When they got back to the motel, Lily announced she was going to sit by the pool. She wore what appeared to be the same string bikini she'd worn at the Blue. Evan had thought it was black but in the light of day it turned out to be dark red.

She kept the little ball of sampler heroin in her bra until they got back to the motel room. There she hid it in the bottom of her bag, sticking it in a balled-up pair of socks.

"What's your other stuff look like?" he asked her.

Lily dug in her handbag and brought out another rolled up baggie of similar size, though a smidge bigger. This powder was slightly greyer than the bundle they'd just picked up.

"Can I hold it?"

"Sure."

Lily handed it to him. He rolled it around in his fingers.

"I've never touched a hard drug before," he said.

"Well, now you have," said Lily, snatching the baggie back.

"You going to have any of that now?"

"Nah, I'm good," she said. "Probably tonight before we go to bed."

She disappeared into the bathroom and reappeared in the bikini.

Her body, while still the young miracle it had always been, now seemed significantly less inviting than it had the other night. Evan made a concerted effort not to look at her when she stepped out of the bathroom with a towel under her arm. Try as he might, he betrayed a seconds-long side-glance up and down her legs, up to her thighs and along her pale cream belly, and he saw her catch him looking and jerked his eyes back to the TV.

"You coming?" Lily asked him.

"Yeah," said Evan, although he really didn't want to.

The pool was empty, not that surprising on a Friday afternoon at a low-end motel in a 110 heat degree index. It was rectangular, mid-sized, the little blue waves dipping and bobbing in a low breeze, winking with sunshine.

"This isn't going to take long," Lily said.

She applied sunscreen on herself, reeking of coconut by the time she was done. She slathered it all down her arms, on her neck, her cheeks, ears, her collarbone, her legs, the tops of her feet, her stomach and sides. She didn't ask Evan to do her back, which he told himself was not that disappointing.

"You want some?" she offered.

"Nah, I'm good," he spat, bitterness ruling his every impulse. He didn't know what to do. He felt like he had as a child when being disciplined, furious with rebellion but his limbs and tongue refusing to obey his crackling neurons.

"If you're gonna be out here you should probably take some," said Lily.

"I don't care," he said.

"You should take some," she insisted. "Or tomorrow's gonna be really uncomfortable for you. Here."

She grabbed his hand and was about to squirt some into his palm, but he jerked it back.

"Fine, good point," he snapped. He snatched the bottle out of her hand and dabbed some on his cheeks, forehead and earlobes.

I hate you so much, he told himself in his head. No one listens to you. No one takes you seriously. Lose some weight, you fat fuck. Then maybe she'll let you put sunscreen on her lovely pale back. And she'll share her heroin with you like a big boy.

Lily lay down on a beach chair, lowered her sunglasses over her eyes and lounged. Evan sat in his beach chair, sweltering in his jeans and t-shirt, trying to read Lincoln's Melancholy.

Honest Abe's dreary face looked out at him from the cover, seeming to say, "I feel ya, bro, this is some real shit."

Evan thought about getting up right then and there, heading back to the room, grabbing his belongings, loading his stuff in the car and taking off without saying anything to Lily, leaving her there as she lay half-nude next to this cement hole filled with chemical water.

But he didn't. He sat there next to her in the molten sunlight and felt sorry for himself. He sat until his sweaty fingers left imprints on the pages of the book he could not seem to read no matter how many times his eyes scanned the same page over and over.

They stayed there a good hour, until it was late afternoon and the tyrannical sun was beginning to slide down the sky. There were ominous thunderclouds coming in from the west, accompanied by a faraway rumbling.

Evan looked over at Lily and saw she'd fallen asleep. Her belly was stretched taut, her breasts cupped in the blood-red bikini bra, rising and falling placidly. His dick whimpered at him. His brain waged war on itself.

He reached over and poked her in the arm. She started and looked at him, raising her sunglasses.

