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Colton and I both thought we'd built up some sexual stamina in the short time we'd been together, but the session we had in Akio's front room after my story was like nothing I'd ever imagined possible. Colton worked me up using his ear on my chest and told me 'Think about that time in Comfrey's office where you held on...think you can hold now? Damn I love that sound when you're excited...'

I purred, panted, somehow didn't come, and all the while Colton listened to my heart race. It was pounding so hard I could hear it inside my head, and I thought about how I'd stood there praying that Comfrey wouldn't make me turn around, and remembered her voice saying...

'Breathe deep for me, Todd-coon,' Colton said, as if reading my mind. He switched sides in a quick, fluid rolling motion and put his left ear on my right, and I breathed in like my lungs could simulate a long, rolling wave on a beach. Colton had his hand in my pants, his fingers pinching the tip of my cock. Still I held on.

'How do you even get that much oxygen inside you?' Colton said. 'You got lungs like a jet engine, raccoon.'

'Yeah, because unlike you I take ca....woah, Colton....oh shit, oranges!'

'Okay, you got it.' Colton sat up, looking worried. 'You okay?'

'I think I'm gonna faint.' And I'd made it worse by sitting up with him, trying to convince myself I was okay.

'Okay, I got you. Steady. Too much oxygen? Just breathe steady. Sorry, my fault.'

My head was swimming so much it was like the one time I remembered 'hitting the wall,' and I actually had done it while swimming rather than running, and had to sit on the poolside with my head in my hands and everything feeling a long way away.

But I wasn't exhausted. I was so horny I was trembling and sweating and my crotch ached like I'd run a whole marathon at my sprint pace. And Colton comforting me was so damn hot, he kept talking slowly, reassuring me a bit like I sometimes did for him when he got a little paranoid after too much of Akio's weed.

'We gotta be careful with your special thing, Todd-coon. Never thought I'd get safetied just for listening to your breathing.' He had his arm wrapped around me. 'And your heart's still thudding like crazy. And I've never seen even you pack a bulge that big.'

I waited for him to do something, and then remembered we were still on safety. Good. Let him stay there for a bit. I couldn't quite feel it, but I could sense from his twitching that his heart was telling him to get moving along with mine. 'I do appreciate how safe you are, you know that?' I said, still trying to control my breathing and ease my swimming head.

'You're_always_ safe with me,' Colton said. 'Just cool off and calm that engine for a minute. Hey, why don't you tell me that story Akio made you come with. Was it really about Deke?'

'Damn that's a hot idea.' I told it slowly, bringing myself back under control, still hard and my pants soaked from imagining Colton instead of Akio and me instead of Deke, but really I was thinking about them too. 'Don't hate me for this,' I said, 'but those pictures of Akio when he was in his late twenties? _Damn_that's a fit wolf.'

'Amen,' Colton said, stroking me between the ears like Akio had. His own breathing was now a growling purr. 'Wanna fuck like we're both wolves and have a good howl? Huh? Huh? Come on. Let's do it. Hey, listen,' he put his muzzle close to my ear and took a slow breath. 'What if when you get to NY and you gotta go for your next sports check-up, your doctor's a hot wolf who just graduated from med school? What if he's a guy this time and he's got a really cute bedside voice?'

'Oh man, Colton, don't go there!'

'Comfrey didn't make you come but you'd never survive that!'

'Stop it, you're killing me!'

'What if he liked you? Started coming to your games just to see you. Asked you for a drink. What if you went back to his place and you got to see him in just his pants?'

'I couldn't, Colton. You're my fox.'

'Yeah. And I'm really hot for imagining you getting fucked by a wolf. Would you do it so you could tell me about it? Would you let me watch if I was there?'

'Urrrrgh...God Colton I need to come like right now, you gonna do something or just sit there?'

'What can I do, you horny little dirtbag? We're still on safety.'

'_Un-_safety! Un-oranges! Get a move on, fox!'

