March 17, 8 am

Simon

When we get to the corner, Baz continues south while I turn east. I feel a pang at his absence, and I'm relieved all over again that I don't have to leave him. He doesn't want me to. He really doesn't want me to. If I hadn't seen his face last night, I would never have been able to convince myself of it. I would have been sure that no matter how much I want to stay, the right thing to do is leave. As it is, I can believe it, but I can't understand it. I mean, don't I have to leave him in a couple of months anyway? Does he think we're still going to be together after we graduate?

Does he want to still be together after we graduate?

I try never to think about graduation. Everything past it is a fuzzy beige cloud. I can't visualize what happens next. All through high school, Penny made me focus on college. But no one spent college forcing me to focus on what comes next, and so I didn't. I don't. It's hard to really believe that there is a next. Graduating feels like dying. Like no one knows what happens after. Like it's unknowable.

I can't explain this to anyone, because I know it only makes sense in my screwed up head. I don't think Penny and Baz even think about it. Or probably they do, but that's the thing. They think about easily, like its nothing. Like it's just another semester, not the end of the known world. Well, for Penny, it really is just another semester. She took a gap year, so still has a year to go.

But Baz and I have never talked about it. And as I walk, I let myself imagine that it's because he plans to still be around. As it happens, and after it happens. I let myself imagine what it would be like if there wasn't a looming farewell we can't escape. If there was nothing I have to run from.

I daydream as walk, imagining Baz, severe in his robes. I imagine his eyebrow raised, somehow intimidating even in the whole stupid cap and gown getup. I imagine him turning to me. I imagine the look that always enters his eyes when he sees me. The one that fills me with heat and drenches me with cold all at once. I imagine the lines in his face softening, his lips curving. I imagine the smile he lets me see for a moment, before his face goes back to its terrifying version of normal.

Before I get any farther in this embarrassingly chaste and sappy fantasy, I find myself in front of the closed door of the bakery. I feel a stab of worry about Ebb. Normally she'd be here by now. I start to unlock the door, only to find it already unlocked. That makes more sense. She's here, she just didn't feel like opening yet. So I slip through the door, but leave the front lights off. I leave the sign in the window turned to Closed. We'll open when she's ready. Ebb's entitled to all the time in the world. Especially after. After last night.

The pain of it starts to strangle me again. Ebb's face. My fault.

I take a deep breath and force myself to exhale slowly, counting to ten. That's what Penny and I used to do. It started out as a joke. On the rare occasion that someone in high school would do or say something idiotic (ha), we would close our eyes and breathe melodramatically, nostrils flaring. I discovered that, stupid as it sounds (and looks), it actually works. Especially for stuff like this, when it's my head sending me in a spiral.

It doesn't work.

Ebb told me to leave. She doesn't want me. And she's right. I cause pain. I shouldn't be here right now. My heart rate accelerates. Counting and breathing are stupid. I'm standing here like an idiot counting and breathing when what I should be doing is leaving.

I hear Penny's voice soothingly in my ear.

"When that happens, Si, just do it again. If it doesn't work the first time, do it a second time. Keep breathing slowly, keep counting."

So I do. I make myself do it until all I can think about is the breath as it leaves my mouth, the expansion of my lungs as I draw it back in. And then I think about Baz.

I let Baz's words settle in me until I'm calm again. I was wrong about Baz. And Baz told me I was wrong about Ebb. And if he's right, then my leaving won't solve anything. It'll make things worse. So at the very least, I need to withstand my panic long enough to let Ebb have a say.

It was easier to agree in the abstract. In bed, with Baz's voice warm in my ear. In the reality of the moment, though, I want to run.

I don't.

I open the door that leads away from the little tables and empty glass cases and silent cash register. The door that leads back to the hidden universe where Ebb and I bake and talk and decorate and go through ungodly quantities of paper towels. I remind myself that there's nothing to panic about.

But as my feet pass the threshold, I discover that I am wrong. Panic is completely fucking appropriate.

Ebb

I hear Simon's footsteps and my heart falls. For the first time since I met the boy, I've been dreading his arrival.

I try to push him away with every bit of power still in me. But there's precious little of it left, isn't there. I know it well enough; there's no power without blood. Moving will make it worse, he made sure of that. All that's left to me is to watch, helpless. Watch as Davy stands by the door, his face ugly with anticipation.

I've wisdom enough to know when I'm defeated. Doesn't stop me from feeling the fury and the fear, though. No measure of wisdom can change a heart when the heart's right, which is as it should be. It wouldn't bother me, except. Except that I know it gives the bloody devil exactly what he wants.

