I walked to Fellis’s. His mom, Beth, let me in but didn’t say anything to me because she was on the phone telling someone it was all going to be all right. Fellis was sleeping when I went to him in his room. And he didn’t wake when I nudged him, so I sat in a beanbag chair and wondered where he put those pins, and when I settled on a place—in his dresser—I looked for them but only found some cash and change and sticks of half-burned incense.

I tripped over a box in his room on my way to the bathroom in the hallway. Again, I threw up, and in the light I saw some rust was still on my hands. I washed it all off.

Fellis was awake when I went back in the room, and so I turned the light on. He was sitting up in the bed with his back against the wall. He asked when I got here, and I said a little bit ago.

“How was your grandmother?” he asked.

“I was late,” I said. “Didn’t make it.”

“There’s always another day,” he said. He sat up straighter. “What time is it?”

I told him and he whistled.

“This was the fastest fucking day,” he said.

“Let me get one of those pins,” I said.

Fellis yawned and wiped his face and then looked at his hands and smelled them.

“Rust,” I said. “Did you hear me?”

“Yeah, I heard you. Hold on. Christ.”

He wiped his hands on his shirt and got up and left the room. He was wearing only his boxers. I could hear him out in the kitchen talking with Beth about something. When he came back he held two beers and dropped one in my lap and set his on the dresser, and then he grabbed his jeans off the floor and squeezed both pockets, and then, still holding the jeans, he kicked at the dirty clothes on the floor, looking. He dropped his jeans and went to his bed and tugged the blanket off.

“You can’t find them?” I asked.

He stopped doing what he was doing and looked at me with just a sliver of his face. “Does it look like I can find them?” He started digging again.

Fellis slanted his bed away from the wall and peered in the gap. He didn’t right the bed, and he grabbed his jeans off the floor and put one leg in.

“I must’ve left them in the silo,” he said, losing his balance. “Whoa!” He reached for the dresser to steady himself and put his other foot in his pants, yanked up, and buttoned. “Let’s go up there and drink anyway. My auntie’s coming over soon to cry and I don’t want to be around for that shit.”

If the pins weren’t in the silo, I told myself, I wasn’t staying.