The incongruity of a chirping bird woke her. Even somewhere as bleak as an abandoned trailer park, birds sang as the sun rose. For a perplexing moment, Minn thought she was a child again, pulling herself from dreams to discover she'd fallen asleep in the shed, again, the one that she and her brother had turned into their secret space (though it was secret only in the sense that the adults had no interest in looking into it). They'd sit in there with flashlights and read the books they could get their hands on, eat forbidden snacks and tell jokes they'd heard but didn't understand. It'd been their safe haven in the moments the adults had become a little too rowdy, and if Minn could've transplanted it and brought it with her when they'd left, she would have. To return there would've been the best of realities, but as she roused, the dirty, incommodious space around her clarified, and she sat up quickly from the slump she'd fallen into only hours earlier.

Head spinning from straightening up so quickly, Minn realized with a start that the boy wasn't there. Isaac had been across from her, sitting on that filthy mattress against the wall, holding his gun, but everything was bright enough in the milky pre-dawn to see that he most definitely wasn't there anymore.

She slowly rose to her feet, leaning against the dented wall behind her, cursing how much she ached. Though she wasn't particularly old, she wasn't quite young, either, and gone were the days where she could pass out on anything from a bus stop bench to a bed of nails and wake up feeling refreshed. A quick look revealed all sorts of gross things in that trailer. The stained mattress was hardly the worst of it. Decaying foodstuffs, broken bottles and empty cans, piles of leaves and plastic bags containing who-knew-what, old pill bottles and dirty magazines, leaves and other random bits of vegetation . . . Minn was fairly sure she even spotted a couple of syringes amidst a twisted piece of fabric and a probably-used condom in a corner (though God only knew who'd be willing to have an intimate encounter in such a place), and those were just the questionable items she could see. Somewhat overwhelmed, the woman was even more vexed at the fact that she had to pee.

She stepped gingerly around the rubbish, not wanting to make noise for fear of rousing Isaac if he were somewhere in the trailer. To her left was the end of the building, where a huge cracked window looked out onto gloomy, strangely-lit trees. The door that led outside, which was in front of her, was shut, and she momentarily wondered whether she should try to open it and just run, but her bladder was far too full for running. This trailer had to have a bathroom, even if it wasn't in working order, and she figured she might as well take a moment to try to find it.

Find it she did, within about thirty seconds. To the right, the trailer narrowed into a hallway that led to a few other rooms, all with doors open. A closet was ajar, spilling old clothing, and what she could see of the other rooms was shrouded in shadow. If Isaac were in any of them, she couldn't tell, but her heart pounded in her ears as she anticipated him revealing himself at any moment. The bathroom was closer than any of those other rooms, though, its door forced open and impossible to close due to the piles of old trash bags stuffed into it. The sink and shower and toilet were predictably disgusting, although they at least lacked stagnant liquid. She refused to look too closely into the toilet as she lifted its lid and took care of her business more quickly than she ever had in her life, hoping that whatever was piled below had been there long enough that it didn't pose any sort of hygienic threat. Minn attempted to position herself so that she revealed nothing, just in case the boy happened upon her, but the worst thing she had to deal with besides the state of the bathroom itself was the fact that there was no way to wash her hands, which didn't bother her, as they could hardly be any less clean than the filth she was about to leave behind.

Stepping into the narrow hall again, Minn was ready to make an attempt out the door. There'd been no sound at all in the trailer since she'd awakened; there was no reason to believe Isaac was there. Some small hope told her maybe he'd taken her car, even left on foot—maybe he'd just changed his mind and gone without doing anything to her or himself. A fleeting notion that he might've touched her as she slept rapidly vanished; nothing about her own body felt or appeared violated. As she reached the trailer door, grasped the knob, she wondered, too, if she'd find him outside, either dead or alive, but she couldn't linger over it all or she'd stand there forever.

The door swung outward the moment she pushed; Minn tried to catch it, but the spring was broken. When the thing banged against the side of the trailer, Minn was sure it would catch the attention of anyone out there, but after an uneventful ten or so seconds of watching her breath condense in the cool morning air, she crept down the stairs. The rising sun cast the world in a dreamscape. She'd been too overwrought the night before as he'd brought her here, too distracted to pay attention to the layout. But now she quickly realized three things: this trailer was one of many in one of several rows, and they were connected by a gravel road; that gravel road led down toward trees and the lake in one direction and upward toward a distant off-ramp in the other; and Isaac was standing in the middle of that gravel road about ten yards to her right, staring at her. Black jeans tucked into combat boots, ridiculously aggressive t-shirt, dark vest with all manner of rings and pins on it, chains at his waist and neck, one ear pierced all the way up and the other more conservative with its single stud, fair skin practically glowing against his dark, the white of his fingers wrapped around the gun he held down at his side—he was like some sort of nightmare, and Minn was unsure how to escape his haunting. She was unsure what to do and froze where she was at the bottom of the stairs.

