{Cary}

In fourth period, Cary's schedule told him he had to visit the school counsellor. He shifted his feet in front of his new locker for a full minute when the class bell rang, thinking about heading out the doors to the 7-Eleven to have a 50-minute smoke break. He hated counsellors and their questions and the way they were paid to pretend to care. By now he figured he could break a counsellor in two sessions, ducking their prying questions and pissing them off so they dropped the act. He had a feeling Pete wouldn't like that.

He made his feet go down the hallway to the counsellor's door with no idea what he was going to do with himself once he got there. Just because he was allowed to talk about all that shit now didn't mean he wanted to. Once was more than enough.

He bumped a knuckle on the opened door and sloped inside. In one glance, he checked out the small office space and the person settling back in her chair beside the desk, and then fixed his eyes on the window. There was a tree out there, with fresh green leaves moving in a breeze he couldn't feel.

"Ciaran, right?" Her voice was warm, like they weren't just meeting for the first time. He tucked his chin down, reminding himself that he was not allowed to slap her friendliness aside and hurt this person.

She checked the note on the thick file open on her deck. "Your worker says you prefer Cary."

Cary guessed every single thing he'd done wrong since Grade 2 was there in that file. He breathed shallowly so he wouldn't catch the stink of it.

"So." She gestured to the second chair for him to sit. "Why do you think you're here?"

Cary stayed where he was. Her nails were stickered with tiny Union Jacks, except her left pinkie. It was bare and bitten down to a nub.

She glanced up at his silence, and he made himself hold her eyes with the look his father used to give him—the one that said he was too stupid to live.

Oddly, a smile quirked her lips. "You planning to give me the Good Will Hunting treatment, Cary? That didn't work out too well for Will in the end."

He crossed his arms, setting his eyes back on the window. He was pretty sure she was making fun of him in some way that was over his head. It was a familiar feeling, and he curled himself tightly on the inside so he made a smaller target.

She sighed and fluffed up her hair with her fingers, making her 'fro stand up an inch higher than it had before. "Look, I hated counsellors too when I was your age. So I'll start, okay? I'm here because sometimes kids at this school need someone to listen while they're going through a difficult time—or they need help working on a goal, like not getting upset with teachers or feeling anxious."

She didn't look at him while she talked, which made it easier to watch her sideways. There was a beat of silence when maybe she thought he would talk.

She laid her hands flat on her bare desk, lacing her fingers together. "And obviously, I have spoken with your social worker, and I have some idea why you're here—although not as much as you might think. With a criminal investigation under way, I can't ask you any questions about your family. You can talk about whatever you want to talk about, but I won't bring it up if you don't."

Cary shifted his weight, feeling the way it didn't hurt to move anymore and figuring how long he could run, how fast he could twist away from a blow before his ribs tore with pain again. Was she saying he didn't have to talk about the shit his father did? He could just let his body heal and forget it?

"So ... I'm wondering what it would be like if we just worked on coping with school?" There was a pause, like she really was wondering about that. "Looks like you've had a rough couple years." She ran a thumb over the corner of the closed file. "I'm obviously concerned about the event that led to you being switched to King George. I'd like to talk about that at some point."

Cary pulled his arms tighter against his body, feeling the cuts throb under the clean bandage Jon's mom had made him wear today.

"But I know not everyone finds it easy to talk about personal stuff with someone they don't know. So we could just spend this time getting to know each other first. What do you think about that?"

Cary's eyes wandered around the room until they found the clock on her bookcase. He wasn't good at telling time on the kind with the hands and the 12 numbers, but he figured only 10 minutes of their time had passed. He let out a small puff of breath, regretting that he hadn't grabbed a smoke before he came. Forty more minutes standing here seemed like a long time.

He heard her scrape open a drawer of her desk and some rustling. "You know what, some kids don't even like to talk. Sometimes they like to draw instead. That's cool with me."

His thoughts returned to the woman in the room in spite of himself. She had a stack of paper on the corner of her desk closest to him, and a can of pencil crayons beside it. It wasn't cheap, flat printer paper either, but real drawing paper with weight and texture. His fingers twitched, touching where his jacket pocket used to be, where he used to keep his drawing pencils. He gave her a narrow look.

She flipped the file closed and tapped it with one of her Union Jacks. "What's not in here, Cary? I bet there's a pile of stuff about you this doesn't know." For a second, she was looking him in the eyes, her eyebrows lifted and her face warm with a smile. Then she slid her look away to check the clock on her bookcase. "You still have 45 minutes. If you don't feel like talking today, I'm going to use the time to do some reading. You're welcome to use that," she gestured to the paper, "to tell me something I should know about you. Or whatever."

