God, he couldn’t bear thinking about it. He just couldn’t bear it. It had just been Declan’s money, just an older brother giving pocket money to a stupid little kid who stayed stupid even once he got big. All Matthew’s friends at school got jobs bussing tables and working cash registers and Matthew got bills in a mug on the kitchen counter. And now it was no different, he just collected the allowance from gallery owners who gave him odd jobs as a favor to Declan, because they thought Declan Lynch’s kid brother was cute and his love of ugly sneakers was funny.

Matthew kept walking, walking. Stomping. He walked right out of their neighborhood, past restaurants bustling with diners and comely brick row houses bright in the evening, by a little convenience store that reminded him of the one Declan had sometimes stopped at back at home when he forgot to get milk during the week. He thought about the times they’d just sat there for several long minutes with Declan staring off at nothing with the receipt for the milk pressed between his hand and the steering wheel. Aren’t we going home? Matthew would ask. Play your game, Declan would reply, and Matthew did, he just played whatever stupid game he had on his phone while his older brother sat there at a gas station five minutes from home for sometimes nearly an hour rather than going back to the town house, and Matthew had never once asked him why they were sitting there or what Declan was thinking about or if he hated everything about his life.

And now this thing about sweetmetals—this thing they were supposedly pursuing to keep Matthew safe while not talking to him about any of it?

Everyone still acted like he was just a pet.

Matthew’s feet kept on marching him along, farther from home. “Home.” With quotation marks, because home without quotation marks was either the Barns or the DC town house. “Home” was a Fenway apartment Matthew thought of as Old Man Eyebrows, because of how the detail work over the windows looked like fat, frowning eyebrows. It had seven rooms, which Matthew had mentally named. Twice. Once after the Seven Dwarves, and once after the seven vices. Happy Gluttony was the kitchen. Bashful Sloth, the living room. Grumpy Lust, Declan’s bedroom. So on. So forth. Declan liked the apartment. Matthew could tell Declan liked it. He liked everything about his life here, even though Matthew wasn’t exactly sure what his life here even entailed. He didn’t talk to Matthew about it. Declan didn’t say he was happier, but he clearly was happier. It made Matthew feel kind of bad inside.

Enormously bad inside.

He didn’t know why.