Andy understands why she knows that Timo had been kicked out. She knows for the same reason that Andy knows many of the details of her life: because she likes Timo. God! Bad enough he catches Paul and George looking at her. Just now, after he’s been looking at her for years. That’s bad enough. And it’s fucking gross. Bad enough that Timo might like her. But that she likes him back?

Isn’t anything his? Isn’t there one fucking thing that is worthless enough that he can have it to himself? His own pair of jeans that aren’t George’s hand me downs? His own smokes that aren’t bummed from someone else? A crap pair of Cheetahs sneakers because his folks won’t get him Pumas because he’s just gonna grow out of them anyway? His water spotted books that come from some library sale of shit that’s not good enough for the shelves anymore? The girl that no one else notices because she’s quiet and scrawny and he’s the only one who sees how pretty she is? His own piece of shit bike that his dad cobbled together from old Schwinn and Huffy parts that he salvaged from garage sales? Can’t he at least have that? A bike that everyone makes fun of? Can’t he have that without having to worry about someone fucking jerking it away from him and not giving it back till it’s broken and used up and all the fun has been taken out of it because it’s just one more fucking reminder of what a dildo he is?

Fucking Timo!

The pictures come again, and he does nothing to try and stop them.

Fucking Andy!

George rides hard, trying to find his brother.

Sometimes? Sometimes, man, he just wishes he didn’t have a brother at all. How much easier would that make life?

Fifteen years since the little shit was born, and he’s been underfoot every single day of every single year. Always such a baby. Such a crybaby. From the moment Mom came home from the hospital with him he was crying. God! The years of sharing a room with him after he was too old to sleep in mom and dad’s room but before dad put in the attic room, was there anything worse than that? Six years old and the kid was always waking up with nightmares, crying.