Hi, this is Mercedes Bautista. Sorry I missed your call! Please leave me your name, number, and a brief message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you, and have a blessed day!

  With a sigh, I hung up the phone, then tossed my toolbox into the passenger’s side of my truck.

  Throughout the week, I’d tried to call Mercy a few different times, but every time I did, it went straight to voicemail. I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling deep down that she might’ve been doing it to me on purpose, which stung, but I pushed it as far from my mind as I could as I took off towards Cliff’s house.

  Earlier that morning, he’d invited me over to build a pyset with him for his kids, which - given that on a good day, he couldn’t tell a torque wrench from a socket wrench - was really just a cry for help. Though the st thing I wanted to do was manual bor during the summer in Texas, I was never one to turn down a chance to lend a hand, so I promised to be there.

  When I parked my truck, Cliff was already waiting outside on his porch with a couple of cold beers. In the middle of a sip, he waved at me as I hopped up the steps of his sidewalk.

  “Uh oh, here comes trouble!” He grinned, handing me a beer. “You ready to get this show on the road, hoss?”

  “Hell, I was born ready.” I smiled, though I secretly wished he’d given me an orange juice instead. “Hey, you know, the whole ride over I was thinking of what fun, new ways you’ll find to lose the rest of your fingers. Are you taking suggestions?”

  “First of all, it was one time. Second of all, they reattached it.” He wiggled his scarred index finger in my direction. “So technically speaking, I still got all the fingers God gave me.”

  With a snort, I gestured at him with my beer. “Well, nothing’ll fix you up like mixing alcohol and power tools. Might be a good idea to keep sober if you want to keep all those God-given fingers of yours.”

  “Well, Niecey’ll love me no matter how many fingers I got, so that’s all that matters.” Upon setting his beer down, he brought out his phone. “Now, I got this pyset from Lowe’s, so apparently it comes with an app that helps you build it. Give me a second to pull it up…”

  With his app opened, we headed through the gate to his backyard, where the pieces were thrown together in one big, messy pile. While Cliff guided me through the steps to get started, I took this as an opportunity to let my mind wander freely, rexed by the sense of peace brought about by doing something with my hands.

  In between the set-up of each part, Cliff cleared his throat, which sounded oddly expectant. “So, how’ve things been?” He asked, looking up from his phone. “Everything good with you?”

  Hesitantly, I nodded. I didn’t want to be too honest with him; he and his wife, Shenice, were also good friends with Mercy, so I didn’t want to go into detail about our issues - not when they were both guilty of being notorious gossips. In fact, despite his insistence, Cliff was worse about it than Shenice was, so I knew anything I said would find its way back to Mercy. It was smarter just to leave things unspoken.

  “Yep,” I lied. “Nothing new to report.”

  “What’s going on with that little gal you were telling me about a while ago?” He smiled like he was trying to be encouraging. “The one with the blog?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “It’s a podcast, actually.”

  “Right, right.” Just the way Cliff said it made it clear he didn’t take it very seriously. “Anyway, how’s that working out?”

  “We’re still working together.” I chose my words carefully to dodge the implications. “Speaking of— have you heard anything on your end tely? About… you know, the fire stuff?”

  “Huh? Oh, no, sorry.” Cliff cast his eyes back down at his phone, scrolling with the pad of his finger. “Honestly, I’ve been so focused on getting this promotion, I haven’t really thought about it…”

  “Um— that’s fine, this promotion sounds like it’s a pretty big deal.” I tried to disguise my resentment.

  “I’m fuckin’ excited about it, man! Just the pay bump alone, I could finally get my mama a live-in nurse. A really good one, too!” He grinned so widely, you’d have thought he won the lottery. “Which’ll mean Clem can finally get back to teaching. She’s been such a good sport about everything, but she’s sacrificed so much just to keep Mama well, and I wanna give her back that freedom…”

  As Cliff droned on about his family, I was filled with a somber envy. In many ways, he had a life I thought I’d have at this age: one with stability, security and safety. He was a glimpse into a way of living that was beyond my reach, and sometimes it was hard not to hate myself for the position I’d gotten myself into.