"Storm's coming," he said, nodding to the west as the clouds overtook the sun. "Should probably go inside."

They went back up to the room and Lily showered, followed by Evan.

Every time she uses the bathroom I'm going to be wondering if she's getting high now, he thought as they switched places. The bathroom was filled with the scent of her shampoo and soap.

As he rinsed the day's sweat from his hairy gut and pimply butt, Evan reflected on how, if only he were more of an alpha, if he only understood the game, he could be fucking Lily in this here shower right now. His dick began to swell at the thought, but he paid it no mind.

The thunderclouds rolled in at an alarming pace, and within ten minutes they were drenching the parking lot with torrential rain. Water spilled over the gutters and splattered to the cement balcony floor. In the distance, Nashville's skyscrapers were obscured by walls of white and grey.

Evan and Lily braved the deluge and drove to the Applebee's across the street for dinner. Lily got a chicken salad, Evan got a burger.

"Can we buy some beer or something for the hotel room tonight?" she asked him after they'd handed their menus to the waitress.

"Yeah, sure," said Evan, glowering.

You mean, can 'I' buy us some beer, he thought of saying but didn't.

"What exactly is your problem?" said Lily. "You were fine all the way down here and then ever since you got that wristband you've been moody as hell."

Evan shook his head.

He looked out the window at the rain beating on the pavement and flooding the grass.

At least she didn't appear too bothered about the awkward pass the other night. That had already come and gone like yesterday. She hadn't even brought it up other than to admonish him the night before during Funny People.

"I dunno," he said. "Just been a shitty summer, I guess."

Lily nodded sympathetically, her enormous brown eyes boring into his.

"Don't worry about our little errand today. It was nothing, really. You're probably not even going to remember it in a few months."

"I'm fine about that," said Evan.

He struggled to think of an excuse.

"I... I just don't know... I just don't know if I actually want to do this tomorrow. Just sit in an arena all day just to be told no thanks, go home."

"Why the fuck would you leave now? Even if that's probably true, why would you leave now? Why come all this way and then blow it less than 24 hours before?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, I'm aware of that. I'm not going to. It's just, reality is setting in. Harsh, harsh reality."

Their drinks came. Evan had a Coke, Lily had a water.

"Look, I know you've had to witness some really fucked up shit recently," said Lily. "But, I mean, you have parents who clearly love you and are still letting you live with them for free, even though it seems like you really don't go to school, you have a little sister who loves you and clearly looks up to you who you said is probably going to make a full recovery, you have a job you don't hate... you have friends... you're trying out for American Idol tomorrow... for a twenty one year old guy in this day and age, that's doing okay."

"It's not stripper money, but yeah," said Evan.

Lily glared at him.

"You want to be a stripper? Start working out. They have male strippers. You can be a little gay boy toy. I can even get you started, if you're really serious."

"I was just trying to make a joke," said Evan, though he didn't believe himself.

"Sitting here and bitching at me isn't going to do anything about anything," said Lily.

She looked back down at her phone, tuning him out.

"I've decided what I'm singing tomorrow," said Evan, fleeing his thoughts.

"What?"

"That Johnny Cash song," said Evan. "Do Lord. It's the obvious choice, and I'd been leaning towards it but now I know for sure. It's easy as fuck. Easy melody. Then when they ask me why I picked it I can tell them about my brother and they'll hopefully let me through. Plus, Idol loves religious shit."

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He stopped to sip his Coke. It tasted bland, flat.

"I thought you said you were going to choose once you got to the stadium?"

"It's an arena. Not a stadium. And I changed my mind."

"Hmm. Well, glad you figured that out," Lily said, still looking at her phone.

"Yeah."

Lily looked up and sipped at her water.

"Can I ask you something that I've been wanting to know?" she asked. "It might be really uncomfortable."

"Sure," said Evan. "It's about Jason, isn't it?"

"It is."

"What is it?"

