Okay, I was going to wait to post this, but then I decided not to :) Warning for semi-graphic self-harm towards the end of the chapter (and uh, you know, attempted murder, but I figured that was kind of a given already)

I wake up at the crack of dawn, which should be a good way to avoid the rest of the house— Ma and Ed sleep until noon whenever they're unemployed, which is most of the time, and Angela took after them, she's not out of her room until eleven unless I drag her out of bed. Unfortunately, I share digs with my kid brother, and no matter how quiet and subtle I think I'm being, by the time I'm back from taking a leak, Curly's got my number. He sits up, back ramrod-straight against his headboard, examining me like I'm a deer he wants to shoot right between the eyes. Him still being cocooned in his blankets lowers the intimidation factor a fair bit. "Where are you goin'?"

"Out," I say, fumbling in the velvety semi-darkness for the heater I stashed under my bed. Silencer's already attached. If I think any harder about this, even with mother's little helper on my side, I'm going to lose my nerve altogether. "Go back to sleep, 's still early."

"Who do you think I am, a preschooler you can put back to bed?" he sneers. For some reason, his hand's shaking, though I'm the one who should be afraid. "You actually brought a gun here, into the house, with Ma and Ed? You thought that was a good idea?"

I wasn't thinking about that aspect at all, and I hate that of all people, Curly's pointing out my massive lapse in judgement. He's right, there's no way in hell I ever should've brought a loaded gun in here, with two raving drunks— one who's a bad med interaction away from dangling from the ceiling fan, the other who's prone to violent fits even without deadly weapons in his reach. Me knowing I'm wrong and admitting I'm wrong, though, are two very different things. "Then you shouldn't have no problem with me takin' the gun out of the house, should you?" I span the distance between our twin beds in one step. "What you don't know, you can't be held legally liable for, kid. You was sleepin' this whole time, comprendes?"

He doesn't understand shit, judging by the growing mutiny in his expression, and I remember we patched exactly nothing up after our blowout over his freeloading daddy. "I know Alex shot Gabi, when he went lookin' for you, I've been outside sometime in the last week. I know what you're fixin' to do."

"So have you just been askin' me rhetorical questions all this time, or did it still actually take you this long to figure out what I'm up to?"

I don't think Curly knows what a rhetorical question is, but he picks up what I'm putting down anyway. "Shit, I guess I didn't want to believe it was true, or I wanted you to cop to it— I don't know!" He gets his hand stuck in his rat's nest of black curls, ends up pulling a chunk of hair out. "You can't do this. Half the crew already thinks you're losing your grip, that you ain't committed to the life no more, and he's real popular. You're gonna make a martyr out of him."

I suspected as much, but it still hurts to hear confirmed. "I think maybe I'm gonna take care of the threat to my girl, first, worry about my approval ratings with the crew later." And then I decide to be cruel, just because I can. "You're a coward, Curly, can't even handle a goddamned bloody nose, and now you want to tell me how to run my own outfit like you know the first thing about shit. I guess you'd probably sit him down for a talk about his fucking feelings, and ask him real nice to never do it again, and look all surprised right before he shot you in the head. At least that wouldn't involve someone bein' unhappy with you."

Curly's so pissed hearing all that, his fists ball up involuntarily, and I just smirk. Christ, I can be a real bastard, I don't even know why I'm winding the kid up like this. He's only voicing my own fears, the ones I refuse to consciously acknowledge anymore. "You gonna take a swing now, try to stop me? Don't waste your breath. You know I could take you with both hands tied behind my back."

He's well-aware he ain't winning no real fistfight with me. He reels backwards, retreats, but only temporarily. "I'll tell Tío Luis."

I laugh. I really do. Loud enough to wake up the first morning birds, or our parents, if anything could penetrate their dead alcoholic slumber. "Who do you think put me up to this? Hell, gave me the gun to begin with?"

"Then I'll go wake up Ed, tell him what you're up to, how 'bout it?"

If that ain't a wildcard I didn't anticipate him throwing down. "You're stoopin' real low, Curly," I say slowly, appeal to his sense of shame, at the very least. "That's real fuckin' low. I never ratted you or Angel out to him, no matter what you did." Put myself in front of his belt or his fists for them plenty of times, come to think of it, and this is the kind of thanks I get?

