rokhal

“Muppet Treasure Island,” Lisa was saying, fast and high-pitched. “It's, like, a 90's classic. Gabe'll totally love it. It's a house off-campus, but it's not a frat house, everyone's really nice and cool, they'd love to meet you, they know you're super smart, you know you're smart, right? Like, technically you dropped out but you kinda did the opposite of dropping out. I mean, with Guero attacking you and the rumors and that mess. Anyway, they don't know any of that, and I'm, um, I can shut up now. Come if you want?”

Robbie's stomach growled as he pressed his phone to his ear. Tommy was assaulting a Honda's engine block with an impact driver in the workbay to his left while Alejo had a straight-piped G-body idling for a diagnostic on his right. His ability to follow Lisa's speech had taken a dive after she'd said the words, “pizza party.” It was barely a month past Christmas, and everyone had tightened their belts. Uber hadn't paid out any of the bonuses he'd earned last month, Canelo had cut his hours, and Robbie's plan had been to subsist on stale tortillas and Velveeta until his next paycheck so he'd have enough for meds and rent and real food for Gabe. “I'd love to,” he said politely. “When did you say it'll be?”

“Omigod! Sorry. It's on Birch and Wudnerbar, just off campus, but it's still really safe. I'm so glad you're coming! You and Gabe!”

“Yeah,” Robbie said, swallowing and jiggling his knee. “Thanks.”

There were two types of off-campus housing as far as Robbie was concerned: neatly-kept and sterile new apartment blocks (predictable, easily accessed from a through-way, a single clearly-marked entrance to pick up or drop off drunk students) and giant rental houses (chaotic, hidden at the ass-end of some cul-de-sac, no covered shelter to wait for an Uber so the drunk students had usually gotten distracted by something indoors by the time he arrived, forcing him to waste two to five minutes texting them, or contemplate cancelling the ride as a no-show). He parked the Charger at the curb opposite a giant rental house (the driveway was packed with the cheapest new cars money could buy, Lisa's Beetle, and a stanced-and-slammed WRX with an aluminum wing that clashed with its bronze rims) and stared up at the bright windows against the hazy dark. The front door had stairs. The side door just had a single step.

Gabe stared and reached for the upside-down bouquet of faded flowers dangling inexplicably from the porch-light as Robbie tilted and heaved his power chair up that single step to the side door. “Bell, the bell, can I?”

Robbie lifted and steadied Gabe by an arm around his waist to Gabe could stand up and ring the doorbell. They could hear chatter and fake gunfire and a faint chime from inside the house, but no one approached. Gabe pushed the button again with a determined expression, setting the bell chiming a second, third, fourth time, and then a gawky white man with a deflated afro yanked open the door, releasing a waft of vanilla air-freshener and Italian spices. “Pizz—uh.”

“Lisa's friend!” Gabe greeted him, waving.

Robbie prodded himself to fake eye contact. “Lisa O'Toole invited us. This is my brother Gabe—”

“Lisa!” the tall man bellowed into the house. “Your ex is here!” To Robbie, “She said he had a wheelchair, I forgot, shit. Give us a second, we got a game on the floor, Guys, gotta move Agricola to the table! Can that thing drive on rugs?”

Rugs could be an issue. “I'll keep an eye out.”

“People can trip on rugs,” Gabe cut in. “And slide on them. Matteo has a rug in his room and it has a, a rubber thing underneath. For traction.”

“Yeah,” the man said, eyeing Gabe with a hunted expression. “Uh.”

“Lisa said there was pizza,” Robbie interrupted.

“Yeah. There. There might be a slice or two left—” A shock of rage flared up and down from Robbie's scalp to his toes and fingertips, and he shuddered a bit as Eli lunged out of the car to grab for his body's motor functions. Robbie took a deep breath to settle hard under his skin, and Eli switched gears and started shoving his own memories of cocaine withdrawal into the mix of hunger and anger and disappointment. Robbie rode the wave and bit hard into the inside of his cheek.

“Robbie! Gabe!” Lisa had arrived. Robbie was feeling so betrayed and light-headed that Eli almost managed to lift Robbie's arm and jab her in the throat, but then she saved everyone in the house when she exclaimed, “We have more pizza coming, we kinda underestimated. I'm sorry, I made them save you the last two.”

I want her now, Eli announced, tugging Robbie's eyes toward the faintly freckled skin of her throat where her makeup ended. You had your turn, and you owe me. You think she'd give you a second glance if I didn't woo her for you? Women don't actually go for the brooding, boring type. They want a man who can provide conversation.

“Thanks,” Robbie said, staring determinedly at her green plastic hoop earring. She's not in the deal and I never promised you anything for that. I let you drive at school as a favor. Because I felt sorry for you. This was exactly as awkward as he'd expected. He didn't know why Lisa wanted anything more to do with him; she'd enjoyed sitting for Gabe, but Robbie had been a bit of an ass about that time she'd left Gabe unsupervised for long enough that Eli talked him into running away and becoming a horrifying fire-demon-werewolf, and then she didn't call Robbie to tell him Gabe was gone until she'd already been searching on her own for like five hours. She'd probably picked some other quiet loner guy for a boyfriend by now. Some college student, who wasn't possessed by a dead serial killer. He and Gabe followed her in.

There were beer cans, but Robbie only saw them in people's hands, or in trash bins. A half dozen people knelt on the floor around a large game board and a menagerie of little wooden game tokens. The floor was fake wood with area rugs here and there, but the rugs were mostly anchored by furniture, not wrinkled enough that people would trip on them. There was a very large TV displaying four split-screens of some shooting game; three guys and a girl sat on a sofa in front of it, bent over controllers. The board-game people looked up and stared at Gabe as he rolled past, and so did a group of girls chatting on a couch on the opposite end of the living room.