"I want to know, when Jason committed suicide," Lily said, hesitating. "...you never actually saw his body?"

"No," said Evan. "Apparently Maddie came home from her friends' early and found him and freaked out and called 911 and my parents got home like right after and they found her in the kitchen screaming with the phone still in her hand. They got the authorities or whatever on their way and then they called me."

"Where were you?"

"I was over at Matt's. Fucked up. I was worried about being drunk but they didn't even seem to notice. If they knew, they didn't say anything."

"Did the cops say anything to you?"

"They knew it was the less important issue right then, but yeah, one of them took me aside and basically told me he knew I'd driven home wasted but given the circumstances they wouldn't do anything about it."

Their food came. Lily picked at her chicken. Evan stared at his barbecue burger, the grease soaking into the bun.

"But no, I didn't see him," he said. "I went down there after they'd taken him out and had been working in the room. The lights were out but I could see his brains on the wall. On his Johnny Cash poster. Then they called me back upstairs. They had someone come that night and clean it and they took the bed and the mattress all that same night, too. Normally you have to wait for that but they did it for us."

"You could see his brains? What did you do after?"

"After everyone was gone, I just went to bed. I just went to bed and passed out and when I woke up I thought the whole thing was a dream but then I got up and saw my parents and I was like, yeah, that wasn't a dream."

"Have you been back in his room yet?"

"No, nobody really goes downstairs anymore at all. My mom does laundry and that's it. And she avoids doing it until absolutely necessary. She used the laundromat for a while, too."

He half-heartedly tucked into his burger, the grease spilling over his fingers. It tasted plain, the bacon rubbery.

"The reason I asked was that I didn't see Larry's body either," said Lily. "I just remember my mom waking me up and saying I had to go to my grandma's."

Evan had completely forgotten about that. He remembered Larry, paunchy and balding and gregarious. He'd seemed friendly on first impression but that had all gone out the window the day that Evan saw him lose his temper with Lily. He'd seen Larry's true colors, and Evan had always avoided Larry after that.

"Did Larry shoot himself, too?"

"No, he hung himself in the basement. My mom just woke me up and told me I had to go with the cops. I was smoking weed at the time, so I was really scared about getting caught but they just thought I was tired from getting woken up at 3 am. They drove me to my grandma's and I stayed at my grandma's for a month, then I stopped talking to my mom."

"Do you still talk to your grandma?"

"Sometimes."

"Did you move in with Daddy from your grandma's?"

"Yeah," she said. "I stayed with her for like two years, then I got my job at the Blue this past winter and I moved out."

"Was she sad to see you go?"

"I think so," she said. "But I had to leave. I had to be on my own."

Evan looked at the rain again. He took another bite out of his burger. It tasted like shit.

Lily chewed her chicken salad and, voila, there was her phone again, and, gasp, what was this? Why, she was texting again!

Now Evan knew her conversations were probably all about heroin and stripping. She sent a text and set the phone down again and looked at Evan. Evan wanted those brown eyes to look at him like they never wanted him to go away, and he hated himself for it.

"I can't imagine getting to that place where you want to end it all," Evan said. "As shitty as life can be, I can't imagine it."

"That's depression," said Lily. "It's not rational."

"When were you diagnosed with depression?"

"When I was 15."

"What meds have you taken?"

"Nothing at first, but eventually they started me off with a low dosage of Prozac, and it was only when I was on my period."

"What does depression feel like?"

Lily thought.

"It basically feels like everyone hates you and you deserve it and you don't know why. No one's honest. They're all just playing you. Using you. And you know you deserve it so there's nothing you can do but accept it."

She went on.

"It's not even really a sadness, it's just this, like, resignation. Like you're a piece of shit and everyone knows it and you know it but it's not even worth bringing up so everyone just carries on with it. Whenever you picture yourself or think about yourself, you can only think about the worst parts... you can only think of yourself as your worst self. Just standing on the edge of this deep and never-ending pit and looking in and knowing you're going to fall and wanting to fall and get it over with but you never actually do so you just stand there and feel nothing."

