There was a hiccup of hesitance before a man approached her and asked her if he should call 911. “Yes,” she gasped, completely out of breath. She watched him dial the number and tell the dispatcher that someone was in trouble before he handed the phone to Aria.

She did her best to answer the questions being asked by the pacifying voice on the other side of the line. She described the emergency, telling them the name of the street that Wolf and Anthony were carrying EJ down and some of the buildings that were defining features on it. She described his condition. But when the woman asked Aria for her name and address and phone number, Aria went silent before hanging up the phone. She couldn’t afford to tell them. Part of her was terrified that not staying on the line would cost EJ his life, but she was fairly certain that they had already sent an ambulance.

Aria thanked the man, who was standing over her, confused about why she had handed him back the phone so soon, and started running back in the direction she had come. By the time she spotted her friends in the distance, the red and blue flash of ambulance lights illuminated their figures. Aria stopped and watched, not wanting to be caught up. She watched the police officers and paramedics crowd around EJ, long enough to see him take a huge gasp of air and begin to cough uncontrollably in response to the naloxone being squirted up his nose.

Anthony had run away at the first sight of police cars, afraid to be locked up again, and Wolf was standing against a length of chain-link fencing. He was out of breath, but giving information to the same officer they had seen take away the mentally ill man who was throwing rocks at cars the other day. Even at a distance, Aria recognized the way his glasses and his chubby face seemed to strip him of the ruthless authority that other cops had in spades.

Wolf lied to him by saying that he didn’t know EJ, but that he had seen him collapsed on the sidewalk. He gave the officer his address back in Washington and told them he was visiting a relative nearby. The truth was Wolf had been trying to extricate EJ from the crepuscule of his downfall for months now.