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“Yeah. And Pan…”

“What about me?”

My spine stiffens at the sound of his voice, which is weird—not a reaction I’d usually have to Pan coming in the room. But like I said, I guess everything’s different now.

“Uh, nothing,” I say quickly. “Did you…sleep well?” I try.

Pan, also with bedhead, shirtless, stares at me. “Like a baby,” he says. “And yourself?”

“Oh, I, uh…”

He doesn’t wait for my answer, already thumping down the spiral stairs.

“…fine,” I finish.

Which is the biggest lie anyway. In reality, the same things that are swirling around my mind now kept me up way late last night.

Like, for example: Tink’s a girl.

But I kissed Tink when I thought she was a boy.

And Wendy saw it, but she actually knew Tink was a girl, but she didn’t tell me that she knew. But she also didn’t tell anyone else that we kissed, because I bribed her with a dirt bike.

But she also also didn’t know what happened to her brothers. Like, that they’re dead. So when she found out, she ran away on said dirt bike, which is God only knows where now, and almost got killed or…worse. Which makes all that pretty much my fault.

Not to mention that she only found out about her brothers because the shop got all fucked up—because, oh, also, the shop’s all fucked up, and it’s possibly—probably—because of me. Partially.

I lower my forehead to the counter and sit there like that a long, long time.

“You okay, dude?” comes Kit’s voice.

No, I think. Because I’m really just that fucking stupid. I really do ruin everything. I really and truly do actually destroy everything and everyone around me, even when I think I’m doing the right thing. Even when I would never, ever do it on purpose.

But I’m not going to say that out loud. Not to Kit, of all people.

Never to him.

“I just…” I squint my eyes shut. No point in sitting up. “I just have…so many questions,” I finish.

Not least of which is how the fuck do I fix this for everyone?

And that’s enough to make my head hurt more than any black eye ever could.

CHAPTER 4

TINK

“Food’s up.”

I drop the two bags into the middle of my bed. Wendy stares at them, then looks at me, then stares back at the bags.

“I’m not hungry,” she says flatly.

She slept in my bed last night. We didn’t even really talk about it. She just kind of crawled in and passed out, and I wasn’t far behind. Now her hair’s a scraggly mess, she’s sitting cross-legged, and Nana is lying rolled into a dog donut at the foot of the mattress, her nose twitching slightly as she detects all the cheese and salsa goodness I’ve just brought in.

“Yeah, right,” I say, flopping down onto the side. “When was the last time you had something to eat?”

Wendy lifts a shoulder. I swallow. I don’t want to push her too hard, obviously. Don’t want to do anything that could upset her. But I also have this instinct to look after her intensely, patch her back up, and I guess the first way I can think of doing that is with food.