She stopped.

"I don't talk about this with anyone," she said. "I've never talked to anyone about this before. So thanks for asking."

"You're welcome."

"You're the best therapist I've ever been to."

"Thanks. Thanks for talking to me about Jason. Matt and Rob and Brian never want to."

"Did Jason ever talk to you about depression?"

"No," said Evan. "No, he didn't. All he'd talk about was the stuff I told you earlier."

"I can't believe the military didn't help him out after he fought in Afghanistan," said Lily. "Don't they have free health care for vets?"

"It sounds like it's not as great as they make it out to be," said Evan. "And he got an other-than-honorable discharge anyway, so he forfeited any right to any of that. It's why they didn't have a flag folding at his memorial or a gun salute or anything even though he was in Afghanistan. It was just basically my family and a bunch of his friends standing around a bunch of pictures of him."

Evan ate a fry. It was dry and tasteless, sponge-like.

"I'm actually just really pissed at him," he said. "That's really the main emotion I've gotten out of all of this. Just being pissed. Cause it's like, what's the point? I watched him, knew him my whole life, he was always there, with everything he went through, and then, just like that, it's over. All that for nothing."

Lily shrugged.

"The point isn't to inflict pain on anyone else," she said. "The point is to be gone. The point is to not be conscious ever again. The point is to end being on the edge of that pit. The point is to jump in and get it over with. You're not capable of thinking of anyone else. Just the pit."

"Do you think that pit is the void that we all feel in ourselves? The void that the universe is expanding into?"

Lily stuffed a lettuce leaf into her mouth and clenched her eye socket at him in confusion.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Towards the end, Jason would always talk about the void. It's like, the universe is expanding, right? But what's outside the universe? What's the space that it's expanding into? He called that the void, and he said that the void is always calling us home. Like, you know how you get nervous when you're standing in a high place or somewhere where you could die easily? It's because part of you actually WANTS to die. That part of you want wants to give in to the fear or whatever, that's the void beckoning you and saying, you should come back. This is where you belong."

Lily nodded slowly, chewing.

"Yeah, like, that faraway feeling you get when you're on a tall building or doing something dangerous? I feel like that sometimes when I'm dancing and I'm hanging on the pole upside down or something. I could just slip and break my neck in front of everyone. It'd probably be a front page story. Dancer at Deja Blue falls off pole, breaks neck."

"Do you still feel depressed?"

"You never stop feeling depressed. You just kind of get used to it. You distract yourself. The medicine helps but not always. So yeah, I do. Not as bad as I used to. But yeah."

"Do you feel depressed right now?"

"No, not really. Not while we're talking here. It's good to talk to people like this. It's good to not feel alone."

"Do you think that your current occupation is contributing to your depression?"

"Not really. It doesn't really, you know, help some of the time, but the money's too good. I'd be depressed at any job. At least with this one I get lots of money and I feel, you know, wanted."

"Do you think your heroin addiction is contributing to your depression?"

"I'm not addicted to it," Lily said sharply. "And don't say it so loud."

"You've taken some multiple times a day since we've been down here."

"No, I have not."

"You said every time you went into the bathroom—"

"I did it like, once before we left, and then--"

"When that scary-looking guy came over before we left," Evan said, interrupting her, remembering the guy in the black Cutlass.

"Right, that's Jorge, that's one of Daddy's runners. And he's not scary, he's really nice."

"He's nice to you. But he brought you your stash, that's what you were waiting for."

"Well, yeah. Duh."

"Daddy couldn't give you any of the heroin he deals?"

"He doesn't keep any in the trailer where he lives a lot of the time. You don't shit where you eat. But yeah, as I was saying, I did it once then when you came and got me, once on the way when we stopped at that gas station in Kentucky, once when we were downtown yesterday, and then I've done it like three times since we've been in the motel. And I've snorted it, and not a lot. Like, one line at the most. I'm not a heavy user. I'm not shooting up a full syringe five times a day. I just use it to take the edge off."

