Neil looked at him, surprised by how hard Nicky and Aaron were taking it. He wondered if he was supposed to feel something besides shock, but a mental check came back clean. He'd grown up around death. It was nothing to him now but ice in his system and a reminder to keep moving. Seth should have been an exception, since Neil had been living with him for months, but Neil had never liked him.

"Are we going back?" Neil asked.

"When they're all drunk and cracker high and I'm off my meds? I'll be back in jail before you can say 'threat to society'. We'll wait until morning."

Andrew got out of the car, but no one else moved.

"What about the line-up?" Kevin asked.

Nicky winced. "Kevin, the man is dead. Like, permanently."

"It's not a major loss," Kevin said.

Nicky got out of the car and paced the driveway with his hands linked behind his neck. Neil looked from Aaron to Kevin, and then slid out Nicky's open door. Andrew was fiddling with his key chain on the front porch when Neil caught up with him. Andrew finished whatever he was doing, transferred the key chain to one hand, and pointed his cigarette at Neil's face.

"That's interesting," he said. "That apathy doesn't bode well for your sanity."

"I don't understand suicide," Neil said. "Staying alive has always been so important I can't imagine actively trying to die."

"He wasn't," Andrew said, like Neil was being stupid. He unlocked the door but didn't bother with the lights when he went in. Neil followed him into the dark hallway and left the door open behind him for the others. "He wanted a way out for a little while, a few hours where he didn't have to think or feel. Problem was he picked an out that's easy to die on. That's his fault."

"Is that why you drink?" Neil asked. "You don't want to feel?"

Andrew turned to face him. Neil wasn't expecting it and almost ran into him. Andrew dug his fingertip into the hollow of Neil's throat in warning. This close Neil could smell the alcohol and cigarettes on him. It made him think of his mother burning to ashes on the beach. He reached out without thinking and took Andrew's cigarette away. For some reason Andrew let him keep it.

"I don't feel for anyone or anything," Andrew said. "Don't forget that."

"So Kevin's just a hobby for you?"

"Seth didn't kill himself. He couldn't have."

"What do you mean?"

"Seth only takes his pills when he and Allison are on the outs," Andrew said. "When they're together she's enough to hold him up. She went with him tonight, so she would have made sure he left his pills at home. She knows he likes chasing them with drinks."

Neil remembered watching her dig through Seth's pockets. "She checked him. I saw her."

"So did I," Andrew said.