Lisa led them to a cluttered galley kitchen where three empty pizza boxes sat on the counter, one box weighted shut by a pink purse. She removed the purse and opened the box to reveal two glorious slices of pepperoni-and-cheese, the salty grease just starting to congeal on the pepperoni slices.

Pathetic, Eli scoffed, and graciously fucked off to sulk in the car.

“I'll get you some plates,” Lisa said, opening and closing cupboards apparently at random until she came up with two mismatched plastic plates with cartoon characters on them.

“Just one is fine,” Robbie said, tilting his head at Gabe.

“You sure?” Lisa sounded upset.

“Yeah.” Of course. “I'll wait.”

“I can wait, too,” Gabe said as Lisa set both slices of pizza on the plate in front of him. “Robbie, you should eat.”

“I'll take half, okay, Buddy?” To Lisa, “Is there a fork, and a serrated knife?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure—” She turned her back on him and opened drawers one by one, revealing pencils and screws and cooking utensils and shot glasses and towels and a giant pack of paper plates, as disorganized as the contents of a foster home's bedroom closet. Robbie joined in starting at the opposite corner of the kitchen and they came up with a fork and a steak knife just before Eli slapped Robbie with a memory of tossing a victim's house so he could rip his contact information out of their address book. Robbie ignored him and got to work sawing the pizza into bite-sized pieces. The steak-knife left scratches in the plastic plate. Robbie couldn't bring himself to care, as each cut and jab released wafts of meat and bread and tomato sauce.

He scooped a third of the pizza slices onto the plate Lisa had given him and handed Gabe the fork.

Gabe stared down at his plate while Robbie warmed up his salivary glands with a chunk of crunchy, chewy, fresh-baked crust with just a smear of caramelized cheese on the edge.

“Need something?” Robbie swallowed and nudged him.

Gabe gestured with the fork and opened and shut his mouth a few times, stared at Lisa.

Robbie jerked his head at her until she sidled out of the kitchen. “What's up?”

Gabe pushed the pizza bites around his plate, revealing a cartoon rat with a swollen head; Robbie barely remembered watching an episode and wasn't sure who the rat was, but he looked unfriendly. “I'm not a little kid. This is for little kids.”

Lemme talk him around. No. Robbie scratched the back of his neck and curled his other arm protectively around his own pizza bites. “Lisa knows that. This is just what she found in the cupboard.”

“If, if.” Gabe gestured behind him, at the large living room where UCLA students were chatting and drinking and playing board games and shooting games, and pretending not to stare. “They don't. They think.”

He's worried about his rep. Lemme talk to him! Robbie gritted his teeth and shoved Eli back into the car, hopefully far enough he wouldn't keep eavesdropping. “You want another plate that doesn't have cartoons on it?”

Gabe bit his lip and nodded.

Robbie got him a paper plate from one of the drawers he'd riffled through looking for cutlery, and tipped Gabe's pizza onto it. “Better?”

“Yeah.” Gabe picked at his pizza while Robbie forced himself to slow down and savor his own.

Someone slapped Robbie on the back and he jumped and spun around, fists raised, guarding Gabe and his plate with his body. “Whoa.” The slapper was an Asian guy with bleached tips and a red leather jacket. “Didn't mean to scare you.” Robbie glared. “Nice reflexes,” Red Jacket said, raising his own fists and bobbing on his toes. Past the guy's shoulder, Robbie saw Lisa making eye contact and giving him a thumbs-up. “That your Mopar out front?”

“Yeah,” Robbie said. Then, reluctantly, “Your WRX?”

“Yeah!” The guy grinned at him and leaned next to him on the counter. He reached for one of Robbie's pizza bites. “You mind?”

“One,” Robbie growled.

Jacket withdrew his hand. “No worries, I can wait. So, you in the low-rider scene? Badump-badump?”

“Racing,” Robbie said, chewing.

“No shit! Where do you go for that?”

Red Jacket was grinning. He looked a little short to be a cop, and that hair couldn't be regulation, but it would be easy enough to shave off for court days. Robbie stuffed another pizza bite in his mouth; he had two left. “Nunya.”

“Where?”

Wow. “What's your setup. On the WRX,” Robbie asked with his mouth full.

Red Jacket obligingly described the cosmetic aero kit and ill-planned suspension and performance mods he'd installed to irreparably lower his vehicle's resale value, render it unusable for its designed purpose, and burn two hundred thousand miles off the expected life of its poor Boxer engine. Robbie listened grimly. This was probably not a cop, he admitted to himself. He still wasn't going to disclose any of the street racing community's favorite dragstrips. “So?” Red Jacket finished, still grinning. He touched Robbie's forearm with his hand. Robbie caged his last bit of pizza with clawed fingers.

“Cool,” Robbie said.

Red Jacket pulled his hand back. “So, um. It's Robbie, right?” Lisa must have introduced him. Why? “Taylor. Taylor Pei.”

“I'm Gabe Reyes,” Gabe said, backing his chair up so he could see Taylor around Robbie. “Robbie's my big brother.”

Taylor put on a wide and pretty convincing smile; Robbie suspected it might actually be genuine. “Hey, Gabe. Glad you and Robbie could join us. Whaddya think of the party?”

“It's cool,” Gabe said, straightening in his seat and enunciating like his speech therapist was standing behind him. “I like your game system.”

“Yeah? You a gamer?” Taylor raised his eyebrows at Robbie, tilted his head. Robbie shrugged; he had no idea what Taylor was trying to communicate. To Gabe, Taylor offered, “Wanna get in on the next round?”

“Go for it, Bud,” Robbie said.

