanted it centered, but because I liked watching the way his body moved, the way his muscles curled, bulged in areas. It took a whole five minutes for him to realize what I was doing, and when he did, he was on me, verbally, physically. He lay over me, his forearms keeping the top half of his weight off me, his bottom half between my legs. “I’m not a piece of meat, Red,” he’d said, kissing my neck. He loved kissing my neck. My shoulder.

My gaze lowers, and I look at his side of the bed, at his pillow that hasn’t been slept on in days.

I smile through my tears as the memory plays on. He’d tickled my side then, made me squirm. He’d said, “You little pervert.” I’d laughed uncontrollably.

Logan always made me laugh.

My smile fades when my insides turn to stone, and the single bubble of hope I’d held onto bursts. Because… I’m thinking about him in the past tense.

As if he no longer exists in my life.

Or maybe… maybe he never truly existed at all.

I thought I’d broken his bravado.

But I was so, so wrong.

I am nine years old, and the leather cracks beneath my weight. The car still smells new, even though I’ve been in it for months. The dash is gray. I can barely see over it. In the pocket of the door, there’s a tube of hand lotion. It’s pink. I wonder who it belongs to. “Are you all buckled in?” he asks, looking down at me.

I nod, and he smiles.

“So… how are things at home with your mother?”

I gasp for air, having passed out in the bathroom. My pants are around my ankles, my cock out, and the last thing I remember was coming in here to piss. I’m higher than high, but the memories keep me beneath the water’s surface. I pull Mary from my pocket and bring her to my mouth, spark her to life. White ribbons emit for my lungs, and my mind brings me visions and moments of white drapes and freckles half the shade of her scarlet hair. She’s in a long skirt, white tank top, and an oversized granny cardigan, and she looks like a hobo. But she’s my hobo. Her laughter fills my ears, my heart, and I can feel myself weakening.

See what she does to you, Logan?

“Leave her out of this. She didn’t do anything,” I whisper, tugging at my hair. I bring Mary to my lips, shorten her lifespan just to shut her up.

As soon as I exhale, she’s talking again. Laughing. It’s sinister and it’s deranged, and if she doesn’t quit it, I’ll flush her down the goddamn toilet. You think she didn’t know? Of all the towns in all the world, she moved to yours. Why do you think she went after you? Why do you think she stayed with you? You know, Logan… You know…

My eyes drift shut, my jaw tensing. Mary burns between my fingers as my mind plays havoc with my emotions, tugging my heart in all different directions.

In my head and all around me, Aubrey replaces Mary’s laughter.

Then Mary replaces hers.

On and on.

And on.

And on.

You’re nine years old…

“Quit it!”

I’m your whore, Logan. Now and forever. Tell me what you want. Tell me what you need, baby.

“I need you to quit this shit,” I whisper, my eyes filling with tears. “Please,” I cry out. “I need you to stop. I can’t fucking take it anymore. Please. Stop.”

You’re nine years old, and the leather cracks…

“Make it stop,” I plead, liquid heat streaming down my cheeks, to my jaw.

But then Aubrey: “…or that I’d fall so fast, and so hard, and so deeply in love with every single part of you. Bravado and all.”

And Mary: She knew, Logan. You know, deep down, she fucking knew.

I swallow, thick, and plead with Mary for something more, something else. Something to take it all away.

She helps me with my pants, leads me out of the bathroom and back through the living room and toward the kitchen where the party plays on, clueless to my downfall. At the table, strangers sit. On the table are needles and powder and lighters and spoons and Mary taps my shoulder, whispers seductively in my ear, Have you met my friend, Heroin?

She presses down on my shoulders until I’m sitting with the strangers, and then she runs her hands through my hair, tells me to find her in one of the bedrooms when I’m done.

* * *

The high that comes is instant. Every inch of me warms, every memory disappears. Every thought. I’m walking on clouds. Floating. Opening every door to every room.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

I find my whore on a mattress in one of the bedrooms, laid out and waiting, her legs wide open for me. I climb on top of her, feel my heart slow when her fingers comb through my hair. Mary’s fingertips tap, tap, tap at my spine, her warmth surrounding me, caressing me.

I think I’m in love with Heroin, but Mary doesn’t seem to mind.

Mary loves me for loving her friends.

Mary loves me for me.

Pressure builds in my cock, her hands grasping me, begging me to give her what she wants. What we both want. She’s whispering in my ear, words I’m too far gone to make out. She licks at my flesh, at every inch of my body. I’m naked and needy, and she’s my dirty little slut, so wet, so desperate.

Mary is my comfort.

My joy.

I fuck Mary until she screams.

My Mary, Mary, quite contrary…

When I’m done, I pass out next to her, covered in a cold sweat, my mind, my heart, my soul finally empty.

* * *

I awake to movement next to me, and I realize I’m naked. I groan when I sit up, stirring the person next to me. My brain’s trained to see scarlet upon scarlet upon scarlet.

My heart stops when it’s not.

There’s no fucking scarlet.

No upturned nose.

No freckles.

And Mary? Mary’s nowhere to be seen.

Hair darker than dark shifts on the pillow, her murmured words making my stomach flip: “You want a repeat of last night, huh, baby?”

I flip to my side, puke all over the carpet. Sweat coats my skin, fear pricks at my flesh, regret… regret empties the content of my stomach for the second time.

“Jesus, Logan,” Charlie mumbles. “Learn to handle your shit.”

I dress. Find Mary in my pocket and leave the room. The house is quiet. Bodies everywhere. I take whatever illicit drugs I can find. I’ll need them as much as I need Mary. I’ll need them as much as Mary needs me.

Sunlight burns my eyes when I step out of the house.

I wish it would burn me entirely.

I walk, having no idea where I am.

Who I am.

I pull out my phone, switch it on, and fall to my knees the instant I read her single message: