wisps of fog emerged from the lake like specters rising from graves. they wove between the catwalk arches, slid and twirled across the cement, and toyed with the anglers’ plaid collars before slipping quietly into the streets of grand harbor.

the weekend heat lasted just long enough to make children run on tiptoes across the sand, but not long enough to warm the lake to a swimmable degree. the unusually cool water brought the salmon and smallmouth bass to the pier as well as wrinkled hands teaching little hands how to hold a rod. 

gabe’s grandfather grew up on the great lakes; never taught him to fish, but often complained about the dwindling population of perch in the area. his last memory of the old man was watching him cook the bony catch on dad’s stainless-steel grill. 

gabe sat in his usual spot beneath the square lighthouse at the tip of the pier. a thousand questions flooded his brain but provided no logical answers. the only thing he knew for certain was that the phone call with sarah unlocked something new and filthy; like flashing his ID at a sex shop on his eighteenth birthday and perusing the pastel merchandise. the thought of this butterfly driving three hours to perform a horrifying ritual bestowed an unfamiliar confidence in his stride and a newfound air of credibility in his demeanor. when a brunette cartwheeled on the walkway and her skirt billowed open (so close that he could smell the tanning lotion on her thigh), he was ABOVE it.

a fisherman sat on an upside-down bucket at the open corner of the pier. gabe brought his knees to his chest and watched the man hammer a spike through the head of a flopping bottom feeder and into a blood-stained block of wood. the man caught gabe staring, nodded, then traded the hammer for a pliers, pinched the fish’s skin, and peeled it off.

when the time came to actually perform the deed, gabe wouldn’t let sarah go through with it. he would use their time together to show her that life is worth living (though he was beginning to doubt that too.) if she was attractive, maybe she’d spend the night in his bed.

gabe knew it was HER through two-hundred feet of thickening cloud. he knew it was her because she stepped with the graceful poise of a dark angel through banal rows of fishermen, youth-group rollerblading parties and pregnant women chatting on the corrugated ledge. her facial features were hazy from this distance, but gabe was already entranced by her wonderland aura.

heads turned in the girl’s wake, scrutinizing her appearance with the wrath of mid-west sensitivity; “is this halloween?” “where’s her mother?” “slut!” 

as butterfly approached with her head down, gabe stood and wiped sweaty palms on his jeans.

sarah looked up. she noticed him immediately. she swept a rogue strand of hair behind her ear and forced a heavy smile. beneath the piercings and makeup, she was beautiful... and gabe wondered why such a beautiful girl would want to end her life.

“cute town,” she said and smoothed her skirt down the back of her legs before posing herself on his ledge.

gabe sat down beside her but watched the fisherman fillet meat from bone. “i’m sorry about emma. sexboy told me what happened.”

“she got anxious. i knocked on her door and her mom answered sobbing. i’ve never been so embarrassed.”

“did you see her?”

“no.”

“how did she do it?”

sarah didn’t respond, but unstrapped her fancy backpack and leaned against the lighthouse.

“you said you brought pills?” gabe asked.

“that’s about all i brought.”

“do we do it tonight?”

“sooner the better for me.”

“i don’t feel ready. i hardly know you.”

“you don’t need to know me.”

“my parents’ll be out tomorrow night. can we do it then?”

sarah’s eyes were fixed on the old man’s hands as he ripped the spine from the fish and tossed it in the lake. “yeah,” she said. “tomorrow should be fine.”

*  *  *

jules grew concerned when her supposed-to-be-spoiled “friend” unlocked a sky-blue minivan with wood siding and rust-speckled dents. based on the boy’s online personality, she and trevor appraised his suicide at around four thou, but if the car and clothes were any indication of his worth, his death wouldn’t bring them any closer to their financial goal. and there would be another.

gabe’s neighborhood wasn’t the usual suburban tack or city-cuff townhouse that jules had become familiar with during her escapades. these homes were MANSIONS and they rolled with the hills and peeked from the mid-west jungle of first-grade leaf-collection trees: maple, oak, and the feathery white trunks of birch. several homes were guarded by gates, cameras and codes, but the target's house had minimal security. the gravel drive circled an island of tamed foliage and connected gabe’s home with two others. (trevor would have a difficult time watching the bedroom window from the street, but the driveway was vulnerable and wouldn’t work as a safe lookout. jules hated logistics, but became accustomed to her partner’s nit-picky requirements.)

she spotted a body of water through the branches and leaned forward to see if it was lake michigan.

“we live on a bayou,” said the boy. “if you follow the curve to the channel, it brings you to the lake and pier.”

jules ignored the anecdote and settled back in her seat.

gabe parked the van in a three-stall garage and pulled the key from the ignition. “it’s eight-thirty,” he said. “parents’ll be in the media room, so we should be safe. if they DO see you, just say—”

“they can’t,” jules said. “no one knows i’m here. got it?”

he nodded and combed his fingers through two inches of light-brown hair.

jules stared at gabe’s boyish features. he was a year older than she was, but with kindergarten flesh void of post-pubescent divots or pebbled razor-burn like the indecipherable brail on the underside of her own boyfriend’s chin. his eyes were wide, tender, and grey. if gabe lived long enough to NUT UP, he might just grow into his bony awkwardness.

in the foyer, shoes lived in precious rows on a rubber mat. gabe untied his sneakers and aligned them with the others. jules placed her foot on a chest with an acrylic mallard on the lid, unlaced one boot at a time, then folded them inside her backpack.

the living room’s twenty-foot ceiling confirmed that the sky-blue beater in the garage was a ruse. the final sliver of evening sun highlighted the room’s expanse and the crystal knickknacks on the fireplace mantle. jules crept behind gabe, every sense attuned to the tick-tick-tick of the grandfather; the muffled tv chatter from another room; and the smell of lemon wood cleaner.

nautical accents grew from the home’s crannies like weeds; starfish-embroidered pillows, a lamp with a sailboat base, braided molding, and a gnarled hunk of coral crowning a stack of people magazines on a glass coffee table. a wet-bar flaunted the jones’ bold taste and provided a welcomed break from the sails and fish. jules observed upside-down wine glasses—two missing—and a jar of pistachios on the mahogany countertop.

“can i get you something to drink?” gabe asked.

“i’d like to be in your bedroom before your parents come out.”

a collage of black-and-white family photos followed the stairwell’s incline. gabe led the way, but kept his eyes on the steps instead of the cluster of organized memories.

jules recalled the stained yellow pages of her mother’s album. the plastic sheets were meant to arrange and bind the pictures, but when mom peeled them back to remove jesse, the glue lost its tack and the remaining polaroids would forever slip out the bottom (trevor always joked about white-picket fences, homemade apple pies and other pursuit-of-happiness stereotypes, but he knew that was never jules’ goal. she wanted a home—even a shack would do—where family pictures were hung in frames.)

gabe’s bedroom was the first door on the left. the others, jules assumed, were guest rooms and closets. 

he opened the door and hit the lights. the walls glowed carrot-orange. “that’s edgar,” he said and directed jules’ attention to the floor-to-ceiling cage in the far-left corner of the room. 

she mentally scoffed at the name’s allusion, but eyed the bird’s frozen body and inquisitive head.

“it’s illegal to keep crows as pets,” gabe proclaimed as if he just ate a worm on a playground dare.

jules thumbed her backpack straps and stepped lightly on the hardwood floor. the rest of the room caught her attention in bursts; a foosball table with paper plates littering the field, orange curtains smushed between a desk and window, a magnetic board with life-like sketches of wildlife and demons and flowers and girls, and open shelves which served as a partial barrier between the desk and queen-sized bed where gabe sat. he eyed her from over book tops and mason jars half-filled with teal sea glass—the only nautical decoration in the boy's domain. she recognized several of the book spines: the complete works of shakespeare, the complete poems of ee cummings, a picture book of mc esher’s sketches, the wizard of oz set, and a meticulously sorted collection of manga. the row of sci-fi novels were from a series that jules wasn’t dork enough to comprehend.

she scanned the room and sized the worth of NUMBER EIGHT. depending on his access to a parent-supported bank account, she and trev could hit their goal by tomorrow night.

a brand-new digital camera sat on the desk; two grand with the lenses and case. jules considered grabbing the equipment, shoving the kid into his fancy bookcase and bolting out the door... but she wasn't a criminal.

she slid a graphic novel from the shelf and thumbed the pages. “you don’t do so well with the ladies, do you?” she asked. she meant it as a joke, but gabe’s eyes found hers through the open shelves and she knew she hurt him.

she returned the book to its slot, then ran her fingers over a sprig of parsley growing from the base of a well-lit hydroponic garden. “who are your parents robbing to buy this shit?”

“mom’s a realtor,” gabe said. “top salesman in her firm for six straight years. dad’s a lawyer.”

“ah.” one last detail caught her eye: in the center of the room stood a wooden beam like an afterthought in the design. tacked in the center of the post was a marker drawing of john. 

she might have looked away if she tried.

gabe’s the last one, julsie, she reassured herself. go to bed. sleep all day. when his parents leave tomorrow night, we’ll end this.

she finally pried her gaze from the unsettling sketch. “do you have a bathroom?”

gabe pointed to a door hidden behind a rack of blazers. “clean towels under the sink. let me know if i can—”

“i'll be fine.”

in the bathroom, jules lowered the toilet seat, sat down, peed, and sent trevor a text. “biggest score yet. kids a mess. tomorrow night for sure. xoxo to the moon and back.”

she promptly deleted the message as well as trevor’s reply: “make it happen. xoxoxoxo to the sun and back!”

she wiped and flushed, then adjusted an orange plastic knob until the tap turned warm. an electric razor sat beside the sink in a dusting of white fuzz. she washed her hands, inspected her wig in the mirror, and sighed.

no words were exchanged when jules reentered the moonlit bedroom. the covers were folded halfway down the bed and a new pillow had been fluffed and propped on the headboard. 

the boy pulled off his shirt and shorts. an elastic band proclaimed “american eagle” in bold letters but barely held the boxers to his skinny waist.

jules stepped out of her skirt, unwound the laces of her corset, unclasped the armor from her chest, and pulled off the fishnets like twin snakes shedding their scales.

gabe climbed in bed and faced the bookshelves. 

jules slid beside him (with six precious inches of space separating his flesh from hers) and watched the stars through a slanted skylight. 

the bird's talons scuttled on his perch.

within an hour, gabe’s breathing shifted from his mouth to his nostrils.

jules fell asleep minutes later. her last thought was of the strange boy laying beside her; if he couldn’t find joy in his spoiled-rotten life, then he probably deserved what was coming.