I have a persistent dream where I'm on the upper floor of a skyscraper as it sways. The rays of sunshine spill onto the rooftop, splitting shadows from parched concrete. Pat blocks the fire escape to my left. He is two-hundred pounds of lean, angered muscle and is unrecognizable to me.

Unlike normal nightmares, I don't wake drenched in sweat at the moment the girders weaken and the structure collapses—I free-slam the sidewalk.

There is a silence after this happens—a gut-wrenching absence of noise where nobody comes. It's impossible to distinguish between legs, arms, or the peculiar jutting contortion of what resembles elbows. When lack of sound or sensation becomes enviable—that's the shit that terrifies me most—that's when my eyes fly open. And in the hysteria that accompanies my waking screams, I miss the quiet.

Pat and his goddamn skyscraper always visited when I had a choice to make because he syncs with my indecision, and for the last two nights in a row, I'd avoided him by attempting to become nocturnal.

Sitting on the hood of Chuck's car, I gazed skywards, spinning his keys on my finger. I yawned and once again rubbed the tiredness out of my eyes. The haze was lifting to reveal an expanse of stars; they were fierce tonight. The shifting coolness within the air helped to stave off the sudden drop of my head as my eyes threatened to close with it.

A cough sounded from across the street. It broke free over the melodic hum of distant traffic on the freeway, higher than the chirp of crickets. I followed the sound across the street to where Heather's cigarette ember glowed. Even at dusk, her eyes would be cloudless summer skies.

She smiled. "Those Chuck's keys? He'll kill you." She shook her head and tutted.

"So will your cigarettes," I replied.

Heather grinned at the same time I did.

She pushed off the hood of her dad's Honda Civic onto her feet. The disused vehicle was now a staple in her front yard, as was the old rubber bike tire twisted into a figure of eight and the scattering of bricks that had once been her garden wall. The hardy dandelions masked the tufts of grass that sprung up through the cracked pavement that led to her porch.

Curious if she'd been watching me, I asked, "Have you been out here long?"

Her lips twitched up into a grin. "Longer than you."

Heather and I used to lie on our backs in the yard and name constellations. We grew up together, pranked Chuck together, and when Heather turned eighteen, she went on dates—with other boys. She was the sole person who got my brother Chuck as I did. But I wished she got me instead.

Heather squinted up the street to the tiny one-story house. Trees rustled in a sudden breeze, and the same wind blew strands of artificial plum-streaked hair in front of her face.

"Still stalking Mr. Thompson, huh?"

Reginald lived five doors down. He owned a pesticide company and had slaughtered thousands of vegans under the radar. The first time I posted something through his mailbox was the day dad planned ahead for his funeral.

"Don't worry. I haven't sent him anything new." I emphasized the word new, but the way Heather scrunched her nose told me she disapproved of how I'd handled my fourth of July firecrackers.

She nodded. "I see." We're both quiet for a minute before she added. "How's your dad? You don't share much with me anymore."

"Already gone."

Heather straightened. "Gone? Like dead?"

It was too dark for her to see my eyes as they rolled. "No. Dad's gone to the hospital; they're going to remove his prostate three Sundays from now after more testing."

A while ago, Heather would have known every single detail about me. I shared more then. Nights like these reminded me of how we were.

Heather sighed in relief before asking her next question. "Where is he going to put it?"

I suppressed a grin. Heather would be the only one more concerned with making me laugh, even at the worst of times, because she knew if you couldn't find the humor in a situation, then you were really fucked. "Well, I thought I'd take it Monday through Friday, and you could have alternate weekends?" I shrugged my shoulders as I posed the question.

"I don't know if I'm ready to co-parent your dad's prostate. Do they look like oysters?" she asked, strolling the distance that separated our houses.

My grin became a broad smile at the thought. "That's how I imagine them."

"Are you worried about your dad, Adrian? Are you doing okay?"

I let her words bounce around as a wave of different emotions hit me tenfold. Of course, I'm ecstatic that she cared enough to ask. But, on the other hand, I'm still deciding how much to share, as I've avoided ruining our infrequent conversations with the subject. But before the blanket of indecision could fully settle any further, I made up my mind that she was just asking because that's what people do.