  In an effort to show Cliff that I’d been listening, I smiled and hummed intermittently, nodding along as I concentrated on fitting the pieces of the pyset together.

  With the arrangement of each wooden st, it brought me back to the time where I spent a whole afternoon building a pyhouse with Feliz when Cleo was just a baby. He’d designed it himself - I was just there to drill holes and hammer nails - and even though he never got to see her use it, Cleo pyed on it so much, every splinter had been worth it in the end. Now that she was older, it went unused, standing in their backyard as little more than a testament of a love Cleo never got to fully appreciate.

  When we were ready to start drilling parts together, Cliff’s cheeks were red from exertion, and his white T-shirt had darkened with sweat around his neck and armpits. Throwing himself down in a wn chair with the grace of a bull in a china shop, he lifted up his cap to wipe his forehead dry.

  “You good, man?” He asked, bringing his cap back down on his head.

  “Hm?” I flipped my sungsses up onto my head. “Yeah, why?”

  “Eh, just wondering. You seem kind of quiet today.” He paused to take a sip of beer. “Quieter than usual, I mean. Just wondering if something was bugging you.”

  Though there was a sense of genuine compassion in Cliff’s features, I couldn’t help but feel awkward that he even asked. Despite our long history, he and I didn’t have the type of retionship where we spent much time opening our hearts up to one another, so it actually caught me a little off-guard.

  “Funny— I’ve been getting that a lot tely,” I replied with a nervous ugh, wiping my palms off on my jeans. “But it’s nothing, really. This whole thing is just reminding me of some good times with Feliz, that’s all. It’s bittersweet.”

  “Ah, yeah.” Cliff rested his bottle on the arm of his chair. “Now there was a guy who knew his way around a toolbox. Can you imagine how pissed he’d be that I got some prefab from a store instead of— I don’t know, hacking down a tree myself?”

  The longer I thought of Feliz, the harder it was to keep the smile on my face. “Yeah…”

  “He must be the only guy I ever met who could put shit together without directions and have it come out looking halfway decent,” he added. “Now that’s a superpower.”

  “Mm…” My throat tightened so painfully, I could only hum in response.

  “Wonder where he’d be right now, if he was still here.” He gnced up into the sky, a wistfulness in his voice. “Maybe he’d have been an architect or something. That would’ve been cool, right? Bet he’d have loved that shit.”

  I nodded stiffly, mouth ft to keep my lip from trembling. When Cliff realized I had nothing to say, the conversation died between us, with only the sound of a soft wind ruffling the trees taking its pce.

  A few minutes passed, but rather than continue building the pyset, Cliff kept staring up into the clouds, drumming his fingers along the neck of his beer bottle. When he finished it, he set it down on the grass and looked back over to me.

  “You alright?” He asked.

  I shrugged dismissively. “I’m fine.”

  Obviously unsatisfied with my answer, Cliff sat forward in the wn chair, his gaze still fixed on me. I was starting to feel a little interrogated, so I drank my beer in the hopes that it would help me unwind - or at least make me look less bothered. Bancing his elbows on his knees, Cliff leaned closer, cing his fingers together.

  “I know I’ve said this a hundred times over, but… it wasn’t your fault, you know,” he said, his tone unexpectedly gentle. “What happened to Feliz, I mean.”

  Gun shots.

  As soon as the words left Cliff’s mouth, my eyes started to sting. To keep myself occupied, I collected several screws from nearby and started sliding them into the wooden sts one by one.

  “I know you still feel pretty bad about it,” he continued. “Even though it was so long ago…”

  Nervously, I swallowed. “We don’t have to get into this right now.”

  “I’m not trying to get into anything!” He raised his hands defensively. “I just wish we could talk about him without you getting like… this. You know, all weird and shit. And don’t say that you don’t get weird, because you do. I can’t remember the st time we talked about him without you shutting down.”

  My cheeks burned, but even the humiliation of Cliff’s observation wasn’t enough to stop my mind from repying the memory like a tape stuck in a VCR. In vain, I tried to deploy the breathing exercises Dr. Oh had taught me, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from feeling like I was drowning on dry nd.

