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Major was getting used to the throbbing pain in his face. The Candy-Man, the Hell's Angels in the jail cell … next up, maybe the assistant football coach from his high school team would show up. That guy had had quite the temper. But it didn't matter anyway. Nothing had seemed entirely real to him since he'd seen those brains in the Candy-Man's car. What the hell would a guy be doing with human brains? Major couldn't figure it out. A delicacy for rich people? Seriously, who was so rich they had to eat human brains?

He was so busy researching it, earbuds in, music blasting, that he didn't hear Corinne ringing the doorbell until the door closed behind her. He pulled out the earbuds, resenting the distraction and trying not to. It wasn't Corinne's fault that he seemed to have fallen into some weird modern noir movie.

From the thud of her shoes on the floor as she crossed the room, he gathered she was mad.

"So, you missed our lunch date."

They'd had a lunch date? "Things have been … kinda crazy," he muttered. Did she know he'd been in jail? He couldn't remember. It didn't seem to matter. He tried to remember the Major who was a good boyfriend. "But, uh … I'll make it up to you. Okay?"

Corinne moved closer, gasping as she saw his face. "Oh, my god. Major, what happened to your face?"

If she had been Liv, he could have told her. But sitting here, looking at Corinne, he wondered if he had ever really known her. Major shook his head. "It's a long story." She frowned, and he decided to take a stab at the explanation. "I—I broke into a guy's car. Then the cops put me in a cell with these bikers, and … whatever. You know, it doesn't matter."

"It does matter!" She took a step towards him, and her attention was caught by the giant image of a human brain on his computer screen. "Why are you looking at pictures of brains?"

Major opened his mouth to answer, not sure what he could say that would explain the situation without making him sound crazy, but she spoke again before he could come up with anything.

"You know what, don't even answer that. This is so not what I signed up for." She headed for the door.

He got to his feet, following her. "Look, I know things—"

Corinne stopped, whirling to face him. "You keep getting into fights. You just got arrested. You're in a running battle with someone known as the Candy-Man. What the hell? You were the dream combination of super-hot but funny, and … now you're like some whackjob who doesn't shower enough."

Did she not get it? This was serious. People's lives were at stake. "If you'd just give me a second to explain …"

"You should get some help."

She was right, he probably should get someone to help him with this, but who could he tell that he'd found human brains in a cooler in the car of the man who had killed Jerome? And whatever Ravi and Clive said, Major knew it had been the Candy-Man. He stood watching as Corinne walked out of his life, and felt nothing but a sense of relief that he didn't have to try to be normal anymore.

On her way out, she nearly ran into Ravi, who stared after her, then turned to Major. "I take it game night's off?"

Major gave that some thought. He should take a break from worrying about this brain thing to go kill some virtual zombies.

Zombies. Brains. No way. But … brains. He frowned.

"Major?"

"Yeah, let's, uh … let's skip game night." He turned back to the computer, entering some new search terms.

When the knock came at the door later that night, he almost didn't answer it. Whoever it was, he didn't want to talk to them. But he heard Liv's voice through the glass, and thought better of it. If he could talk to anyone, explain what was going on with him to anyone … it was Liv. She was being bright and falsely chipper, so he could tell Ravi had told her about Corinne. But when the door opened and she saw his face, it was clear that Ravi had not told her about the biker gang beat-down, which had added such nice colors on top of the half-healed beat-down from the Candy-Man.

"Oh, Major. Who did this to you?"

"I can't talk about Fight Club." He winced openly, ignoring the pain in his face, as if he had truly slipped up by mentioning it. "Crap!"

Liv didn't fall for his comedy, and he couldn't really blame her. He wasn't finding much about his life funny at the moment, either. "I want to know what happened," she demanded, stepping inside.

"Would you believe shark attack?"

She ignored him, touching the side of his face gently with her small, cool hand. Major walked away, not wanting the sympathy or the concern today.

"Did you go to the skate park again?"

"Rough night in jail," he said breezily. "Turns out the police take umbrage when you accuse them of negligence."

"You were in jail? Why didn't you—" She caught herself even before Major could give her a pointed look. "You did call me. You called me from jail and I didn't answer."

"It's fine. Really. I'm … glad you're here now." He really was. Even after everything, the only person he wanted to see every day was still her, the only person he wanted to talk to right now while the world was falling down around his ears was, still and always, her.

