But before she can escape, Shane exhorts her to stay, begging Coyne to lift his shirt and “show her, show her what you showed me.”

Coyne takes a deep breath and turns around. He takes off his black sweater-vest and then begins to unbutton his shirt, which is an orange so bright she wonders if he’s going hunting later in some kind of gay nature preserve.

When he lets the shirt fall, her breath catches.

From his lower back and trailing up his spine are a series of small circular wounds. Burns, she thinks. Each the size of a pencil eraser. They’re still crusty and inflamed. One weeps clear fluid as the scab cracks. The burns go up to the base of his neck—around the point of his collar—but not beyond. Like the attacker didn’t want to show off his handiwork. Like it was a message just for Chris Coyne.

“Cigarette burns,” Coyne says over his shoulder. “They don’t heal easy. Because of all the chemicals. Did you know in England they call cigarettes ‘fags’? Here I am: a fag burned by a fag. Go figure, huh?” His words are glib, brave, but his tone doesn’t match: his voice shakes a little. He’s trying to cork that bottle, keep the fear from coming out.

It’s a familiar feeling.

He puts his shirt back on. “They . . . did more. They took my pants off. Shoved a bunch of hot peppers up into my, ahh . . .” He clears his throat. “They spackled it over with peanut butter so it held the chilies up in there.” He offers a weak, fakey smile. “Sounds funny, I know, and if it didn’t happen to me, I might laugh, too.”

Atlanta’s not laughing. She says as much. In fact, she’s pretty horrified.

“I bled down there for a week,” Coyne says, matter-of-factly. Now she sees them: the tears at the edges of his eyes, glistening, filling up, but never falling down his cheeks. He blinks them back and massages underneath his eyes. “When they did it, they said . . . they said that this will teach me that it’s an exit, not an entrance. Ironic given that they were sticking things in there, not taking them out, but I don’t suspect that any of these fine upstanding citizens are in line for the Nobel this year.”

“There was more than one?” she says.

He nods. “Four of them.”

“And you know who they are?” Another nod. “And what is it you want me to do about this, exactly? Against four pissed-off gay-basher bullies?”

“You took down three bullies the other day.”

Shane grins. “She did. You did. It was pretty sweet.”

“You want me to scare them? Hurt them? Get revenge? That what this is about? Revenge?”