Jaymie awoke, removed the cats, and went to report his dreams to Aaron, as he did almost every morning. He promptly discovered that his brother was nowhere in the house, nor was he answering his phone.

"Rex! Hey, Rex!" he called up the stairs.

"I'm sleeping!" yelled Rex, who'd made it safely home, late and tipsy.

"Rex, are you awake yet?"

"Fuck off, I don't care what you dreamed!"

"Hey Rex, did you see Aaron at the show last night?"

Rex groaned and rolled over, abandoning their effort to bury their face in the pillow and go back to sleep. "No, he didn't show up." They stretched and shook themself awake, energized by memories of the show. "Hey, I don't know why you guys bailed but whatever you did instead was nowhere near as amazing as Jo's band. Also this drummer got murdered... it was kind of crazy."

"But he wasn't there?" Jaymie had appeared in the doorway instead of texting Rex or shouting at them from the kitchen, and they realized something was wrong.

"Wasn't he with you?" they asked, propping themself on an elbow.

"We were supposed to meet there, but then I had to—something came up."

"It sounds like you bailed, and he went home to watch Netflix instead."

"Ok, yeah, but then where is he?"

"I dunno Jaymie, maybe he met a little terrier on the way home, took a detour to avoid it, and woke up the next morning under a willow tree in a graveyard with no recollection of how he got there."

"Jesus Christ, Rex! That was in summertime! It was fucking forty below last night!"

"Urg, sorry, I'm getting up. I'll be right down." They rubbed their eyes, threw off their blankets, and wrapped themself in a large, knit sweater of their mother's before following Jaymie down to the kitchen.

"Holy shit," said Jaymie. "A drummer died, you said? Oh my god. What if the killer was having, like, a drummer night, and Aar was walking there alone..." Jaymie couldn't finish his thought.

"How would the killer know he's a drummer?"

"They were at our house concert!" Jaymie said, the pitch of his voice rising. "The fucking pumpkins?"

"Sorry, I'm not thinking straight... Why do people drink?" Rex shook their head and poured themself a large glass of water from the sink. "Ok, let's stay calm and think of all the possibilities—"

But Rex was too late.

"Oh my god. He's been murdered! I knew this band thing was a bad idea. This is all my fault. Rex! This is all your fault—why didn't you talk me out of doing music? You know I only ever listen to you. People were getting murdered! Jesus! What kind of an idiot puts together a band in the midst of all that? And now he's gone and—no way, there must be another explanation. We have to go out and—oh my god, what am I going to do? There are just—Rex, there are certain things I need a teammate for. Like, who will remind me, when I'm making hot chocolate, you have to make a paste first! Like, with the hot chocolate powder, in the bottom of the cup or the pot or whatever? Because if you just throw it in there, there will always be gross lumps when you're drinking it, and I don't remember, I don't keep track of stuff like that! I just, I have a lot on my mind—shit! I shouldn't have just left him to go home by himself. How could I have known! I didn't think he'd actually try to go to that show on his own—it was so loud and crowded and full of drunk teenagers—you know, by not going, I basically gave him an out! He hates places like that! Because it's so awkward, especially if you're on your own, if you have a panic attack and you have to try and explain it to people, but you're panicking and trying to breath and everything—you just need someone else there, to tell people you're just, like, choking on a skittle for a second, or something like that that's less embarrassing than, like, panicking over nothing, or over the fact that you saw this rottweiler that wasn't on a thick enough leash or whatever... And I know—I mean, we've all freaked out here and there. I've had—maybe not about the rottweiler, but I've—sometimes you drink one Red Bull too many and then all the sudden you're like WHAT THE SHIT IS HAPPENING and that's just life, you know?"

"Jaymie, I think we should—" Rex attempted to interject.

"Rex! Oh my god, you're right. We have to do something! I mean, it's only been one night, right? We should go and—before he turns up all, you know, all made out of pumpkin shells or whatever..." He shuddered. He sat down and stared at the surface of the table. Then he jumped up again. "We'll retrace our steps! We were walking over the bridge, and then there was Daffodile and I—shit, I'm deplorable! Why wasn't I thinking? I never even sat down and listened to him play his new song! The one supposedly not about dogs. I'm the worst. Rex, I'm the fucking worst! And now I'm going to pay for it! Who's going to wake me up in the morning if I have an interview or, like, an appointment, or my job..."

