“Channing.” Her voice was soft and soothing. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“Yeah.” Glass shattered. “I could’ve been around more. I know that much.”

It was the same conversation I always heard from them.

My brother blamed himself—for what I had no idea. I didn’t blame him for his absence. Hell, half the time I was jealous of him. I wish I could’ve disappeared like he had when he was growing up. He spent most his time from eighth grade until he got his own house on someone else’s couch. I would’ve done that too, if I could’ve. I’d been too young.

Heather half consoled him, but she was always frustrated too. I could hear it in her voice. It was in everything, actually, even the way she walked around the house. Some days I wished she would move in, but part of me was scared of the day it happened—because when that happened, something else would happen. I didn’t know what, but I always felt it. I carried it around in my stomach.

The relationship between Heather and me was half because of that. We were half friends. We were half not-friends. We were half present, half not-present. Half haunted, half alive. Or wait, maybe that was just me? But Heather averted her eyes when we talked to each other sometimes, and she avoided having conversations with me in the first place. But other times, she was in my face, eyes blazing with fierce determination. I was never sure which Heather I would get, but I knew it wasn’t me or her. It was the question of her relationship with Channing. I got it. I did. I could sympathize somewhat.

I generally avoided everything.

Heather was nice. She loved my brother, but I was in the way. They couldn’t have a normal relationship because of me.

A part of me ached at the thought. Who was I to stand in their way? But this brought me back to the conversations they always had: I would be out.

Channing would grumble.

Heather would comfort.

And when I overheard, I’d always wonder: why didn’t they just let me go? Why did my brother keep trying to play the part of father/parent/big brother extraordinaire? It wasn’t a role that suited him.

He was a legend.

He was a fighter.

He ran his own crew.

The domestic look was not something he wore well. I agreed with Heather on this part.

He hadn’t been around when it was just my dad and me. Our half-brother was never around, or hardly. He was kept with his mother most our life. Channing started his own crew in high school—the whole reason the system was created. And when he graduated, he started working right away. He took over my dad’s bar two years ago, and he made it better. He brought in our cousin, and they made it a success. And he’d been fighting at events the whole time. He talked about retiring, but I never knew if that was a wish, like he was wishing to become an adult? Or he was wishing he didn’t have a teenage sister to take care of? Or he was wishing for his old life again?

Like that.

Maybe fighting was his way of coping? I didn’t understand that either.

It wasn’t like he and my dad had been close.

Channing was like our mom, and when she died, it was like he went with her. He left the family. I mean, I saw him around town and at parties sometimes—until he either kicked me out or had my guys and me kicked out. He said we were all too young.

Jordan was relieved when Channing stopped attending the same parties we did, and we had learned to avoid him at the bigger parties.

The Roussou scene was different than other towns.

People didn’t leave. Or if they did, they weren’t in the system, and those people—the Normals—didn’t really exist to us anyway. In the crew system, we’re all part of a big, fucked-up extended family, no matter the age.

“I’m going to get a refill.” Heather’s chair groaned. “You want more beer?”

That was my cue.

I stood and slipped down the hallway to my bedroom just as the patio screen door opened.

Then the refrigerator opened, lighting up the kitchen and dining room.

I grabbed my backpack and returned to the hallway. I paused, listening as Heather opened some bottles, pouring into a cup. I smelled rum. Bottles clinked together, and then the fridge door shut.

The inside of the house fell into darkness again.

The screen door opened and closed.

As I heard her footsteps going over the patio, down to the backyard, I slipped out the front door again.

I opened my eyes at the sound of grass crunching.

When I looked up, Cross stood over me, but he wasn’t watching me. He was looking at the reason I’d come out here.

He sighed, sitting next to me. “How’d I know you’d be here tonight?”

“You tracked my phone?” I sat up and grinned at him.

He chuckled, reaching for the whiskey in my hand. The cap was already off, and he took a drink, hissing through his teeth. “Fuck.” He handed it back. “Why do you drink that shit?”

I smirked, taking a drink. Unlike him, I enjoyed the burn. “Why do you?”

“Because you do.”

He said that like it made the most sense in the world.

I laughed, taking another drink before lifting my head. Below us, at the bottom of the hill and across the street, was my old home. I had no idea what time it was, but it was after dark and the house had been silent since I got to my spot. I hadn’t expected otherwise.

I didn’t know the people living there. They were new to Roussou, but I knew they were a young couple, maybe in their thirties, and they’d moved into my house when the bank sold it again. They had little kids, and they’d left some of the toys on the front lawn. I wanted to go down and put the toys away, place them on the porch and inside the toy chest there, but that was a bad idea. Talk about stalking. That was a line I couldn’t cross, not yet anyway. Right now I just came to watch my old home.

“How was the party?” I asked.

Cross shrugged, hanging his arms over his knees with his hands looped together. “It was okay.” He gave me a half-grin. “I’d rather hang, looking at your old house instead.”

“That’s total bullshit, and you know it.” I handed him the whiskey.

He took it.

“You and Monica break up again?” She was his on-again, off-again girlfriend, but I knew they’d gotten back together on Friday. Seemed right they’d break up tonight, just in time for school to start tomorrow. The relationship was really one-sided anyway. Cross tended to sleep with whoever he wanted, though not a lot of girls talked about their time with him. Cross liked his secrecy, and I was one of the few privy to his freewheeling whoredom. Monica was the other. Cross had never kept it secret that if she wanted exclusive and steady, she needed to go somewhere else.

And how I knew so much about Cross’ sex life was lost on me. We never seemed to talk about it.

He shrugged again, reaching for the whiskey and taking another drink. A second hiss, and he returned the bottle.

I took it, throwing my head back for a shot.

Goddamn.

The burn was still there. Good. It hadn’t dulled yet.

“Bren.”

I tensed, hearing the question in his tone. I heard reluctance too. Neither of us wanted to go where he was going with his next question.

“Why do you come here all the time?”

It wasn’t all the time. Maybe two out of seven nights.

I focused on the whiskey. “You know why.”

“No, I don’t.” He turned to watch me.

I hated when he did that. It was like I’d let part of the wall slip and he could read me.

I took two shots of whiskey this time. “I don’t know.”

I did, though.

I came to look for her, to see if she was moving around inside that house. I wanted a glimpse of her, even though I knew she was dead, even though I knew I was looking for a ghost. I still came.

I wanted to see her one last time.

“You’re not supposed to lie to me.”

I heard his disappointment and breathed in.

I let the air circulate through my lungs and then back out. One steady breath. Then I murmured, “You know why I come.”

“For your mom?”

I frowned. Why did he have to say it? I didn’t want to hear it. I just wanted to feel it.