Colton gripped gently under my armpits and pulled me around so my back was against Akio's couch, my butt still on the floor. In an effortless motion he landed himself on my lap, wrapping his legs around the back of me, then raised himself up and shifted forward for me to get inside him. The relief was instant, I came and then it was like I kept coming, more juice than I ever thought possible in every squirt. That's when I started howling. Colton copied me, and I felt him cover my stomach in wet warmth as he hugged me against him and soon we had no more breath to howl with and just panted hard against each other, our chests heaving and out bodies covered in sweat.

'Good boy, good boy!' Colton panted. 'Whose my raccoon, huh? Hug the fox. Real nice and tight, gimme that hug. That was one _serious_howl. Sure you're not secretly a wolf under all that fur?' He started licking around my ears, then nipping, then chewing a little.

This was always his thing during the comedown: teasing me with his needle-like teeth in whatever place he liked the look of first. It had started with him trying to give me a blowjob one time and me saying 'Colton, teeth!' and it somehow drove him wild. So now we did it on purpose sometimes to get going. He'd still never successfully sucked my dick without accidentally giving me a nip, and now it was a joke because I actually liked him nipping me. Everywhere.

'Colton,' I said. 'My ears cannot possibly taste good.'

'Peanut butter,' he said. 'Just like always.' He said my fur smelt of it. I still thought he was making it up. 'And you're still hard. Damn, raccoon. I gotta get off, this is starting to hurt.' He rolled off and sat next to me with his back against the sofa's footwell and his head tipped back on the cushion. 'Man, what a mess. Tummy-rub!'

'Colton! You jackass, don't rub come into my fur!' I was too busy laughing at his tickling to protest any more. 'That is so gross! And I'm gonna stink, you gross fox!'

'And you know what else?' Colton said, sitting up. 'Any minute now, Akio's gonna come back in and find us lying here with you covered in pearl jam and we're gonna freeze and pull stupid faces, and you're gonna get your dumb floppy ears thing on, and he'll just put his hand on his hip and say "Having fun then, boys?"'

I looked at the clock on the wall. Akio had been gone for nearly three hours already.

Colton reached for his cigarettes on the coffee table and lit one. 'Hey Todd, you ever think about becoming a doctor?'

'Oh fuck no! Me? With that kind of fetish? Okay, yeah, when I was a kid I thought it would be the coolest job in the world. Then I grew up. Some people just can't do certain things. And I've gotta tell you this? It'd be just like your hypersexuality. Too much of a good thing. And it wouldn't be a good thing. You can't do a job like that unless your a professional and not a massive pervert. I couldn't be like Dr Comfrey. Okay, when I was about 14 and school told us to seriously think about our futures, yeah, I thought about it. And then the sensible part of me just gave me a great big oranges moment.'

'I think you'd have been a great doctor,' Colton said.

I wanted to laugh it off, but when I looked at him I couldn't, because for whatever reason, he genuinely meant it. 'Well thanks,' I said. 'But come on. Me? You've seen how grouchy I get when I don't sleep well. You know the hours those guys have to do? And I hate blood. And hearing someone yell or scream in pain? I shiver just thinking about it. I'd just panic. And I'd be worried about making a mistake all the time. Someone's life in my hands? I don't think I could deal with that.'

'You're probably right. Engineering's the way forward for you.'

'We're_both_ going to be engineers, right? You did mail that form off for your late entry, didn't you?'

'Errrr, yeah. Sure.'

'Colton! The deadline's next week! This is what happens when I let you spend every night stoned, fox pants. Go get it out of your bag, right now. We're gonna shower and clean up and then find the nearest po -'

The front door opened. We both heard it.

'Oh just great,' I whispered. 'Akio?' I yelled. 'Do yourself a favour and don't come in here for a minute.'

'It's Kaede,' she called to us. 'Why? What are you two up to?'

Colton was grabbing our clothes, and in his haste managed to throw me his cowboy shirt instead of my t-shirt. Too late, Kaede came dancing on in with a spring in her step.

'Hey guys, relax, I'm used to all this. If someone's been in Dad's house the chances are they've been naked in it too.' She looked at me. 'And had come in their fur.'

