How do you know when you’re There, I had once wondered. Maybe you’re lucky enough to
notice the moment it’s happening to you. Maybe you’re able to block out all the other stuff
that is, in the end, just background noise. But, most often, you don’t know that you were There
until you lose it, or until it gets taken away from you. When you look back, you clearly see
that time, that place, when all the pieces of you had finally fit together to make you
blissfully happy, make you your whole self. Like one of those jumbo puzzles that take up your
entire kitchen table for weeks, the tiny pieces are just cardboard shapes with colors splashed
on them, and they don’t make any sense until you find their rightful place among the other
pieces. When you put the last piece into place and the pieces now form a complete picture, that
’s when you’re There. But while you were busy thinking about gluing the puzzle together, so
that the pieces would never be apart again, someone comes from behind you, destroys the last
piece and throws the rest of the pieces away. Even if you could muster up enough courage to put
the pieces back together, the picture would never be complete again, because of the last missing
piece … which, as it turned out, was smack in the middle, or in the heart, of the picture.
My life before Cameron was a jumbled mess: some pieces were sporadically linked together—while
others, like Bill’s death, had no fit. The day I met Cameron, the pieces started to flow into
place, and the night that Cameron kissed me, the day that he sat next to me and told me he loved
me, that was when the last pieces of me were snapped into place. Every other second, minute,
hour that I spent with Cameron after that moment, made the last piece of my puzzle grow
stronger, so that it made the damaged, the broken pieces become insignificant—mere background
noise.
But Cameron had taken that last piece of the puzzle with him, and a black hole was all that was
left in its stead. How do you recover from that? How do you survive? You don’t, I resolved.
There’s no coming back from that permanent void left inside of you. You become a shell, going
through the motions without emotion, like a robot, while the rest of me was wherever Cameron
was.
In a few days, my other roommates would herd back to the house and school—the cycle, would
start again. I vowed to myself that I would play the part until the moment arose when I could
execute vengeance on the people who took Rocco and Cameron away from me. Then perhaps I could
find Cameron again …
Epilogue
I was the kid who crawled out of the womb ready to fight, fists up and everything. I lay on the
bed reminding myself of this while I breathed through the pain. But bullet wounds were nothing
compared to the hole that had been blown through my heart, leaving a big bleeding empty space.
There was nothing Dr. Lorne could do to fix that hole. No amount of stitches would put her back
in there to fill the space she had vacated.
No, people like me weren’t built to deal with matters of the heart. Hell, as far as the outside
world was concerned, a guy like me didn’t have a heart to start with. I’d lived my life trying
to prove them right—until recently.
How do you fight something that you can’t see, I asked myself. How do you get rid of the guy
who’s messing with your business, when that guy is you? You turn the gun on yourself, I
resolved—it’s the only way to sever the human from the gangster.
“Looks like the bullet went right through,” Dr. Lorne announced. He was holding an X-ray image
to the fluorescent light of the ceiling. We had equipped him with a full ER in his house a few
years ago—everything he needed to patch us up, including an X-ray machine. It was worth every
penny. We kept him busy.
After Spider shot me in the shoulder, I let Carly drag me to Dr. Lorne’s place. This was more
for her benefit than mine. If she doesn’t have someone or something to worry about, she goes
nuts. Dr. Lorne was the best in his field—Harvard med, one of the top surgeons in the country,
medical reviews—which he had thrown all away to follow his true passion: booze. But the best
thing about Dr. Lorne was that he sobered up quick, took cash, and kept his mouth shut.
“You’re a lucky man,” he said.
I didn’t feel lucky. Actually, I was jinxed. But I knew what he’d meant and there was nothing
lucky about it. Spider was a straight shot, even with his eyes closed and an arm tied behind his
back. This had been methodically planned.
Twenty stitches later and I was as good as new—well, my shoulder was anyway.
Dr. Lorne took out his magic bag of pills, which we also supplied him with, and handed me two
yellow ones. I grabbed the bag and took two more. Drugs are great in that way: they fix
everything that hurts, inside and out. The good doctor was in no position to judge me on this.
He left me the bag and walked out.
Carly, who had been whimpering on a wooden chair in the corner while the doctor did his job,
spoke up, “I don’t think I can do this, Cameron. You should have seen Emmy when she heard the
shots. It was as if someone were sucking the life out of her. It was … horrible.”