He'd stopped taking his meds. Why should he take them? No one believed he was better. Not Ashley and not Joey, even though he was sleeping and hardly writing songs and not talking a mile a minute and not bouncing off the walls.

And then everything crashed down around him. Ashley leaving, and not just because she'd always wanted to go to England and her dad got her a job but because of him. And Joey and Caitlin fighting because of him. It had seemed better for everyone if he left. So he did.

All he could do was play the guitar next to Skinny, hope for enough money to eat. Days and days of it, and he almost forgot his other lives. His life with Joey that crumbled when he landed in the hospital with a mental illness. His life with his father that crumbled when Albert beat him. His life with his mother that crumbled when she got cancer, and she got thinner and thinner and weaker and weaker until she was no bigger than a child.

And Skinny getting angry with him, angrier and angrier, and he would yell and shove and hit him when things didn't go his way and Craig looked at him with the fearful eyes like he used to look at his father.

Play the guitar, and don't sing and don't work on any songs. Play the guitar and follow Skinny's lead, eyes downcast. Days and days. And maybe his crumbling sense of morals wasn't as far gone as Skinny's, or he wasn't hungry enough, but he couldn't rob somebody. And he'd had it out with Skinny but Skinny won, and he remembered laying on the ground, trying to breathe with the wind knocked out of him. Next thing after that he was talking to Joey, and he didn't know where he was or what he was saying.

Joey reaching out to touch his split lip, bruised cheek, and he jerked away.

"Joey, what did I do with my guitar?" Looking around he saw he was at a shelter, packed in with mangy people at the bottom of their luck. His luck had run out pretty fast being only 16.

"C'mon. Let's go home," Joey said, his voice and words careful, and he was looking at him with the compassion you might show an injured wild animal.

"Okay," Craig said, and followed Joey to the car. But they didn't go home. Joey drove to the hospital.

"No, Joey,"

"Yes. You need to be here. To be stabilized with your+"

"No, Joey, no…"

"With your medication, Craig, you've been off of it for too long"

"I'm not going," He crossed his arms across his chest, stared out the car window.

"You're going. Whether you agree to go or not. I will drag you in there if I have to,"

He glared at Joey and felt this crashing wave of despair.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0

So I followed him into the emergency room. There was no choice. It was too bright in there, with the flourescent lights in those bars buzzing overhead. Or maybe I'd just been in the dark too long. I squinted and ducked my head and Joey took my arm and pulled me along after him.

"Sit here. Wait here," Joey said, and I slumped down in the chair, watched him go over to the receptionist and explain in his way, the way he always talked with his hands and the way he always glanced over at me.

Joey came back, sat next to me. Things were starting to unravel, to go really fast. He was looking at me like he was going to start talking and I really wished he wouldn't.

"Craig, I don't know what to say to you," he said. I squeezed my eyes shut, 'don't say anything,' I thought.

"Just because I fight with Caitlin, it doesn't mean it's your fault. It's not. I don't think it's anyone's fault. Caitlin and I, I don't know, we're not in the same place. She needs things from her career, she needs things I can't provide. I can't be all that success and all that challenge for her in L.A. So what I'm trying to say is it has nothing to do with you, Craig,"

I looked at him from the corner of my eye. Beyond my racing thoughts some of what he was saying was coming through. Him fighting with Caitlin, it wasn't really about me. It was about them. But Ashley, she left the country because of me. Joey couldn't gloss that over.

"Yeah, but Ashley…" I said, and whipped my head around at the sound of the door opening. Some lady with a snot nosed little kid. The kid looked maybe three. The lady glanced at me and looked away, and it was probably because I looked crazy. I'd been in these clothes for days, and they had dirt and blood on them, and my hair was all over the place. I looked awful. The lady looked away but the little kid stared at me.