While Renée and Mom get the cake out of the oven and I put the finishing touches on my face paint (Gene Simmons, thank you very much), I motion for Lon to come into my room.

“Close the door behind you,” I say with my back to him. I hear it click shut and then take off my shirt.

He whips off his mask and gapes. “Oh my GOD,” he whispers. “Does Mom know?”

In the middle of my lower back is Lon’s birthday present: my first tattoo. It’s a blocky outline of a spider’s body, the legs jaggedly bending out from either side of it-the symbol that Spider-Man Venom bears on his chest and back in the comics. In the center of the symbol, on the abdomen, it reads simply: LON

“No, of course not. Not yet, anyway. That’s why I brought you in here all secretly-Renée’s the only other person who knows.” I look over my shoulder and smile at him. “C’mon, check it out up close. You can touch it if you like, just be careful.”

He nervously inches up to me, and I feel his cold fingertips tracing the design on my back. “Oh, man…I can’t believe you did this. Did it hurt?”

“A little,” I say, remembering the way my hand tightened over Renée’s as the first flush of pressure turned into fiery pain. It wasn’t as bad as getting the crap kicked out of me by Casey, but it was pretty fuckin’ bad. Renée’s artist was gentle, though, and had a huge Spider-Man obsession. “Not as bad as everyone makes it out to be, though. It was totally worth it too. Happy birthday.”

“This is my present?” he squeaks, his eyes growing massive. “You got this for me?”

“What…of course I got it for you! That’s your name there! It doesn’t say ‘George’ or-or ‘Bub’ on there, it says ‘Lon’!”

“Wow. I don’t…I mean…I…” Suddenly Lon’s crying like an old lady at a wedding, his hands clapped to his mouth and tears pouring down his face. I turn around and grip him in a big hug, squeezing him tight enough to wring the juices out of him.

“Thank you,” he blubbers, his face sticky and wet against my bare chest. “Thank you so much, Locke. I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe it.”

“You doofus,” I say. “You know why I got the Venom symbol around your name, right?” I feel him shake his head against my chest. “When we were at Chapter and Verse, and I flipped out? You remember that?” I feel a nod. “Right, well, at the end of that day, after I flipped out at the woman behind the counter, I told myself that I was going to get rid of all of that stupid anger and hatred for you. There were very few things that made me really want to get rid of the venom, but you were always at the top of the list. It hurt you, man, and I was always scared…” I take a deep breath, preparing myself to say something that I wouldn’t ever dare admit. “I was always scared that one day you’d accidentally do the wrong thing, and I’d really hurt you. And that idea was too much, y’know?” I pull him away and look into his puffy red eyes. “I haven’t had an angry in over a month, kid. Thank you for making that possible.”

Lon bursts into tears again, so I clutch him for a while longer until he stops. We clean ourselves up, him wiping tears and snot from his face while I wipe the same from my sternum. I get my shirt on, Locke yanks his mask on, and we emerge from my room with a knowing nod. Lon, my friend, my brother. You will always be my inspiration.

“Guys,” I hear my mom call out, “there’s someone here to see you.”

I turn around, expecting one of Lon’s school friends-

But no. It’s just my father.

Lon runs over to the man in the suit, the man holding a big box wrapped in orange, the man who abandoned him, and gives him a grappling hug. My dad growls playfully as he swings Lon in his arms, giving him a hard pat on the back. Knowing Lon, it probably hurts, but he doesn’t seem to care. He looks good, Rick does; he has a bit of the distinguished-older-man thing going on right now, sort of like Jeff Goldblum, only a little grayer. A pointed wizard’s hat sits on his head. This is his idea of a costume.

After handing Lon his present and asking the usual introductory questions, he marches up to me with a crooked smile on his face. “Locke. How’re you doing, son?” His hand jabs out.

There’s the stirring, the flexing, the twitching of something solid and alive inside me. A murky cloud stirs up, and a clawed hand reaches up through it.

I put my hand into his. We have a few hard shakes before breaking it off. “I’m doing okay. How’s life on your end?”

“Ah, y’know, life is life,” he says, glancing casually around the apartment. “Work, family, sleep, eat, whatever. Nice makeup, by the way; shout it, shout it out loud!”

How dare you speak to me about family, you absentee shit? “Thanks, but I just do it for the chicks. You want your tux back?”

He looks me up and down. “You’re not wearing it today?”

“It was for a party a couple of weeks ago. Besides, I don’t think Ace and Paul would be cool with it.”

“Huh. How well did it fit you?”

“Perfectly.”

“Then keep it,” he says, as if he’s giving me the key to the city. “I haven’t had much use for it any time recently.” His Used Car Salesman smile pops up. “And I bet you looked good in it.”

“Thanks. I did. How’s the baby?”

He hisses between his teeth, and I gain no decent amount of pleasure imagining five-in-the-morning vomit runs on Rick’s part. “Brian’s a bit of a hellraiser, but it’s all good. Bethany wants to get to know you better, by the way. I think she’s a little intimidated by you.”

“Understandable. I’m a little intimidating.”

My dad chuckles, taken aback, wondering what to say to that, when I see Renée standing behind him wearing a baffled expression (her costume: Eleanor Rigby. A dead Victorian mistress. How cool is that?). I motion her over, and she struts up to me and gives me a kiss on the cheek, leaving a smear of glitter-laced black. “Dad, this is Renée, my girlfriend. Renée, this is my father.”

“Oh, really?” she says, her eyebrows jumping a foot. She shakes hands with him and says, in a voice that drips with both sugary sweetness and Bambi’s blood, “I’ve heard so much about you, Mr. Vinetti. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

The red in his face betrays his loss of composure, but he smiles and shakes her hand with a little bow toward her. “Call me Rick. Locke didn’t tell me he had a girlfriend, much less one as beautiful as yourself.”

“Oh, bah,” she says, tugging at her bondage straps. “He just keeps me secret so other guys don’t come gunning for me.”

“Well, we’d better be off,” I say, throwing a little salute to the man who was never there for me. “I’ll see you later, Dad.”

“All right, talk to you later, son. Nice meeting you, Renée.”

“Oh, likewise, Rick!”

As I’m about to leave, I stop and trot back over to my dad. “Hey, Dad, quickly-I’m sorry about being kind of rude, the day I came to get the tux. I was in a weird mood, and my head was…Anyway, just wanted to apologize. I was out of line.”

He looks at me, half-puzzled, and says, “Well, thank you, Locke. I totally forgot about that, but…thanks.”

We say our good-byes all around and make our way out into the street.

“You bastard,” Renée snarls. “Nice meeting you, you schmuck. You fucking waste of a parent.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Do you still hate him?”

I shrug. “Sure. I’ll always hate him. But, y’know…that’s it. He’s an asshole, but he’s still my father. I owe him that much. Besides, Lon adores him.”

“On that note-Lon like his present?” she asks.

I grin from ear to ear. “He loved it. He started crying like a baby about it.”

She giggles and bounces up and down. “Perfect! You, come here right now!” She grabs my face between her palms, and we share a prolonged, deep kiss in the middle of the street, smearing my demon face paint every which way. Then we’re off down the street, arm in arm, taking in the autumn air and the smell of pumpkin. Parents and children covered in cheap lace and greasepaint are everywhere to be seen, fixing hats and holding out pillowcases. Everything is orange, black, red, and green. This might be the best day of the year to be a teenager-looking ridiculous and getting up to no good are part of the game plan.