  From the corner of my eye, Cliff had clearly taken my sudden silence as an insult, like I was choosing to be stubborn instead of holding back an impending breakdown. He scowled in frustration.

  “Look, this kind of shit gets really tiring, alright?” He gestured at me, sitting up straighter in his chair. “It’s about time that someone told you to knock this shit off. You need to hear this.”

  The ringing in my ears is so loud…

  “Cliff—” My palms were so sticky with sweat, it was hard to keep them steady. “Please—”

  Now my hands are ruddy-red, too.

  “No, listen to me.” Cliff gripped the arms of his wn chair. “I know Feliz was your best friend— he always said you two were like brothers— and I get that things have never been the same for you since—”

  Mi amigo, quédate conmigo.

  “But Jesus Christ, it’s been ten years. When are you going to let it go?”

  His hands are cold.

  His grip weakens.

  “Instead of being grateful that you survived in the first pce, all you do is sit around hating yourself because you lived and he didn’t.”

  Take

  me

  instead.

  “But do you think this is what he would’ve wanted, for you to become a miserable sack of shit on his account? What do you honestly think he’d say if he saw you like this?”

  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  All I could do was focus on each breath that I took. When I closed my eyes, I saw Feliz's - so cold, so vacant - and my stomach twisted into knots. I felt both heat sick and frostbitten, numb and nauseous, barely able to string together a coherent thought.

  Inhale, exhale.

  Inhale, exhale.

  Inhale…

  Cliff sighed deeply.

  “You know I’m not trying to be an asshole, right?” He said. “It’s just… it’s hard to see you like this. Hard to be around you when you’re… you know.”

  With enough oxygen in my system, the world around me steadied, though the hyperventiting had left me a little dizzy. It was then that I’d noticed a tingling in my arms, from the crook of my elbow down to my knuckles, a sign of things to come. I swallowed the lump down in my throat.

  “Yeah, well, I have to live with the guilt for the rest of my life, so…” As I spoke, my eyes were so painfully dry. “Sorry if it doesn’t make me the life of the party.”

  “But that’s what I’m saying!” He replied sharply. “You don’t need to feel guilty over Feliz! Nobody ever expected you to.”

  I stared down at my shivering hands, but even with the sensations radiating all throughout my arms, my skin remained smooth. It seemed that the wasps had just barely been held back, like little soldiers waiting for a command. The sigh of relief I let out was shaky.

  “Cliff…” I gnced over at him. “It’s not just about Feliz, okay?”

  Cliff’s brow fttened, confused. “Well then, what the hell is it?”

  Before I could continue, I closed my eyes, but this time, I didn’t see Feliz. Instead, I saw Raja, his features contorted into a grimace of agony as he writhed in the sand, clutching his knee and sobbing.

  Please, leave me.

  Despite carrying Raja out of an active war zone, I still felt that on some level, I hadn’t done enough for him. Over and over I told myself that if I’d just been faster, maybe they could’ve done more for him, could’ve saved him from a lifetime of constant pain and a permanent limp that meant he could never run right again.

  But when we’d gotten there, they told me it was actually a miracle that Raja hadn’t bled to death in my arms, just like Feliz did - a miracle he felt unworthy of, despite my insistence.

  As selfish as it might’ve been, I didn’t regret it for a second. Whenever I woke up to his face, Raja was living proof that something good came out of the worst day of my life, and I didn’t suffer for nothing. I had years of pain to let go of, but knowing that he would be there with me made it feel possible for the very first time.

  In my silence, Cliff watched me closely, puzzle pieces fitting together in his mind. When he’d reached his conclusion, a deep scowl carved its way into his face. “Jesus,” he muttered, his tone a cross between pity and disgust. “Don’t tell me you’re still thinking about him.”

  Aligning the drill with another screw, I turned my focus back to the project. There wasn’t any point in saying anything else, because I already knew exactly where this would go. All I could do was continue drilling, concentrating on the whine of the motor to drown him out.

  “I get why you’re fucked up about Feliz, but Raj?” His lip curled. “What could you possibly have to feel bad about with him?”

  “I don’t want to get into this with you,” I said sternly. “I’m serious.”