With Mom holding vigil at the ward, Chuck was in charge. The new norm was flaring tempers and arguments over who'd neglected chores. Dinner tonight was Easy Cheese and a half-eaten box of Fig Newtons because yesterday, the microwave meals were nuked. Still, at least they didn't contain any of Mr. Thompson's carcinogenic vegetables.

"It could be worse," I offered instead.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I half expected to see another message from Chuck repeating how useless I am, and I'm more than prepared to tell him to go to hell. But it's not from Chuck. It's Mom. She wanted me to lock up when I came to bed. Her bedroom light flicked off as if her message was timed with the house itself.

Heather dropped her cigarette, stubbed it out with the tip of her boot, and held out her hand. I raised her up onto Chuck's hood beside me.

"Why are you still out here, anyway? Mr. Thompson hits the CIU bar on a Friday." She lit a cigarette, shuffled until our elbows touched, and passed it to me.

I took a drag. "Can't sleep. Literally. How about you?"

"The same. Beau took me out on a date ages ago and told everyone we did it—which we didn't. Plus, I don't have a prom date or any prospects of getting one. Are you going to prom, Adrian?"

Watching a girl you cared about with a guy who didn't respect her was beyond difficult. My signature baseball cap kept my unruly hair hidden but was stashed in the back of the truck. But I had the sudden urge to hide my face. She reached, brushing the hazel strands that concealed my eyes, which were now trained solely to avoid hers.

"Adrian," she said again. "Look at me."

But I couldn't because I was drawn to her mouth and couldn't do that without thinking for the hundredth time about what it would be like to kiss her.

"No." I finally said and shook my head in answer to her question.

I'd never liked prom, and why on earth would I encourage the beginning of what signaled the end—graduation, and adulthood. This was where our trains took different tracks, and she would inevitably bid me farewell for better pastures.

The street had bumper-to-bumper parked cars and tree-lined sidewalks. Headlights glinted at the end of the road as they dipped, hitting a pothole. Heather looked once at the car and then over to her house.

"I gotta go." Heather slid off, stubbed my cigarette, and waved at the dissipating smoke. "Mom's driving up now; she's finished her shift. See you later?"

She blew me an air kiss, but I never caught it because that was lame, and she wasn't serious.

"Don't worry about Beau," I called out as she disappeared into the shadows. She never stopped, so I assumed her hearing had.

Beau lived two blocks away with his father, Larry. Before considering whether I should, I walked the route, hidden under streetlights that tinged my shirt an inappropriate shade of pink for stealth. Whenever I wore white, Chuck washed them with red because the washing machine required a NASA-trained engineer to operate, so I had to make do with him.

Beau's Charger sat in the drive. As a mechanic, Larry fixed old automobiles. Discarded cardboard boxes lined the perimeter outside a shed.

What I desired to do most was forbidden by law and because Beau was a close buddy of Chuck's, but Heather always said, "If you don't take chances, you might as well not be alive."

My eyes went straight for what I was looking for in the boxes—spray paint.

While I shook the can, the ball bearing smacked, mixing the paint with the propellant. My scrawled note glistened in the moonlight across the pristine royal blue of the car. As I imagined Beau's reaction in the morning, my lips curled up. Heather and I would frequent the same orbit again after this, at least for a time. I had missed her a little too much.

Uncertain of how fingerprint analysis was conducted, I stashed the can in my pocket and glanced for a final check over my shoulder before crossing the street. In the house next door, Sebastian Goodwood stood with an open mouth, holding a trash bag.

"You didn't see me." I placed a pointed finger to my lips. The trees rustled in a sudden breeze, amplifying his silence until he answered.

"I swear," he replied, nodding.

I prayed he was concealing a dead body. That way, our deeds would be canceled out. Beau robbed Sebastian of his lunch money at school until his mother switched him to a lunch box with a numerical padlock. Sebastian often swore on his mother's grave, so I didn't know if he was trustworthy, but then again, he swore on just about anything to avoid conflict.

Back at home, I scrubbed my fingertips raw. Industrial spray paint was of better quality and was going nowhere fast. Over the next couple of days, I saw Heather more and Pat a little less. She never questioned why my hands were stained yellow, which was good. I'd never want to lie, but I'd caught her more than once staring at them with a silly grin on her face.

From that week on, whenever Pat did pay me a visit, I couldn't fathom why Heather caught me every time I fell.

Heather

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