It didn't take long for the story to get out about what Robby had done. Robbed an antiques store in the next town over with a few of his no-good friends and when the cashier fought back, Robby stabbed him. The man survived but they got the whole thing on tape. Running back here to say goodbye to me only made things worse for Robby.

No matter how many times I showed up at the police station, they would never let me see him or talk to him or even know what was going on. My dad was figuring out the lawyer crap but we don't have that much money and I know that if his case depends on a good lawyer, Robby is doomed.

"Yaz, this is a really bad idea," My friend, Sage, tells me as I stand in front of the hospital door of Gregory Sanchez. My brother's victim. I came to get answers because without having contact with Robby and my dad refusing to talk to him too, that left my only source of information as the news and who knows how distorted their information is?

Mr. Sanchez should have at least some answers. Now that I'm here though, I'm thinking that maybe I don't want to know the truth or not. The older man is lying in the hospital bed, unconscious, and I don't know if he's just sleeping or if it's a coma. Can somebody be comatose from getting stabbed? I see his body inflating and deflating with breaths though, so he's definitely alive. He doesn't look hurt other than his deep slumber—no bruises or cuts on his face or arms and there's no broken bones. I don't see any bandages so I'm wondering where he got stabbed.

"We shouldn't be here," Sage tells me again when I ignore her first request.

"You won't be late for your date," I assure her because I know that she's worried about being late to meeting her boyfriend. They're supposed to hang out at five tonight, after he gets off of work, but it's only two now so we have time. We had to drive to the next town over, where the stabbing occurred, but the drive is only about forty-five minutes.

"That's not what I'm worried about," She defends. "I just don't want you to get even more hurt than you already are."

I turn to her and give her an 'are you kidding' look. "The hashtag RobbyTheRobber is trending on Twitter."

"Only in our town," She adds, nervously spinning her dark brown hair around her fingers. She's definitely dressed to see her boyfriend- a tight mini skirt and a crop top that shows off her completely flat stomach. Sage has a great body and crazy long legs and she knows it and she's definitely not afraid to flaunt it. "And nobody in our town matters. Soon enough, you'll be able to talk to Robby himself and get all of the answers that you need but bothering this man who's obviously been through a lot, it just doesn't seem like it'll help anybody."

I shake my head in disbelief, turning back to look at the man lying motionless in the hospital room that we're standing in front of. In the hallway, looking into the room like two freaks trying to spy on coma patients. "He couldn't have done this."

"What? Robby?"

"Yes, look at that guy," I insist, continuing to stare at the sleeping man. "Robby's a good guy. I know that nobody else thinks so but I know him better than everybody else and I know that he wouldn't do that to anybody. Not unless he deserved it."

"I don't think that he meant to," Sage tries to make me feel better. "I think that he just panicked. It was the adrenaline, he didn't know what he was doing. I know that Robby has a good heart but I also know that he doesn't do well under pressure."

"He wouldn't do this," I say again.

"And what are you going to do?" She asks me, making a very valid point, I know, I just don't want to hear it. "Go in there and just say 'hey, did my brother really stab you?' or are you going to accuse him of being some asshole who deserves to be stabbed in the gut? Because I don't think that either one of those scenarios will end very well at all and I think that you know that too."

"I'm just going to go talk to him," I explain. "I don't know what I'll say, I just want to see for myself."

"Okay," She finally relents, knowing that even though she's being the reasonable one right now, she won't be able to talk me out of this. "Do you want me to come with you?"

"No, it's fine. I'll be fine," I assure her before I go into the hospital room by myself. I'm not sure if he's allowed to have visitors but when I asked the nurse what room number he was in, she just gave it to me so I assume that I'm not breaking into his room. If he wasn't allowed visitors, she wouldn't have given me his room number.

Once inside the room, I sit down in the chair beside the bed of the unconscious, round man. He has a stubby little gray mustache and a balding head, a round belly moving up and down with his shallow breaths. He looks like somebody's grandfather. A father, a husband. Somebody who doesn't deserve to be stabbed in the gut by a stupid twenty-three year old that makes bad decisions.

I'm not even in the room for five minutes before the man starts to wake up. He blinks a few times and I think that he sees me in his peripheral vision because he motions to me with his tiny sausage fingers.

"Lizzie?" The man croaks out in a feeble, quiet and raspy voice. He thinks that I'm somebody else.

"I'm not her," I announce quickly. "Is that your wife?"

He opens his eyes wider to see who I am and when he gets a good look at my face, he looks very confused. Very tired, confused, and in a lot of pain.

