The one who ain’t had a chance wasn’t me at all. It was Metro. That’s something I knew about all along. Which probably explains how I got to jail in the first place and why I even went back where they stabbed him. I wanted to tell him he never had a chance. I did, and I took my chance. And if Cuddles didn’t have his knife on me, or if Maxie and Lou was really friends like I thought they was and not the crumbs they turned out to be, I’d have stopped them then and let Metro go. We was just gonna fuck him up a little bit, you know? But I didn’t stop them. I couldn’t. Don’t ask me no more how it happened. Don’t ask me no more about who he was to me, ’cause all I know is what he was and what I hate. Telling me his real name didn’t change nothing. Not like he wanted things to change. Get to know me maybe. Talk shit and get high. Chase cock, not pussy. So why was I even watching Cuddles fuck that whore up near Columbus or hiding my face in his denim jacket? I was really hiding in it, you see. Cuddles ain’t nothing to me. He proved that when he made his steel talk in my face. Not stainless this time ’cause it could have been my blood on the blade. Or my ass open like that for all the craziness Maxie and Lou had stored up inside them. It could have been me. Which is what I told myself when I was alone in the cell and nobody was looking and I could rub smooth the bruises Cuddles left on me. Not just the prick of steel. They didn’t allow that in there. But the hammer of his hands and backhand jabs hard to my stomach and head. And the guards? Shit. They just pretended I wasn’t even there. Your ass ain’t worth shit around there. ’Specially if people are holding crap against you. And when you find out the hard way that your friends ain’t your friends, you take your own chances ’cause you’re the only one you rely on from then on. You go solo.

“Only thing worse than a faggot is a stool,” Cuddles says.

“A stool faggot,” goes Maxie.

“So you told them, huh? You probably told them about the herb, too. You must have told them everything,” says Lou.

“I signed, goddammit! I signed my fucking name. Yeah, I told them. You guys never saw that guy Metro. You never looked back. You never heard the sound of leaves falling red or curling up dry on the goddamn ground. Don’t give me none of that stale shit.”

“You yellow, Lonny.”

“But who was fucking him, Max? Who was fucking him?”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, a great, big, stool faggot.”