“Her name’s Lacy, her GPS says she’s here,” Joey said as he approached the men. Down the hallway, behind one of the closed doors, was the sound of a man coughing and the smell of burning plastic.

“I know,” the man said, rising, and when he did, Joey saw the shotgun on the table. Alongside the gun were an assortment of amputated hands, the fingers scraped raw. The lava lamp sent blobs of purple light across the exposed wires and onto the armless torso of a boy no older than himself.

“Let’s take you apart,” the man said, grabbing Joey. “Where should we open him?”

The second man rose from the table with his shotgun and locked the front door. “Just wait. Matt’ll be pissed if we scrape without telling him.”

“Fuck Matt.” He grabbed Joey more tightly. “This one just fell into our arms, it’s ours.”

“Matt pays the rent, I’m fucking telling him.” The man lowered the shotgun at Joey. “Your sister’s down that hallway. Come on, I’ll show you.” He pushed Joey ahead of him to the room at the end of the hall, then turned the knob and opened the door to the cotton candy stink.

The man leaning over his sister had a back so hairy it transformed the tattoos below his shoulders into dark, unrecognizable splotches. Lacy was lying motionless beneath him, covered by a thin white sheet, with her arm over her head and her emotion slot empty.

“The fuck you guys doing?” the guy said. Then he saw Joey and grinned. Lacy spasmed beneath the covers.

“Joey?” she said, pulling the sheet tightly over her body. “What are you doing here?”

Joey had practiced his speech on the drive over, a collection of all the real memories they’d ever shared: watching TV on the couch after school; a lightning storm crackling past their porch; paddle-boarding together at Pictured Rocks; the two of them playing chess—and though she’d won every game, she’d promised that next summer, if he beat her, she’d take him to Cedar Point, would sit next to him on the Raptor, said it would be okay, there was nothing to be scared of. But Joey hadn’t been prepared for the men, or the guns, or the body parts, or his sister naked in bed, and all he could manage to say was “Can we go home now?”

For some reason this struck the man as incredibly funny. He rose from the bed with violent laughter, but Lacy grabbed his arm. “Matt, that’s my brother, let him go.”

“Your brother? He’s a fucking score.”

“He’s not a fucking score. They’ll trace him here.”