We must sacrifice with all our hearts.
Even if others do not know us.
We must fight to save the world.
— unknown man sitting in front of the church at Zitlala

✦

That blond boy is going to save the world. His birth was preordained. The breakers of hope and the eaters of love, slithering and wet and as long as your intestines are, long as they need to be—they don’t stand a chance. His secret club met after school and devised a plan. And he—the greatest scout of all, with so many badges, kind and intelligent, strong and quick, devoted to God and beloved of angels—put it into action. He did everything right. And he has by God he has the power of friendship.

That blond boy is tied up in a garbage bag.

Only Cancer remains.

✦

You smell him a mile away, wearing his stomach for lip gloss. In a shaft of atoll sun, merciless except where the trees cut it, bleeding shadows across those slender legs. A tight little backpack throws his back back, leather straps with steel snaps digging into the soft wet clam meat of his armpits.

His ribbon-bound neck sweats from gym class, and the strain of throwing up. Rape whistle sticks to his soaked white shirt, clinging to the nearly-translucent hollow of his sternum. His teeth peek out, pastel braces wrapping his overbite in colored bands of tight rubber. He sees you, and thick dark eyebrows dig into his skull.