  “You said it yourself!” He continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “That he wasn’t there when you were trying to save Feliz, even when he should’ve been—”

  “No, what I said is that he got separated from us ‘cause they wanted to take us out one by one!” I struggled to keep my voice level. “Fuck, I know you never liked him, but you weren’t there, okay? Stop acting like you were.”

  “I didn’t have to be know he was always a fucking coward!” He spat. “From the second I met him, I knew he was a spineless piece of shit who had no pce fighting for our country. He couldn’t shoot a gun, couldn’t throw a punch— the only thing he was ever good at was running away, and he knew that, too. That’s why he was a shitty soldier, and if he had any balls—”

  “For God’s sake, stop it!” I shouted, knuckles white as I gripped the drill. “He came back for me, Cliff! And— and he nearly died! If you saw what it was like— if, if you saw his— his leg…”

  Even though I’d seen enough mangled bodies in my line of work that I’d become desensitized, it was different when it was Raja. Kneecap shattered, skin split open, his face pale as the blood drained away…

  “You don’t get it.” My voice slipped out weakly. “You don’t know what he went through for me.”

  “It’s like I always said: you’re a bleeding heart, through and through.” He said it like it was a fw, a weakness, an unforgivable sin. “Then again, you’ve always had some kinda weird— I don’t know, soft spot for him, so I don’t know what I was expecting.”

  I threw the drill down into my toolbox and shot up to my feet. “Fuck you!”

  “No, fuck you!” Cliff rose from his chair like a bolt of lightning. “Take off those damn rose-colored gsses for five minutes and look at the facts! He ran off and left you and Feliz behind—”

  If I spent another second around here, I was absolutely going to lose it. I already felt the sharp, painful bubbling of my skin stretching across the emerging wasps, and I wasn’t sure I could hold them back for long. Yanking my sleeves forcefully down my arms, I turned away and started heading towards the gate, snatching my toolbox off of the ground as I did.

  “Screw this, I’m going home!” I clutched the toolbox so tightly, my knuckles were white. “We can finish the pyset ter—”

  “Oh, no you don’t! Get back here!” Cliff followed right after me so closely, he was able to grab my shoulder to spin me around. “I’m not letting you off that easy!”

  “Don’t you fucking touch me!” I snapped, terrified and furious. “I ain’t pying with you, Cliff! Back off!”

  “Lord help me— see? This kind of shit is why I haven’t said anything sooner!” He ughed, though it was devoid of anything but frustration. “You’re too fucking fragile to even entertain the possibility that it was his fault! That maybe, just maybe, he was the bad guy!”

  Rather than dignify Cliff with a response, I poured all my concentration into keeping the wasps at bay, aching all over from the control it took to keep them from emerging. Though I was brimming with white-hot rage, whatever Cliff saw must’ve been different, because his anger gave way to something wretchedly pitying.

  “Be honest with me, Manny,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’ve never considered that he let you fall behind so he could get out of there alive? Even if it meant that you didn’t? You don’t think he did the math and realized you two were acceptable losses?”

  A chill ran down my spine. I turned my head to look at Cliff, who met my stare without any hesitation, as if he’d readied himself for this conversation a long time ago.

  “What?” I barely spoke above a whisper, my throat tight. “Why the fuck would you say that?”

  His stare was steady and sincere. “’Cause you don’t deserve to punish yourself for the rest of your life when he’s the reason it all went to shit, okay?”

  There was such conviction in Cliff’s tone, like he thought he was lifting the heavy burden of guilt off my shoulders with just his words. But I didn’t feel absolution - I felt a rage so all-consuming, I was emptied of anything else. Below the surface of my flesh, the wasps yearned for freedom, and it was getting harder and harder not to give in to their demands.

  “What’s wrong with you? How the hell can you say something like that?!” I shouted, the toolbox jangling as I gestured with it. “He was in our fucking squad, Cliff! Doesn’t that mean anything to you!?”

  “His selfishness cost Feliz his life, so no, it doesn’t! And you know what?” Behind his eyes flickered something dark and vengeful. “I know you’ve held out some kind of hope that he’s out there, but if there’s any justice in this world, he’s six feet under in an unmarked grave. And I mean every word of that.”