Gabe hurried to finish his pizza. “Video games, when you kill enemies. They're not real. The computer, it's pretending. So it's not bad. I don't wanna be bad, I just like games. 'Cause you can go really fast, and explore, and do missions and stuff.”

“The computer's pretending,” Taylor echoed. “I like that. Hey, Conner! You wanna check what's taking the delivery guy? And swap out?”

One of the guys on the gaming couch looked over his shoulder at them. “Hey, yeah, sure!” He nudged everyone else to pause, and stood to check his phone. Gabe parked his chair beside the couch, and one of the other gamers showed him the controls while Taylor leaned against the back of the couch, watching.

“Fuu—uuudge,” said Conner, phone dropping slack against his thigh. Everyone in the living room stared at him expectantly. “Sent the pizza to the wrong house.”

The room exploded in frustration, and Robbie began to sweat. Conner hung his head and started swiping and tapping at his phone. “Sorry, guys, my bad, I'll pay for it. 'Nother forty-five minutes.”

Okay. Okay. Robbie threw away Gabe's paper plate, and carried the plastic plates and the empty pizza boxes deeper into the kitchen where one wall hid him from view. He opened each pizza box, came up with half a breadstick, a little cup of marinara sauce, two bits of sausage, a piece of pineapple, two mushrooms, and a slice of green pepper. He ate all of it, even the pepper, then washed the plastic plates and hunted around the cupboards to find the stack they'd come from.

Shoved in one cupboard, on top of a pile of napkins and towels, was a glass baking dish loosely covered in plastic wrap, smelling of warm chocolate and butter. Robbie froze, looked over his shoulder; no one could see him.

Robbie had rules about stealing food. He would never, ever steal food with a label, reserved for an individual who needed it. But common food, unlabeled food, was meant to be shared, unless it was a trap set so the foster mom would have an excuse to discipline new kids as an example, and in those cases, fuck 'em. Robbie's rule, refined over twelve years in foster care where every kid was a government paycheck first and an expense sheet second, was that the gravity of the crime of stealing unlabeled food was equal to the inverse of how hungry you were, multiplied by the odds of getting caught.

What really pissed Robbie off now, was that it was Lisa who'd concealed the food from him. This was one of the cupboards she'd searched through while she'd looked for the plates. Lisa didn't think he was worth wasting dessert on.

Robbie was very hungry, and if he was quick and quiet about it, his chances of getting caught were well below fifty percent. It was permitted, borderline imperative, to steal these brownies. He fished a table knife out of a drawer, took out the baking dish, and peeled away the plastic wrap. Several squares were missing, leaving a jagged edge. Robbie removed a row for himself, recreating the shape of the edge, and wrapped his brownies in a paper towel to stick in his inner jacket pocket. He hid the baking dish again and washed and replaced the knife.

He approached Taylor. “Hey, where's your bathroom?” Taylor pointed up the stairs, and Robbie locked himself inside, inhaled his brownies while sitting on the bathtub, washed them down with tap water, and took a moment to swish his teeth clean while he remembered one foster mom who liked to smell the kids' breath. He braced his hands on the sink and sighed. The brownies had a weird chemical taste, but they had sugar and butter and calories and they were still moist and chewy and just warmer than room temperature. Food. God! Food!

No one stared at him as he returned to the living room. Success. Fuck all of you.

He leaned against the wall, digesting and watching Gabe play Capture The Flag (with guns!) on the widescreen. Lisa sidled up to him. “Having fun?”

That was a lot of nerve. But she was being polite, so Robbie could be polite back. “Uh-huh.”

“Told you everyone's really nice,” she continued. “Taylor? He's nice. He's into cars.”

“I noticed.”

“He's a good guy. He's in my Com 120 class. He just had a breakup, but they're on good terms, it was just the long-distance thing. He told me I could tell you he's ready to move on.”

Robbie squinted at her. “I'm pretty sure we broke up almost a year ago. You don't need my permission to date him.”

Lisa facepalmed. “Omigod. No.”

“What?”

She shoved off the wall and patted him on the shoulder. “I can't deal with this. I. Just. Urgh!”

Robbie watched her head to the kitchen and return with a can of Pabst. She stomped past him and joined the board-game people at their table.

Eli leaned into Robbie's head. What's her problem?

No clue.

Video games had replaced comic books as Gabe's main hobby; he was better than Robbie, which wasn't saying much, but Robbie had never bought him any shooting games. Nonetheless, the UCLA students who'd started out going easy on him soon found they had to go less easy once he figured out the controls. The mood was less competitive than before Gabe had joined, but they seemed happy to play with him.

“Guys!” called a girl from the group that wasn't doing anything. She sounded a little loose, maybe high, except Robbie didn't smell any weed smoke. Probably lit up outside before the party. “I wanna watch the movie, put the Muppets on.”

Gabe's character ran off a cliff and died. Robbie brushed past Taylor and leaned over Gabe's shoulder. “What's up?”

Gabe glanced at the college students on the couch beside him with a hunted expression.

“You need some space?”

He shook his head. Robbie squeezed halfway between the couch and Gabe's chair, screening them with his body, and waited. Gabe leaned close and whispered, “It's for little kids. I'm a teenager.”

Robbie frowned. He'd yank Gabe out of here in a heartbeat if he was uncomfortable, but he'd been having such a great time, and this aversion to children's media was completely new to him. “You can like kid's shows. Don't you like Ninja Wolf and Batman?”

Gabe cringed. “Yeah, but. I'm a teenager. I'm supposed to like them ironically.”

Taylor tapped Robbie's shoulder. Robbie stared at him, recalled how careful Taylor had been so far to make Gabe feel welcome, and backed out of his way. “Hey, I'm cool, right?”

Gabe shrugged.

