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stairs, skipping steps.
    His voice is soft and weary when he
speaks. “When Mom’s cancer got real bad, when she couldn’t get out of bed, I
was the one who took care of her. Did you know that?”
    I try not to cringe. “Yeah, you told
me.”
    “Tarren and Tammy said the mission was
more important, but they just didn’t want to watch her die. They left. Just
fucking left.” Gabe’s hands are tight fists, his knuckles nothing but bone
wrapped in skin. “When it was getting close, I called them. Begged them to come
home. But they didn’t make it in time. I was the only one with her when she
died.”
    “I know,” I say softly.
    Gabe walks up the stairs, and I force
myself to watch. The weak tendrils of his energy hold so close to his withered
frame, and he refuses to use the bannister for support. When he gets to the
top, I assume our delightful conversation is over. I drop down onto the couch,
close my eyes, and exhale.
    “He’d run into a burning building for
any one of us.” Gabe’s voice floats down from the upstairs hallway. “Hell, he’d
do it for a complete stranger, but that doesn’t make him brave.”
    He slams his bedroom door.

Chapter 5
    Early in the morning, I leap out of my
bedroom window and land softly onto the snowy ground below. The air is crisp,
and the night seems to throb with the promise of dawn. As soon as I begin
running, the cold leaves my limbs. My eyes cut right through the darkness, and
my body knows these woods so well, I think I could run them blind.
    The muscles of my legs are tight from
too many days of sitting in a car, but they loosen with the miles. It’s odd not
having Tarren out here with me. We always run together, and I’ve grown use to
the rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulder at the center of my vision, to watching
his streaky aura calm as the miles of effort soothe him. He’s also the pace
setter, and without him I run faster, testing my legs, that angel part of me.
    This is flying. The balls of my feet
lightly grace the ground, and my body hums like the well-tuned machine that it
is. My human self would have been stumbling and huffing like a freight engine
after the first mile. This new me -- not so new anymore, I suppose – smiles and
kicks up the pace. 
    When my muscles start to burn, I keep
going. There’s a little bit of madness in this, reaching for that pain,
embracing it, letting it wash away all the thoughts and guilt. I push myself
harder; my feet practically fly. The pain carries away my thoughts. As Tarren
has taught me, pain can be a form of peace.
    ***
    When I return to the house, I’m
surprised to see Gabe already up and at his bank of computer monitors in the
dining room. Then again, he did pass out around 8:30 last night, not even
halfway through the original RoboCop.
    Gabe is bundled in the same Cartman
hoodie as yesterday and still shivering in spite of it. Sir Hopsalot lounges in
his lap chewing on the blue “no kill” bandanna knotted around his neck. The
silver rabbit was originally intended as a snack to slake my hunger, but Gabe
and his big heart foiled those plans. Now Sir Hopsalot is family.
    “I washed all your clothes yesterday,” I
tell Gabe. “When’s the last time you changed?”
    Gabe leans back in his chair and frowns.
“What’s today?”
    “Did you eat breakfast?” I assess his
aura, noting the cloud of pained red. Another migraine.
    “Thanks for cleaning everything,” Gabe
says beckoning toward the living room where the coffee table is now free of
discarded bottles and moldy food, and the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree has made
a quiet exit. “Must have taken you all night.”
    Yep, when you can’t heal one brother or
protect the other, the next best option is to clean the hell out of the house,
meth-addict style.
    I have a strong urge to bitch out Gabe about
the science experiments growing in the fridge and the half-eaten sandwich I
found beneath rank t-shirts on his bedroom floor.
    Instead, I just say, “I