One Thing Leads to Another (pt 5).

Everybody says that you’re an asshole if you know you’re good looking, but Wolf has always known they were beautiful; it’s like their names, just something a little different about them. True never got what his brother had, the glorious years in the school halls where people did whatever he wanted, and there were always girls and always friends, and Wolf is sorry for that, watching his brother chew his fries and suck the salt from his fingers. He should be seventeen and anybody other than this.

Shining Steps sounds retarded, True says. Why’d you go there?

They don’t let you pick, Wolf says. I went where they sent me. They got me a place to stay and a job at a restaurant. Right now I’m living with a bunch of guys in Des Plaines.

True nods; he scrapes the leftover salt from the bottom of the bag. Wolf looks over his shoulder at the counter girls who are staring at them; they jump when his eyes hit them, covering their mouths and giggling, hurrying back to work.

It’s disgusting, Wolf admits, where we live. You can practically ride around on the size of the roaches we got.

Gross, True agrees; he reaches for Wolf’s fries and his brother swats his hand away, then relents and gives them over. True chews happily in triumph; Wolf thinks of the nights that he made True go hungry so that he could eat, and made True go through the night with his stomach cramping because there was only enough for one of them to get high; how if the little fuck was pissing him off too much he’d lock him out and make him sleep outside. Once Wolf was cooked up again he’d love his brother and say he was sorry and True never held hit against him, he always had a hug for the big bad Wolf.

Can they come with us? True asks. It takes Wolf a moment to understand him, and he coughs out a laugh. No, True-blue, they can’t come with us. What are they, your pets?

True licks the ketchup out of the little white paper cap; No, Wolf thinks, he’s theirs.

I have to say goodbye, his brother says. You got to let me say goodbye. Wolf is about to tell him no fucking way, but he sees the tension in True – and what will he do, chase his brother down? Drag him into the car, fighting the whole time? Fine, he says, but the roads are shit and I don’t want to get into an accident so don’t take all night, all right?

True promises he won’t, sucking at the last of his shake, not caring how loud the noise it, grating on the inside of Wolf’s head like sandpaper. He rubs his eyes and thinks of Jude looking at him like a cartoon dog so hungry that people are turning into drumsticks. And all the while True is telling him about Dixie and about Jackie, and the stories are like the group meetings he has attended hundreds of until depravity no longer shocks him – but it does now, not in the things his brother is saying but in the way he takes no notice of them at all, just breathing them in and out as if these were regular things. Wolf bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood.

*