In his dream his father sat him down on the old easy chair in their livingroom and explained everything.

His explanation was so soothing, like being wrapped up in a blanket: he just sat him down and explained it all, his facial features hazy with memory as he watched his mouth. He explained everything from his birth to Hillworth. It was shining enlightenment, borne of his lips and his irritable hands as he revealed the magician's trick behind Jesse's whole life. He'd never been so patient in reality. He never would have taken the time to sit down for five minutes and explain anything if he thought he already should've known. In his dream everything was spoken in uncomplex sentences, and it was so simple that he was struck by it, he was struck by how easy it all was. How magnificent.

Struck by some impulse he told his father he was going to get a girl of his own. He needed a girl, he said. When his father laughed he was relieved. It had been the correct thing to say. That's all you need, said his father, a girl of your own. It had been the right thing to say. Jesse believed in it.

Then he was in some forest full of tall trees -- the dream kept on switching -- and he was looking for someone. For a moment he thought he was looking for Tay. When he saw Dylan Rasmussen's pale flaxen head he was back in the start of the school year and had to pull his head back and slug him, right in the gut, pull back the unresisting neck and punch him over and over driven by an anger he didn't understand. Dylan's body was a rag doll body. He was waiting for him to throw up. Puke, he said, I'm going to make you puke. In real life Dylan had never puked: now he doubled up on the pine needles and threw up dribbly stuff all over them, wordless and limp.

Jesse was unhappy now, really unhappy, and for all he crouched and jogged Dylan's shoulder Dylan wouldn't say a word. Not one word. He lay behind him and put his arm around him like you'd hug your kid sister lying in the same bed, only Dylan's pale and glutinous skin gave so that his arm sank into Dylan's arm and his front started to sink into Dylan's back. Soon they were one thing. If his father found out he was going to shoot them both, he'd screwed it up, if his father found out it was going to be all over, if Dad -- he found an edge at his thumbnail and sat in the vomit trying to peel it up over his hand, tried to get the skin off. Dylan's flesh was sticky and leaden. It wouldn't give. He sat for ages, trying to pick at that skin.

He said: Dad is going to kill us, but Dylan's mouth over his mouth didn't say anything either.

Somehow he'd done it wrong. He could feel Dylan's flesh over his flesh starting to tighten up and dry. Dylan explained it to him with a picture once: skin to skin, skin layer, fat layer. Subcutaneous fat. Subcutaneous was a Dylan word, dropping from his mouth without him having to even think about it. His bones were Jesse's bones but Dylan was dying all around him, even now that he'd stopped trying to peel him off, Dylan was shrivelling into tarry liquid the same as the puke and steamed off his body into nothing. There were little traces on him from where his roommate had been that weren't big enough to do anything but scrub off. Jesse put his face down into the pine needles and wept from sheer desolation.