  If I were a bomb, that moment would’ve been when I’d blown this fucking street right off the map of Dals.

  Just as I was about to beat Cliff within an inch of his life, the gate to the backyard opened, and through it came Cliff’s wife, Shenice, with his children in tow. Immediately, Cliff’s demeanor changed, fury promptly repced with joy at the sight of his family. He’d changed so instantly, so completely, it was like we hadn’t even had this conversation. It made me feel even crazier knowing that while he could smile so freely, I was left seething.

  Bouncing baby CJ in a carrier, Shenice came forward to say something, but whatever it was, I couldn’t really make it out. The hive in my head was so violent and unyielding, I couldn’t even hear my own heartbeat. When I swiveled my head to look at them, my vision was dizzy and out of focus. All I could do was hold my tongue until I tasted blood, gripping my toolbox like my life depended on it.

  When Cliff’s daughter, Savannah, tugged at my sleeve, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

  “Hey, Manny?” Savannah blinked up at me, her dark eyes wide and anxious like a doe’s.

  I clenched my jaw to keep from screaming at a seven-year-old girl. “What is it, ni?a?”

  “What happened to your arm?” She blinked innocently. “Did you get hurt making stuff with Daddy?”

  I looked down, and it was then that I saw that my shirt was dappled in little red patches of blood, each one followed by a long streak. More blood trickled down past my fingertips, and I stared in horror as a wasp crawled out from under my sleeve, a little blur of bck, red and yellow as it flew away. I didn’t even have time to process what happened before Shenice turned her head towards me, and that white, gleaming smile of hers wrenched open with a shriek.

  “Oh my God! Manny!” Out of instinct, Shenice ripped Savannah away from me like I was contaminated. “Are you okay?”

  “What the— Jesus Christ!” Cliff gasped. “Manny, what the hell? Are you alright? Do I need to call an ambunce?”

  “N—no, it’s— I—” I stammered quickly, but I knew there was nothing to say that could justify it.

  The weight of their eyes on me made me feel like an ant under a microscope, desperate to escape the burn of the magnified sun in their stare. Every inch of skin on my body was slick with sweat, and for a moment, I thought I might actually pass out. Fuck expnations, I had to get out of here - whatever was wrong with me, I had to take it to my grave.

  This time, Cliff didn’t try to stop me. He called out my name several times, following me through the gate, but by the time I’d made it to my truck he seemed to realize it was a pointless endeavor. The truck started up with a roar from the engine, and I didn’t even bother looking back to see what face he was making.

  It wasn’t more than five miles until I had to pull over, shaking too much to be anything but a car crash waiting to happen. The A/C was bsting as cold as it could get and every window was rolled down, but the inside of the truck was still threatening to close in on me. Was it possible to have a panic attack so intense that it killed you? I was about to find out.

  Once my truck was in park, I ripped the sleeves up from my shirt, expecting to find my arms riddled with wounds, but my skin was smooth and even, like nothing had happened. There was no way the wasps could slip out without me noticing… right? Just the idea of it made me want to tear the skin off my bones.

  As I fixed my gaze down at my hands on the wheel, a wasp nded on top of my knuckles, perching neatly like it was resting on a journey. Enraged by its presence, I smmed my palm down to kill it. For a few seconds, I left my hand there, afraid that I wouldn’t find anything underneath if I dared to lift my hand.

  When I pulled back, I saw the little wasp half-crushed, its pale yellow blood smeared across my knuckles. It tilted its head to the side, wings twitching, twitching, twitching until it fell still. Upon watching it die, a pang of guilt coursed throughout my body, though I was relieved to see that it was real.

  Then, as if it had a life of its own, my skin began to stretch across the wasp’s corpse, forming a little bnket of flesh around it from the tip of the antennae down to its stinger. The lump turned a sickly shade of yellow, quivering rapidly until moments ter, the wasp emerged, fully intact.

  Upon its rebirth, it fluttered away with its new pair of wings, and my skin fttened back down to normal. All that was left behind was a little stain on my knuckles as proof of what had just happened.

  For the next five minutes, all I could do was throw up, until all that came out was an awful yellow-green bile - a color eerily close to the blood of the wasp.