"The edge of your depression?"

"Yeah," Lily said, and skewered a chunk of chicken with her fork. "It's the only thing that's ever worked, like, consistently."

Evan thought of what his boss Rex had said about girls not wanting to be "saved" and decided to go against it.

"You know, Lily, I know it's pointless to say this and I know it won't mean anything, but... you know don't have to do that, you don't have to sell yourself like that. You don't have to snort H to feel all right."

Lily rolled her eyes.

"Uh, well, yea, when it comes to the dancing, I kind of do. The only reason I'm doing it at all is because I have to. If I didn't, I fucking wouldn't. So I do have to. At least for now."

She paused.

"Not forever, though. Like, another year. And the H, I've only been doing it for like four months. I'm going to quit when I feel like it."

"Don't they all say that, though?"

"Well, now I'm saying it, too. I'm good. You don't have to lecture me."

"Are you going to have any of that stuff Tyrone gave you?"

"Hell no, that's Daddy's. I'm just bringing it back to him."

"How much is he"—Evan swallowed and spit out the name—"Daddy paying you for this?"

"He said we'd discuss it when I got back, but it's going to be a lot. More than I make in a week, probably."

"What exactly is so special about this particular H?"

"It's the purest stuff on the market right now. Daddy's been trying to get ahold of it for months."

"So Daddy's a heroin dealer in addition to running a strip club."

"Yeah, we went over this already. He does what he has to, like everyone else."

"And he still lives in a shitty trailer with one of his dancers even though he could probably afford something a little better?"

"First of all, he doesn't actually live with me. He has a house somewhere, too. He comes over a lot, but he gave the trailer to me. The trailer is technically mine. And you gotta hide in plain sight, sometimes, I guess. Why, are you jealous of him or something?"

"I just find that odd. And it's creepy that he calls himself 'Daddy'."

"Yeah, I know. I thought that same thing when I met him. But he's okay. He really is."

Evan didn't buy that for a second, but he kept his mouth shut.

Lily continued.

"But yeah, so he got ahold of this pure stuff cause Tyrone moved down here like last month and ended up telling him about it. He was going to send one of his guys down here to get a sampler to see about pushing it but then he found out I was coming down here with you and so we ended up doing it."

"Does he know that I know about this?"

Lily hesitated.

"He doesn't, no. He told me not to tell you, actually. But I was like, how the fuck am I gonna lie about that? Even if I took a cab, you'd still be like, 'Where the fuck did you go?'"

"So what will he do if he finds out I know?"

"He won't find out. How will he find out? You're never going to talk to him. And I'm never going to tell him. So there we go."

Their check came. Evan reached for it but Lily slapped his hand away again.

"I'll get this one," she said. "Thanks for driving me to Tyrone's."

"Don't mention it."

They walked back through the rain to the car and stopped at a gas station where Evan purchased a case of Bud Lite and Lily bought more cigarettes. They splashed back across the street to the motel. The rain died down and the sky cleared as night settled in.

They drank some of the beer and watched Family Guy, Lily putting away four or five cans before heading to the bathroom.

"You don't have to hide it anymore," he said when she took her baggie out of her travel bag and headed for the door. "I know what you're doing now."

"Yeah, I'd rather not have you watching," she said, tipsy.

She was in the bathroom about ten minutes.

"You're a nice guy, Evan Barker," she told him when she came out, stoned silly. "A real nice fuckin' guy."

Evan lay in his bed, eyes on the ceiling, not responding.

"Don't you change now," she said. "Don't you go changing on me."

Her head hit the pillow and she was snoozing shortly after. Evan listened to Lily's breath and turned his thoughts to the audition in the morning. It made him feel slightly better.

"Anything's possible," he said to himself, but he didn't know how to believe it.