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  Aaron looked up at the screen to see Spencer’s waiting message.

  SPENCER: Hey.

  Aaron grabbed his laptop and pulled it to him, putting his hastily scribbled notes aside.

  AARON: Hi.

  SPENCER: Have you read over the specs?

  AARON: Yeah, I just finished. I have a few ideas about what we can do.

  SPENCER: Me too, but they’re going to be a challenge. One of them involves using social networking APIs.

  AARON: That’s cool. I’m up for a challenge

  A challenging project would take his mind off less pleasant things he would otherwise be thinking. If he kept his mind busy enough, maybe he could get through this semester without a complete breakdown.

  SPENCER: Okay, the specs essentially say we can do pretty much whatever we want so long as the program is a desktop app with a menu and your basic standard interface. The program just needs to serve some useful function, but I want to go beyond that. I was thinking about a client app that will monitor your social networking sites and respond to certain messages. Like a bot, but smarter.

  AARON: Like what?

  SPENCER: Maybe monitoring your account and responding to tweets like #FollowFriday. When someone tells their friends to follow you, it could automatically generate a thank you tweet. Or it could go through all the tweets directed at you and randomly generate #FollowFriday tweets.

  AARON: All with the documented Twitter API? I heard it’s pretty programmer friendly.

  SPENCER: Yep.

  AARON: I’ve never used Twitter, but it could send out a tweet with the song you’re listening to, or what movie you’re watching based on the metadata. We could even connect it to YouTube and tweet videos the user is watching or rating.

  SPENCER: We could combine them into one big Twitter app.

  AARON: It would be more work.

  SPENCER: True, but when we’re finished, we could load it up onto a Freeware site and start getting our names out there—maybe add some stuff to our resumes.

  AARON: That’s a great idea.

  They continued to talk late into the night about the design for their new software. Downloading a screen share program, they drew up specs and mapped out ideas to submit for their proposal. Before Aaron even realized it, it was after midnight. They had been chatting for over five hours. He couldn’t help but be a little shocked, because he didn’t even talk to his own family for five hours in a month, much less one night. Spencer was surprisingly easy to talk to, especially about programming, because he seemed to be very passionate about it, just like Aaron was.

  SPENCER: This was great, man, but I have an 8 a.m. class. Damn interpreter. =)

  AARON: I can’t believe it’s midnight already. I’ll see you in class.

  SPENCER: K, night.

  AARON: Good night.

  Aaron turned off his laptop in kind of a daze, the machine hot against his legs. Setting the computer on the bed next to him, he realized he was sitting against his headboard. He didn’t really even remember moving to the bed, but he must have at some point because that was where he ended up. One word, almost foreign to him now, resonated through his head as he set the computer on the desk and started getting ready for bed.

  Fun.

  Talking to Spencer, planning their project, had been fun.

  Nine

  FOR THE first time since he’d started college, Aaron found he was actually looking forward to going to class. The previous night had been a great start to their project, and Aaron was excited about showing Spencer the code he’d written that morning. It was elegant, and some of it was truly inspired. People generally didn’t look at software development as something creative or artistic, but merely as a means to an end.

  “You’re ready early today. I’m surprised. I heard you typing away last night when I went to bed,” his mother said, pulling her long brown hair into a loose ponytail as she went to the stove.

  “Yeah, Spencer and I got a little carried away last night talking code,” Aaron told her as he distractedly doodled a few more logic structures in his notebook at the kitchen table. When his mother took a peek over his shoulder as she set the syrup next to her son, she saw complex diagrams with squares, diamonds, lines, and arrows. He wondered if she understood any of it.

  “That looks complicated,” she said, turning back toward the counter to start mixing the waffles. Before she could measure out the mix, Aaron turned to face her.

