A droopy girl about his age in an Arby’s uniform comes out to watch him peel a french fry off the floor. He shows her peace fingers, love hands. While she blushes, he fits the french fry through his rigid grin and chews it.

Becomes eleven percent.

Love to everyone

Drains back to eight percent.

He is staring across the intersection toward Black Jack’s Casino when the Arby’s girl comes back. This time she wears latex gloves and holds a spray bottle.

“Sir, I’m sorry, but you have to leave.”

The phone pings: Where are you?

The Arby’s girl goes away, looking over her shoulder. He taps fast on his phone surface.

Don’t worry I’m good

“Him.”

A security guard with a black beard lumbers ahead of the girl with the spray bottle.

“Him, right there.”

“Hey.” The guard’s approaching steps rip the sticky floor. “Hey, you. You were told to leave.”

His hands jump. Peace! Love!

“Out.”

Ping: You are not safe

Ping: You need your medications

Ping: Please tell us where you are

He sees his own grin in the cracked phone. Five percent. He has no idea where he is. Over him the security guy snatches the girl’s spray bottle and seethes. “Leave now.” Then the bottle is cut loose, chemical blasts against the side of his face, down his chest, over his hands protecting his phone. When the spray stops, his face burns, his fingers drip.

“Don’t pretend you don’t hear me, asshole.”

It’s not that. He doesn’t speak anymore. Back when, as it started, he had been feeling unlike himself already, angry and exhausted, nothing to say. But then came the October dawn when he had awakened to pounding and screaming on his mom’s back door. He had opened it to see his neighbor and his almost-girlfriend Cassie with her black bubbled skin and behind her the hillside on fire and the entire sky full of smoke. Her horses! Her horses! He hadn’t known how to help her—called 911 and stood there shaking while she screamed. After Cassie’s funeral, he had begun stealing things and failing school. He had obeyed a nagging voice and let a different neighbor’s horses go. He had walked through Best Buy unplugging everything. He had climbed the water tower with spray paint and written DON’T LOOK UP HERE THE PROBLEM IS IN YOUR HEAD. Next, he had lit his mom’s garage on fire, destroyed her car and her boyfriend’s motorcycle. They call it back-burn, the voice had whispered to him, over and over. Little fires stop big ones. He remembers woofing single words of explanation to his mom—all the family he had—while she cried and slapped his face for grinning. “I don’t know you!” she had wailed, erasing his name.

Another spray in the face. “Out.”