1
“I don’t want anything.”
Kit woke up in the bathtub.
His head hurt, but that was nothing new. His mouth tasted like musty dry cotton, and his legs ached from curling up in the cramped space—also nothing new. He often slept in the bathtub when Uncle Ed threw parties, because he never knew what drunk asshole might decide to pass out in his bedroom.
Uncle Ed included. Ed might not have been Kit’s real uncle, but Kit wasn’t interested in fucking any of Dad’s friends. At least the bathroom door had a lock.
The utter silence, though? The lack of Ed’s terrible music blasting to wake up the stragglers and chase them out of the house? The lack of shouting?
That was definitely new.
Kit levered himself to his knees, then slumped with his arms on the edge of the bathtub for a moment. The cold porcelain felt nice.
He needed to find another place to stay soon. Maybe skip town. He had been at Uncle Ed’s for a few months now—three? four?—and people were getting too friendly and too mean all at once. The guys who wanted into his skinny jeans, and the guys who thought he might know too much about their dumbasscriminal schemes. Some of those were the same guys. Better to bail before he caused trouble.
Tomorrow, maybe.
But it had beentomorrow, maybefor the past three weeks. Kit’s motivation was in short supply these days. Staying with Ed was easy, because Ed would never kick him out. Ed was one of two people who knew Kit’s old name—the other was the guy who made Kit’s new ID.
Kit shoved to his feet with a sigh and stretched his arms up. Shook his legs out. His knees were pink from pressing against the side of the tub, the marks clearly visible through the prominent holes in his black jeans.
He bent over the sink for a messy mouthful of water, wiping his mouth with the back of his hands. Fished some probably-ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet, but pocketed the pills instead of swallowing them. If he didn’t eat first, they would just make him feel sick.
Kind of nice, having peace and quiet in the morning, he reflected as he tied his black hair into a short ponytail. According to his cracked phone screen, it was already 9 a.m. Someone should have been awake.
But no. Blissful quiet.
Maybe everyone else was still passed out. Kit could grab breakfast before anyone else stumbled into his way.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Kit left the bathroom. His bedroom—Uncle Ed’s guest room, piled with boxes of broken equipment from the man’s amateur DJing habit—was exactly as he left it last night. If anyone crashed in his bed, they had the decency to fuck off already.
The upstairs hallway windows didn’t have any curtains, so the early morning sun half blinded him. Wincing, Kit shielded his eyes.
“That shouldn’t be allowed,” he muttered at the sun.
The sun gave no reply. Just kept shining in. Blinding. Annoying.
So distracting that Kit, in his hungover daze, nearly stepped in the pool of blood.
He stopped just in time, the sole of his shoe hovering mere inches above the puddle. Close enough that the outline of his shoe reflected in the dark red surface. Kit took a step back, gaze lifting to follow the blood to its natural origin:
A larger pool of blood, under a man’s lifeless body.
More blood splattered against the walls. Other chunks of matter Kit’s mind shied away from identifying. The stains were shockingly red against the gray-white wall.
Kit’s heart thudded painfully. Once. A burst of fear before the shock numbed him.
He found me.
But that was impossible.Hewas still in prison, and this wasn’t his style.
Then the smell hit. Mostly piss. Mostly masked by the usual booze and weed reek of Uncle Ed’s house. But the smell of death was there too. The slightest aftertaste in the air.
This man was only recently dead. Kit crept close enough to look at the man’s face. Unfamiliar, what remained of it—slack jaw and lolling tongue beneath the ruin of his forehead. His head sat too low on the ground. The back of his skull had been blown out, shattered with an exit wound.
Should I check for a pulse?