Liv sank into a chair, still mentally beating herself up, and picked up the paper lying there. "You made it on the police blotter?"

He hadn't wanted to tell her, or anyone, the rest of it, the worst of it, but now he found he did want to tell her, and that he could tell her without breaking into tears, which was a step up from the rest of the day. "One of the kids at Helton Shelter brought that into a group session this morning. Unfortunately, my bosses weren't nearly as impressed with my street cred as this kid was, so … If you hear of anyone looking for a youth counselor with a rap sheet …"

"They fired you. Major, I'm so sorry."

There had been a time when he could have let her see how devastated he was, but … this was no longer that time. He looked away from her shocked and worried face, forcing the "life's a beach" smile he kept for these occasions. "Look at me." He knew what his face looked like, what a bad example he was setting for the kids. "I didn't give 'em much choice."

Liv was searching for words, but he didn't want platitudes. Having come this far, having told her the worst, he was ready to tell her the crazy part, too. He needed to tell her.

Reaching for her hand, he said, "I need to talk to you about something. I think you're the only one who might listen to me." He'd considered confiding in Ravi, but he hadn't wanted Ravi to go all … medical conspiracy theorist on him. Maybe if they'd known each other longer, but—it had always been Liv he talked to, right from the start.

"Of course."

"Those people in the woods didn't kill Jerome and Eddie. All right? It was a drug dealer named Julian Dupont, the guy the kids call the Candy-Man."

Liv broke in before he could finish. "They found their remains at the house."

"I'm telling you, it wasn't them. All right? This Dupont guy was wearing Jerome's shoes. He practically admitted to killing him. The police, they're covering this up, now, don't ask me why—" She was looking away, not believing him, and he could hear his own voice rising, the growing hysteria, and he tried to rein it in, bring the tone back down so she would take him seriously.

"The DNA was verified."

"Just … listen. Please. All right? I saw something in the Candy-Man's car, and it's gonna sound crazy, all right, but I know what I saw."

"Okay." There were years of trust in her face and her voice as she watched him, waiting for the crazy.

"There was an ice chest in the passenger seat. It had a brain inside. A human brain. I'm sure of it." He looked closely at her face, waiting for the disbelief. She seemed shocked, as if she were processing, but he couldn't tell if she was shocked about the brains he'd found, or about the ones in his head that were clearly slowly turning to mush.

"Brains, huh?" she said at last, her voice carefully casual.

"You think I'm crazy."

"No!" She got to her feet, looking past him with that thousand-yard Liv figuring things out stare. "It's just that if the man worked for a butcher shop, like he told the police, then, it seems logical the brains came from an animal."

"No. I've been looking at pictures of human and cow brains for hours, and yes, I know how crazy that sounds, but Liv, a cow's brain is baseball sized. That's not what this was." God, it was a relief to be able to talk this through and be sure of what he was saying. She was looking at him in distress, and he needed her to be with him on this. Maybe no one else would be, but she had to be, or he really would go crazy. "I need someone to believe me. I'd feel so much better if that someone was you."

She was struggling with her disbelief, he could see. "I know how close you and Jerome were," she said slowly, grasping at some explanation, "how responsible you felt for him. I think you holding on to this case is a way of you holding on to him."

He couldn't help the crushing disappointment. Of course it was crazy. Of course she couldn't believe him, not without seeing the brains with her own eyes. And maybe he was chasing ghosts just to feel like he had done something for Jerome even now that it was too late. She had a point. And clearly, he wasn't going to convince her that he had seen what he had seen, so he was going to have to convince her instead that she had proved her point. "You're right," he told her at last. "I don't want you to be, but you are."

"I know it's not easy to let go."

"I—I've gotta get my act together. This—this isn't who I am." Liv released a breath he hadn't even noticed she was holding, in relief that he had come around, he assumed. "You know, if I'm gonna get into a fight with a biker gang, it should be because I, I accidentally knocked over a row of their hogs outside a dive bar." That one was probably pushing it, but Liv seemed to buy it.

She took a step toward him. "Just promise me that you'll back off from this Julian guy?"

"I promise." They looked at each other, a comfortable, familiar silence between them. "You're a good friend, Liv." She always had been, until she wasn't. He was glad to have this part of her back again.

Major closed the door behind her and returned to his computer, putting his earbuds back in and typing "Uses for Human Brains" into the search engine. He had promised to back off from Julian, not from the brains. He was going to get to the bottom of this if it was the last thing he did.