Jason looked at Cal with a moment of sharp intensity, and then relaxed, just a bit.

“What do you need to know?”

Trey leaned back in his chair, and I could feel the vibration pulsing out of him, reaching like curious fingers into Jason’s skull.

We were in.

“It actually helps us the most if you don’t tell us anything about how you know him, or from when,” Cal added. “Just tell us, in general, what he was like. What did he look like the last time you saw him?”

I looked at her with my eyebrows raised. There was no rule about staying vague, far from it. She was up to something. But Trey spoke up before I could contradict her.

“That’s fabulous instruction, Ms. Ganon. I’ll be writing about that in your evaluation,” he said. “In fact, Mr. Trip, Ms. Ganon and I will handle this. You can wait outside.” I glared at Trey, but he looked away from me, gesturing Jason into his worn La-Z-Boy. I turned to Cal, but she just shrugged, wide-eyed and useless.

After a minute, I left, the screen door slamming shut behind me.

—

DON’T GET ME WRONG; I was livid. Getting kicked out of my own operation? By Trey, no less? Trey, who didn’t waste a second throwing me under the bus and proclaiming himself king of it? But when I got outside, something bigger took over.

I want to describe the feeling of the sun on the concrete steps of that wheezing-cough-of-a-house on that first warm day of summer. I want to describe the sunlight of the late afternoon, the way the grass felt warm and lazy on my ankles like the tails of bored cats. The way the heat of summertime takes on its own weight. Sunlight literally feeds you; did you know that? The same way food feeds your overall internal functioning, cells in your skin stand before sunlight with their mouths open wide.

When you think of Hell as being underground, you’re being infantile. Ground implies nature, soil, photosynthesis, nutrients. The life-and-death cycle of things. Nothing where I live is sun fed. You can’t dig deep enough to reach us. How can I explain what light looks like to people who assume they’ll never know life without it? How can I tell you in words you’ll understand how beautiful it is, both now and after it’s gone?

I got so drunk on all that beauty, I barely noticed when Trey stepped out of the house.

“If she doesn’t suck my dick after that, you better,” he said a second before Cal came out after him. He threw his beer bottle at the pavement and snapped his fingers, shattered glass rising like a tide at our backs as we descended home.

LILY