“Ouch. Well, these guys are cool, and the girls are cool, and we're all technically adults. Like, we can vote, and Conner's old enough to drink. And we all love the Muppets. Everyone loves the muppets. They have muppets on talk shows, like Wendy Williams and the news. That's why we're having a Muppet party.”

“It's not just 'cause of me?” Gabe checked.

“Nah. I mean, we're all happy you could join us.”

Robbie gave Taylor an appreciative nod. Taylor wasn't looking at him. Gabe whispered, “I like Muppets, too. Not ironically.”

Taylor offered him a fist-bump, and Gabe returned it.

Lisa had been right, Taylor was a good guy. Robbie hoped he did well in Com 120.

Oh, he's slick. You better watch him, Robbie. World's full of sick people out to exploit the vulnerable.

Go away. Robbie shoved him, and he left, slowly.

The UCLA students started the movie up, and Robbie returned to his spot leaning against the wall, where he could watch Gabe's back. Muppet Treasure Island opened with an eerie song, dirt and rough-looking men, skulls singing about ancient crimes, and mass murder to conceal the location of a stash of cash. A familiar scenario, thanks to Robbie's vigilante activities and Eli's obsession with true crime podcasts.

Gabe seemed to be handling it alright, dark and gritty as it was. But then again, it was a kid's movie. Maybe Robbie was smothering Gabe, underestimating him. Gabe could cut his own pizza, he'd seen him do it. Would Gabe tell him if he wanted Robbie to back off? He hadn't told Robbie when Eli had started talking to him. Robbie had broken his trust, multiple times, and Gabe knew about Eli and how dangerous he was. Did Gabe even want to live with Robbie? Robbie had always assumed that he was the only person who'd give Gabe the love and respect he deserved, but was that even true anymore? He watched Gabe rock happily from side to side and bounce his hands to the songs, safe and accepted by these total strangers, and felt a stab of self-loathing.

The nubbly textured paint on the wall was clammy against his hands as he steadied himself against it. He needed to sleep, but he had to watch out for Gabe.

The protagonist, Jim, was a child-actor around Gabe's age, an orphan in the care of a scary bar owner who used him for free labor; Robbie could read between the lines of this scenario, too. Probably told him several times a day how lucky he was to be washing dishes and mopping floors for her. Jim was best friends with a rat, and the rat was best friends with Gonzo, who was...Robbie squinted. He wasn't sure what Gonzo was meant to be, but that long nose reminded him of some kind of bug. A gigantic blue housefly or something. Horrible. Best friends were a rat and a housefly. At least Jim had been allowed to stay at this bar long enough to have friends.

A blind hitman showed up and burned down the bar, leaving Jim and the vermin homeless but in possession of a pirate's treasure map. They chartered a ship from the “halfwit son” of a shipbuilder, Fozzy Bear in a curled wig, who heard voices.

God, this movie had a lot of puppets in it.

Things started getting bad as they boarded the ship. There were just...puppets everywhere, with bulging eyes and coarse artificial fur, jerky movements. A troop of rat tourists treated the whole expedition like on-board entertainment. A blue puppet with a hooked nose and alarming bushy eyebrows elected himself the “stern disciplinarian” of the group, and grimly announced the arrival of the Captain, who was even worse.

Oh, this was bad. Robbie chewed on the sleeve of his inner jacket, his breath growing hot and dry with engine fumes. The Captain was coming, to inflict torture and suffering on all these hideous artificial life-forms; forboding music swelled, and a carriage loomed into the screen pulled by huge dark horses tossing their heads frantically, heavy hooves striking the cobbled pavement, growing nearer and nearer, and that was when Robbie's powers went haywire.

His body shoved itself off the wall and staggered to the foot of the stairs, and even though he'd wanted to get out of there and away from the horrible movie, it wasn't him moving. He gasped, hot breath moving in and out between his teeth and drying his gums. “Nn,” he grunted.

He'd come loose beneath his skin, his consciousness a headbolt two sizes too narrow for the threads it was meant to screw into. He lifted his hand and stared at his palm, and that wasn't him, either; he'd meant to do it and tried to do it and it had happened, but the motion was all wrong, the timing was off, and he could feel himself slipping, slipping away. Someone else was moving his body for him, and it was only a matter of time before they replaced him entirely.

This didn't feel like any of the ways Eli had grabbed control of him in the past, which meant he was trying something new. Fucker. Robbie scrabbled for purchase, trying to tense up to fill this space he no longer fit into, reeling in those threads of awareness he usually left in the car. Eli followed.

The fuck did you do? Are we stoned? Eli demanded, lashing out within the ill-fitting meat-sack Robbie's body had become. They shuddered. Usually when one joined the other in Robbie's human body, the other retreated slightly from the confined space, or they threaded seamlessly through each-other in unconscious cooperation. Now, they were both wholly, terribly present.

Fuck you, what is this? What's happening? Robbie lashed out at him, clawed for control. Eli, spotting Robbie's weakness, did the same, and their body whimpered.

Focus! Did you take anything?

Eli was alarmed. Wound so tightly around each-other, Robbie could feel each thought sliding through him one by one, all distressed and none of them intentional enough to be lies; Eli wasn't doing this. They were slipping out of his body and none of the usual tricks Robbie knew to dig in were working.

The stairs were steep and tilted. Robbie gripped the railing and rested his head on the wall. He just needed to steady himself, and then he could get to the car, everything would be better in the car, the way he could pour his consciousness out and sprawl through the frame and get breathing space from Eli; maybe with some distance he'd be able to look back at his body and figure out what was wrong. Or, Robbie realized with horror, he'd probably get sucked right in and never make it back. If he followed his instincts and curled up inside his impervious trunk, he would die again for real. As he rested his head against the glossy textured paint, he felt the same give and looseness to the wall that he normally felt just before passing a part of his body through the Charger's steel.

