Brian closed his eyes, blood trailing down his cheek and matting his hair. I felt it, damp and warm, seeping through my pant leg. It was Brian’s blood, and for some reason I knew it was pure. No other man I’d held in my arms-and now, not even I-had blood this pure.

His eyes reopened, and he looked up at me. “Tell me, Neil,” he said. “Tell me more.”

I could hear the carolers’ footsteps, their hushed giggles. They approached Coach’s house. We had to leave soon. “One more thing,” I said. “You were so erased that when Coach gave you the five bucks, you just let the bill drop to the floor. I saw the money lying there, and I picked it up. It was mine.” Brian tried to exhale from his nose, and a bubble of blood widened and popped. “So I owe you, Brian. I’ve owed you that, all these years.” I lifted his head a little, patted my ass for my wallet, found a five-dollar bill.

The carolers clomped toward the porch, arguing over what carols they still hadn’t sung. “No one’s even home,” one said. “Let’s yell Trick or Treat,” said another. If I were in my regular mood, I’d stand at the door, smile through one or two songs, then hurl a fistful of dimes and nickels at them with all the strength I could muster. As I thought this, I heard a loud “Shhh.” Brian and I froze, waiting. “Someone’s home,” a boy insisted, and when I looked to the window I saw a face peering in at us, a head with a red-balled stocking cap, gaping mouth, spying eyes made blue by the never-ending porch light. I tried to picture the scene he saw: two boys in the dark, sprawled together on the couch, holding hands; one battered and bruised, the other bleeding from the nose.

They began singing “Silent Night,” which had always been my favorite as a little boy. They finished the first line, and Brian sat up from the couch. The blood’s flow was subsiding. He pinched the five-dollar bill in both hands, looked at me, and ripped it in half. Again. He began tearing it then, ripping the halves into more halves, until the bill was torn into hundreds of pieces. He cupped the pieces in his palm and threw them, green shreds of money showering across the floor.

Brian leaned his head back into my lap. “It’s over,” he said.

“Silent Night” paused, and a caroler giggled. I stroked Brian’s hair with my stained fingers. I wanted to tell him not to worry, that everything would be fine, but I couldn’t speak. I just kept holding him, touching his hair and his face, letting him know I was sorry.

In the middle of that quiet I heard a soft clicking noise. At first the sound puzzled me; then I recognized it as that of a key in a lock. Brian panicked, standing from the couch, pulling me up with him as we attempted to make our break. But it was too late. The house’s door clattered open, and the room’s light flickered on.

A woman gasped. Through the open door I could see a sliver of carolers, some faces peering inside at the scattered tatters of money, some faces turned to the sky and the snow, now beginning to fall. And there, in front of them, in the room with us, stood the family, their outlines barely visible within the weight of the room’s light. It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn’t, and we weren’t.

SCOTT HEIM is the author of the novel In Awe (1997) as well as a book of poems, Saved from Drowning. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Village Voice, Nerve.com, The Advocate, Paper, and many Anthologies. He has previously lived in New York, London, and various towns in his home state of Kansas. He now lives and works in Boston, where he is finishing his third novel, We Disappear. For more details visit his official website at www.scottheim.com.