Venomous Page A

pause, and then he monotones, “Renée’s dad stabbed her mother to death, and then he cut his own wrists and died with her. Renée was thirteen.”
    Oh Christ.
    “Renée’s dad had all sorts of problems with drugs and started getting violent, seeing things, making up conspiracy theories, the whole nine yards. So one day her mom scooped her and Andrew up and left San Francisco, meth, and her husband behind. For a couple of years, everything was fine; Renée was eight when they left, so they’d had a chance to start a new life, until one day out of the blue, Andrew gets a phone call from his dad, who apparently sounded totally coherent and reformed. He doesn’t tell anyone, he just talks to his father, who he hasn’t seen in years. And a week later, Renée’s mom’s boyfriend comes home and finds them there, bled to death.”
    Oh God, no.
    The blood drains out of my face, and the room swirls purple and green. The air seems suffocating, full of dust or smoke to the point where I can’t see or breathe. Using every ounce of my willpower, I manage to climb out of my chair and stumble through the glass doors, spilling out into St. Mark’s Place. I hold myself up against a wall, trying to catch my breath, to regain my balance, to not throw up. A crew of punks jeers me, but I can barely hear them. It’s too big. Oh God, it’s way too big. It’s unbearable.
    Misery magnet , hisses the venom, I told you. It’s not just bad, it’s beyond horrible. It’s the principle of evil. One girl, hurt beyond anything you can imagine, and you found her. Bravo.
    Casey comes out and hands me a bottle of water, which I pound down my throat. Standing back up, wiping my face on my coat sleeve, I stare at him in horror. His eyes reflect back an understanding, a grasp of just how terrible the whole thing is. There’s no sense of patronization; neither of us is the bigger or little brother. This is just horrible in the worst possible way, and it happened to someone we both hold dear.
    “You gonna be okay?” he says, his voice shaking with worry. “It’s a lot to take at once, I know. That’s why she doesn’t like to talk about it.”
    “Got it…. So Andrew…”
    “Yeah. Andrew blames himself. Thinks if he’d only just dropped the phone…but yeah. Now you see how bad it is.”
    “How do I…What can I do to make this better?”
    He shrugs. “You can’t. You’re in no position to save anyone, Locke. Just be there when you can, do what needs to be done. It’s all she’s ever needed.”
    We take a moment to stand and feel beaten before moving back down the street.
     
    I come back home wearing a new shirt from a store called Search & Destroy. It depicts a black-and-white drawing of a man standing at the edge of a rooftop in an overcoat, exhaling a puff of smoke that drifts dramatically from his mouth and surrounds his head in a stringy cloud, as though his hair is on fire. Casey had brought it up to me and declared, which seems to be his way of doing things, that he was buying it for me. This was still taking some getting used to—not just being treated to random gifts and excursions, but the self-assured attitude all of these people have about, well, everything. Casey never asks or wonders—he declares or states . It’s both comforting and unnerving, like at the Milkshake Company today. The garment hanging from my torso felt like a bribe to make up for sometimes treating me like an insect, and I don’t like to be bought. The venom despises it. Everything wasn’t what it seemed, and that left me feeling caught in the crossfire.
    Lon’s sitting on the couch watching TV as I walk in. He does a double take after glancing at me. “Wow! I like your shirt.”
    “Thanks,” I say, running my hand over the plastic printing for the millionth time in the past hour.
    “Renée called,” Lon says, going back to Samurai Jack, who is tearing art-deco robots to shreds. “She wants you to call her.”
    I’m in my room with the