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breath, then continued after a long pause. “We were practicing for our tour, and Brodie kept missing rehearsals. That wasn’t like him. No matter how messed up he was, he never bailed on the band. Anyway, I realized I hadn’t seen him as much as usual. So I went over to his place.” Bryan paused again, licking his lips and taking several shaky breaths as if steeling himself to relate the rest of the tale.
    Callie could see the sweat beading on his upper lip. His color had faded as if he were feeling ill or nauseous.
    “He was shooting up, Callie. I saw the needle, the works, everything. I couldn’t believe my eyes.” His voice shook. “And the thing is, he was so goddamned casual about it, like it was no big deal. He invited me in and tied his arm off with me sitting there. He’d already cooked the stuff. I don’t think I’ve ever been as sick as I was when I watched him shoot that garbage into his vein. I was stunned. I mean, I knew that he liked to party, but I had no idea it had gotten like that. And it happened so fast, or at least it seemed to. Part of me just wanted to grab that poison and flush it down the toilet, but I just sat there and watched, like I was paralyzed or something. I couldn’t even say anything.”
    Callie couldn’t imagine what it felt like to see a friend, or anyone for that matter, shooting up heroin. The very thought horrified her. She reached out and touched his hand. “What did you do?“
    Bryan sat up, his grim expression adding additional poignancy to the gruesome tale. She’d noted before that his eyes, already tempestuous, darkened considerably whenever he experienced emotional distress. Now they had turned almost black, taking on the appearance of a southwestern sky she’d seen once right before a tornado struck the city. She marveled at the powerful emotions that could initiate such a change. “I stayed there with him, and I tried to talk to him about getting clean. He said the usual crap, you know, about not being an addict. We fought, and he kicked me out. Then I called B.T. and the rest of the band. We tried to talk some sense into him.”
    “An intervention?”
    “Yeah, I guess you could call it that. Brodie was like me, didn’t really have any family to speak of, so it was just the band, B.T., and Maria. We didn’t really get anywhere, and he never agreed to get help. But he did keep it together long enough for us to finish rehearsals and go on tour. We were about halfway done when he died.” Bryan closed his eyes, obviously struggling to master his emotions. When he opened them again, the deep blue pools revealed a suffering so torturous that Callie wanted to weep. The muscles in his throat moved strongly as he choked out, “The tour, the goddamned tour! My best friend was strung out on smack, and we just patched him together enough to go on tour!”
    Callie reflected on what Bryan had just shared with her. So this was the source of his self-destructive tendencies. He really hadn’t caused his friend’s death and was in no significant way responsible. But the guilt seemed to be eating him alive. It seemed surreal, totally alien to her, and she was clueless as to how to process it. As she struggled with her own overwhelming emotions, a ghastly thought occurred to her. “Did you find him?”
    Bryan pressed the heels of his hands against his closed eyelids, as if to shut out the horrific scene. “No, Twist did. We were in London and had one more show before we were going to take a two-week break. You know, come home, regroup, then start on the American leg of the tour. Twist went to Brodie’s room for some reason, and he found the body.” He took another deep breath and swallowed the hotly sickening wave of nausea the memory still evoked.
    “He’d been dead for hours. Apparently he’d gone to his room to shoot up as soon as we finished the show. We’d been keeping a close watch on him because it’s so goddamned easy to score in London, but he said he was