Chapter 3

My hair was falling out in clumps now, and the bone pain kept me from closing my eyes at night.

Lottie thought I was asleep. Every night she'd be out on the balcony gaming on a call with Steve, and their laughter carried inside, sharp and grating.

That noon, Steve showed up using "dropping off company documents" as his excuse.

The second he was through the door, he wandered a lap around the living room in his sneakers.

"It's so cozy in here. No wonder you never want to come back to the office, Ms. Barnes. Turns out you've got such a nice little safe harbor at home."

I ignored him.

When he reached the coffee table, he let out an "oops" and knocked over the pill box I'd just set out, dead on target.

The last few cancer pills spilled out.

He scrambled to pick them up, and in all the fumbling he crushed several under his feet.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to..."

Lottie heard the commotion and came striding over, frowning.

"What happened?"

Steve ducked behind her, looking like a startled little deer.

"I accidentally knocked his medicine off... Ms. Barnes, did I mess up?"

Lottie glanced at the crushed bits on the floor. Her tone didn't so much as ripple.

"Broken things bring good luck. We'll just buy more."

Back in the day, when she ran to every pharmacy in the city for me in a panic, she probably never imagined she'd one day stand in front of the same person and tell someone else, about medicine he'd knocked over, "We'll just buy more."

It really was different now.

That evening.

The savage pain triggered an acute hemorrhage. I collapsed on the freezing floor, my mind slipping away.

Using the last of my strength to dial 911, I pressed Lottie's number with shaking fingers.

I wanted to hear her do what she'd done every other time, when I curled up in pain, cupping her hand over mine and saying, "Don't be scared, Russ. I'm here."

The phone rang for a long time before anyone answered.

Steve's bright laughter came through. "Ms. Barnes is helping me with the claw machine! Whatever you need, I can pass it along for you!"

Behind him, the cheerful music of the arcade played on.

The phone slid out of my hand, and the world went dark.

When I woke, I was in a hospital. Lottie sat by the bed, cotton candy stains from the arcade still on her clothes.

I opened my eyes in a daze, and somewhere in my mind, the way I did every time I got sick, I reached for her hand without thinking.

The moment my fingertips brushed her sleeve, she shook me off.

"Why would you do that to Steve? That video online, did you post it?"

Lying in the hospital bed, all I felt was how absurd it was.

Absurd that I'd come so far from the boy I'd been at fifteen and still hadn't learned it:

the person in front of me stopped being someone who would hold my hand a long time ago.

Seeing that I wouldn't speak, Lottie shoved her phone screen right up to my face, anger in her voice.

"He's got no one in this whole city. I was already getting ready to send him off. Why would you do something like this?"

In the video, my father had rushed to the street outside Lottie's company. Steve had just gotten off work, and my father raised his hand and slapped him across the face in front of everyone, eyes red as he cursed him:

"You shameless homewrecker, seducing another man's girlfriend!"

Steve had been branded a "homewrecker," and the post ran thousands of comments deep.

Lottie drew a deep breath. Her voice shook a little.

"Do you even know Steve almost jumped off a building?"

"I didn't post the video..." I explained, my voice barely a thread.

Before I could finish, Lottie's phone rang again.

She glanced at the name on the screen, didn't spare me another look, and dropped one last line:

"You take a good hard look at yourself, and stop stirring up trouble!"

Then she turned, slammed the door, and was gone.