Silas doesn’t look at me right away. His hands never stop moving.
“It was just some coke,” one of the guys blurts out from somewhere behind us, his voice shaking so hard the words nearly collapse into each other. “He’s done it before-”
Silas’s hands never stop.
“It wasn’t just coke,” he says flatly, the compressions landing hard beneath his palms. “Or it was cut with something.”
The certainty in his voice cuts straight through the panic around us.
The boy’s friend stumbles closer, eyes wild, hands hovering uselessly at his own head as if he wants to help but has no idea how. “I swear to God, it was just one line. Maybe two. He said he was fine.”
Fine.
The word hits me like a slap.
My stomach twists, the patio beneath my knees starting to feel too familiar again. The flashing pool lights against wet concrete, the bodies crowding in too close, the awful helplessness of everyone watching and no one understanding how quickly “fine” turns into dead.
“Did he take anything else?” I ask, forcing the question out before my own head can spiral. “Pills? Anything to drink? Anything else tonight?”
The guy shakes his head too fast. “Just booze. And that. I think. I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.”
Silas shifts, angling the boy’s chin up more firmly between compressions, his whole focus narrowed down to survival. There is no hesitation in him now. No taunting. No jealousy. No cruel little games. Just the ruthless efficiency of someone who has learned what happens when you waste time.
“Does anyone here have Narcan?” he barks, finally lifting his head enough to look at the crowd.
No one answers.
A girl near the back starts crying harder.
Kadin appears beside us again, crouching now, his breathing rough from panic and running. “911 is on the phone. Ambulance is coming. They want to know if he’s breathing.”
“He’s not breathing right,” Silas says, his tone clipped. “Tell them possible opioid overdose. Tell them if they have Narcan in the kit, they need it ready the second they get here.”
Kadin repeats it immediately into the phone, his face pale.
The friend who’d been talking drops down onto his knees across from us, shaking so violently he almost tips over. “He doesn’t do that shit,” he says, looking at the boy like if he says it enough times it might undo reality. “He just likes to party. He doesn’t do that kind of shit.”
Silas’s jaw tightens.
“Doesn’t matter what he likes,” he says. “It matters what’s in his body now.”
His hands press down again. Once. Twice. Three times. Each compression is deep enough to make me flinch, but he never slows. Water still drips from the ends of his sleeves, his soaked flannel clinging to his back and shoulders, every muscle in his arms working with brutal precision.
I can’t stop staring at his hands.
Can’t stop remembering mine on my mother’s chest, smaller and weaker, shaking too hard to count right.
Not like this.
He knows what he’s doing.
The realization settles somewhere painful in my ribs.
“What do you need?” I ask, because if I stop moving, stop speaking, I’ll start seeing the motel room again instead of this patio.
His eyes flick to me for only a second. They’re sharp, sober in a way the rest of him isn’t, unreadable except for one thing: urgency.
“Count with me,” he says.