Colton gave up. He dropped my t-shirt and just stood there naked and laughing, his dick still wet, bent over and hugging himself. I wanted to run, or shut my eyes and pretend I wasn't there, but I did neither. I just stood there, still holding Colton's shirt and covering myself even though it was too late.

'You two are a cute couple,' she said. 'Is Dad here?'

'He went grocery shopping,' I said.

'What?' Kaede said. 'Oh come on, don't tell me he forgot.'

'Forgot what?'

'It's Mum's birthday. He said he'd take her out for lunch. I came here to pick him up because I know he'll get totally skooshed on Martinis, he does it every time he goes out with her. What time did he go out?'

'About three hours ago?'

'Huh? Oh this is weird. He wasn't in one of his weird moods, was he?'

'Does he have weird moods?' I said.

I couldn't quite read the look she gave me right then. All I knew was that I didn't like it. And somehow, it was as though she suddenly didn't like me. At all. And I was thinking about that other un-readable look of hers, the one she'd given me when Akio had told her I was related to Deke.

She looked at Colton. 'Seriously, has he been okay today? This whole week?'

'Well...yeah, I think so,' Colton said. 'I mean, I guess we don't know him that well but we've spent the whole week laughing and getting stoned and he's been drawing pictures of me and Todd and it's like he's enjoyed it all. And he beat me at Parkrun this morning and he was milking it for all it was worth, and then he went grocery shopping because Todd and I had something to talk about and he gave us some space and...yeah, that can't be weird, can it?'

'Okay fine, it's cool,' Kaede said. 'I'll call him. Let's not worry.'

She was worried when he didn't answer his phone though, it was obvious. 'Okay,' she said. 'I'll just wait here until he gets home. Why don't you two go shower and I'll make us a snack.'

* * *

Kaede made us several snacks, in fact. Then when she was done, she went through her father's fridge and stock-took it like it was the kitchen she worked in. Not content with that, she started prepping him an entire week's worth of food, and I wondered if this was a regular routine of hers, looking after the old man by making sure he had food on tap for his stoned evenings and whole days spent doing nothing but painting or translating.

It had turned out that the answer to my question about how a 70s bohemian could afford a house like this was that Akio had worked his ass off for it, because a 70s hippy layabout sometimes did actually know that those days didn't last forever and they had to do something with their life. How he came to be the only one of the ten original joint-buyers of this commune house left living in it I still didn't know exactly, just that his artwork had taken off and eventually he'd bought everyone else's share and then turned the place into an actual home in good repair. Then turned it into a palace. The whole place was his dream, right here, and his life's work surrounded it in every way.

Including his daughter, who had clearly picked up his work ethic and attention to detail. And all through letting me help her and following her instructions and even teaching me some basic Japanese food names (which then led to a whole class on greetings and phrases that Colton seemed to enjoy more than me), I knew part of her wanted to sink one of those sushi knives into me. I could just tell. Under this sprightly wolf who ran a tight kitchen and loved her trade, there was some passive-aggressive edge waiting to come out.

Seven PM, and Akio still wasn't home. His ex, Ayala, had even called, hours before, to say not to worry, because it was only supposed to be a light lunch anyway and her boyfriend was taking her out for dinner, and she'd wanted Akio's advice because she thought Cal might propose to her that evening, but it was fine. She knew what she was going to say anyway. And if Akio didn't show up by late evening then she'd call around and see if any of their friends knew where he was.

'I think I'm gonna call her,' Kaede said. 'I'm sorry but this is just bugging me.'

'It's not late yet,' I said. 'Maybe he got a call about work and he's gone to see one of his customers at their place. That happened the other day, he was gone until really late. Let's not worry.'

She put her phone down on the table, slowly, then finally, there was the edge. She looked at me with eyes full of venom and a tautness in her stand. 'Okay, Deke's nephew. Let's not worry.'

I looked at Colton, who was just as on edge with her now as I was, then back at her. 'Excuse me?'

'You know it as well as I do' she said. 'This is your fault. Whatever mood sent him wandering off alone, you put him in it. You being here for the last week and a half's been putting him in it all the time, and you just haven't seen it, because you don't know him. You don't know what you being in this house has been doing to him.'

