“How’s Renée doing?”

“I don’t know, she hasn’t been answering my calls.”

“Do you think she’s okay?”

“No.” The response makes me feel cold and stupid. “I’m not her fucking boyfriend, Locke,” he spits. “None of this is my doing, and it’s not my job. If I were you, though, I would prepare for the worst. Beats me why, but carnage is one of her turnoffs.”

“I’m really scared, Randall. I don’t know what to do.”

“Good.”

“You think she’s gonna dump me?”

“I would.” A pause. “I have to go. Take care of yourself, Locke, because at this point, I don’t think you have anyone coming to your aid.”

I decide to give Renée a call. I owe her that much. Randall’s wrong: I am her boyfriend, and I fucked up royally, but no matter what’s happened, I love her, and I know she loves me. I have faith in her. In us.

“Hello?”

“Renée?”

Click.

Okay. Let’s try that again.

I prepare myself for the shots of fire in my veins contrasting with the blood rising to my face, but the venom seems like a background presence now. It’s definitely still there, but the actual attacks seem to have ceased.

There’s crying in the background when the other end picks up. “Who is this?” says Andrew.

“Andrew, it’s Locke. Is Renée there?”

“Holy shit, Vinetti, I am going to fucking kill you tomorrow.”

“Andrew, please-”

“I asked for one thing, Vinetti. One thing. Keep her happy. Your ass is mine.”

“Andrew, there’s more going on here than you-”

“See you tomorrow, kid. Gonna bite off your fucking head.”

Click.

That was productive. Guess I’ll give her a night to think about things.

When I see Andrew outside school, I decide that my give-Renée-a-night-to-think idea was about as ineffective as my tell-Randall one. His friends hang back around him, waiting to see what his first move will be. They all look nervous. And stupid. It’s a sea of huge pants and stocking caps, huge jackets and attitude. Terry stands off to one side, shooting me a look that’s supposed to say that he’s not afraid of me, only his face looks like it was run through the dryer one too many times, and I know why.

I reach Andrew and stare up into his stony expression. We’re inches away. The air seems to vibrate around us.

“Should we go to a courtyard or park or something?”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. “Pardon?”

I shrug. “I’ve never been in, like, an official school-yard fight. I figured, y’know, they’d form a circle around us”-I motion to his fan club-“and we’d pace around for a while until you smacked the shit out of me.”

He examines my face and sneers. “Looks like the queer beat me to it, though, huh?”

“Yeah, the queer did a number on me. You wanna go talk?”

“Yeah,” he says, waving his friends away. “I’ll talk to you guys later. Me and Locke are gonna have a chat. Omar, tell Doc Raymond that I had a family thing to deal with and all that.” Terry snorts and makes a comment, which I’m pretty sure includes “motherfucker.” Andrew and I trudge toward Broadway. I light a cigarette and offer one to Andrew, but he turns it down.

“I thought you smoked.”

“I blaze mad trees, man, but don’t smoke the bogie.”

“Oh. Right.”

“I smoke weed,” he enunciates for my benefit, “but I do not smoke cigarettes. Jesus, watch some MTV, it’s like you were raised in a fridge.”

“Sorry. Guess I’m not as ‘stupid fresh’ as you are. Maybe I should hang out with ghetto idiots.” There’s silence, so it’s apparent that I’m doing the pursuing in this interaction. “How is she?”

“She’s not good,” he says, peering pensively into the distance like a Calvin Klein model. “It’s like something just broke in her, and everything in her head just sort of went disordered, right? Like it got all stirred up together.”

“Has she talked to you a lot about it?”

“Nah. Most of the time, it’s like she can’t even think of the words. She opens her mouth and says one or two things, and then starts crying.” He looks at his hands and rubs them together. “Not taking her meds no more either. It scares the shit out of me. I mean, she needs to take her medication or else she just…ahhhh. I worry, Vinetti. I worry.” He looks everywhere but at me. I don’t blame him.

“I’m really sorry, Andrew.”

“Ah, y’know…I’m not happy with you, kid. Blood has a lot of impact on my sister, and from what I heard…Fuck, look at you, it was obviously a bloody match. I think seeing two people she loved and trusted drawing so much blood from each other was just an overload. I think she’s scared that if she puts her faith into anyone, they’ll only end up hurting each other because of her. And it all results in big ol’ pools of blood, every time.”

Andrew was so much more comfortable in my mind as an idiot bully. His eloquence only makes him scarier. Still, I find myself walking steadily beside him, a cold numbness spreading through my arms, legs, face, and chest. It feels good, I suppose, in that I’m really beginning to consistently feel things again, but it also feels hideous in a way that the venom never did, all the guilt and pain without any of the fiery hatred that sent me zooming fist-first into the fray. I do realize, though, that it isn’t a truly-numb numbness like I’ve been feeling recently, just a chilling numbness. Which, I suppose, counts for something.

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m so sorry, Andrew.”

“I told you, it happens.”

I light another cigarette with the butt of the one I was just smoking. If there was ever a time to chain-smoke straight through a pack, it’s now. Andrew looks at me disapprovingly and says, “Son, that shit’s gonna kill your ass so quickly.” Then he smiles like a goon and adds, “Though probably not before the faggot or myself do, apparently. I have to tell you, the urge to destroy you is so fucking intense, but seeing you only fills me with pity.”

I can’t help but chuckle. Again I make a mental note: just felt something. It’s strange, keeping my emotions logged, but after a period of pure nothing, it’s nice to be able to recognize an active feeling. “Yeah, well, you should see him.”

“Yeah?” He seems genuinely interested. “Did you kick Casey’s ass?”

I shrug. A surge of weird macho pride hits me. “Well, yeah. He knocked me unconscious, though.”

He chortles. “Man, if I’d done that to either of you, I woulda been put down for a hate crime, but just ’cause you’re both psycho little freak kids, you get off scot-free. I’m surprised. That kids looks jacked.”

“Hey, now. I still have your sister to deal with.”

His face darkens. “Okay, well, maybe not scot-free. But you know.”

“I didn’t know I was allowed to smoke in here,” I say, lighting my cigarette.

“Only patients are, and even then, only certain patients.” She puts an ashtray in front of me and stares with a look of slight concern. It’s a refreshing change from her usual blank face. “I suppose I should see the other guy?”

“What?”

“Must’ve been a nasty fight.”

I hiss as the lungful of smoke enters and exits my mouth. “My friend Casey,” I say softly. “You remember him?”

“The gay kid? With the…” She glances at her notepad. “The black, right? The other venomlike impulse?”

“Right.” I rehash the story in complete, blood-soaked detail.

Dr. Yeski nods slowly. “Wow,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“It’s been a rough couple of days for you, I take it.”

“You have no fucking idea.”

“You talked to…Randall, right? Have you talked to him about this?”

“A little bit. He’s taking a step back from the situation, says he’s sick of being our friend if we’re going to behave like this.”

“Sounds reasonable. How are you feeling about how this all played out?”

I shrug. “It all makes sense.”

“How so?”

“Well, the venom acts both as a current for rage and as a poisonous entity,” I explain. “Everyone I come in contact with gets hurt, poisoned. But things were beginning to go well, and I was starting to realize how great life could be if I somehow quieted the venom, or learned to control it, but I just played into its plan. I thought I had gotten a grip, but instead I just learned to make the venom part of my personality. Once it was on equal footing with me, it could take every good thing I’ve gathered in my life away from me in one fell swoop.”