Gavriil (Stepanov Mafia)

Slowly, Devin grabbed the medicine box containing the bandages and the bottle of peroxide and shuffled off to his room, slamming the door when he got there.

Well, there was no arguing with him. He had one-hundred percent gotten himself into this. But for some unknown reason, I couldn’t let him handle it alone.

Chapter Three

Samantha

We had never been a very sentimental family. The day my dad abandoned us, Mom packed up all of his stuff and left it in boxes by the curb. I sat in front of the window all day and watched as people pulled over and rifled through the boxes, picking and choosing from his remaining shirts and shoes and buckled belts. Whatever passersby didn’t take was loaded into the back of the city dump truck the next morning, never to be seen again.

Just like Dad.

A little bit of digging in the attic, however, revealed that Mom wasn’t as minimalist as she appeared. I found a few boxes full of clothes from her teenage years. A few of them had yellowed lace around the collars and stains from too many years packed in storage, but a lot of the items were in really great shape.

I wrote down the brand names and did some searching online and found that many of the dresses and skirts went for a couple of hundred dollars on internet auction sites. During Mom’s afternoon naps the next two days, I snapped pictures of her sequined dresses and velvet skirts and posted them online. By the evening, there was a bidding war going on.

Realistically, I knew a few vintage clothing items weren’t going to get us to $50,000, but I couldn’t just do nothing. I had to help Devin somehow. In the end, Mom’s forgotten box of clothes fetched just over $400. That was almost one percent of the total we needed. I tried to look at the dismal number as a good thing, but it was hard. We had nine days and a lot of money to go.

As usual, Devin moved in and out of the house like a phantom. Coming home after I was already in bed and leaving before I woke up. Or, on some occasions, not coming home at all. The few times I tried to call him, he’d bark through the phone that he was busy and tell me to leave him alone. How’s that for brotherly love? I just hoped he was having more luck than I was.

Three days later, Mom was having another rest day. They were coming more and more frequently than they used to. Rather than once or twice a week, she was sleeping through four or five days now. She’d been out since lunch, and it was nearly midnight. I’d given up my vigil next to her bed and was reading a book beneath my own covers – a romance with a shirtless cowboy on the front, my favorite kind – when I heard what sounded like whispering coming from the living room.

I laid the book down flat in my lap and closed my eyes, hoping it would make my hearing better. It didn’t make the sound anymore distinct, but it was definitely there. Assuming it was Mom mumbling in her sleep or snoring, both equally viable options, I sighed and pushed back the covers.

But when I padded into the hallway, I could see that Mom’s door was pushed open even though I’d definitely pulled it shut behind me. Also, I could see her lying in bed, and she was sleeping peacefully, not making a peep. I heard the noise again, and I realized it was coming from the living room.

“Devin?”

Immediately the noise stopped. I heard sniffling and then a quick cough.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice unusually deep. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The lights were off in the living room, so I flipped the overhead light on as I walked in. Devin squinted and looked down at the floor as his eyes adjusted. When he looked up, I gasped.

“I know,” he said, turning away. “I look like shit.”

“No, you look worse. You look like a zombie. You look like you died and rose from the dead. Holy crap. Are you okay?”

“Sore. And thanks for being so gentle with your assessment.”

I felt bad, but there was no way to be kind about the way he looked. His skin was a mottled mix of green and black and yellow. He looked like the surface of cottage cheese that had gone moldy. Both his eyes could open now but just barely, and his lips still looked cracked and raw. There were bruises along his neck and arms that I hadn’t noticed the first night, and one that covered his entire temple and stretched up into his scalp.

“People have been steering clear of me the last few days,” he said. “I think I know how lepers must have felt.”