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flickering like glass shards and cut into lines in that yellow light. I looked at her again and saw a straw in the hand she used to push her hair back behind her ears. Then there was this rage that started building inside of me. There was this anger that washed all of the haze left from reefer and alcohol and ladder bars out of me and left nothing more than a need to break every last bone in that motherfucker’s body. Right then, there wasn’t a thought that could’ve calmed any of it down, and so I went with it.
    “You snort any of that shit?” I looked Maggie dead in her eyes, and I could see she was scared.
    “Who the fuck are you talking to? Ain’t none of your goddamn business, Jake!”
    My eyes flicked over to that mouth that shouldn’t have been talking but was, that mouth that just might shoot me over the edge. Avery’s eyes were lit up like firecrackers and his jaw had been put into motion. “Did you give her that shit?”
    “Fuck you, Jake. I suggest you go find some other place to be a fucking hero, because nobody wants you here. There ain’t a goddamn soul that wants anything to do with your sorry ass, especially not Maggie.”
    I could hear the music playing, but all the noise of folks talking and hollering had shut quiet. I could feel their eyes pressing into the back of my skull, and those eyes went to pressing so hard until they were pushing me forward. Before I knew it, I was moving too fast to stop and I was into him.
    That first punch sent a red mist hanging on air and the blood started pouring and I could see it in his eyes, I could see it in there even as I was hitting him, that he’d never been in a fight and wanted it to end. But that next fist came and split his head against the window, and glass went haywire, and I kept forward. My hands were on him now, and I had him out of his chair and onto the floor and I was braining him, his skull just cracking as it bounced off the tile into another line of knuckles.
    It was when his eyes started fading and that wide-eyed rabid look had turned stupefied there on the floor that I got my wits about me. Something came over me, something screaming that anything more would kill him, and it held my fist still as the moon there above him. I stood up, and I could feel those eyes pressing into the back of me, but it was a different kind of pressing now, a feeling like those eyes belonged to kids who weren’t ready to see something like this.
    When I got up, I looked at Maggie. I looked at that plate and the place she’d set the straw. I looked at that shit she’d been just seconds away from snorting up her nose, just seconds away from a glue trap that would’ve held her to this place and this life just like me. She was staring at my hands, skin torn, blood of him and me spread across those flattened knuckles. And she just kept staring at my hands while that pile of shit gasped and puddled on the floor.

6.
    My eyes opened that next morning into a blurry, brown shadow that slowly came into focus as a pair of leather boots with mud caked to the soles. My mind started running that what-the-fuck-happened checklist, but number one checked out: those were my boots. Hardwood floors, dirty as hell from men too lazy to push a broom, was my second clue that it was all right: I was home. I pushed myself up from the floor with arms that felt loopy, and I could see that I was in my bedroom. I just hadn’t made it quite to the bed.
    That was every night I’d ever spent mixing alcohol and Xaney bars wrapped up in a nice, neat little package. Nights that began sharp always had this scary tendency to go black in a hurry. I’d start off having a good time, and next thing you know, I’d wake up to nothing but stories from friends to shed light on what I’d done.
    Unfortunately, I’d taken that pill just a little too late in the night. Should’ve started earlier, I guess. I could still see Robbie Douglas’s body wrapped crooked as hell around that rock. It played