Just as the venom can’t take it anymore and is about to suggest that my half sister is one of the Children of the Damned, Millie comes striding back into the room with a complete coat and tails, all wrapped up and ready to go. She sees Bethany and smiles. “Hey, sweetie. Did you say hello to Locke?”

Bethany nods her head slightly. “I like his hair.”

“Isn’t that nice?” Looking back to me, she hands me the tux. “There you go. It should fit you well enough. Rick wore it to a costume party once or something, I mean, no one really has a coat and tails anymore. Well. Anyway. All yours.”

I smile and take it and, making the excuse that my friend is waiting for me, slowly back toward the door. Millie keeps smiling and says a good-bye and that she hopes to see more of me soon, while Bethany trots over to her and hugs her around the waist as if her mother is a life preserver in the ocean. The whole place seems irritating, jagged. I feel dizzy. The venom sends shocks and strains down the cords of my neck, through my shoulders, down into my fingers. I’m somewhere between enraged and ashamed.

Fucking bitch, with her big, stupid smile and her long hug, fucking athletic blond-haired rugrat, fucking McMansion-

As I’m almost out of the kitchen, Millie says, “I’ll tell your dad you said hi.”

I nod, and then wave to Bethany. “Later, kid,” I say, a little too desperate to get out the door.

Have a good one, kid. Hope you don’t grow up to be Ophelia.

I exit the front door, and the fresh air hits me, washing away rage, nerves, and the nonstop buzzing in my head. I let it wash through my coat, my T-shirt, under my armpits and into my hair. Thank God I got out of there when I did; I was beginning to sweat and shake a bit between Millie’s niceness and Bethany’s therapy talk. Whatever you want to call it. I just felt like I walked onto the set of some weird TV show about the darkness that lives within the typical American family. Or something. God, it’s nice out.

Wonder if Dad knows crazy comes from his side. Wonder how it’d make him feel to know that you-and thus I-were spawned from his genes.

As I get into the car, Randall hands me a cigarette, and I spark up. He glances at the suit and smiles. “Shit, a full coat and tails. You’ll be the life of the party. Go, Rick.”

“Yeah, lucky me.”

“The visit wasn’t a memory you want to cherish, I take it?”

I shrug. “Millie was too nice, their little girl is in therapy, and both the kids have names that begin with B.”

Randall raises a hand to cover his smile. “Sorry.”

“It’s not funny.”

“I know.” He chuckles. “I know, I’m sorry, it’s not funny.”

“Just drive.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

He starts the car, and then, the minute we pull out of the driveway, we nearly die.

Our car and the one barreling toward us both screech to a sudden halt. Randall hits the brake, and we both lean forward painfully, the seat belts cutting into our shoulders. The other car honks at us as it backs slowly up, and I stare blankly at the man behind the steering wheel.

Again the venom fills me, swells up in me, and like on the phone with Renée, guides me. There’s no dam about to burst, just a quick, clean shot of wit and rage balled into one. Maybe I am in control or maybe it’s controlling me; either way, it feels wonderful and right. Destiny.

“Stop for a second. Roll down your window.” Randall glances at me funny and does as he’s told-my voice has the urgency of a police officer’s. Once the window’s down, I lean forward and grin politely at the dapper man with the shaggy blond-gray hair, his face curled into a sneer of contempt. “Sorry ’bout that, Dad, us kids all hopped up on goofballs, you never know what we’re doing. Thanks for the tux. I’ll bring ’er back nice and clean. Nice seeing ya!”

I take just enough time to catch his stunned, stupid expression before I tell Randall to drive.

Five minutes after I get to the waiting room, Dr. Yeski walks out with Shelby Waters, a girl who hangs out with a lot of guys from my school. She’s in my grade and runs with a crowd that loves Randall but cringes when I stop by (Randall calls them “vintage T-shirt kids,” which I think refers to their tight garments with badly screened images of crappy old cartoons on them). She’s obviously been crying furiously: Her eyes are bright red, her nose is running, and there are twin rivers of eyeliner coursing down her cheeks. She sniffles a little and mumbles a thank-you to Dr. Yeski, who just smiles and says, “That’s what I’m here for, Shel. Take care until next week. Call me whenever you want to if something comes up, okay?”

The older woman next to me clutches her cakelike cap to her head as if it might fly off, and leaps to her feet. Just as they’re about to leave, Shelby spies me and turns pale in recognition. In a soft and terrifying voice, she mutters, “Don’t tell anyone about this.” And then the old woman is pulling her away, her arm wrapped around her in an ominous fashion.

Dr. Yeski beckons for me, smiling. I trudge into her office, trying to ignore the fact that the last person who walked out of here was crying like a baby. It’s a typical shrink’s office: desk with a PC, leather couch, chair, potted plants, lots of books, and of course, five, count ’em, five boxes of tissues strategically placed throughout. What surprises me the most is a huge Clash poster on her wall with a scrawled signature reading, “For Laura-Death or glory!-JS.” In the lower left-hand corner, there’s a doodle of a trout nailed to a cross. I point at it and ask what it’s doing up there.

She doesn’t smile. “I got it signed by Joe Strummer back when I was about your age.”

“What’s with the aqua-crucifixion?”

“I asked him to draw a Jesus fish. He’d been drinking.”

“I have to tell you, the crying girl and the drunken punk rocker doodles? Hell of a first impression.”

“Understandable.” Then she plants herself in her swivel chair and picks up a yellow legal pad, and we start talking. Or she starts talking, and I get distracted…

“How’re you doing? How’s your week been?”

I snap to attention and move my eyes upward, to her face. “Sorry? It’s been okay. I dunno. Large. I mean, strange.”

She doesn’t seem to notice my piggish snafu. “How so?”

“I had to go to my dad’s to borrow a tux for a party. It was kind of surreal, being in his house and with his family. We’re not very…We don’t really spend a lot of time together, so it…threw me off, I guess.”

“Why don’t you spend more time together?”

I shift in my seat, feeling warmer than I should. Easy. “I think my mom could tell I hated being there, around his new family, and my dad just…” Deep breath, one step at a time. “He kind of considers me a bummer, I guess. Always unhappy, a little crazy, and so on and so forth. Every so often I’d start having a venom moment and would just go out and sit in the car.”

She nods. There’s sympathy there, although impartial. It feels strangely okay-I’m not being humored. “I bet that’s hard. What happened when you went there this week?”

“Well…I dunno. My dad’s new wife…Well, hold on. Is she my stepmom?”

“Not if you don’t want her to be.”

“I mean, yeah, sure, that’s deep as shit and all, but really. Technically.”

“Technically, yes. She’s your stepmother.”

I grimace. “That’s what I thought. Anyway, my stepmom was really nice, which was off-putting. She was all huggy and talkative.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“It’s just a weird thing. I like to vilify them a bit, my dad and Millie and their family. But instead, she was just really amiable and kind to me, and it was a bit of a weird experience.”

“Do you expect her to dislike you?”

Okay, here we go. I feel venom whirl around in my heart, ready for the fight. “She’s my fucking stepmother. I feel that I have sort of an inherent right to dislike her, and vice versa.”