Will couldn't believe it. There she'd been, so close, right in front of him—the same woman he'd seen that night at the grocery store. The woman who had, for whatever inane reason, made his heart almost stop. It had been a little over a week; he'd figured, with some dull sense of regret, that he'd never see her again, that she was just some fleeting nobody like the countless people he had passed and would continue to pass by in his lifetime. There were so many people . . . so many. And she'd just been another no-name entity, another path crossed once and never again . . . but there she'd been, right there, in the café. Sitting in some chair over by a measly bit of flames being passed off as a fire. Her profile had been rimmed with the flamelight, as if her very body had been glowing, and the instant he'd seen her she'd had the same effect on him as she'd had before: his chest had tightened and a rushing sound filled his head. His knees had locked and his entire body had felt warm. Somewhere in his mind, beyond the rumbling in his brain, he was both ecstatic as well as enraged to see her. That woman so . . . so clean and pure and guileless . . . so . . . so breakable. Will knew that even in the sweater and jeans she appeared to be wearing (he couldn't quite tell, from his angle) she was hardly more than a glass figurine covered in fabrics. If she shed her clothes, she'd glitter like a faceted piece of crystal. He'd be able to breathe near her and watch his breath condense on each little pane of glass making up her frame. He'd be able to etch permanent lines in her reflective skin, to chip away bits of her with a knife, even as she continued to sparkle and make lights dance across the walls and ceiling and floor. He could drop her and break her into thousands, millions of tiny pieces that could never be re-formed into the thing of cold quartz she was now . . .

Something stirred in his gut, deep down. He was unsure whether what had consumed him was desire to see what he could do to her or fury for what she was making him think. It was best to turn away. He must turn away.

And then she'd made a movement, quicker than he could, and was glaring fiercely at him, clearly wanting him to turn stone or spontaneously combust. Even from the corners of his eyes, Will had read what she'd wanted to do to him in the few seconds she'd turned his way. There was some power in her, he sensed, but a power he guessed was built on false foundations. He didn't know how he knew it, but he did. Her animosity was a show.

But he'd left as soon as he'd paid. There was no way he could stay in the café, not after the way she'd caught him looking. He could've killed himself for being caught. He never meant to look—he'd just been so taken aback, and then his mind had jumped to all sorts of things and, before he'd realized he was staring at her, she'd shocked him with a look of her own.

He wanted to hurt her. He wanted to collect her and put her on a shelf somewhere. This was, by the standards of the world around him, a terrible thought. Thoughts like this were not normal, whatever that meant. It was thoughts like this that destroyed not only the person they were about but also the brain thinking them. Will knew it was unwise to allow his mind to wander and be gripped by notions he'd never admit to having, but he'd rarely felt so powerfully drawn to another person. He'd been often drawn to ideas, to feelings, to intangible, untraceable things . . . but hardly ever another person. He could feel the dangerous deep fixation creeping upon him, and there was going to be nothing he could do about it. The images flashing through his mind in the café—those had clearly been the imaginings of an infatuated mind, and for now, he was going to let them go. He didn't have the willpower to stop his mind from wandering down the dark halls it was starting to move through. When he became passionate about something, he had no choice but to embrace the fervor.

When he'd been a boy, Will McCarthy had always wanted a brother. He hadn't wanted a little brother in order to play games or watch cartoons with. He hadn't wanted a brother to talk to or confide in. He'd wanted someone to push around a bit, someone that was his own to control and boss around, like the kids at school did to him sometimes. He'd always felt deprived in being an only child; all the other kids seemed to have siblings in tow when they played outside on the streets after school or on the weekends. They had younger brothers or sisters to yell at or force to do stuff, like ring the bell of some creepy neighbor's house or taunt so-and-so's dog tied up in the yard across the street. Or they themselves were younger siblings, bossed about and resiliently complying with made-up rules of made-up games. Will neither had younger siblings nor was a younger sibling, and this always seemed a gaping inadequacy in his life growing up. There were things that happened between siblings that he could never understand. Control games for the affection of parents, bickering that was ok because it was between brothers and sisters, kicks and punches for which apologies always sufficed—Will missed out on all of these things. He had no one to play mind games with, no one to argue with, no one to kick or punch or exchange apologies with. If he'd had a brother, perhaps he would have noticed the other things that went along with them—the things that most kids kept behind the walls of their houses to save face—things like kindness, sharing, teaching, guiding. These positive sides to having siblings he also missed out on, though he didn't know exactly that he was missing them; he only sensed from the affection behind the kicks and quarrels and jests that there was a special bond between brothers and sisters he would never be able to understand. He understood only what he saw, and that was that older kids got to push their younger siblings around. This was what he gathered as an elementary-school boy, and the fact that his parents didn't seem willing to work with him in providing a brother gave him reason to despise them until he reached his adolescent years.