“Oh,” he breathed.

What. Eli could see the obvious just as well as Robbie. No. No-nononono! No!

Robbie sucked in a hot breath and stifled a sob into his hand.

You fucker! Eli howled. You selfish pacifistic cunt! This is your fault!

He couldn't die right here in the living room where Gabe was watching the movie. He couldn't ruin that for him. But if he left his body in the Charger, it could be days before anyone found him; the uncertainty would be worse than the shock. Robbie pushed himself away from the wall and wandered through the main floor, checking doors as he went. Side door, front door. Attached garage. Patio. The board game group glanced up at him curiously, Lisa too. It was a pity she'd hidden food from him; now Robbie's last thoughts of her were angry ones, and on the whole she didn't really deserve that.

People who torture, kill, and rape, Eli ranted, as Robbie finally found a coat closet. His body stooped to pick up one of a half dozen pairs of shoes, debating gravely whether to stack them outside, giving away his hiding spot, or simply shove them to one side, mixing them all up into a pile. That was a good deal! A rational compromise. I sacrificed my personal integrity to compromise with you. We shoulda racked up a dozen kills in the first month, but you never fucking looked for anyone, you lazy, selfish...This is all your fault! Your fault, not mine! I don't want to die but you've killed us both and I'm stuck with your whiny self-righteous ass thanks to our eternal spiritual bond. Eli grabbed for the body and kicked the shoes on the floor before Robbie wrestled him away. I wish I'd never brought you back. I hate you. Everything started going wrong the moment I met you, you're a curse, a fucking albatross.

Robbie folded himself up into the clear space at the bottom of the closet and shut himself in. Dangling sleeves brushed his face like searching hands, stinking of Juul smoke and mayonnaise.

Huddled on the floor, clinging to his body by the fingertips of his soul, Robbie experienced a profound and unaccustomed clarity. His situation was absurd, and entirely preventable. He'd died two years ago, yet still carried on with his life, shunning help, keeping his condition secret, and never even opening a library book on magic or demonology. Eli might not understand entirely how their resurrection worked, and he usually lied by omission except when Robbie's ignorance proved inconvenient, but he knew more than Robbie and he was easily baited into showing off. Robbie could have accessed the knowledge he'd needed to anticipate their unravelling before it became a crisis. Instead, as was his habit, he'd retreated into denial.

Denial that he was trapped in poverty. Denial that Hillrock Heights would kill him and Gabe no matter what he did. Denial that he had traumatic amnesia and other stress-related mental illnesses. Denial that his supernatural nature was obvious to everyone who saw him, the V on his forehead and the orange eye and the mysteriously vanishing on-the-job injuries. He wasn't a real boy anymore and everyone who knew him was just too polite or too scared to mention it.

I don't like you thinking in my head, Eli moaned. I'm never gonna get away from you. You weren't supposed to wake up; I thought you'd be just, dead memories so I could blend into future society, but now you're here stuck to me. Squirming around. Like a snail crawling up my nose, forever. That fucking two-headed bastard screwed me. All those virgin hearts, and he still screwed me, he's laughing at me!

Shut up and hold on.

I can't, Eli sobbed. I can't. Do I have to spell everything out for you? We're going to Hell. Where we send people with the chains. We're never gonna do that again. Never gonna be the Rider again. Never gonna drive my car, or skin a hooker, or do another goddamn line of coke. I just wanted to live, Robbie, why'd you have to ruin that for me?

So this was it. The end of his life, the end of his battle for dominance against Eli, the end of Gabe's time in the care of his only surviving family. He leaned his head back against the wall, the drywall booming in his ears at the impact, and once again he felt that same give to his skin as in the moments before the Rider and the car passed through each-other. That was how he was going to go, just fall through the wall and out of his body and never find his way back. And then keep falling, because Eli had attached himself like an anchor to drag them both down, down, down, and “No.”

He bit his hand and the pain was hot and sweet, reverberating through him and filling the gaps under his skin with sound and color.

That was a lot of sound, a lot of color. The light slicing up from beneath the closet door intruded on the nebulous after-images that streaked the darkness around him. A too-punchy Flamenco tune rippled through the wall, Cabin Fever! Robbie hated flamenco, too loud and too bright, the kind of music they expected kids to dance to in elementary school. It went on and on and on, and because it was in the walls, it was also in the bits of Robbie that kept slipping out of his body. If he merged with the wall, it would be all through him, the cha-chas and the spinning and the loud colors transforming his soul like swirled food-coloring. He cried out in horror, panted hot breaths into his hands. Tears greased his cheeks.

The door opened, and his body made an endless whine, looked up at the light, and cringed. Robbie watched helplessly from within, startled that he was still capable of making a sound like that since his voice had changed at fifteen. His soul spun helplessly in space. He tried to close his body's fingers, and they closed, but it wasn't him doing it. Beside him, Eli did the same; Robbie elbowed him away, sending them both sliding back into darkness. Far in the distance, he saw strands of Lisa's red hair catching the light as she leaned in and coughed. She was the first natural red-head Robbie had ever met; he could tell because he'd never seen faded roots in her hair, and her eyebrows were so fine she always drew them on.

“What the?” she asked, probably worried and confused. She waved her hand through the air and Robbie's body pressed harder against the wall until he realized she was trying to fan away the fumes from his breath. “Are you okay?”

Robbie tried to make his body shake its head, and it did, but there was no cause and effect relationship. He was adrift with no input. In that same horrible distant way, he unclenched his fist and beckoned her in closer. “I died,” he confessed. “I've been dead a long time. I didn't tell anyone because it wasn't a problem and nobody could tell, but I can't. I broke, I, look.” He held up his hand and pointed to his fingers.

“Cheezus, what'd you take?” Lisa hissed.

