Chapter 8 – The Rabbit

Laz

It’s four in the morning when I let myself in through the kitchen door, and there’s a black rabbit sitting on the counter next to a mug of tea that went cold hours ago.

Rory waited up for me. He got so worked up that he stopped being a person, and the tea’s grown a skin since then.

“Shift back,” I tell him. “I know you want to yell at me, and you can’t do that with whiskers.”

He jumps down and disappears behind the island. Rory keeps a pile of clothes folded on the bottom shelf of the pantry, because he shifts in this kitchen about once a week.

When he stands up, he’s in a sweatshirt with a cartoon dinosaur on it. His golden-brown hair’s sticking up on one side, and his face has gone all blotchy.

He shoves his phone into my hands hard enough to hurt.

It’s a video. Some guy with a vape hanging out of his mouth is sprawled across the hood of my car and giggling into the camera, outside a bar with two letters missing from its sign. FANG & SONS, 2:31 A.M. It’s got four hundred comments.

“It’s in the house group chat,” Rory says. “Everybody’s decided you went there to buy either Sugar or Hallowell, and they’re taking bets.”

My father’s probably seen this already, or he will by breakfast. Gordon will have it taken down by lunch, and I’ll be getting a phone call I’d rather not have about why a Kron was parked outside the cheapest bar in town.

“You’ve been gone for two nights, Laz.” He’s talking too fast to breathe properly. “You haven’t answered a single one of my texts.”

He wraps both hands around his cold tea.

“The last time somebody in this house stopped answering his phone, it was Per. I thought you were doing what he does.”

I hate that he’s been sitting here thinking that. Rory has watched my brother disappear one unanswered text at a time since spring. No wonder he thought I was next.

“I’m not on Sugar,” I tell him. “I swear to you, Rory. I’ve never touched the stuff.”

He nods, but he doesn’t look like he believes me, and honestly, I can’t blame him.

“Somebody answered Per’s phone,” I say.

“Oh no.”

“Two nights ago. Some guy told me Per was asleep and to stop calling. He used my full name, too. Lazarus.”

Per’s had me saved in his phone as LAZARUS for years, in capitals, to make fun of the way our father’s saved in mine. So maybe the guy just read it off the screen. Or maybe he’s got a pretty good idea who I am, and he wanted me to hear him say my name.

My money’s on the second one, and on him being whoever sells to Per.

Asleep. Per’s been on Sugar since spring, and I know what asleep can mean for somebody like that.

I’ve spent two nights picturing him on some stranger’s couch with his phone in somebody else’s hand, not moving, and nobody bothering to check whether he’s breathing.

“You have to tell your dad,” Rory says.

“If I tell my father, Per’s on a plane to some very expensive clinic by the weekend, and he’ll know I’m the one who put him there. He’ll never speak to me again.”

Both nights, I’ve been driving up and down the Strip with the windows down, listening for the bass that was playing behind that guy.

I can hear the music inside every club from the curb, which should make this easy. The problem is that they’re all thumping the same kind of music. Pink Pantheress, Disco Lines and Tinashe, DJ Sonny Fodera, every once in a while, Daft Punk’s ‘One More Time’.

They all have heavy bass, and all bass thumps the same way, so it was never going to get me anywhere.

“Why Fang & Sons?” Rory asks.

“If somebody’s selling Sugar to my brother, it’s not happening at The Vein. Half the staff there would be on the phone to my father before the guy got the stuff out of his pocket. Nobody who works for us would be caught dead in Fang & Sons.”

Hallowell was behind the bar. He stared at my car for the entire song, and I stared right back.

It was some truly offensive Meat Loaf, and I sat through all of it like a teenager with a crush.

“I was only there to see if the music sounded familiar.”

Rory swipes to the next clip and turns the screen around. It’s me, getting out of the car and walking into Fang & Sons at last call.