'Woah, hang on a minute, he was the one who invited me in here. He told me I'm nothing_like_ Deke, and all that didn't matter anyway.'

'Oh yes, he told you. He told you, he told you, he told you.' Kaede banged the dishwasher door shut. 'And of course you listened.'

'What exactly is your problem with me?' I said.

'Oh, you mean you somehow didn't just hear everything I said? Well, men don't, so what was I even expecting? You need it spelt out for your dumb raccoon brain? Here it is: you came here digging up my father's past. And for what? Just so you could find out about your dead uncle? It's too late for anyone in your family to start caring about him now. But I guess it's not too late for you to come here and play with someone's emotions just to make yourself feel better.'

I was stupefied, and silent.

'You should never have come here,' Kaede said. 'If he'd told me who you were before you got here, I'd have told him so. Instead he spends the whole week thinking he's found what he's lost again, and then you're just going to leave. And you'll probably take all the drawings he did of you too. Because you're selfish.'

'Fuck you,' I said. 'You don't even know me. Everything you're saying's bullshit. Too late for my family to start caring? What the fuck do you know about my family? You weren't even alive when your dad knew Deke, so what do you care about any of that?'

'If you had any decency at all,' Kaede said, looking like she could grab one of those knives and murder me, 'then you'd get out of this house right now. But you won't.'

'Oh, it's your house to kick me out of now, is it?'

'I don't have to know you,' Kaede said. 'All people ever want from Dad is what they can get. Why did you ask him if you could come here? To get photographs of Deke. I read your website. That's what it's about. Getting what you want. While he just gets painful memories and pretends he doesn't until he forgets my mum's birthday and goes AWOL and doesn't call. So fuck you.'

'Okay, maybe we call a time out and go for a walk,' Colton said, trying to take my arm. I wasn't letting him. I pulled away.

'I am not responsible for this!' I shouted at Kaede. 'Jesus Christ, how did a man as cool as Akio manage to raise such a total...' I wasn't sure what I'd intended to say, just that I'd bit it back, the only thought controlling me was that I might not be so welcome in Akio's house if there were words against his daughter I couldn't take back.

'What, raccoon?' she stood nose to nose with me now. 'You wanna call me names? Fine, do it. That's all you're dumb enough to do when the truth hurts. Well here's another truth for you to go home with: my dad hated your uncle. Everything you've seen since you got here was a show of him pretending he didn't. He tell you that story about how Deke fucked him when he was soaking wet? That's about the last happy one he ever got. How about the one where Deke hit him in the face? You hear that one yet? How about all the stories about how Dad tried to help him and all Deke ever gave him was abuse? How about the one where Deke told one of their friends to go kill himself and Dad had to talk him out of actually doing it. You wanna call me cunt now, raccoon? Maybe first you wanna find out who your uncle really was. And how Dad still tried to help save his stupid life even after every shit thing he ever did in this house.'

For a moment, we all just stood there, and I prayed it wasn't all true. For the first time in ages, I felt like I was offering up a real prayer. And I could only hope I wasn't going to hate Akio's daughter forever for being the one who actually told me the truth.

Because it couldn't be the truth. Akio would never have thought about Deke again if their whole relationship had been filled with fights and abuse. After he'd died, he'd never have looked back. Never typed Deke's name into that search engine, never come up with my site and invited me here.

Unless....

'Todd-coon,' Colton said in the calmest voice I knew he had. The strange one that never came out when he was in the firing line, only when someone else was. 'Why don't we just go outside and you can unload everything you're thinking about right now on me, and that way nobody has to say sorry for anything that got said later? Come on, let's not end all this with a fight. Remember how it got last time we had one?'

I couldn't move. We all just stood there, until Kaede broke the stare and started calmly emptying the dishwasher like neither of us were there.

I opened my mouth.

'Todd,' Colton said. 'Seriously. Don't.'

I heard the front door open.

Kaede simply went back to cleaning the kitchen like nothing had happened.

When Akio came in, he wasn't carrying any groceries. 'Hi boys. Oh, hi Kaede. Mmm, what's that smell? You guys been making...' he stopped and looked at everyone. 'Guys?' More puzzled glances. 'Is everything okay right here?'