“I'm falling out,” he continued, hot breath hitching. “See. I'm not in there. I keep sliding out.” Cabin Fever! chorused the Muppets from the TV, and Robbie pictured their matted hair and bulging eyes and flinched away. “What's gonna happen to Gabe? I never made enough money. I was never gonna afford night school and a sitter. I'm not even real anymore, I shoulda just gave in and robbed a bank, if I knew I only had two years I woulda robbed a bank for Gabe. I wouldn't kill anybody.” He stared up at Lisa's worried green eyes, she looked so sincere even though she'd hidden food from him. Multifaceted. She deserved to know the truth. “I never figured out how to talk to girls. When I talked to you in English class, that was my creepy uncle who lives in my head. It was me, too, but we were like this.” He meshed his fingers together to demonstrate the way they blended into each-other while cooperating on a common goal. “I'm sorry I let him talk to you.”

“That's okay,” Lisa said, very slow. She didn't believe him, otherwise she wouldn't be okay with that at all. She sat on the floor and stared at him. “Robbie. Did you take anything?” A hiss of breath, startlingly loud. “Did you eat one of Kayla's brownies?”

Fury bloomed up, through, and around him like a snug blanket. “That was common food. I was hungry and I didn't get caught. You don't hide food from people, it's.”

“Omigod, those have pot in them, how many did you eat?”

“I didn't eat all of them.” Robbie riffled through his thoughts looking for the one he'd dropped. “Manipulative. It's manipulative to hide food. It's wrong.”

Lisa laughed thinly, her eyes very wide. “Robbie. Robbie, listen. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the brownies. It's just, I talked up how safe and responsible these guys are, and they are, they're great, and it's legal now but I didn't know Kayla was gonna bring the pot brownies until after everyone was already here and I didn't want you to think we're a bunch of druggies. ...So I didn't tell you and this is all my fault and I'm so sorry.”

That can't be right. Robbie agreed. He'd had a puff here and there at punk concerts when he was fourteen, and that had just made the world a little brighter and warmer, it had never unmoored him from the physical world. He could feel the chains of hell dragging Eli down and tugging Robbie down with him. “I died,” he insisted. “Lisa. I already died. I borrowed my car and the army guys chased me and shot me to death. It hurt so bad. And one of them looked at me after, like he was sorry. He was sorry, he knew it was wrong, but he shot me anyway. I didn't do anything to him. He just. 'Cause I was a witness, I guess. And they set me on fire.”

Lisa covered her mouth, probably in horror. “Robbie, it's okay. You just need to get out of the closet because there's a broken space-heater or something in there and I need to turn it off.”

The fumes weren't coming from a space-heater. “I can't help it.”

“Please.” She offered her hand and Robbie barely grazed it before she jerked away, hissing. She stared at him forever. “Okay. Okay!” When she stood, the world tilted with her, sending Robbie lurching backward against the closet wall. “Kayla,” she called. “Um. Can I talk to you a sec.” She stepped away and Robbie squinted into the light, wishing the closet door would close.

The door did not close. He could try to make his body stand up and pull it shut, but he had sunk so far, achingly far below the surface of his skin, and the thought of wasting his last moments on earth on something as pointless and mundane as closing his own tomb was cruelty and desolation. He fluttered fruitlessly toward the view from his eyes, like a moth tied to a bowling ball. He missed being connected to his body; as a disembodied soul his thoughts kept folding over each-other endlessly. He usually tried not to think too hard about abstractions, and now for the rest of eternity, abstraction was all he'd ever have. Abstract hell.

Cabin Fever! went on and on and on and on and on and finally it ended. Muppets chattered in muppet voices. He heard Gabe cry out, “Jim, he's tricking you! He's a bad guy!” Splashing and sloshing. Explosions. Shrieking.

That can't be right, Eli repeated himself. He sounded like he was just continuing the same thought he'd started minutes or hours before, as though he and Robbie were running on asynchronous timing. Cannabis has ceremonial applications, but it...

Can it kill us?

I don't know, Eli admitted. Robbie had never heard him sound terrified before, but he was now. Natural drugs can do things, 'cause there's math in 'em. Math shapes magic. It's stronger if you eat it. And you ate a lot. Math in the leaves.

Lisa was back; Robbie watched helplessly from within his body as she pulled on his wrist with an oven mitt. “Conner's going to the dispensary to get some CBD,” she told him, as Robbie's corpse slumped motionless in the corner. “It's supposed to level you out. Cheezus, I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault,” Robbie assured her. “It's how I was raised.”

“Okay. That's okay. You wanna sit on the couch with Gabe?”

“Nn!” His eyes squeezed shut so hard his eyelashes rubbed together. “Can't let him see me go. Just, tell him I'm sorry. And I love him. I just. I made a lot of bad decisions, and I'm so sorry.”

“Robbie, you're okay. Everything's gonna be okay.”

His head shook from side to side, parroting the denial in his soul.

She pulled harder, stood up and hauled. Robbie let his body be deadweight. “I'm serious. You don't have to hang out with everyone else, but you gotta get some fresh air. You can sit out on the deck, it's nice.”

The deck was too exposed. There were helicopters out there; all night in LA, if you looked up long enough, you'd see a helicopter. “Garage?” he pleaded, standing. There, his body wouldn't stain the carpet and it would be convenient to tarp him and load him in a trunk for disposal.

“Okay, come on.” She held him carefully by the elbow, through his layered jackets. “There's no cool cars in the garage though. Just Dustin's mom's Odyssey.”

“You can make a drag car out of an Odyssey,” Robbie informed her. “They over-engineered it. Honda does that.”

“Oh, yeah? How do you do that?”