"Who are you?" He asks me, not unkindly.

"Nobody," I say quickly. "I was passing your room and I saw that you were alone. I'm sorry that you got stabbed."

He lets out a very pathetic laugh and adjusts himself in his hospital bed. "You and me both, kid."

"So is Lizzie your wife?" I ask the question again because I want to know if he has family. I want to know about this guy. I don't know why but I just feel like I need to know why he's the one that my brother stabbed. I want to know why I have a tank top covered in this man's blood.

"Yes," He confirms. "She should be back soon. I'm not alone."

"Why'd you get stabbed?" I ask him and I know that it's a ridiculous question but in the moment, I'm not really thinking straight. "I mean, was it karma? Are you, like, a drug dealer or something?"

"Karma?" Mr. Sanchez raises his bushy gray eyebrows at me. "No, I don't think so. I was just closing up my store and I got robbed. That's it."

"Is your store a black market of illegal human organs?"

He smiles a little bit at me, probably thinking that I'm funny but it's not a joke. I just want to have some reason to see why Robby did this. He couldn't have possibly stabbed this old man who was completely innocent, just closing up his store, not wanting any trouble. "A flower shop. Sometimes it's just bad luck."

Bad luck named Robby.

"I have to go," I decide suddenly. He's a good person, I've decided, and that's all there is to find out here. The question that I was asking has been answered but I don't like what I found out. Sage was right, this was probably a bad idea. If I never showed up here, I could have continued to fool myself into thinking that this man was a bad dude. A drug dealer, murderer, just something like that. But now that I've faced the facts, I can see that he didn't do anything wrong. He should be at home with his family right now, not waking up in a hospital bed with a stranger poking around in his business. "I hope that you feel better."

"I do too," He says slowly as I start leaving the room. I think that he tries to ask me another question, maybe my name or asking again why I'm in his room, but I'm out of the room too quick for him to say anything else.

Sage is waiting for me in the waiting room of the small hospital. "How'd it go?"

"Just as bad as you'd predicted," I mumble bitterly. "He is a perfectly normal, nice old man."

"Are you okay?" She matches my quick pace out of the hospital to get back to her car so that we can go home. To my empty home, to my dead trees, to my broken family.

"Who the hell is my brother?" I ask her in frustration. "How can he be this guy who helped me with my homework and fought off bullies and bought me ice cream every weekend for like, three years but also be this guy who stabs innocent old men? He's just... he's not who I thought that he was."

"Don't say that, Yaz, he's still your brother," She assures me as she starts the car and we start heading back home. This town is bigger than ours but that's not saying much considering how small our town is too. They only have one hospital here, which is how it was so easy for us to find Mr. Sanchez, but they have three traffic lights compared to our one. They even have two gas stations, which is impressive too. "He just makes terrible decisions."

"I don't know what I'm going to do. I mean, he's my brother. I love him so much but... why is he doing this?"

"Like I said before, he doesn't do well under pressure. He probably was just with his friends, wanting some quick cash, so they tried to rob the store but when the guy was still there, Robby panicked. Maybe the man tried to fight him and he just was trying to defend himself. Look, I know that's not an ideal situation and Robby was still very wrong but that's better than thinking that he went into that store planning on stabbing the guy. Right?"

"I don't care," I shake my head and I close my eyes in an attempt to calm down. "I can't think about this anymore."

"You shouldn't go home to be by yourself," Sage decides. "Come hang out with me and Ty. Some of his friends will be there too, it won't be weird or anything."

Normally, I would say no to offers like that. Unlike Sage, I'm not a social butterfly and I don't like hanging out with people that I don't know. I'm not really shy, I just tend to be more of a thinker than a speaker and I'm not good with conversations. Not to mention that I basically look like a sack of potatoes when I'm standing next to Sage.

Where she is wearing a mini skirt to show off her legs and a cropped top, I'm hiding thunder thighs under jeans with a baggy t-shirt and sneakers. When we're in a room together, nobody really ever notices me much. But I really, really don't want to be alone right now.

Sage said that it wouldn't be weird because his friends were there but what she didn't tell me was that when we got to Ty's house, we'd go down into the basement where there are three rooms: A living space, a bedroom, and a bathroom. And I would be sitting on the floor in the corner of the living room while two strangers play video games on the TV and Sage and Ty are fucking in the bedroom.

The only sounds in the musty, dirty room are the sounds of the video game and the sounds of my best friend screaming, only dulled by the very thin wall between us. I can feel the wall rocking behind me.

