Maybe that’s for the best.

I let my eyes, heavy and irritated, close softly.

Sadly, it’s not my time, and after a few hours of dreamless black sleep, my eyes click open again. My wounds, now rested, have been given time to be sore and uncomfortable. I roll over and feel everything from my scalp to my toes scream bloody murder. I lift my arm to scratch at the cut above my ear, and everything from my fingertips to my shoulder blade becomes a bag of rusty nails and shattered glass. Well, at least I can feel real pain again. Good to know. Christ, this SUCKS. Every movement is torture. I want to fucking die.

Lon sits at the kitchen table when I enter. He’s reading a comic book, and he does a double take when I come into the room: looks at Batman, looks up at me, looks back down to Batman, and then gapes at me like I’m a circus freak.

“Holy crap!”

“Language,” calls my mother from the other room.

“Hey,” I mumble as I sit down at the table with the speed of an octogenarian.

“What happened?”

“Got in a fight.”

He laughs like it’s not really that funny. “With what, a bear?” My mom snorts approving laughter toward my little brother. Being the subject of ridicule is, in this case, tolerable. “Are you okay? I can get you some ice…”

“I’m fine. Just a little sore.”

He tilts his head sideways, fascinated by my face. “Wow…I’ve never seen a real black eye before”

I lean forward. “Wanna touch it? Softly, though.”

Just as he reaches out to feel my swollen face, my mother enters the room and slaps his hand out of the air. “Leonardo, honey, will you excuse us for a second? I need to talk to your brother.”

Your brother. Oh man…

Lon nods to us, and then in a blur he’s in his room. My mother goes about tidying some things up in the kitchen before she slowly takes Lon’s seat and lights a smoke. When she doesn’t offer me one, I take it upon myself to spark up. I haven’t had a cigarette in way too long, and my throat has finally stopped aching from being choked. A minor blessing.

“So,” she snaps, “want to explain yourself?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I have time,” she says, taking a deep drag from her smoke. “And so do you.”

“This is gonna be unpleasant, you realize.”

“I’d have never guessed.” She shoots a smoke ring in my face. “Talk.”

I spew, starting with Renée telling me about Casey’s love for Randall and ending with me chasing my girlfriend to a taxi, with all the drama and bloodshed in between. No emotion crosses her face the whole time; she just nods every so often to show me she’s listening. I leave out certain parts of the whole ordeal-the night spent at Renée’s place, the fight with Terry, things like that. By the time I wrap the story up, we’ve motored through three cigarettes each, with no finish line in sight.

“Okay,” she says, little ghosts of smoke escaping her mouth with every new syllable. “So you and your friend beat each other half to death because you revealed something about your friend. All this while your girlfriend was there. That nice girl I met earlier today.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

After a moment of contemplation, she looks at me with death-ray eyes. “Christ, Locke, I don’t even know what to think anymore.”

Thank God for my bout of apathetic emptiness, ’cause otherwise I’d be cursing out my mother right now. “Wow, no Mom sympathy? Can I at least get a bowl of Chicken and Stars out of this, maybe a glass of choco-”

“I mean, he’s your friend,” she says, shaking her head. “He’s someone you care about. I mean, Jesus, I don’t blame you for telling Randall about how Casey feels-he’s your friend too, I know, and he was upset-but even if your friend who…who has angries like yours is the first person to throw a punch, you hold back. You don’t beat up your friends. You turn the other cheek and forgive them for being stupid or selfish or wrong. Being in someone’s life means overlooking their faults sometimes and being the bigger man, not retaliating against them.”

“That’s very Christian of you.”

“It’s very HUMAN of me!” she bellows, and jabs the lit end of smoke at my face. She’s close to tears. “This isn’t about philosophy or faith, it’s about basic human treatment! You don’t DO this! To anyone. Have you seen yourself in the mirror?”

She’s got a point. “Okay, yeah. I look pretty…”

“Hideous? Gruesome?”

“Oh, thanks, Mom, you’re a peach.”

“LOOK at you! This is the face of what these spasms of anger are gonna lead to if they keep going on! You look in the mirror one day and you see this stranger with a busted-up lip and a dazed look in his eyes, and you want to know who he is and how he got there! Don’t, honey; Locke, you’re so much better than that. Come on.”

She pulls hard on her cigarette and then, with a flourish, jams it into the ashtray. Her mouth opens as if to say something, but then she just goes quiet and shakes her head again. Finally, with nothing else to say, she stands and starts getting dinner ready.

“So, that’s it?” I say. “What do I do, Mom? There’s no way to fix this. The venom’s ruined everything. I don’t know how to go back.”

“No, you know what, enough of this,” she says, waving me aside. “I officially divorce myself from this issue. Until you’re ready to get yourself together, I’m not listening to any of this venom bullshit. I love you to death, Locke, and I always will, no matter what, but enough is enough. You want to be a thug, go for it. You want to get better, work on it and then talk to me.”

“Mom, please,” I say. Now I’m the one close to tears. “I don’t know what to do.”

“That makes two of us,” she snaps, and turns to leave the room. “Start thinking.”

The next day is Sunday, thank God, so I hole up in my room and recuperate. It’s not as bad as it sounds. I get most of my homework done and manage to replace my Band-Aids every couple of hours without making my wounds reopen (lucky me). My mother doesn’t try to baby me either, just announces when food’s ready and reminds me that I have a meeting with Dr. Yeski the next day. The military vibe goes on all day, with my mother playing the general and Lon playing the spy who peers at me over chairs and couches to get a good look at someone who’s taken a decent beating. And all I can do is laugh and think, Man, I wonder how Casey looks.

Somewhere in the evening, out of both loneliness and worry, I call Randall. When he hears my voice in response to his greeting, he sighs.

“How are you? How’s Casey?” I ask.

“Casey is, thankfully, not in the hospital,” he says, his voice heavy with the fatigue of having to tell this story over and over again. “Things were shaky for a little bit, ’cause he kept coughing up blood, but we think it’s just blood he swallowed over the course of the fight. I imagine you did the same thing. You knocked one of his teeth loose, though. I talked to his mom and dad, and they’ve decided not to press charges. You’re lucky for that.”

“You two have talked?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you…I mean, did you…was, uh…”

“Spit it out.”

“Are you with him?” I spit out.

“No, of course not. Don’t be stupid. Just because he’s in love with me and I’m taking care of him doesn’t mean that I’m going to fall for him. That’s hideously offensive to both me and Casey.”

“My mom called me hideous last night.”

“What can I tell you? Small world.”

I wait for him to answer my other question, but there’s only silence. “So, how are you?”

“Do you actually care?”

“Of course.”

“I’m tired and I’m hurt,” he says. “I’m sick of everyone overlooking their own feelings in favor of appearances or other people’s feelings. This thing was so blatantly indicative of how fucked-up we all are that there’s no point in trying to move on right now. This boil has been coming to a head for a while, and now that it’s been opened up, we need to let the infection run dry. Until then, you’re all on friendship probation. Don’t come to me for advice or instructions, because I’m all out of ideas.