"I can see you're stressed—" said Rex.

"Now I'll have to live with the guilt for the rest of my life! Which probably won't be very long because now who's going to remind me not to drive if I've been drinking more than one drink per hour—that rule sounds unnecessarily conservative, I know, and that's how I usually feel about it once I'm four or five drinks in and suddenly I realize it's karaoke night at Cowboy's, but the truth is, I'm not the greatest driver at the best of times."

"I know you're not," said Rex.

"I just get distracted and... Shit. Rex! I don't know what to do! I'd gotten really fond of that guy, you know? It's like, I've only been sleeping in a room by myself for a few years, and now that I do, I just... I don't like it. You know? I don't know how you do it! Like, sometimes when I'm just by myself and he's not around, I just say stuff out loud expecting somebody to answer and then there's no answer and I'm like, Woah, that's weird. And then I remember I'm by myself and I have to just text one of you guys instead, and it's fine or whatever. NOW THE WHOLE REST OF MY LIFE IS GOING TO BE LIKE THAT. Rex, you don't know what it's like!"

"Yeah, it's pathological," said Rex.

At one point, early in life, Rex had wished they had a twin. When you had a twin you never had to be alone, as Rex had observed from watching their brothers. Fortunately for Rex, rather than abuse and terrorize them as Rex had seen some of their friends' older siblings do, or simply ignore them as one might expect from brothers eight years older, they had taken pity on their young solo sibling and attempted to involve Rex in all music-related activities. The perspicacious young Rex had soon noted that brothers could be extremely high-maintenance, as well as identified themself as an introvert, and the desire for another sibling had gone away.

"I should just die right now," said Jaymie.

"Ok, that's enough," said Rex. "He probably just crashed downtown at Sasha's for the night. Or, like, he does have some friends! He could've gone to Adib's to play poker. Or maybe he even, like, met a woman! Come on Jaymie, let's at least go through some of the possibilities first."

"Right, because Adib and his boyfriend really want to spend Friday night playing cards with our neurotic brother. You're right though! Rex, we need to take action. I'm being useless, I'm sorry. I just feel—I'm a little overwhelmed. Ok. Yes. What are the options...I'll call Sasha."

"Who's that girl, Janessa? Does he still see her sometimes?" asked Rex, relieved to have been able to set Jaymie back on track without any assistance from Aaron.

"Maybe. You know how to contact her?"

"No, you find her, I'll call Sasha."

"Good. Jo?"

"Sure, her next... And if he was going to the show, which way would he have gone?" Rex asked.

"Waterfront Drive, and then... Was there a game last night? He might have wanted to avoid it. In which case...the river trail."

"He wouldn't choose the deserted river at night—how could that possibly be less intimidating to him than hockey fans?"

"You'd be surprised," said Jaymie darkly.

"Well, let's go get a coffee and make sure he's not also out getting a coffee, and we can walk that way and stop in at the Aunties' to see if he slept there. Maybe we'll get some ideas along the way." They went upstairs to collect their backpack.

As soon as Rex had left the room, there was a terse rapping at the front door, which caused Jaymie another burst of anxiety. He imagined police officers waiting beyond, bearing tragic news. It swung open before Jaymie could answer it, and a very young woman with bleached-blonde hair walked in, said, "Sorry I'm late. I played a crazy show last night—it was kind of a big deal. I'm ready now!" and walked straight past him and through the door leading downstairs to the jam space.

Jaymie stared after her in perplexity. "Rex?" he called quietly up the stairs. "Does Aaron have a teenage girlfriend we don't know about?"

Rex reappeared from the stairwell. "What? I mean, if he did, we definitely wouldn't know about it. Why?" At that moment a raucous drumming started up on Aaron's kit downstairs.

"Because that girl is for sure not here for me," said Jaymie. They stood and listened for a full minute, utterly baffled. "She seems to think I'm expecting her..." The drumming sped up.

