Malcolm was stretching on the floor of his room, post work-out, during which we'd been trying to burn off some of his anger and frustration over the situation with Trip. He didn't like being taken for a fool.

He heard a knock on his door. That was odd, he thought, someone knocking instead of using the chime. He stood and triggered the door.

Trip stood there, looking guilty, bottle in hand.

Malcolm felt all the anger that he'd worked off earlier come rushing back. He stood stiffly in the doorway, saying nothing.

"Can I come in?" Trip asked after a moment.

Malcolm stood there, seriously considering closing the door in Trip's face. But...he just couldn't. Moving aside silently, he waved Trip through.

He watched as Trip went into the lav, returning with two glasses. Placing them on the desktop, Trip poured drinks from the bottle, then handed one to Malcolm without asking. He sat in Malcolm's desk chair and waved for Malcolm to sit on the bed.

As Malcolm settled stiffly on the edge of his mattress, Trip asked without preamble, "Do you have any deep, dark secrets?"

Malcolm hesitated, then said cautiously, "Don't we all?"

"No, I mean it, Malcolm." Trip leaned forward, cradling the glass between both hands. "You ever do anything that you're really ashamed of?"

Malcolm watched Trip carefully as he measured out his response. Trip looked deadly serious. Staring into Trip's eyes, Malcolm realised something else: his friend was scared. Trip actually seemed frightened. Malcolm nodded.

"Like what?" Trip asked, very quietly.

Malcolm slid backwards on the bed, then drew his legs up, sitting cross-legged on top of his duvet. He took a sip of his drink. "I had a friend in school. I knew that she was diabetic, but I didn't really realise..." He sighed, looking down at his drink. "One day on the bus, she started acting strangely. I suspected that something was wrong, but I left her there." He looked up at Trip. "I don't know why. I mean, looking back now, it's perfectly clear to me that I should have stayed, but at the time..." He shook his head. "I have every excuse in the world - I was young, I was scared." He looked back to Trip. "I should have stayed. I should have told the driver. I don't know why I didn't."

"Was she okay?"

"Later that same day. But still..." he stared into his drink, swirling the amber liquid in the glass. After a moment, he took another swallow, then shook his head. "I'm not sure what that says about me, about my character." He looked up at Trip. With false brightness, he asked, "And yourself?"

Trip nodded, then took a sip from his glass. He shot Malcolm a wan smile, then began speaking. "It was back in high school. At the time, I was feeling a lot of pressure - most of it self-imposed. It was like there were all these expectations on me, for being so bright, college applications, stuff like that, and I freaked." He raised his glass to Malcolm. "I dropped out of school." He downed the rest of his drink in one fast swallow. "I was sixteen."

Malcolm's eyes widened, and he tried to cover his surprise by sipping his drink.

Trip gave him a half-smile. "Wait, it gets worse." He reached behind him, to the bottle on the desk, poured himself another drink, then refilled Malcolm's glass. "I took off, ran away to New Orleans, spent my time drinking, smoking...stuff." He looked away from Malcolm. "Got into some harder drugs. Then we started stealing, you know," he looked back to Malcolm. "To fund our 'extracurricular activities'. It was one of the things we stole..."

"Wait," Malcolm said, interrupting softly. "Who was 'we'?"

"Sorry," Trip said. "Kevin, his girlfriend Sarah, Nora and Dan...well, we called him Dan, but his real name was something unpronounceable Korean. My N'olean friends. One drunken night, we broke into someone's house." Trip's eyes lit up. "God, you should have seen this house. I mean, here I was living in a ruin of a place, but this home was absolutely sumptuous." He took a sip. "It actually had a name, 'The Tiny Bubbles House', it was so frothy. We got chased away before we could do any real damage." He pulled a small package from his pocket, holding it out to Malcolm. "But not before Kevin stole this."

Malcolm's eyes moved from Trip, to the box, then to Trip again.

Trip nodded, eyes flat. He shook the box slightly. "Go ahead, open it."

Malcolm reached out and took it, placing the box on his leg. It was a plain box, no markings, one end already opened. Rummaging through the packing material inside, he pulled out a small, intricately carved ornament. He could see a small hole for thread or a ribbon on one end. An amulet, actually, he thought, or a charm.

"It's beautiful," he said in a soft murmur, moving the object slightly and allowing light to hit its surface; green, shiny, so dark it was almost black. He could see carvings, soft indentations, maybe words carved on it, swirling across both sides, but worn away with handling.

Trip started speaking again. "Kevin died a couple years later. It was a horrible, strange accident - a piece of granite from a monument in D.C. fell off, hitting him." He reached out his hand and Malcolm gave him back the object. "His mom found this in his stuff, and gave it to Sarah. A few years later, Sarah died." Trip stared down at the charm in his hand. "Another strange accident." He looked up. "Before she died, she'd told Dan that weird things had been happening to her. As a joke, she said that she wanted him to have it if she died. So he took it. Then, when he died, it went to Nora."

Trip folded his fingers around the object. "Now it's mine. Nora was killed last week."

"I'm sorry," Malcolm said.

Trip nodded. He smiled oddly, holding the charm up in one hand, his drink still held in the other. "Always knew my time would come. Just didn't realise it would be so soon."

Malcolm blinked in surprise at his last comment. Trip couldn't seriously believe that their deaths and this charm had anything to do with each other. Unsure of exactly what to say, he tried, "Did anyone ever try to return it?"

"Yeah, actually. Nora wrote me...I mean, by the time it got to her, we both suspected that something was up." Trip laughed weakly. "We didn't really believe, but we suspected. So she mailed it to house we stole it from. A week later, the package came back to her; which was odd, if you think about it, because she hadn't included a return address." He paused. "And strange things kept happening to her: one time, she told me that she could have sworn she saw the mirror above her couch lift itself off the wall, hover there for a second, then fall, barely missing her as she jumped up." He shook his head. "Weird stuff."

Malcolm leaned forward. "Do you believe these things are related?"

"I didn't used to. But out here? Stranger things have happened; and when I opened the package and saw this," he said, raising the hand with the charm. He let out a careful breath.

He put the amulet on the desk behind him, then waved his hand dismissively. "Although now, talking about it," he said, wrinkling his nose. "I'm not sure that I really believe - I mean, come on, New Orleans juju magic in space? Sounds like a bad horror movie."

Malcolm laughed, and Trip smiled back at him. "Although New Orleans was an...unusual town," Trip added.

"In what way?" Malcolm asked. "I've never been."

"Well," Trip said pensively. "Let me give you a for example. We used to hang at this bar, the Halloween Lounge. The place was a wreck, with Halloween decorations up year round, just kind of fading into the gloom. It wouldn't even start hoppin' until after midnight, but boy, once it did." He took a sip from his glass, then, over its rim, said, "I went there naked once."

"Pardon?"

Trip nodded. "They had this sort of unwritten rule - anyone in the buff drinks for free. And I was pretty poor at the time." He smiled wickedly. "And thirsty."

"Ah," Malcolm said, covering his surprise by sipping his drink.

"You shocked?"

Malcolm thought a moment, then shook his head. "No. Surprised, but not shocked."

Trip frowned and said, "I did a lot of things back then that I'm ashamed of. Kind of a lost year, if you know what I mean." He looked down at his drink, rolling the glass between his palms. "The follies of youth and all that, I guess." He looked up. "I did eventually go home. Got on the straight-and-narrow, blah blah blah." He leaned forward. "I'd rather you not tell anyone about this, if that's okay."

"Of course."

"And I'm sorry for being such an asshole."

Malcolm looked away. "I know."

x-x