  “Mom, do we have any bacon? I’d love some bacon and eggs.” Aaron noticed his mother held on to the measuring cup in her hand, but just barely. In the last two years, he’d never asked for anything. Whatever she made, he ate, with no enthusiasm. If they went out to dinner, he had no preference on the restaurant. He didn’t even care what kind of soda they had in the house; he drank whatever his brothers drank. It was a huge shift in his behavior, but he needed to give her some kind of hope. He didn’t want to be sent away. Since she’d mentioned earlier she had gotten bacon at the store the day before, he thought that might be a way to fake normalcy for her. Her expression showed she would have slaughtered a pig in the back yard at that point to give him what he’d asked for.

  “Sure, honey, I’ll make bacon and eggs,” she said almost casually. He knew it was a monumental thing to her, but she looked over at him like she expected him to have changed. He sat, continuing to draw his complex shapes on the pad in front of him, not acknowledging the magnitude of the moment. His heart lightened.

  With hands that trembled slightly, she made her son his bacon and eggs.

  As they ate, Aaron explained the symbols and flows to his mother. It was possibly the longest conversation they’d ever had, and he could tell by her glassy gaze she hadn’t understood a word of it. By the time Aaron went to throw on his shoes so she could take him to campus, he could see a glimpse of tears in her eyes.

  “You look so much like your father. During those fleeting minutes when you’re not angry, I can sometimes see the boy I knew. You talk with such enthusiasm about this project, and about programming in general. It just… it gives me hope my son might one day emerge from that shell where you’ve been living,” she told him with a light in her eyes that hadn’t been there in a while. Embarrassed, Aaron turned away. He couldn’t bring himself to take away her hope.

  Once he was in the computer lab at school, Aaron continued to work out some of the design of their new program as he waited for Spencer. He’d just finished detailing the tweet object parameters when he saw his partner walking up the stairs toward him. Spencer half waved at Aaron and dropped into his seat, punching the power button on his lab PC. Aaron smirked, knowing exactly how tired Spencer was feeling because he was feeling it himself. Spencer avoided the braided security cable that connected the monitor to the table as he set his bag down next to him. Aaron watched Spencer log into chat, and Aaron quickly followed suit.

  SPENCER: I’m fucking wiped.

  AARON: Yeah, me too, but I have a few more ideas. Oh! And look at this.

  Aaron loaded the code he’d written from his thumb drive and turned the flat-panel monitor as far as the security cable would allow so Spencer could see it.

  SPENCER: I love the generalized parameters for the module. That will make it a hell of a lot easier to reuse. Brilliant, man!

  Aaron chuckled at Spencer’s enthusiasm, pleased he’d made him happy. Then he stopped short. He hadn’t so much as cracked a smile in more than two years. He didn’t deserve to laugh. He didn’t deserve to be happy. Juliette couldn’t laugh, and it was all his fault. She couldn’t enjoy the joke. She was gone. He had led her to that van like a lamb to slaughter.

  SPENCER: Aaron, are you okay? You look kind of sick?

  “Aaron.?”

  Aaron looked up and saw that Spencer had one hand up to reach for him, most likely to put a hand on his shoulder. Aaron wrenched back so violently he nearly fell off the rolling chair. Spencer jerked back as well and stared at Aaron, remorse and pity written clearly all over his pale fac
e.

  Aaron felt anxious, like his skin was crawling, but he also felt embarrassed by his display in front of Spencer. Quickly, he typed out a message in the chat window.

  AARON: I’m sorry. So, should we pitch this idea to Dr. Mayer?

  Aaron was trying to change the subject before Spencer could ask about his bizarre behavior. Spencer looked at him for a long moment, and Aaron could feel his gaze even though his eyes were fixed determinately on the keyboard in front of him. Finally, his chat client displayed a new message.

  SPENCER: Sure, we can show him our idea after class if you want. There’s no point going forward if he doesn’t approve.

  Even after Dr. Mayer had started class, Aaron was distracted and upset by his reaction in front of Spencer. It had never really mattered to him what people thought of him, because he never stuck around long enough for it to matter. It used to, he could remember that clearly, but now he was in and out of the restaurant, or in and out of the doctor’s office, or in and out of the classroom before anyone could speak to him. He didn’t make friends, didn’t form relationships. So, if some guy stared a little too long in the hall or some girl tried to talk to him in the library, he could just brush them off. This time, however, he couldn’t just walk away. He needed to work with Spencer in order to get this project done, not only for his own grade, but for his partner’s. It was more than that, though. Aaron found he didn’t want to brush off Spencer or walk away. For the first time in so long, he’d found someone he could talk to, at least superficially connect with over code, if nothing else.