"She's not very good, is she?" said Jaymie, at the same time that Rex said, "She's got 'fast' and 'loud' down pat." The playing stopped.

"Are you coming? I practiced!" called the young woman.

"Ah." Rex smiled ruefully as realization dawned on them. "He's teaching drum lessons now."

"No kidding! Aw. That's our boy," said Jaymie, his eyes taking on a watery sheen. "Well, come on, Rex, no time to lose!" He pulled his boots on and skidded out the front door, and Rex followed him as the frantic beat started up again.

***

Lucas woke to the sight of a mass of black hair strewn across the pillow beside him, stray ends tickling his forehead. He'd shifted in the course of the night to the far quarter of the mattress; the long-limbed woman beside him had somehow arranged her body, while asleep, to take up the entire bed. He smiled and reorganized himself so as not to fall off the edge. It wasn't unheard of, but neither was it an everyday occurrence, for him to wake up beside a beautiful woman.

Jo had a special sort of charm he'd never encountered before. She wasn't the humble Doesn't Know She's Beautiful type of attractive, and she wasn't the confident Beautiful And She Knows It kind either. Of course, Lucas had nothing against either type of people, as long as they weren't being used as clichés that would make his younger sister feel like she was in an upsetting damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situation when she came across them in her terrible teen romance novels. (None of which he'd ever dream of reading, while she was visiting his apartment over spring break and had gone to the mall for an entire day and left her books about werewolves and statuesque soulmates with tragic diseases stacked on the couch alluringly. He'd resisted—if anyone ever asked.)

Lucas surmised that Jo was the type of person who'd noticed she was pretty, internalized it, and then forgotten about it and moved onto more important things, like transcribing Stevie Ray Vaughn solos note for note, or taking advantage of the new legal marijuana market to experiment with different strains and no longer have to go to the drug dealer whose boyfriend made implications that he liked tall women while Jo was waiting for her to return to the room with the right size of baggies. Lucas and Jo had had two dates already, so he knew a few of the details of her life.

He stretched, the gears in his brain already too active to keep dozing, and wondered if it counted as objectification if you analyzed the nature of people's attractiveness in your own head. Did you still have to be PC, just in your own head? It wasn't like he was ignoring her personality and just imagining specific, particularly exquisite parts of her—many of which he'd had the privilege of putting his hands or mouth on or near—and then reliving in his mind the exhilarating experience of touching those parts, thus getting turned on all over again the morning after...

He shook his head. She was still sound asleep, and he had a new blog post to finish by the end of the weekend. He eased himself into sitting, took up his laptop from the bedside table, and began to tackle an entirely new challenge.

How could one write honestly about a band's terrible show when one had just slept with that band's guitar player?

***

Rex had never been too concerned by their brothers' absences. Occasionally one of them would party too hard and they'd end up on someone's floor for the night, or the two would fight and Aaron would go to their Aunts' house or Jaymie would spend a few days with sketchy friends and return apologetic and with a bit of a hangdog, heroin-chic complexion which, no surprise, many women found very attractive on him. And then there were the very infrequent instances when Aaron got confused and woke up in a burnt field in Saskatchewan, etc.

But the combination of the weather and the deceased drummer and the fact that Aaron hadn't even sent them a text had set both remaining Brzezinskis on edge, and they knew they wouldn't be able to relax until they tracked him down.

As they walked, they made a list of people to contact and places to go, and then they made phone calls and, when they realized it was Saturday morning and people were asleep and not picking up, sent messages. The sky was as bright and blue as a beach day in July, but the cold hadn't let up. Sundogs hung shimmering above the city, sending down bright golden and rainbow rays as though to initiate the Rapture. Comfortingly, the siblings knew that if any of them had been beamed up into eternity for their pure heart and acts of virtue, it would have been Rex, not Aaron.

Their efforts turned up no clues but kept them occupied and in a positive mindset until a short time later, when Jo cleaned herself up and began walking to meet them, and on the way found Aaron's empty, snowy coat forsaken on the riverbank