There's three guys in the room with me and I've never met any of them. Two of them sitting on the dirty couch are focused on smoking their joints and playing their game but the third one on the old reclining chair and he sometimes stares at me instead of watching the game. Whenever I see him looking at me, I give him a short glare and then look away again. Making eye contact with a scrawny pothead with sex noises in the background is a very uncomfortable thing to do.

"Hey," After fifteen long minutes of nobody in the room talking, the scrawny guy speaks up. Looking up at him, I see that he's talking to me. Then, he nudges his shoulder toward the door to the bedroom. "When they're done, you want a turn?"

I don't know how to respond to that because I'm rarely ever hit on, especially by something so crude and not subtle at all. Obviously, I'm not going to take him up on his offer and I'm kind of surprised that this guy thinks that that's going to work. I wonder if that usually works for him, if girls just say yes and go into the bedroom with him. Slowly shaking my head, I say "No. Thanks." Because that's polite, right?

"Come on, babe, you look like you could use a little loosening up," He blows smoke out from between his lips and keeps eye contact with me. His two friends laugh at the double meaning to his words. This is worse than being alone and I want to go home but now that I'm here, I'm most likely stuck here for a while, until Sage is ready to leave. The shitty thing about not having my own car.

"I know that I'm late," Somebody else, now racing down the stairs of the basement to join us all in the dingy basement. The screaming has stopped in the other room so I assume that Sage and Ty will be joining us again in the living room soon. "But I made a pit stop."

The guy now standing in the basement, right next to me and towering over me since I'm sitting on the floor, is holding a six pack of beer and a brown paper bag that looks to be holding a bottle of alcohol.

"Dex, my man," One of the guys on the couch responds to the new guy from the couch but doesn't look away from the TV. "Wuddya got?" He slurs all of his words together probably feeling too lazy to enunciate.

I don't think that any of them realize me staring at the new stranger but I am. He's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. His golden blond-ish hair falls down in front of his face but I can still see his bright blue eyes and round mouth curling into the smallest of smiles. Unlike when the other guy stared at me, I don't feel sick to my stomach when he looks at me, I just fucking die and I can't look away.

"Hey," He greets me coolly. I can't speak to him, he's too beautiful, so I just offer him a feeble wave.

Sage and Ty make their entrance from the bedroom now and Sage greets the blond guy in front of me. "Hey, Dex," She says, waiting for Ty to sit down on the couch so that she can sit on his lap. "I thought you weren't coming by today."

"Change of plans," He explains to the rest of the group. He glances at me again. I'm still staring. "You guys started the fun without me."

"We can start again just for you," She responds with a coy smile as she leans farther into Ty. He wraps a wide, muscular arm around her and then nudges her shoulder, obviously not appreciating her slightly flirty attitude toward the beautiful guy still standing right next to me.

"Don't do me any favors, sweetheart," Dex winks at her and then sits down on the arm of the couch with the two guys playing the video game. He uses the weed on the table to roll his own blunt and then he lights it. Everybody gets high in this town—it's probably the only way to survive around here without going crazy. But I never smoke because my brother always told me not to. Robby always warned me that it was bad, and so was alcohol and other drugs, and I've always trusted him. I've stayed sane because of Robby being around but I wonder how long I'll last sober and alone. "What'd I miss?"

"Javier is killing it," The guy in the recliner says, looking at the TV screen. "And Derrek's just doing okay but he's getting his ass kicked."

"I am not," Derrek denies quickly. "I'm moderately losing. And this game is stupid."

"Don't dis the game just because you suck at it," Sage laughs at Derrek. It's a shooting game and I think that there's zombies in it but I'm not really paying attention to the game. I've been staring at the stained walls, thinking about my brother most of the time that I've been down here.

"Oh, like you could do any better, princess," He argues.

Never one to run from a challenge, Sage stands up off of Ty's lap so that she can take the controller away from Derrek. Before she takes the controller though, she grabs a beer from the six pack that Dex had brought and opens it. She takes a gulp and then sits it on the coffee table near all of the weed.

Everybody watches Sage start playing the video game against Javier. I'm uninterested in the entire thing but I watch the TV anyway because I don't have anything else to do. My phone is dead and the walk back to my house is at least an hour. There's no public transportation in our town either—no cabs, buses, and definitely no Ubers. It's summer too, and hot outside so the walk home would completely suck.

"Damn, you really aren't bad at this," Javier notices once she starts playing. He actually has to put his joint down to focus on the game because she's apparently making him work harder for his win. Sage's eyes are narrowing and she's sticking the tip of her tongue out of the side of her mouth which is how I know that she's focusing. She's full of so much pride, I know how competitive she gets so even something as stupid as this video game, she feels the need to win at.