"Do you want to leave?" he asked, his voice accusatory and hurt at the same time.

Minn thought of saying a few different things but settled on, "Can I?" The boy's face was impossible to read. Her breath revealingly loud, she stepped forward and again stopped, waited for an awkward amount of time for him to respond.

"You really want to?" he said at last.

The wait between her question and his answer had nearly given rise to hysteria. Minn practically yelled her affirmative.

Isaac suddenly closed his eyes. He shifted his weight from side to side, and his hands shook, began to lift up under his chin. Minn saw what was coming in just enough time to run the few steps toward him and grab his elbow, yanking away the gun the second he pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot echoed against the sides of the trailers, up under the towering concrete piles of the overpass.

Minn might have screamed; she couldn't tell. As the reverberation died down, she looked at Isaac, who gazed wildly at her, mouth agape in disbelief. Her hand was still on his arm. Rather than let go, she gently squeezed. A tremor in her voice, she asked him to hand her the gun, and to the woman's complete surprise and relief, he did. The thing felt terrible in her hand, cold and heavy, but the weapon became a lesser concern as the boy standing over her broke down. His knees gave out, and he sank to the ground, clutched the gravel in his rigid hands. He began to sob, suck in great heaving breaths, and Minn wasn't sure whether to feel sorry or embarrassed for him, this tall, severe kid melting right in front of her.

She had the gun, though! She could leave! She could demand he hand over her keys and phone and—and she could go! He couldn't hurt her, now. He could still hurt himself, though . . . and he would. Surely he would. But if she could get her phone and call the police, that might work. They could come and take him to some facility where he could get the help he obviously needed, because Isaac was disturbed beyond her skill.

"Hey," she tried, calmly, soothingly, like a mother to a child, "can you give me my phone?" He couldn't hear through his own sobbing. God, this poor boy. He was a mess. She had half a mind to go through his pockets and find the phone and keys herself, but that could have an adverse effect. His weakness gave her strength, though. "My phone, honey?" Minn repeated, putting a hand to his hunched back.

The touch startled him, as if he'd forgotten she was there. He turned his face toward her and pushed back his long hair. Everything about him cried out for comfort—moisture glistening on his cheeks and nose, lips quivering, empty gaze, and dripping onto his shoulder—

"You're bleeding!" Minn reached up and took his chin in her hand, turned his face, and saw a stripe of bright wet red from his ear down to the hard edge of his jaw. The bullet hadn't entirely missed him after all. "Damnit, Isaac." Using his name seemed to connect him to the real world once again. While Minn searched her pockets for something with which she could stanch the bleeding, he slowed his tears.

"Thank you," he muttered as she dabbed a glove—the only thing she could find—at his face.

Minn pursed her mouth, exhaled her exasperation. "You're as bad as my son. No regard for safety." She paid no attention to the absurdity of her own statement, the fact that this boy had just tried to kill himself not had a little accident. He sat there like a sullen child, sniffling, so different from the chaotic person of the night before. Now that the gun was out of his possession and in hers, Minn was able to feel sympathy for him, to see him as a wounded bird rather than an unpredictable predator. "What's going on with you? Please tell me. I want to help you."

He only shook his head of stringy green hair.

The woman lowered her brow. "Isaac, let me take you to the doctor. This might need stitches."

The boy gripped the wrist of her aiding hand, and when she caught his eye, it'd turned dark again. "No."

"Well what do you want to do, then?" Minn drew away from him, slipped her wrist from his grasp. "Because I'm not going to stay here."

"Just go, then."

"But I don't want to leave you like this. I don't want you to hurt yourself."

He rubbed his nose and sat back, having been on his knees. His boots ground against the gravel, and something like nonchalance reclaimed him. "You don't give a shit about me."

"That's—that's not true. I don't understand you, and I don't like the way you've done things, but I do care." Did she? Did Minn even believe herself? "I wouldn't be sitting here now, would I? I would've just gotten this and run." He narrowed his eyes at her, stony once more, then ran them past her and around their surroundings. The sunlight had brightened the area to recall individual trees and the contours of the junk piled up around the trailers, old tires and trash cans, folded and torn up lawn chairs and rusting barbecue grills, all sitting there as if cheerful to have at last gained an audience. "You said you wanted to talk to me," Minn continued, trying to ignore the uncanny feeling they weren't alone. "So please, Isaac—talk to me. I don't know what's wrong, but I promise that I mean it when I say I want to help you."

Isaac squeezed his eyes shut, bit at his lips. He seemed struggling, to be considering, perhaps, whether to tell her whatever it was he'd been wanting to say. His breath grew ragged, and then he hit his forehead with the palm of his hand and after a moment of intense inner struggle revealed in his outer behavior, he at last forced out, "I killed that kid—I killed that fucking kid!"