--XX--

"You wanted me to pretend, right?"

The shovels leaned against a tree trunk; the afternoon was beautiful- beautiful beyond any description I could have possibly provided; more beautiful than anything I could have ever written on paper. Shafts of sunlight, a strange combination of pink and orange, penetrated the leaves, branches, and twigs above us.

Malcolm's Vystir poisoning wasn't affecting or disabling any of his abilities that day. The fire he started was a few feet to my left. Whether there was any warmth from it, I'll never know.

He stood beside me to my right. The large red mantle he always wore glowed, its red a deeper shade in the firelight. He pressed the earth flat, even, with his boot. It was the color of dark chocolate and the dirt beneath it only a shade lighter. He turned to me.

"Pretend what?" he said.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Flashback. Don't mind me."

"Pretend what?" he insisted, his voice the deep and gruff growl I had grown accustomed to in the years I had spent living together with him.

"Pretend that I was fine," I muttered, softer than softly. "Pretend that I liked it. It wasn't directed at you."

It was silent in the glade, save for some crickets and cicadas in the distance.

"And I don't know," I continued. "Maybe I did like it. I don't even know."

"You're not there anymore, Chris."

"Easy to say."

He and I stood in a spot in the forest between The Port and the Everglades; behind Vicinity Two. I had been there before.

Before I knew anything near me had shifted, I was in his arms, the one place I felt as close to validated, as close to wanted, as close to loved as I felt I could possibly ever feel.

Images flashed in my head and I burned them; I burned them like Malcolm could burn anything on a good day when his Vystir poisoning wasn't eviscerating him.

Eviscerating him like my memories do.

Every day.

I was a torn pile of shreds of a broken thing. How I walked around anywhere, I'll never know.

"Can you tell me how you put up with me?" I said.

"What do you mean?" said Malcolm.

Maybe it was my fault. Maybe, if I had gotten the flash drive sooner, gotten to James sooner, delivered things faster, maybe it wouldn't be as bad. He could be better. Maybe if he never rescued me from being used like a toy for money, he would be fine. Maybe I was just... a bag. That people had to carry.

The one thing I had spent my entire life trying not to be.

"I mean," I replied, "How do you believe that there's anything about me that is worth loving? What about me was worth saving?"

Why was I so lucky? Why did people like me, why did anyone care; why were people helping me? It was the Overwoods. Abuse was everywhere, crime, evil, awful ugly detestable things were everywhere.

I was just one of them. It made no sense.

Malcolm pulled back to look at me. His eyes almost set me on fire, or maybe he just knew how much I was hurting and decided to kill me right then and there using fire, to end it for me. To save me from being hurt and lied to and possessed by scum again.

"Everything," he said.

Would Marie have agreed with him? What would Marie say? Maybe I could have saved Marie. Maybe I just didn't try hard enough; maybe I just wasn't good enough or smart enough or fast enough.

Why was I the one still alive?

Maybe I could have saved her.

Maybe I could have saved her, and the other girl, too, the one murdered- had I found whoever the killer was.

Or saved Crayon or Skittles.

It was the one thing- the one thing that kept me from pulling the trigger when my hands were on the gun, the gun I was going to use three days before my twelfth birthday.

I'm gonna kill me before you do.

The words in my mind; the words I wrote on paper.

It didn't end then, because, I thought I could help- I thought I could help and make a difference; I wasn't the only one who suffered and I thought, maybe, I could help someone else. Maybe.

And that couldn't happen- wouldn't happen, if I pulled that trigger.

Somebody else did but they missed.

"Hey." Malcolm was almost forgotten, though he was directly in front of me. "Did you hear me?"

I said nothing.

The sunlight turned into shadows in my mind, shadows that couldn't conceal the ropes, the smoke, the brittle skeleton between innocence and hate, between hunger and submission, between forced-to-survive and drugged-to-near-death, the skeleton that was shattered in front of me.

Too many times.

"Everything about you," he insisted, "is so much more than beyond worth saving."

I took a step back. My heart was beating so hard that I swore Crayon and Skittles could hear it pounding from six feet under the ground- where they were now buried- or even from heaven; from wherever they now were.

They were gone and I didn't save them, I stayed alive to do one thing and I couldn't do even that.

Malcolm almost gnarled at me.

"Don't you even think about going anywhere-"

"I love you," I interrupted rudely. "Just know... that I thank you, for everything."

He spoke but I couldn't hear him.

I continued.

"I never had a family but you. I love everything you are."

I tried to quickly blink away all the shadows. It didn't work- they didn't go anywhere.

"I can't be here right now. I'm sorry."

My feet took off and I was en route to the Lowdown.

Spinning through the air, I thought I heard Malcolm call my name from far below, from where I took off. Or maybe it was one of the monsters, the evil people in the shadows. The ones that find entertainment in the suffering of a child.

I stayed alive, to do one thing. I've been only a failure- and only a failure- since I chose not to pull that trigger.

I was going to end this multi-murderer's streak, here, now, or I wasn't going to keep going.