“Get a manual,” he mumbled, struggling to recall the nuances of the build he'd seen on Youtube. “Or convert it to manual. Engine's not bad but you could swap it. There's room. Upgrade the rods and pistons maybe. Turbo. Cold air intake. Already got V-Tech, so you don't need to swap cams.”

“I'm sure Taylor would understand everything you just said.”

“Taylor doesn't mod cars, he mutilates them,” Robbie and Eli chorused.

“If you say so. Boys.” Lisa led him out the garage door and Robbie smelled rubber and gasoline. Fluorescent light danced over him, fast and dazzling. He sat on the wooden step that led from the threshold to the concrete below. A faint scent of scorched wood rose as he explored the grain with his fingers.

Robbie folded forward until his face rested on his knees and he couldn't see the lights anymore. “I was a terrible boyfriend.”

Leaves of five. There's exorcisms use number five. Juliana's laughing her ass off in Hell.

Robbie turned his attention inward, away from the velvety charring wood and the weight of his own forehead on his knees. Would Mom be happy I'm dying, 'cause it meant I killed you, too?

'Course. She hated me. Never let a bitch like that into your life, kid, or she'll poison everyone. Even if they always loved you. She'll take 'em all away.

Mom would probably be right. Robbie moaned. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

Lisa hummed. “Don't worry about it, you had so much going on.”

In the quiet of the garage, and the dark behind his closed eyes, still and hunched on the step, Robbie felt himself slipping away again, faster, deeper. This was it, he thought. This had to be his last moments before Eli's curse dragged them both down. “I don't wanna go to Hell,” he sobbed. “M'sorry, I don't wanna go.”

There was a bell, like in that AC/DC song, and Robbie clutched the back of his neck with both hands, trying to hold on. CPS, he thought. The terror that engulfed him should have raised every hair and locked every muscle, but instead his body sat inert, empty, all its wires cut.

“That's the pizza,” Lisa said, rising.

“I just came for free pizza,” Robbie confessed.

“I'll get you some, don't worry. Stay put.”

Darkness sealed him up on all sides. “I'm trying.”

Did you eat five brownies? We're fucked if you ate five brownies.

Maybe, Robbie replied miserably. He was reaching for comfort in his last moments, and the closest he could grasp was Eli. Even his hatred wasn't enough to make him let go. God, he was so pathetically lonely.

A dreadful, irresistible force pressed through his right shoulder and sent him and Eli churning through each-other, and with it an intense smell of herbs and cheese and fresh bread that poured under his skin like the thick white smoke of a dying electrical motor and permeated every crevice of his being, a scent potent enough to shove him down below the earth and re-animate his corpse. His body reached up and lifted his head to fill his eyes with a miles-wide plane of glistening, lumpy, caramelized cheese that interfaced with a conic section of thin bread through a layer of red matter the same color and texture as blood and ground bone. Tomad, comed; este es mi cuerpo, Robbie remembered dimly. He faced obliteration, and took it into himself, bread and cheese crisping further in his hands as cheese and tomato sauce unfolded within him. For an aeon, Robbie Reyes did not exist. There was only the cheese pizza, which possessed him entirely.

“Feel better?” Lisa had asked him.

Robbie wasn't sure how she expected him to answer, because he'd just surrendered himself to the infinite. But his body sniffled back tears of motor oil and nodded.

“You want some more?”

He nodded again. The second slice went down faster, and he felt himself surfacing—someone was surfacing, but it might not be Robbie and it certainly wasn't Eli. It was probably the cheese. “I died,” he reminded her. “I'm not really here.”

“Hey, listen.” Robbie jerked upright, staring. That wasn't Lisa's voice. That was a different woman, sneaking up on him. She moved her head in front of his fixed vision, mouse-brown hair in a ponytail and shrewd gray eyes. “What you're feeling? Like you're not real or in control of your body? That's just the brownies. Like, I'm kicking myself for not labeling them but I thought it'd be fine if I just told everybody—anyway, edibles just do that. Your body metabolizes it into a whole different drug from what you get when you smoke it, it turns into a dissociative. It makes you dissociate. But it's going to wear off. Just. Might take the rest of the night.”

“Okay,” Robbie said dubiously. “But I'm really dead. I exorcised myself by accident.”

You'd think if he'd wanted to booby-trap me he'd trigger us to fall apart first time I got some cocaine, but maybe he didn't know me that well. Yegor Ivanov, he knew me, he knew what I liked. ...Robbie, that asshole, he used me! He led me by the nose! Oldest trick in the goddamn book, when we get down there I'm going to cut his heart out and eat it. Don't needta worry about prions down in Hell. Robbie, there's an upside.

“I don't wanna eat people,” Robbie protested.

Hideous cackling erupted all around him and he covered his ears and turtled in. No, no, go away go away GO AWAY

“Take the CBD, it'll help you sleep,” Kayla ordered, still giggling. “Here.” In her palm gleamed two capsules of shimmering golden oil.

Robbie leaned in and gazed at them. “I have work in the morning.”

“If you want a prayer of being in any way functional, you'll take these, and wake up when you wake up,” Kayla said firmly.

Robbie licked his lips, watching the tiny air bubbles trapped in the capsules flash like timing lights under the humming fluorescents. “What's it gonna do to me?”

“It'll help.”

Indecision froze him for a moment, and during this moment, Lisa crossed in front of him and took his hand in her oven mitt. “Robbie, trust me? Could you trust me please?”

Robbie trusted her good intentions. He'd doubted her intentions today, and it had killed him. “I'm sorry I thought you hid food from me.”

“Okay, it's okay. I mean, it's totally messed up that that would even occur to you, but. If you can't trust me, could you trust that Kayla knows more about, about pot, than both of us put together, and take the CBD caps?”