As an adolescent, Will understood what it would've taken his mother and father to give him a younger brother, and he immediately decided that it was no wonder, with his parents, that they'd never had a child after him. In fact, he was never sure how he had managed to be born, and for some while, as a teenager, he had gone through a determined phase of assuming he'd been adopted. His parents had laughed at the notion and at his suggestion that they all take a DNA test. This had only embittered him more, and when he'd found his birth certificate and been hit with the hard truth that he most certainly was not adopted, any attachment he may have felt for his parents vanished completely.

It had not returned since, and he had little reason to believe it ever would.

His obsession for a little brother had been intense; he'd made up numerous imaginary friends, whose names his memory no longer retained, in place of a brother, and he'd written extensive letters to Santa Claus and Jesus Christ and even the president about how good he would be and what he'd do to return the favor if only they'd give him the chance—then he'd learned Santa and Jesus didn't exist and the president was an imbecile concerned more about his image than a little boy's desperation. What crushed him more than these realizations was the fact that, when he'd questioned his parents as to why they'd led him to believe in such figments, they'd grinned and given each other glances and laughed and told him he'd been cute.

His obsession with discovering his real parents hadn't taken much time to form, after that. It had led him to extensive detective work and sneaking around that would've put an international spy to shame, but his efforts were futile, and this obsession, too, ended badly. Sketches of his imagined real family, extensive loggings of his search, paperwork detailing his parents' lives and any suspicious events taking place around the time of his birth—he took them all and burned them, at the same time deciding never again to question the fate into which he'd been born.

He'd been obsessed with other things since then. For a while, toward the end of high school and like the goals of most other teenaged boys, it was getting girls to sleep with him. Then, once he'd graduated and begun to let his educational future wither, alcohol had enticed him; he'd begun collecting and mixing various exotic types of alcohol to find perfect poisons. That had made him sick more often than he liked. When he'd begun routine, full-time work in retail and sales positions, his mind had turned to more abstract topics in order to avoid contemplating his life. He'd fixate on the precepts of certain strange philosophies he'd read about, or on finding some one, perfect thing in his existence. These desires had proven even more disruptive than his more physical pursuits; they turned him inward, and deep within himself, he'd begun to form more layers over the hard, dark kernel of bitterness that had built up inside of him. He didn't know that this thing was inside him; he felt resentment more often than not, but he didn't question why he felt it. There was some stark, unjust contrast between what he felt and what he had to do in his daily routines in order to survive. He had to work, or his parents would kick him out. He had to live at home, because he didn't make enough money to live anywhere else. He had to live somewhere, because rooted firm within him was that survival instinct, and as much as he hated being with his parents and having to please them in order to be there, he clung to the concept of survival.

There had been one time when Will's innate sense of self-preservation had faltered, when the alcohol had aided him in letting down his guard in order to ensure the preservation of someone else . . . and he'd be forever cursed for doing such a thing. His own body and brain had revolted because of the way he'd acted one night, almost a year ago, to help that thing now lying in a hospital bed; he regretted the selfless move he'd made for it, because his actions had brought the insanity now festering like a sore on that bitter kernel inside him—an insanity he felt he was barely grasping the reigns of . . . one slip, and everything churning in his stomach would be let loose.

There were good obsessions, and there were bad obsessions. This woman Will had seen had caused some irregular ripple to stir the blood in his veins. He didn't know why, and rather than pondering its cause or whether it was good or bad, he decided to indulge in the daydreams beginning to flicker across the screens behind his eyes. She would be a, sort of, breath of fresh air—something to take his mind off of the growing aversion he felt toward his parents and the distaste they no doubt felt for him. Certainly, after destroying their carpet last week (not the first possession of theirs Will had taken it upon himself to irrevocably alter) they were ready to be rid of him. He didn't doubt for an instant that, had he the funds to support himself, they'd kick him out. Will knew his parents had wanted him out of the house for months—maybe years—but he also knew that they were hesitant about letting him go. Not because they loved him or were afraid they'd miss him but because they didn't really think he could make it on his own. They'd thought he was a little messed up in the head for some time now, and it was for this reason they enabled his inactivity.

Maybe he was slightly off; Will had wondered it many times, and there were days, such as this one, when he really did think that his head was a little abnormal. Still, he wasn't weird enough to cause anyone real concern. He'd grown so tired of people trying to tell him what was wrong with him that he had become determined to just deal with himself and his own mind games.

It was time to go to the Contemporary Art Institute. He'd come into the city to wander through the museum. They had a showing of metal works, and Will had always been fascinated by the way people could give life to such cold, impersonal materials. It would be a good way to spend an afternoon that would otherwise be filled with work or idleness.

Reaching the public train, Will tramped up the stairs to the platform and waited to catch his ride. The trip wasn't long, but it was just long enough for him to close his eyes and really give shape to some of the things now shimmering in his brain.