She turned her desk chair to study her shelf of books. As he watched, she drew one down and opened it to read, settling back in her chair a three-quarter turn away from him. That seemed to be all she had to say. Cary sidled to the empty chair, perching on the edge to see if this was a trick—if now that he was in the chair, she would whip around and try to pry him open. She didn't look up, crossing one ankle over her knee as she turned the page. He reached out and took a sheet of paper. The feel of its grain under his fingertips gave him a little buzz of pleasure—he hadn't drawn anything in a long time.

He didn't have a good surface to draw on, and the pencil crayons were slick and sticky compared to the soft lead of his pencils. He still lost himself in the act of drawing and startled when the woman sighed and closed her book. "Time's up for today."

He found he was disappointed not to have more time to finish.

"Can I see what you drew?"

He stood, shrugging his shoulders and tossing the paper on her desk. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her take it, a wide white page with a dark sketch in the middle of it. Her eyes widened and lifted to his. "Where did you learn to draw like this?"

He didn't have an answer for that; he just looked at the way things were.

She touched the small, curled shape in the center of the paper. "Who is this child?"

"My brother." He backed up, one step closer to the door and freedom.

"Whose hands are these?"

He had tried to capture the way Liam looked so small sleeping, and the best way to show that was to put hands around him, cupped behind his perfect head. He had used his own hands to sort out the perspective of the thumbs and fingers, so he said, "Mine."

She caught him looking at her and he held still, hands closed, trying not to flinch away from her look. He hadn't said anything wrong. He had done what she and Pete had asked.

"Huh," she said softly. "Do you draw a lot?"

He moved his face away from her while she wasn't looking at him. "I lost my things in the move." That sounded normal, like something someone who had a normal life and moved for normal reasons would say. Someone who moved with their family. He was sweating, though, now that she'd got him to open a crack. He could taste the bitterness of the rest of the truth in his mouth, and he didn't want to talk about any of it.

She put his drawing on the top of the stack of paper and pushed it towards him. "Take some of these supplies to work on at home, if you want. I get them from the art room for free."

Cary hesitated only an instant before he took a thick stack of paper, rolled it up, and shoved it in the front pocket of his backpack. "Your pencils are shitty," he said to explain why he didn't help himself to those too. The end-of-day bell rang long and loudly, and Cary got out of the room, barely registering her cheerful "See you next week," at his back.

///

He caught the first bus after school instead of staying to catch a smoke at the 7-Eleven. He didn't want to see anyone from his old life there. He smoked as he walked from the bus stop to the Whites' house, glancing at the houses in their neighborhood as he passed. This was his place now; he had some small curiosity about the people who lived nearby. Not much in the flat cold where he found himself, but a tiny spark.

Pete was home already, dressed in a T-shirt and track pants, stretching his hamstring with the heel of his runner propped on the front step. Cary paused at the top of the walk to rub his cigarette out on the sole of his boot and pocket the butt.

Pete looked up, saw him coming, and smiled. The sun picked out the red in his greying hair and beard. There was a little worry wrinkle in his forehead, but the smile looked real. "You're home," Pete said. "How was your day?"

Cary looked him in the face, his hands stuck in his pockets. "Good," he said.

The wrinkle in Pete's forehead smoothed. "Good," he said.

Cary ducked his head and went on by into the house. In his room, he unpacked his drawing paper and laid it on his bed. The picture of Liam was on top, and it hurt a little to look at it now. He slid the page under his bed for safekeeping and took a few more blank sheets off the top of the pile. Then he went to find himself a pencil.

Pete came back from his run 40 minutes later. Cary glanced up from the kitchen table and saw Pete throw himself on the grass in the backyard to do his push-ups, his T-shirt dark with sweat down his front and back. He gathered his papers, careful not to smudge the pencil, and went back to his room. These pictures were private.

He laid them under his bed and sat back on his heels. The dead boy with stitches crossing his chest was on the topmost page. Cary pressed his hand against his neck again, feeling his throat swallow. That pulse of blood against his fingers was still hard to believe. He had drawn one stitch missing without thinking—there was a small gap on the left over his cold heart. It was dark where the skin parted, and something oozed out.

Cary dropped his hand to his chest where the hole was, tucking his freezing fingers under his arm. He needed to have one good day after another to stay with the Whites, and he didn't know if he could do that if that stuff started coming out of him. He closed his eyes and called to his mind the man from his dream with the hands that burned. He didn't know the rules of what he could say and when, so he tried to just hold a picture in his mind in case the man was looking at him and might see.

All the black inside him, woven through the living network of his muscles and arteries. Sticky. Strong. Toxic as poison. It could make his arms and legs jump and move, his hands close into fists.

Cary put his hands over his face and pressed his face against the blankets until he couldn't breathe. God, there was so much to clean up—how was one person going to do all that? How did he even begin? If someone like Jesus was looking at him, wouldn't he figure it was easier just to end him than deal with all that? It would be a kindness to just be—done.

Air went in raggedly, and Cary's eyes were hot and damp under his fingers. His face was full of clean laundry smell and another breath went in. Jesus ... not done. He had another day to figure out how to be good.