He swallowed, feeling each muscle of his throat squeeze in turn as the motion rippled inward. “I'll trust you.”

“Okay, here.” She turned his palm upside down and dropped the capsules into it, smooth and heavy and elastic. The impact was soothing. “You. You gotta put them in your mouth.” Robbie lifted his hand awkwardly and maneuvered the capsules past his teeth. “Here.” A wide-mouthed plastic bottle with a sweet, spicy scent hovered under his nose. “It's just carrot juice, it's like. Healthy.”

Robbie took a dubious sip and held it in his mouth for a hundred years as red-and-yellow lights burst out from the liquid and pattered gently against the inside of his face before he swallowed. “It's tasty.”

“You can keep it. Come on, can you stand? Ben's gonna let you use his futon. He's got all his books cleared off for you.” Robbie's legs pushed the floor down and his head up. His feet were heavy, and the knit of his socks dug into the bottoms of his toes.

Kayla cut in from his opposite side. “Does he use blankets? With his mutation or whatever?”

“Yes, he uses—” Lisa cut herself off. “I mean, I assume—”

“Just. It might be safer for him to sleep in the tub. Or leave him in the garage.”

“We are not leaving him in the garage,” Lisa snapped.

“I should try my powers,” Robbie interrupted, and Lisa and Kayla backed hurriedly away from him. That might...yes, that could work! It's just poison, you've been poisoned before, we can burn it out! Eli grasped Robbie's head and turned it hungrily toward Lisa, and Robbie yelped and hauled him down away from the surface.

“Robbie,” Lisa asked steadily. She didn't sound like it, but she was probably mad and scared. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Robbie said. Now that he thought about it, with as terrified as he'd been since the angry blue bird had announced the Captain's imminent approach, he should have burned up several times already; he was completely defenseless. He should lie. “I don't have powers.”

“Let's say we believe that,” Kayla suggested.

The door opened and Robbie balked. “Gabe. I don't want him to see, if I die. If I'm walking past and I die.”

Kayla scoffed and jolted his elbow. “You're not dying! Nobody dies from getting too stoned!”

“Gabe's in the ground-floor bedroom watching Kamen Rider with Taylor,” Lisa told him. “He won't see you all messed up.”

That didn't make any sense. “Everyone was watching the movie.”

“Movie's over, Robbie. He's fine.”

Robbie allowed them to push and pull him through the house and its bright steady lights, up the endless and wandering stairs, through a grim gray hallway, and into a bedroom with an elevated bed that hovered over a bare futon. A humming desktop computer with two monitor screens dominated the desk, and books, papers, and dirty clothes covered the floor. He laid down on his stomach and wrapped his arms around his head. He heard dragging, scraping, a window opening. City noise. A fan humming. “Gabe worries about me sometimes.”

“He's fine,” Lisa repeated. “We'll tell him you're having a surprise sleepover if he asks about you.”

“Gotta tell him I love him before I go,” Robbie mumbled. The fumes of his breath, trapped between his face and sleeves and the lumpy mattress, drowned out the strange scents of this house in a familiar automotive fog.

“You can tell him in the morning,” Lisa said, patting the futon beside his elbow. “I promise, you'll wake up and everything'll feel better.”

“I wanna wake up,” Robbie begged, and a minute, or an hour later, he fell asleep.

Robbie woke up before dawn, dizzy, confused, unsettled, and desperately thirsty from too much pizza and sugar and not enough water. But his body was his own again, and he understood what he'd experienced last night just before Eli explained it to him anyway: The harder you tried to dig in to your body, the harder the drugs hit you and the more you felt like you were about to fall out. Vicious cycle. Kicker was, it did the same to me; another dud to cross off the list.

Eli let slip a lot of creepy things like that. Robbie should probably try to figure out what he meant, like why Eli had been so convinced that they were both being dragged down to Hell, or who was that...two-headed person Eli had given virgin hearts to in return for designing his powers for him. If Robbie were to take anything at all from his experience adrift in his own mind, it was to stop ignoring long-term hazards in favor of immediate crises. He really had to find out what kind of magical bullshit Eli had chained him to. Just as soon as Uber coughed up his bonuses and business at the shop picked up and he saved enough money to take a week off work.

When he crept back in from the bedroom, there was yet another UCLA student staring at him, this time from the top bunk. “You melted my futon cover,” the student said.

Robbie stared down at the strands of crispy plastic and scorched cotton where his face had been. “Accident,” he croaked.

“Whatever,” the other man grumbled, turning over. “Gotta find a towel to put on that or something. Kayla owes me so bad.” Robbie hovered in the doorway, still not quite embedded in the physical world, until the student rolled back over and tried to make eye contact with him. “I'm not a watchdog or some shit. UCLA's mutant-inclusive. Not your fault.”

Robbie nodded and laid back down. It was only four in the morning. That cover story wouldn't hold for long, and it wasn't much cover, but...it fit. Except for the fact that Robbie and Gabe had already been tested for the X-gene like most kids in the system, and if they'd been positive they'd have been shipped all over the country between the handful of foster homes willing to take them.

He had a thought and wriggled around until he could dig his phone out of his jeans pocket; he powered it back on and waited in resignation. It had to be dead, he'd have to ask his hosts to borrow internet access so he could Google Canelo's number and let them know he'd be late, maybe draw a...a goddamn map to get out of Westwood and back to East Los so Gabe could get his morning meds on time. But to his surprise, the phone powered on normally. His butt must have stayed closer to human temperature.

Lisa had texted him a row of yellow heart emojis, and then, “Feel better”.

“I do. Thank-you.” Robbie replied. He should probably select some emojis, too. After careful deliberation, he sent a carrot, a pizza slice, and the smiley called “weary face” because he was still wiped out. He put his phone away and crept downstairs to check on Gabe.