Kaede stopped now and gave him an unpleasantly wolfish smile. 'Everything's fine, Dad. I was just going. I'd ask where you'd been but I'm not sure that's an important conversation right now.'

Akio suddenly looked mortified. 'Oh shit. I am so sorry, Kaede-ku. Hell, I need to call your mum. Right now. Oh -' he said a long, scrambled line of Japanese which I couldn't have written down even if he'd said it slowly. 'I don't believe it. I'm so sorry.'

'It's fine Dad, we've all done this shit. And I know it's probably nothing to do with me, but where exactly have you been? You didn't even answer your phone? I was worried. It doesn't take that many hours to buy groceries. And yeah, no bags?'

Akio looked almost ashamed, and then just as quickly he was trying to get himself back to the Akio I'd come to know over the last week. 'I...just needed to drive.'

'You what?'

'I didn't answer my phone because I was driving. I forgot your mum's birthday lunch because...well, I was driving. And no, I wasn't smoking at the same time. But maybe I should cut down a little if this is what it's doing to my brain. I was going out for groceries. Then this song came on. I hadn't heard it for years. "I needed to drive....my....car....didn't really care....how...far, I needed to go-oh-oh." Crosby Stills and Nash. I got it in my head that Deke used to play it while I sang, and then I realised they never released that one until after Deke was long gone. And I still felt like I had the memory of it and I just wanted to drive. So I did. I'm sorry if you were worried, Kaede-ku.' He put a hand on her shoulder. 'And you two. How was your secret little story? Things get a little wild afterwards?'

I half expected Kaede to look at me contemptuously and then tell Akio about everything she'd seen when she came in, but she didn't. 'It's okay Dad,' she said. 'You're forgiven. I've got a date tonight, I need to go home and get ready.'

'Oh,' Akio said. 'Is she pretty?'

She narrowed her eyes. 'Dad, how many times have I got to tell you? Some of us actually do find more than just beauty in the opposite sex.' She left, without looking at me or Colton. The same Kaede who'd walked in hours ago, except for the blanking me part.

Man, I'd thought Colton was changeable.

Akio smiled, looking at us. 'Be honest with me, boys. Was everything okay when I walked in?'

Colton and I both looked at each other. 'Well...she was a little bit worried,' Colton said. 'And Todd tried to calm her down a bit but I think he said the wrong thing without knowing it. She...got a little fiery.'

'My daughter,' Akio said, rolling his eyes. 'She cares. She really does. I thought she was used to me having flights of fancy these days. Maybe we need a little talk to smooth this one out. She is fire itself, sometimes. Twenty-one years old and she's a head chef in one of San Fran's finest Japanese bars. She talks fluent Japanese, and that's not just me. She went over there at sixteen and learned the trade and everything else from the finest chefs there are. Men who probably all thought they could break her. Not my daughter. But at least you both looked like you survived whatever storm she cooked up in here.' Akio got a bottle of Sake from the fridge. 'Drink?'

'I don't suppose you've got vodka, do you?' I said. 'Or white rum? Or tequila? Or gin? Can of coke and some lemon in there?'

'Oh, a long island iced tea man, are we?' Akio said. 'Trust my daughter to leave a young man needing a drink like that. And you forgot the triple sec. But no, sorry, I don't have the tequila. I did, but it seems Colton drank it all.'

'Errr...yeah, sorry. I'll replace it.'

'No need,' Akio said. 'But if you boys need it, how about I show you how to make a Sake cocktail with tropical fruit juice, malibu and cachaca? That's a white rum made from the sugar cane itself, not the beat. I certainly have that.' He got it all out, and then a pensive sort of look came over him. 'Boys, do I need to have a little word with my daughter about how to behave towards guests in my house? Because if she really said something that was out of line then that's not okay, regardless of her being family.'

'It was nothing,' I said, before Colton could answer. 'Colton and I have said worse to each other.'

'Very well then, we'll let it lie.' Akio didn't seem to realise that he wasn't talking us through the steps of this cocktail as he might have done on any other night. He just made three of them, with his usual attention to detail, but nevertheless his mind seemed elsewhere.

