In that split second, I raise the wrench, all while knowing how wrong a choice the wrench was. It is unwieldy, small, useless beside him. It is everything we girls are told about ourselves, in that moment—that we cannot hope to fight off this force of nature, that we are doomed. I hardly have time to swing it when I smell his sweat, feel the heat rolling off him, and—

That strange copy of Mama flickers into existence, a beacon of warm light beside me again. “Forever beautiful and fun, under every moon and every sun,” she sings. A death song if I’ve ever heard one.

Brando pauses for only a moment, mere steps from me—I can smell all of him, how I can smell all of him, the old onions and yeasty breath—and his head swivels toward her, the source of music and light, as she continues: “She will be there until the—”

Tai howls, swinging the fire poker at his back, and he topples over with a deflated groan, falling beside me and knocking me off my feet in a whoosh of smoke.

She rushes toward me, sobbing, and he’s there, on the floor, turning himself over and moaning.

“You hit him,” I cry into the baby skin of her neck, as she holds me in her arms.

“Mama distracted him,” she cries back, hugging me so tight, until I really can’t breathe. The room whirls and glitches, and I wipe a trail of slime from my mouth.

She drags me out the door, and both of us collapse onto all fours, coughing at the crispness of the air, and I see, from the corner of my stinging eyes, the dancing edge of the small blaze on the other side of the cabin. That black box, I think to myself.

“We can’t leave him here,” Tai says, gasping on her hands and knees.

I look inside and see his feet splayed, inches from us. Then I lock eyes with Tai.

We remove our sooty sweaters and tie them around our faces loosely. We crawl toward his feet, each seizing a leg. Between the thickening smoke, it’s so difficult to drag him out of the door—a near impossible burden—but we manage it, in desperate heaves, limbs and throats feeling aflame even though we are far enough, safe enough.

Outside, he stirs, coming up onto an elbow, and stares at us, with hell in his bleary, bloodshot eyes. They are blue, and familiar in the firelight.

We breathe hard, watching each other.

And I remember: I remember the young man with the long hair, who helped set up the tea, who smiled shyly at us before folding himself away. Boy. Someone my uncle, my father, and even my mother let disappear into the shadows, either through ignorance or ill intent.

“Hi, cousin … Brando,” I say.