  Without ever intending to, over the five hours they’d spent chatting about code, Aaron had found a friend. That thought scared the hell out of him.

  Aaron was drawn out of these thoughts when the lights in the lab came up, signaling the end of the lecture. He still felt shaken and off balance. Spencer didn’t make any move to touch him again, but rapidly typed out a chat message.

  SPENCER: We could just put together something and e-mail it to Dr. Mayer?

  Great, Spencer thought he was a freak, just like everyone else. He doesn’t even want to stick around to talk about their project with the instructor—the project Aaron was so excited about. To Aaron, it looked like Spencer couldn’t wait to get away from him, and Aaron couldn’t blame him. He wished sometimes that he could get away from himself.

  Quickly, he typed a message to Spencer indicating that was fine with him. He didn’t even wait for his computer to log off completely before he was out of his seat and down the stairs two at a time. In his haste, he nearly knocked over a boy just getting out of his aisle seat in the second row. He didn’t stop until he was outside. As soon as his mother stopped in front of him, he was in the car and they were gone.

  “AARON, ARE you finished eating?” his mother asked gently as she reached to take his dinner plate.

  He nodded, noticing the rest of the family had already left the table. The smell of the meatloaf his mother had made had dissipated. The sound of the news filtered quietly from the living room, but otherwise, the house was fairly quiet. Aaron started to get up from the table when his mother spoke again.

  “Honey, you’ve been preoccupied since I picked you up from school. Did something happen in class?”

  On the surface, her voice was pleasantly curious, but there was an underlying tension there. She was worried about him. Looking to his left and away from his mother, Aaron stared out the glass door leading to the weathered deck. A little boy and girl played in the back yard of the lot adjacent to theirs. They couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. The girl’s hair was in pigtails, and she wore a set of denim overall shorts while the boy was in a Superman T-shirt and red shorts. As Aaron watched, the boy slid about halfway down the slide and then jumped off, his arms out in front of him as if he were flying. He grabbed the girl’s hand as he hit the ground, and together they took off for the other side of the yard, laughing as they ran. It took a second, but then Aaron realized that he’d just witnessed Superman saving the girl. He wondered when the little boy would learn there was no Superman, and the girl was never safe.

  Turning his eyes back to his mother, Aaron hoped the pain radiating through his chest wasn’t as apparent to her as it was to him. He couldn’t tell her that he’d laughed in class. It would give her hope, a hope he certainly did not feel and would not expect. He couldn’t tell her that he’d freaked out when Spencer tried to touch him, or how any of that made him feel, because he couldn’t take away her hope either. Without hope, they’d send him away. Right now, he just wanted to go upstairs and try like hell to do something about his homework. That would help him forget everything, at least for a while, and he wouldn’t dwell on what it meant.

  “No, Mom, everything is fine. I’m going to go up and work on my homework.” His mother nodded, the worry lines deepening in her face. He could tell she was trying not to let on she was hurt he wouldn’t confide in her.

  Of course he saw it; he always saw it.

  It certainly wasn’t personal. If he was going to open up to anyone and talk about what was bothering him, it would definitely be his mother. He heard her soft sigh as he left the room. A few minutes later, Aaron walked into his room and flipped on the light. The grief started to overwhelm him as he stood quietly in the doorway. Any little trigger seemed to set him off lately: the laughter in class, the boy playing a superhero. Sometimes it was just a bleeding paper cut. How was he supposed to get through life like this?

  Aaron decided to forego his homework tonight. The depression had left him drained, and he didn’t feel like taking any pills to make it better. The sun hadn’t quite set as he changed quickly into a long-sleeved T-shirt and sleep pants and then crawled into bed with what little energy he still had.

  He was asleep within minutes.