People should really learn to mind their own fucking business. Not Rory, the asshole who thought it was okay to record me.

“I left Hallowell the donor form,” I say.

“You won’t even show that thing to security, and you just handed it to him?”

“It was tactical.” I start lining up the salt and pepper, mostly so I’ve got something to do with my hands.

“He thinks I killed Marcus Bell, so he’s poking around our house. If he keeps that up long enough, he finds Per. Once he knows the blood on my face was a donor’s, he can go bother somebody else.”

I waited until he was in the back to drop it off, and I’m not explaining that part to Rory.

Admitting it to myself was hard enough. I’ve skipped dinner two nights running, and I couldn’t risk standing a foot away from Hallowell’s neck on an empty stomach.

“Okay but hear me out,” Rory says. “He’s kind of great?”

“He has accused me of murder to my face, to campus security and to my father’s lawyer. That’s a remarkably generous definition of great.”

“He said sorry to me.” Rory picks at the dinosaur’s tail. “About the fries. People at that booth don’t say sorry to me, Laz. Most of them don’t even look at me.”

He takes a sip of the cold tea, pulls a face at it and drinks some more anyway.

“And he isn’t scared of you, which makes him the only person on this campus who isn’t. Except me and Per of course. We know you’re really a teddy bear under all that Rottweiler.”

I scowl at him for calling me a teddy bear, which is straight bullshit. I’m nice to the people I care about and that list is remarkably short.

I can’t argue with him about the booth though. Everyone talks over Rory to get to me, and I’ve just... let them. For years. Didn’t even see it. Nothing like a 4 a.m. reality check to make you feel like garbage.

Puca’s aren’t very intimidating and Rory’s never loved being the center of attention, but he deserves better from his best friend.

As for Hallowell not being scared of me, I’ve noticed that plenty. Some of me wants to know what it would take to scare him. The rest of me wants him exactly the way he is, mouthing off at me with his neck within reach.

“I still wouldn’t use the word great in the same sentence as Hallowell’s name though,” I mutter.

“You have to respect that he keeps standing up to you though.”

I keep my mouth shut about that, because he’s right, I think Hallowell’s got more of a spine than anyone I’ve ever met. If only he’d use it to carry him out of my orbit.

Rory rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, and when he’s done, he chews his lower lip anxiously.

“Laz. The night of the party, I saw...”

I wait for the rest of it.

He knocks the stool with his knee and tells it he’s sorry. His heart’s racing, but Rory’s always is. I’ve listened to it every day since he moved into this house, and it has never once told me a single thing.

“I saw how those security guys looked at you,” he says. “And I just sat in your pocket. I should’ve stayed a person and talked to them. I’m sorry.”

He’s apologized for that every day since, and I always tell him the same thing. I’m going to keep on telling him until he believes me.

“You were in my pocket the whole time, Rory. I wasn’t out there on my own.”

His eyes fill up. He nods, pours the rest of his tea down the sink and goes up to bed without another word.

I stay at the island and open Per’s thread. If my brother ever gave me a name, a club or anything at all, it’s somewhere in here.

I scroll up through two nights of me, then two weeks of me, then a whole summer of blue bubbles. Call me back. Dad’s asking. Are you alive? I hadn’t realized how much of this was just me, talking to nobody.

The last thing he actually sent me is from July.

found the worst bar on the strip. fang & sons. the bartender’s a warlock and he’s mean to everybody and he has no clue who i am. best night i’ve had all year. come with me next time?? miss u

Under it, my response was: can’t. dinner with dad.

I read it while sitting at a table with my father talking at me, typed no, and forgot about it by dessert.

My brother asked me to come out with him, one time, and I turned him down for something I can’t even remember now. Looking at it makes me want to throw my fucking phone across the kitchen.

I’ve seen Fang & Sons. They can’t afford two bartenders, let alone two warlocks.

Three months ago, Hallowell was serving my brother, and I’d like to know what else he sold him.