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Prologue

Oren Strange walked into Abattoir and sniffed the air.

The former slaughterhouse may have been renamed and refurbished, but it still stank of violence and agony and blood.

Sawdust, which covered the floor, swirled about his feet as he took reluctant steps forward.

Paper streamers, purple and white—his school colors—hanging from the low ceiling, tickling his shoulders, felt like ghosts brushing past.

Why was he here, he wondered again. Because of Rio, of course.

He’d confessed his secret, and its release had unexpectedly opened a door he hadn’t known he’d held the key to.

Now that he was here, all he had to do was walk through it.

The question was, could he? If he hadn’t told Rio his secret, Rio would never have asked him to come.

What more, Oren wondered, did Rio want from him?

Why was he so eager to see him after all these years?

Had his life not recently fallen, unexpectedly, apart, he wouldn’t have found himself here at this reunion, ready to step through that newly opened door. Oren walked up to a table just beyond the entrance where plastic-encased name tags rested in alphabetical order.

“O Strange One,” a voice suddenly boomed as Oren studied the display looking for his name.

The old hated moniker that so many had thought such a clever play on his name.

The voice was attached to the dense heavy body of a former athlete who had let himself go to seed, surrendering to age, gravity, and too much beer; the muscle had dissolved into fat and settled around his middle. Lidell Holloway.

“You look exactly the same,” Lidell boomed. “Still skinny as a rail.”

“I’m sorry,” Oren said. “Do I know you?”

Immediately, the bravado left Lidell and was replaced by a kind of bitterness, for Oren had reminded him that he was no longer the star athlete, wasn’t otherwise anyone worth remembering.

Lidell abruptly slunk away muttering to himself.

His voice was so low, but Oren heard what he said: “Stuck up, citified faggot.” So, nothing has changed, Oren thought to himself.

After their exchange, doubt assailed Oren once again and arrested his progress.

He stood still trying to adjust to the room’s heat, the cigarette smoke, the cloying scent of White Diamonds.

Why was he here? Was he, like Jackson, just trying to rewrite his story with a different leading man and a happier ending?

Then, from the center of a gaggle of twittering, giggling women wearing their Sunday best and “good” bras, gold crosses hanging around chicken necks plunging and twisting between pushed-up bosoms like the agony of Christ, he heard a rumble of laughter; like echoes of thunder up at the quarry, it went on and on.

It was the most absurd sound in the world, a laugh he recognized.

Rio was here, as he’d promised he would be.

Whatever else had changed about Rio, his laugh was the same.

Oren found that reassuring. Now the only remaining question was, did he have the courage to step through that open door that invited like a portal into another dimension?

Oren took his name tag off the table and shoved it in his pocket.