The drink though, it was amazing. And lethally strong.

'I would like one honest opinion in return,' he said after we'd all taken a taste and a little sanity seemed to be restored. 'That little line of CSN I sang you. Do I still have a vaguely decent voice?'

'Totally,' Colton said instantly, and I agreed. Akio's singing voice had sounded a little dry, but it was enough to make me imagine he'd once been quite good. Sure enough:

'Good. I'd like you to hear something.' He took us through to the front room, got out a box from under the stereo system and took some CDs out. 'These were all on tapes. I didn't know if any of them would still play, but they did. Little bit of recording software and a Mac and a bit of studio magic and they actually sounded vaguely decent. Deke liked the Dead best, the Grateful Dead that is, but me? I was more in love with good old CSN. Deke and I recorded all this together. We had another friend called Colby. He played rhythm, Deke played lead, they both backed my vocals.' He pressed play. 'This one's my favourite. Judy Blue Eyes.'

"It's getting to the point....where I'm no fun anymore...I am sorry..."

The three of them actually been a pretty mean band, and Akio's younger voice could hold a nice tune.

'I added the drum track,' Akio said. 'It really does sound authentic, doesn't it.'

"I am yours, you are mine, we are what we are...you make it haaa-ha-ah-ha-aaard, and you make it haaa-ha-ah-ha-aaard, and you make it..."

Even Colton was so lost in it he didn't make an innuendo joke. And all I could think about was how hard Deke had made things for Akio, both in his life and after it. Nobody who made music this captivating could have been a bad person, or abused the partner who gave him a home. Could he?

The three of them went into a variation verse, singing a high three part harmony. One of them even said 'Beautiful!' after it.

'That was Deke,' Akio said. 'Bless him. He just came to life when he did all this.'

We sat listened to the music for a good three hours. Colton cuddled me on Akio's couch for a while, and I imagined Deke and Akio and Colby playing in this band, in front of an audience. Some of it actually was live, or perhaps Akio had added audience sound, but I didn't ask because I wanted it to be real. When I asked Akio what Colby looked like, Akio grabbed a pad and sketched him from memory. Then he sketched the three of them playing together. Then he drew me and Colton together on his couch.

Curious, he'd drawn Colton's hand over my heart even though Colton wasn't doing that this time, as if to give me a break and call a chillout session. The record was an atmospheric song about walking along 'The Lee Shore.' Then Akio drew the three of us at the run that morning. I half expected him to draw us in the kitchen, as if documenting an entire day in the space of an hour, but he didn't. How quickly he could draw all this had me awestruck as it was.

'So Colby,' Colton said. 'He still around? _There's_a fox I'd like to meet, who can sing like...oh.' It had dawned on his as quickly as it had me. 'Sorry.'

'It's alright,' Akio said. 'Colby went two years after Deke. Which of them infected the other nobody ever knew. Or even if they both got it from different places. I suspect Colby got it from drugs. The last years I knew him, he really only wanted to do two things: make these records and jack up.'

'Heroin?' Colton said. 'Damn.'

'I'm the only one left,' Akio said. 'Out of the ten of us who started out in this place. Jeremy and Archie both survived like I did only to go later on. Archie drowned after a jet-ski accident on a holiday and Jeremy, I went to his funeral a few months back. Old age. If Seventy-one's old now. The rest? It was either the disease or the Persian brown. Or...'

I thought about everything Kaede had said about Deke again. Suicide? I decided it was better not to say it. If Akio trailed off, there was probably a good reason for it.

'I'm sorry,' Akio said. 'These are supposed to be happier times. The dead are resting and you two are very much alive.'

'Yeah,' Colton said. I could tell what he wanted. He was waiting for Akio to get the leather case of weed out, but the rule was always golden: we'd been drinking already, and you could drink after smoking but never before it. Akio said it made any paranoia several times worse, even on the purest buds he had.

But oh hell, he was getting the case out and rolling up, and even Colton seemed surprised. Then he stopped, as if realising he'd forgotten.