"I know it's low," he says, doesn't even put a token effort into denying it. "But if Ed whales on you, 'least you won't be frying in the electric chair."

This is the kind of cold, hard logic that made Ma keep him around all these years.

I shrug, then, decide to call his bluff. "Go ahead, holler for him, you ain't gonna get his lousy drunk ass out of bed quick enough for him to beat me to the door. And once I'm done with this, hell—" I pat my pocket for my switchblade, that's my backup plan if the gun jams— "somehow I don't think my stepdaddy's gonna be my biggest problem no more."

Curly gets up and throws the blankets off, into a pile on the floor; I think he might actually try to tackle me himself. He does me one worse. "Santi's dead," he says, gets such a hard grip on my shoulder, I swear I can feel it bruising like an overripe apple. "He's dead, Tim, and he ain't comin' back. This ain't gonna bring him back."

I spin around and hit him so hard across the mouth, he falls down onto his ass. It happens so fast I swear my hand acts on its own, I don't register what I'm doing until I hear the crack ring out like— well, shit, a gunshot. He doesn't cry out, or start to tear up neither, he's taken way too many blows in his time for that, but the betrayed, shocked way he stares at me is going to haunt me longer than Alex's ghost once I pull the trigger.

I've hit him before, obviously, we're brothers— Ma's made me whoop him, when Ed wasn't around, and we've fistfought about a million times. But this ain't some half-hearted lick with the belt or a full-nelson over the TV channel. "You know not to talk about Santi like that to me, you know better," I say, and it comes out pathetic and high and pleading, with none of the authority I intended. I sound just like my stepdad after he's thrown his weight around and sobered up, look what you made me do, why'd you have to make me do it. I hate myself.

"Qué pasa? What the hell kind of racket are y'all makin' before the sun's even up?" Ma hisses like a snake that's been coaxed out of its den against its will, her hair a tangled mess flowing over her shoulders, as she bursts into our room. Then she spots Curly on the floor, bleeding so much from the mouth, it's dripping down his chin and soaking the front of the t-shirt he wore to bed. "Timothy Luis, I'll roll your whole head." She crouches over him and tries to get his hand away from the hazmat zone on his face. "Baby, let me see, did he knock any teeth loose?"

Mama's boy that he is, I expect him to not only let her fuss over him and clean him up, but to rat out exactly why I did it in the first place. Instead, he scowls at her and bats her hand away, climbs back up to his feet. He refuses to look at me altogether. "Ma, quit it already, I'm fine. Swear you treat me like a fucking toddler half the time. I took a lot worse in reform school." I have never heard Curly run his mouth at her like that. Judging by her slack jaw, neither has she. "I need to get out of here," he mutters, and he's out the door before either one of us can say shit to him.

I expect her to try to hit me, once her swift holler at Curly to stay where he is does nothing to halt him, though I can grab both her wrists in one hand. She doesn't. "Ain't you your daddy's boy, all right," she says, with more threat and menace than I've heard from her voicebox in a long time. "But if you think I'm going to let you bully your brother the way he did, you've got another thing coming."

"You think Curly needs to be protected from me?" The obvious comeback is that this sure is rich, from a woman who turned a blind eye for years while her live-in boyfriend beat the shit out of her precious baby, excused it all as 'discipline' or just pretended it wasn't happening. Why not strike a little lower, below the belt, though. "I don't care what you've done to me," I say, and I mean it. "But what you did to Curly, I ain't never gonna fuckin' forgive you."

If she couldn't have kept her legs closed, she at least could've made sure he never found out the truth. Because I know exactly where Curly's run off to, without having to be told.

The way the pills work— I know I should be nervous, on an intellectual level, I guess, but I don't feel it. Not physically, no racing heart or twisting stomach, and I can think straight. So I'm doing that kind of straight-thinking in my truck, parked outside some lousy dive, before I go in and make my move.