Tears have been my steady companions in these long years. Now, as they fall, they do me the kindness of reminding me that I've some power left. For as long as my spirit abides, I can control the meaning of things, even if I can't change the fact of them.

I can turn the watching to witnessing.

I bear witness as the door eases open. As Davy's grin grows wicked. As he kicks Simon's feet out from under him, and lands his own foot heavy on Simon's neck so the boy can't rise. Simon's face goes strange. The furious emotions that surge through me are trebled by the testimony painted across the boy's face. I'm witness to an evil that's transpired before. Many times.

Davy looks over at me and smiles with the smug delight of a soul who knows he's exempt from all law, no matter how grave his trespass. The smile of a man who always wins.

"That's much better," he says, observing my face. Noting the size of my pupils, the tremble in my hands. "However," he adds, his voice turning conspiratorial, "as my dear mother used to say, one can never be too thorough when harvesting extra-adrenal glucocorticoids."

His laugh is a dark thing as he bends to look Simon in the eye. He raises up the boy's head by a fistful of hair, so he is forced to look back. Davy nods, satisfied. Then, quick as the devil he is, he slams it sharply to the ground.

"So weak, Simon," Davy mourns, as Simon's body shakes briefly and then goes still. "But let's check and see if it turns out you aren't completely useless after all."

He walks over to the tubes and bottles he's arranged on the table. Blood is flowing neatly from my arm into one of them. Davy extracts a small amount and adds it to the erlenmeyer flask he's set to spinning. It stands on a magnetic stirrer he's set up beside a tiny herd of porcelain goats. Whatever he's looking for, he doesn't find it. I should be glad. But Davy turns to me with such disappointment that I feel a stab of involuntary guilt for letting him down. I shudder as I see him smile, imagining my Simon as a child. Seeing that face, feeling this perverse guilt.

"Hush, Ebb, it's ok," he soothes, setting my insides to curdling. "I knew your blood was likely to prove a poor medium. Else Nicky would've used it years ago, wouldn't he?" I can't repress a shudder of hatred, and Davy smiles pleasantly. "Now, now. Don't look at me like that, darling, you'll hurt my feelings. The only difference between myself and Nicky is that he failed. Or," he says, pretending to think, hand on chin, "I should say, succeeded incompletely."

He smiles to himself then, a private joke. Everything is still. There's only the sound of my blood, and the shallow sound of Simon's breathing. For a minute, for an hour, for a lifetime. Until the sound of Simon struggling to get his elbows under him catches Davy's attention.

He walks to Simon, helping him up gently. The fondness in the gesture is somehow worse than the violence that preceded it.

"Up you go," he murmurs soothingly to Simon, as he helps him sit up. "I'm not going to do anything to hurt you. No point trying your blood again, is there? You and I both know how that'll go." He chuckles warmly and ruffles Simon's hair affectionately. "We've had times together, haven't we, son? But you're just as worthless now as ever."

"Sorry about this," Davy muses thoughtfully, as he pulls Simon's arms behind his back and ties him to the leg of the same table I'm tied to. "I know it's unnecessary. I know you remember not to try and do anything. But no point in my being sloppy. You'll be a good boy for me now, though, won't you, son? The one thing I can always count on you for. To be utterly ineffectual." Davy smiles, puts his hand on Simon's shoulder. "I don't blame you for it, Simon. I blame myself, really. You were supposed to be powerful. Your mother and I worked hard to make you. But it was pointless. You were pointless."

Davy's hand moves to caress Simon's bloody face as he continues speaking. "It's ok, though, son. It's not your fault that you're nothing, that you've been nothing since the moment you were born. We've both tried, haven't we. You've tried. And I appreciate that." Davy looks thoughtful as he walks over to me. He continues talking as he pulls the tubes and needles from my arm, releases the tourniquet.

"I'll leave Ebb alive for you. Let her blood determine what time she has left. And I'll let you rest," Davy whispers, as he inserts a different needle in Simon's arm. He pushes the plunger, emptying the syringe and then neatly removing it. "As a token of my gratitude." His voice is chillingly sincere.

Davy moves about, out of my sight. Things scrape and clatter. At some point I realize he's making tea. After a time, he pulls up a chair. He sits, gracefully sipping the tea. His voice turns briskly conversational. "Now all there is left is to wait for that talented boyfriend of yours to come try to rescue you, and we can finally put this whole bloody business to rest." His grin is sharp. "So to speak." And then he's silent again.

Though the last thing I want to do is obey him, I haven't much choice in the matter. So I sit back and wait for Basilton. I wish I had some doubt that he'd come, but I don't. For better or for worse, isn't that the saying? The boys love each other. So together, we wait for the inevitable.