Overdue Fines

Sammy's sprawled across the bed closest to the door - which I've told him once, twice, a half a dozen times this week not to do – scribbling in his school notebook, which is ripped and worn but which does not have dirty words erased into the blue cover like the green one I occasionally bother to take to class with me.

"Dude. It's Friday."

He doesn't look up for a minute, because he's busy chewing on the end of his Bic – the pen, not the lighter, although the lighter would make him look a lot cooler, and that's something thirteen-year-old Sammy could definitely use. I know from experience that when Sammy's hunched over a notebook, chewing on the end of his Bic, he is doing one of the two things that put him in a deeper trance than even history class does me: studying for school, or researching evil.

In that order.

I lean upside down off the bed furthest from the door – Sam's bed – except he's too stubborn to want to be away from the door, too stubborn this week to want protected. Kid says I'm hovering. S'been calling me Grandma. Ever since – well, about two weeks now.

I dig in my ratty knapsack, underneath my knife and a vial of holy water and an M&M wrapper and a few stray cassette tapes and a couple of chicks' phone numbers – and rustle up my green notebook, adorned with my extensive vocabulary, lovingly etched in crude eraser-marks. I take aim carefully, do a couple of test throws in slow-mo to make sure I got it lined up right, ignore it when a bunch of crinkled-up papers fall out from between the notebook's empty pages. Then I let fly and the notebook whaps Sam right in the Bic and he jumps and spins and lets out this breath that would have been a girl-scream except I got those mostly trained out of him at this point.

"Hey!" he protests.

"Hey!" I mimic. Then, "I said, it's Friday. What are you doing that crap now for? You got all weekend."

He looks at me like I'm even stupider than my English teacher thinks I am. Then goes back to the notebook. "You know I'm not gonna get to do this stuff over the weekend."

And I think, Oh, yeah, Dad's due back. But I don't admit out loud that he's right. All I say is, "Come oooon, Sammy!" But he ignores me and after a minute, I roll over and feel around the nightstand till I fumble across the phone.

Problem is, this town is boring. Unceasingly, unfailingly, unwaveringly – see, I got a clean vocabulary, too, not just a dirty one – boring and none of the girls whose phone numbers are rattling around in my knapsack are picking up their phones.

Weird how none of the girls is picking up.

My heartrate quickens like a traitor's footsteps.

Lying on my back on the wrong motel bed with the heavy plastic receiver in my hand, spitting out a dial tone, I have one of those strange, unpleasant moments where I think, "I hope they're all right." Just, vaguely, the girls in general. I think, some of those girls don't want to talk to me and some of those girls are making out with somebody else - and some of those girls might be dead, because it could be anybody, any time.

I've been thinking this sort of messed-up crap for two weeks.

Except the word isn't even thinking, because you know it if you're thinking about something. This isn't thinking. This is being invaded by overwhelming fear and guilt and worry and just general badness. A fraction of the badness left over from when Sam almost died. From when I almost let Sam die at the see-through hands of an angry spirit. From when I watched Sam and thought he had died.

He's perfectly fine now. Barely a scar. Now.

I reach for the remote, surf through a channel or six. Turn up the volume a stitch at a time to see how long it'll take Sammy to screech at me. 19. 20. 21. The little green bar inches to the right.

It wasn't even supposed to be a big deal, that angry spirit. It was supposed to be a simple salt and burn. Just Daddy and Big Brother showing Sammy the ropes. But nothing is ever simple when it's supposed to be, and the salt spilled and melted a hole in the snow and then I was scooping up snow with red-knuckled hands, chucking it by the frozen fistful at the skeleton while Dad poured the lighter fluid and Sam – and Sammy -

"Dean, turn it down!"

Bingo. Magic number: 27.

"You didn't say please," I tell him in a bored tone, as if I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in where Sam's attention lies.

"I'm trying to study!" He screeches. "I have a test on this book!"

"What is it, A Princess' Guide to Whining? For Dummies? Don't worry, I'm sure you'll ace it." Not my best comeback, I'll admit. I've been off my game since …

Whap! The book in question smacks me in the side of the head and I blink for a second before I swivel around to look at Sam. "For real, dude? You wanna play it like that?" While inside I'm relieved he's gonna interact with me, bring on a wrestling match like that, instead of leaving me alone over here with a dial tone and an infomercial and two weeks' worth of festering guilt and terror …

"What if I do?" he challenges. He looks haughty and pissed off and just a touch worried and I'm on him before he knows what hit him, but I then my eyes land on the scar, still pink. I catch him scratching it sometimes and I know well the itchy stage of healing, how sometimes you forget what you're scratching till it hurts and then you remember the hunt, the adrenaline, the sound of your brother's voice and the moment before you're hurt, when it's already too late to stop it –

So I don't have the heart to do more than my brotherly duty of holding him down and farting on him before I let him go.

"Gross!" he squeals.

"You're welcome, dude, any time. What else are brothers for?" I start back toward my side – Sam's side – of the room and that's when I see the book he's thrown at me and my stomach drops through the floor and I can hear my heartbeat in my ears for a second and it's the damndest thing.

I even recognize the book. Some teacher when I was Sam's age – maybe a year or two older, I never was as good a reader as this kid – tried to make me do a book report on this stupid-ass novel with the stupid-ass title and I flat-out refused. I can't believe Sam's been laying over there on his too-close-to-the-door, too-close-to-damn-danger bed, making notes on this sucker.

"Dean?"

I realize I've been still too long and Sam's stopped in the middle of his princessy tirade about how every evening study session does not necessarily have to end in the disgusting release of bodily gas into his study space. I glance over and the kid's looking at me with that look he gets sometimes, the one that screams Chick Flick but underneath it feels like more than that, like he's brain-scanning me and any minute he's going to say some uncanny, freaky-type thing that just proves how the kid's like a freaking psychic mindreader or something –

But first, he sighs, and deflates a little, shoulders releasing their tension, eyes finding the carpet, then me again quick. Looking half guilty and smiling kind of sad.

"It's just a book, dude."

I want to deny it, but he's right about what's bothering me and he knows it. The novel laying on the ugly-ass Pepto-pink flowered motel bedspread has the unfortunate title of My Brother Sam is Dead.

Two weeks ago, that was almost true. My damn fault.

Oh, this crap has got to stop.

I stay put a minute while I get my own princessy self under control. Then I force myself to act like I'm not coming apart at the never-really-put-together-in-the-first-place seams.

"I didn't say nothing about your stupid book, Sunshine." I chuck the book at him and he catches it easily, his reflexes at the ready now that he's not chewing on his pen and leaning over that damn notebook. Dad's training is really paying off. Kid can catch. He can throw. He can fight. He even knows how to land so that certain death is downgraded to potential death, and mortal wound to wicked pink scar.

"It's just a title, Dean," he says, with those big eyes half-squinted like he can pinch off some of the worry.

"Whatever, man, you need to switch me beds right now so I can crash." I run a hand over my face, which is stubbly and starting to feel haggard. "I need my beauty rest so I can keep making the ladies' knees weak with all of this." I wave my hand toward my face.

I expect another fight. Another lecture about how I'm hovering. About how the spirit thing wasn't my fault. About how Sam is fine. About how he's growing up and I can't always be there to protect him. About how he likes the bed by the door. It makes him feel taller.

Instead he studies me, long and hard and quiet. Then he stuffs the novel in his backpack and switches me beds without saying a word. He climbs into his and claims the remote. I sit up in mine and watch the door.