Gangbangers keep weird schedules. It's better to do business after dark, and it's not like most of us have regular jobs keeping us occupied, during the day— the parties go on all night and bleed into the morning, and then everyone's asleep until well into the afternoon. I'm taking a lucky guess, showing up here at 'Kilkenny's' with half the neon sign already burned-out, but it's a haunt I know he likes to frequent. A couple of half-dressed girls are slumped outside on the steps, one of them lying supine on the rusted metal, the other trying to light a cigarette, mouthing a cuss as it smolders in the misty air. They might actually be hookers, come to think of it, judging by how high their skirts are hiked up— at least I won't be causing too much of a scene in this fine establishment. I propel myself out of my seat, tuck the heater into the waistband of my pants, and start to walk inside.

Cigarette-girl leans forward when I approach her, eyes hungry and predatory like a tiger's, catches hold of my ankle before I can reach the door. "Hey, I'll cut you a deal, since you're Luis's nephew and all." I shudder; I sure as hell ain't been hard to get into the sack in the past, I've slept with chicks whose names I didn't even know before, but I think I'm going to have to draw the line at one whose favors my uncle's enjoyed first. "Two dollars for a throw—"

"No thanks, darlin'," and I reach down to try to prise her fingers off the cuff of my jeans. "Ain't desperate enough to have to pay for it yet, and hopefully never will be."

Her feelings don't seem too hurt— I guess they can't be that sensitive, in this business. "One dollar, then?" she's still hollering at my retreating back, as I push my way through the thick wooden door.

It's a half-asleep, listless crowd, heading into the morning— the guy I think is supposed to be the bouncer is slumped in the corner, using his coat as a blanket, his eyes open just the tiniest sliver. And I guess the luck of the Irish has finally decided to work out for me after all, because there he is. My quarry, in the very first place I went hunting for him.

He's bent over the pool table in the back, lining up the cue in his hands; he's surprisingly alert, for a guy at the very tail end of a party, adroit enough as he knocks the yellow ball into a hole. Swear he's trying to impress this blonde, blue-eyed chick with a hairdo that's flipped up at the ends, who's leaning against his side, pretending to be too dumb to know how to play. He doesn't even notice when I creep up behind him, moving as silent and liquid as a shadow, the way I did as a kid, trying to avoid making the floorboards creak and attracting my stepdad's wrath. He doesn't notice shit until the barrel's pressed against his back. "Tim?" he asks as he swivels his torso around to try to face me— I jam the barrel in further, hard enough to bruise. "What the fuck?"

"You can start walking," I say in a real calm, low voice, "or I'm gonna shoot everybody in this room, startin' with that pretty lil' broad you got hanging off your arm. Choice is yours, pendejo, but if I were you, I'd make it fast."

I am absolutely not going to do that— unlike him, I don't take out my rage on innocent bystanders. I have no idea where it even came from. I feel like I just walked off the set of an action movie, From Russia with Love or something, can't believe this shit is coming out of my mouth. Like any good actor, I've got the whole room in thrall.

That chick he's got with him, though, she's another wildcard I didn't anticipate— because instead of bursting into tears or starting to scream, what does she do but try to fling herself in front of him as a human shield. Jesus Christ, what's he packing down there, ten diamond-encrusted inches? "Don't shoot him," she's got enough nerve to insist, and then starts digging through her purse for her pocketbook. "If you want money, I have some—"

I point the gun in her face, which, if not the worst thing I've ever done in my life, is probably making it into the top three. "Darlin', I promise he ain't worth takin' no bullets for, so why don't you step aside and quit tryna play the hero." Her peaches-and-cream complexion turns the shade of sour milk, making faint freckles stand out on her skin. "You couldn't bribe me with the contents of Fort Knox right now, you want me to be honest."

"Janet, c'mon, baby, just do what he says." Alex throws a look of pure hatred my way as he raises himself up off the table. That's real cute, on his part. "I'll go with you, okay?" he says like he's Isaac walking up Mount Moriah to be sacrificed. "Just don't hurt her."

"Guess you can obey orders well enough, if you really put your mind to it." I jerk him upwards with enough force to dislocate his arm, just about, and start walking him out of there. "Let's go. I don't think you want to do this with an audience."

"You want to kill me in here?"