"Tell me that I'm the best and maybe I'll spare your scrawny ass," Sage offers him.

"That's not going to happen. Ever," Javier barks with laughter at just the thought of surrendering to Sage. I don't know when she ever learned to play video games but I guess she really is pretty good at it because Javier seems to be focusing now too, which he wasn't really doing when he was playing against Derrek.

"How's it going to feel to get beat by a girl, Javier?" Dex asks his friend with a taunting laugh. "At your game?"

"I could beat you too, Dex," Sage informs the blond beauty. I wonder what Dex is short for. Dexter? Or is it not part of his real name? Is there some sort of story behind that nickname? Or is that actually his given name?

"Oh, I don't doubt that," He assures her, getting a beer for himself out of the six pack. "I'm not into shit like that."

"I'm not getting beat," Javier interrupts everybody but then just after he says that, there's an explosion in the game and Sage does a celebratory 'woo!' and shoots her hands into the air.

"What were you saying?" She turns to look at him with a triumphant grin on her face. Sage doesn't wait for an answer before she grabs her beer and takes his joint to finish off as she returns to Ty's lap on the other end of the long L-shaped couch.

"Lucky shot," He mumbles as he turns the game off. "Hand me a beer."

It's only a six pack so it goes by quickly as everybody gets a can.

Dex grabs the last can and quickly tosses it in my direction. "Last one, think fast," He says as I hurry to catch the can before it hits me in the face. Luckily, I do catch it but I don't know what to do with it. I don't drink alcohol but I don't want to sound lame by saying that out loud.

Thanks to Sage, I don't have to. "She doesn't drink," She speaks up and I sit the can to the side. She then looks at me and asks, "Are you having a good time, Yaz?"

I don't really want the attention of the room to be on me so I just nod. The guy in the recliner is still giving me a few looks so I don't want him to have any more of a reason to keep looking at me. Dex is looking at me now too which suddenly makes me feel more self-conscious than I already am.

"If you don't drink then what the hell are you doing here?" Dex raises his bushy eyebrows at me. He has a tattoo on his neck of an anchor. I bet it hurt to get that tattoo, right on the side of his neck.

"She's with me, leave her alone," Sage says quickly because she knows that I don't like to talk very much and so she's just trying to get the attention off of me, which I appreciate.

"Yeah, don't mess with her, dude," The guy in the recliner warns Dex. "She might stab you."'

"Shut the fuck up, Jake," Sage scolds the kid and gives him a dirty look before she looks over at me. "Just ignore him, Yaz, he's being an asshole."

"I'm not being an asshole," Jake insists. "I'm just warning him. Her family likes to get stabby, it's just a fact."

"I don't think that wanting to stab somebody is genetic," Ty speaks up. I'm not going to sit here and let this Jake kid talk about me or my family like we're just psychos or animals that just go around stabbing people. I'm quiet and I don't like confrontation but I am also not a pushover.

So I get up from where I've been sitting in the corner of the room so that I can leave. I'd rather just walk the hour-long walk back to my house instead of sitting here listening to this jerk yap about me like I can't even hear him. I know what people are saying about me, about Robby, and my family. That doesn't mean that I have to just sit down and take it when they do it right in front of me.

"Don't leave, Yaz," Sage pleads with me.

I'm not leaving yet though. I walk calmly over to where Jake is sitting in the recliner and everybody is watching me, wondering what I'm going to do. Maybe I should just stab him. Since everybody seems to think that it really is hereditary, everybody already expects me to stab somebody. I might as well just give them what they want.

But I hate blood and I don't have anything sharp so instead of giving everybody the show that they want, I grab Jake by the collar of his dirty t-shirt. I move quickly and with force so that he can't get away from me and I punch him square in the jaw. He falls back into the chair as he groans in pain.

My fist is on fire but I try not to let that show. I don't even say anything after I hit him, I just start walking away and I head up the stairs. They all start laughing at Jake, that he got hit by a girl, stuff like that but I don't stay around to hear it all.

"I'll drive you," Sage offers as I'm going up the stairs.

"I'll walk," I say to her and then I'm gone.

I start walking home and then I start running and then I start crying and so I have to stop moving altogether because I can't see through the tears. I'm just a joke in this town now. I used to be invisible, and I was okay with that, but ever since Robby got arrested for the armed robbery and assault, I've just been made a laughing stock.

Andthe worst part, the part of this that really takes my breath away in the worstway, is knowing that there's no end in sight. There's no way out.