'Maybe I was actually right earlier,' he said. 'A little less of this stuff might mean I remember more. And you,' he said to Colton, 'maybe ought to take a break before you end up getting your blank days back again. And before your friend here ends up having a conversation with you about how boring it is that you're stoned all the time.'

Colton looked at me as if I'd actually been thinking that. I hadn't. 'Nah, it's cool,' I said. 'Smoke up if you want to.'

Colton looked at the joint, still in Akio's hand, and then snuggled up a bit closer to me. 'Nah. I'm good right here.'

It always happened when I ran earlier in the morning: I'd fall asleep too soon. As soon as I shut my eyes for a nap with Colton breathing softly near my ear, a drowsiness I couldn't resist took me. The last thing I remembered, Akio was telling Colton a story about himself, Deke and Colby all naked together in the middle of a field during a Grateful Dead concert. When I woke up, it was night time, the music had run to the end of the record, the room smelt of weed and there was the last embers of a joint still burning in the ash tray. The floor was littered with sketches.

Colton stirred. 'Hmmm. Oh man. I think it's bedtime.'

'Silly fox,' I said. 'How much did you smoke?'

'I didn't, honest. The old man lit one, he was smoking like such a fiend I must have just gotten high off of passive. Come on, let go upst...'

'What?' I said, trying to blink my blurry eyes clear enough to get up and walk.

Colton picked up a sketch. 'Woah,' he said. 'That's...'

I could see enough now, and what I saw nearly brought me tears. Akio had sketched himself, an almost mirror-perfect pencil drawing of himself in the present, sitting on the same couch and laughing, while a raccoon the same sort of age sat and played a guitar next to him.

I finished Colton's thought for him. 'That's Deke. If he were still alive today.'

Colton knew what I was thinking. It was like I'd seen myself in around fifty years time.

'Okay,' he said, rubbing a hand down my back. 'You okay?'

'I'm fine,' I said, taking the sketch from Colton, who was trying to hide it from my view. I looked again. 'Colton, do you think we should go tomorrow morning? Move on down to Cali?'

'Yeah,' Colton said. 'You wanna high-tail it out of here before he wakes up?'

'We can't,' I said. 'We've got to at least have breakfast and tell him thanks for having us. And we've got to pretend we never saw this.' I tucked it back where I guessed it might have come from, and we both looked at Akio, who looked completely comatose. 'Do you think any of what Kaede said was true? That Deke was actually a totally nasty person and everything he's told us is just what he_wanted_ to be true? Did Deke actually ruin everyone's life in that h...shit, Colton. Look at this one.' I'd found one of Deke standing with his tail between his legs, hunched over slightly, everything floppy. It reminded of what Colton had looked like the day he apologised to me for the prom, when I almost sent him packing, walking down the street just like that. Deke was crying in this picture, his head bowed at the floor. He wasn't much older than me.

What story did this tell? The time he'd told someone to go kill themselves? Only the shame of doing something like that could reduce someone to a pose like this.

Colton looked around the floor as if it were a comic strip that had been strewn everywhere and we had to put the story back together. Colton went to the other side of the room, bent down slowly and picked one of them up. 'Jesus Christ,' he whispered. He tiptoed through the sketches and back to me. 'Here. Look.'

Akio hadn't drawn this while we'd been sleeping, I realised. This was much older. It had probably taken him days to do it, so fine was the detail.

It was set on the big porch in the back yard. Colby was on the left hand side, his hands clasped around the handle of a handgun, the barrel in his mouth. I didn't recognise all the others who were frantic, horrified, but I knew Akio, and I certainly knew Deke, because Deke was the one who'd dared to go near Colby and talk him down. The only words that would have fitted this were Just put the gun down and let's talk about this.

'You think this really happened?' I said. 'Or this is what he wishes had happened?'

'He said Colby lived longer than Deke, right? So if this happened, Deke actually got him not to do it. What are you thinking? Colby blamed Deke for infecting him and this would have been some sort of revenge, because he knew he was dead anyway?'

I had no idea, nor did I feel like waking Akio up to ask. 'I really think we should go to bed.'

'Yeah,' Colton said. 'So do I.'