I figure a public bathroom's as good a place as any to do the deed, especially once I've barricaded the door with the trashcan. Nobody's likely to come in to take a leak at this time in the morning, and I'll be able to rinse the blood off myself— and the floor— easy enough once I'm done. Same reason they keep drains on the floor of a slaughterhouse.

"Good enough for a piece of human shit, I reckon." I guess the reality of his situation hasn't sunk in yet. Maybe it will in a minute. "Get down on your knees."

"I ain't givin' you one last blowjob before I go, maricón, same way you was suckin' off Father Declan behind the altar—"

I crack him across the face with the pistol, and once he crumples, twist his arm and force him down onto the grimy tile, sandwiched between a stall door and one of the sinks. Train it on him, so he doesn't try to get up, once he's regained his bearings. "You never did figure out how to shut that mouth, did you?" He gags on his own blood, lets some of it dribble down onto his collar. "I'm one thing— but aimin' at my girl, hijo de la chingada? What'd she ever do to nobody, least of all you?"

They don't make cusses like that in English; I savor the syllables, the way they come out in a harsh, guttural snarl. When he's too slow with an answer, I jab him in the shoulder with the barrel, and provide my own. "You figure that was even worse than just gettin' to shoot me? Killin' her, and makin' me live with that?"

"No, why the hell would I do that?" he demands, like, right before he dies, he feels the need to set the record straight. "You've never cared about nobody save yourself in your life, especially not some broad, you tossed Bonnie aside like yesterday's garbage. I went there lookin' for you."

"Then what fuckin' part of not findin' me made you want to pop a cap in her?"

"I was drunk and mad you weren't there, okay?" For the first time, I start to see some honest fear on his face, as he watches the barrel like I'm hypnotizing him with a medallion. "She was just… in the way. I don't know!"

He was drunk and he was mad— and the worst part is, I believe him. You can't really give the guys in my gang a lot of credit for their brains. I'm amazed he even figured out how to snitch on me to a cop without getting himself arrested in the process.

There's no fucking point or deeper meaning to any of this. No cosmic significance whatsoever. A Tiger shot my cousin in the head because he was pissed that my uncle stole his girl. I lived because the gun jammed. Now we're two kids squatting in a public restroom, acting out some JD movie that's rapidly turning into a farce. He knows I'm not going to shoot him. I know I'm not going to shoot him. I'm approaching the end of my script altogether.

"You won't do it," he says, reading my mind and speaking the words out loud. It's not even a taunt, so much as a plain statement of fact. "Shootin' someone ain't the kind of thing you can overthink. If you was gonna do it, you would've already. You're just runnin' your mouth."

Hell, I'm half-tempted to shoot him out of spite, hearing that— confirmation of Luis's words, that I'm a coward, writing checks with my mouth that my ass can't cash. And I'm thinking that I once considered him one of my closest friends, but he really doesn't know anything about me at all. Neither does my uncle. I don't care so much what happens to me, I never did.

I've got all the power, now, to even the score. I'm not that scared kid anymore, screaming, covered in blood. And yet, despite having taken enough Valium to get an elephant high, my hands are still shaking so hard I can barely hold the gun up. If I pull the trigger now, I swear the bullet's gonna just ricochet off the walls. "You won't do it," he says again, like a mantra, less certain the longer I hesitate. He swallows so hard, I see his Adam's apple bob up and down, like a toy boat in a bathtub. "You won't do it. I'm sorry, man, I didn't mean for things to go this far—"

Didn't neither of us think they'd go this far. If I open my mouth, I'm going to laugh, loud and hysterical, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to stop.

Maybe it's the fact that he loves his sister that saves him— he left his corner for her, sold me up the river to pay off her medical bills, after all. I'd do the same for Angela, I know now and I knew then. It's enough to convince me he could safely roam the streets, doesn't need to be put down like a rabid dog. Maybe I'm just making excuses for my own weakness. Either way, Curly was right. Santi's gone. Nothing is ever going to bring him back.

In a competition between justice and mercy, for once, I choose mercy.

"Get out of here," I hear myself say. "Out of this city, for that matter— I don't give a flying fuck where you buy a bus ticket to. But don't let me see your face ever again, or I swear to God, you ain't cheatin' death a third time."