  THE SOUND of his heart thudded in his ears as he lay with his bare stomach on the cold, smooth concrete, the knee between his shoulder blades a constant reminder of his helplessness. The smell of grease, gasoline, and sweat hung heavy in the air, almost like a fog, penetrating and inescapable. Scalding, blinding pain all over his body tugged at his consciousness. Each place where they had hit him, cut him, or burned him pushed him closer to that sweet oblivion, that darkness in which he knew it would all stop.

  He could hear Juliette crying beside him—soft, agonizing sobs that were at least marginally less painful to listen to than her screams. Her piercing screams of pain, anguish, and fear as she begged for them to stop, as she begged for her mother, had torn at his soul. He knew by the raw tenderness of his throat that he had made the same piteous cries, but he refused to allow his mind to remember why. He couldn’t stand the memory of the man’s breath on the back of his neck or his pleasured grunts in his ear.

  Summoning all his last reserves of strength, he turned his head to the left, laying his right cheek against the cold dirty floor as his eyes found Juliette’s. The haunted, pleading look in her eyes suddenly made him feel ashamed. He closed his eyes briefly, trying to make it stop. They flew open again at the sound of Juliette’s horrifically interrupted scream. Her head was pulled back hard by her hair until her face was pointed toward the ceiling. The flash of metal, the spray of hot sticky blood was so quick Juliette’s panic-stricken voice was cut off mid-scream. He watched in horrified disbelief as the life drained from her warm brown eyes.

  A sharp pain in his scalp caused him to fight. He knew he was next, and he thrashed and kicked, punched and screamed, trying anything he could to stop the coming horror.

  He saw the knife coming, angled toward his throat.

  His mother’s face swam across Aaron’s vision as he fought against the hands that held him down. The harder they held him, the harder he fought. He screamed and thrashed, and finally, they let go. His conscious mind started to take control of him, pulling him from the dream, and he saw his mother’s frightened face more clearly. Aaron tried to calm himself as her voice registered in his mind.

  “Aaron, baby, please…. Pl
ease wake up.”

  Aaron opened his eyes again and looked around, seeing that it was his father and brothers who had been holding him. As he stopped struggling, they pulled away, and he crawled up against the headboard of his bed, pulling himself into a tight ball.

  “D…. Don’t…. T…. Touch….” He took a deep breath, trying to will his pulse to slow, to stop pounding in his head. “Please, don’t touch me,” Aaron finally pleaded quietly, and they all backed away to give him some room. He continued to rock slightly, his back against the headboard, his face on his knees. Their voices reached him as they spoke softly to each other, but he didn’t even try to understand what they were saying. After a few minutes, someone sat on the edge of the bed. Looking up, Aaron saw his mother holding out a small bathroom cup and a full glass of water. Everyone else must have gone back to bed, because now they were alone in the room.

  Without comment, Aaron took the cup and dropped the pills into his palm. Two pills this time. He must have really scared her. After popping the pills into his mouth, he washed them down with the water and lay back down in his bed. Her hand shook as his mother covered him up with the blankets, being exceedingly careful not to touch her son. She murmured soft platitudes to him: “It’s all right now” or “Try to rest,” maybe even an “It’s all over.” He didn’t much care what they were. The sound of her voice was soothing, and he suspected they were as much for her comfort as they were for his. As he watched, she turned off his bedroom light, her soft sniffle barely audible even in the stillness of the room. Then she left, closing the door behind her.

  He tried to muster up some measure of guilt for scaring her so badly, but the room became fuzzy and blurred as the tranquilizers began to take hold of him.

  Ten

  DR. MAYER started class, and Spencer glanced at the empty seat next to him before settling his attention on his interpreter. The way Aaron had jerked away from him the day before had hurt. Did he really think Spencer would hurt him? Spencer thought they’d gotten along really well as they talked about the project. Maybe it was reflex, something he couldn’t control. But then, why did he look so fucking sad when they started talking? He had no idea what he’d done to screw things up already, but he was determined to make it up. Logging into his chat client, he saw that Aaron’s status was offline. So instead, he pulled out his cell phone.