I take my lighter out, once he's run away from here like the hounds of hell are nipping at his heels. Stare at my own face in the stained mirror, pale as a bar of Ivory, my eyes standing out huge and dark like I just snorted three lines back-to-back. I keep staring at it until my features turn into an unrecognizable, meaningless blur, until I'm looking at a stranger from a vantage point far above myself, then I pull down the shoulder of my thermal and flick a flame alive.

Nothing hurts quite like a burn. Norm used to put cigarettes out on Dally, he reckoned one of my stepdads did the same to me first time he saw me with my shirt off, but none of them, even Ed, ever managed to be more sadistic or creative than I am to myself. Sometimes I just need to cut through all my numbness, even if it's with pain. Hell, especially if it's pain. Remember I still exist.

My skin's blistering, when I come to, in ugly white pustules I'll have to be careful to keep from getting infected. I didn't even notice.

I left the house before dawn, and I don't come back until the sun's set again. I drive around the city until I go through an entire tank of gas, completely aimless, blaring the first Stones album at a volume that'll give me permanent tinnitus but drowns out my thoughts. Consider, for a few longing moments, flooring it and just heading out of town, starting over somewhere nobody's heard of me or my family or my reputation, the way Alex'll get to. I could do construction anywhere else, or seasonal farm work, like Adán— when you've got nothing going for you, you have nothing to lose, either. But I'd still have to take myself along for the ride, all of my worst memories and regrets, and besides, I got the kids to think about. They've always been my lodestone, guiding me home…

Home sweet home, where Ma's up in my face the second I darken her doorstep, close enough I can smell the vodka on her breath. She's pissed, in both senses of the word. "Do you have any idea where Curly's at?"

Figures, that she's all over this like white on rice. I used to go missing for weeks at a time, at his age, and she only noticed when she was going to be short on the light bill or needed someone to keep the kids out of her hair. It's a bad, bad impulse I've got inside me, as I consider telling her exactly where I've been, why Curly and I were scrapping this morning to begin with. "Am I my brother's keeper?" I say instead.

Ma lets me know how much she appreciates my appeal to theology with a slap upside my head, but then turns the force of her rage on Ed, who's slinking into the living room. "You plan on bein' any help today, Edward? Any at all? For once in your useless life?"

"Lord, he probably just got tired of listenin' to you bitch from the minute you wake up to the minute you go to sleep." He sits down on the armchair, puts his feet up on the battered coffee table, and twists the cap off a beer bottle. "Know that's what always drives me out the door, ain't that right, Tim?"

I'm spared a second slap upside the head, for agreeing with him, when the prodigal son himself returns. His face is a fucking mess, but I don't have any time to feel bad about it before Ma's on the warpath. "And just where do you think you've been all day, young man?" she demands, dragging him into the living room by the tricep, which is something she can only do because he's humoring her. "I ought to wear you out, I swear, I got half a mind to." She's threatening to do it herself, when there's not one, but two men in the room with her? Christ, her confidence in us has really hit an all-time low. "Runnin' your mouth at me like that— then I got your principal on the phone, sayin' you're skippin' school. Again, 'cause turns out you skipped it yesterday, too. Care to explain? Or do you want to explain it to that social worker and your probation officer?"

"I'm sorry, Mama," comes his feeble mewl of an apology as he pries her fingers loose. I haven't called the old lady that since I lost my first tooth, but she eats it up coming from him, her face already softening— though, hell, that might just be the liquor starting to hit. "I was at my daddy's place—"

If you've never watched someone choke on a mouthful of hard liquor, it's not pretty. She's out of commission for a solid minute, hacking her lungs up like a career smoker with emphysema, then massaging her sternum. "Your what's now?"

He tilts his chin up, looks at her fearlessly, or maybe he just doesn't have enough good sense to know he should be afraid. With Curly, anything's possible. "At my daddy's place. I think I wanna go live with him, and he says it should be okay, as soon as he gets around to telling his wife."

Ma goes straight over to the sink, pulls an unmarked bottle of hooch out of the cabinet underneath it, and starts chugging. For once, I don't even have the energy to call her out on it. I've already picked up the bottle she left behind.

Another Kodak moment with the Shepard clan.