Still panting slightly Henry approached her side. "What did I do?"

"Not you - Rum. He fell asleep and left me on my own. He knows I'd be bored without him."

"I see now."

"You see what?"

"That's why you asked me up here, because no one else was around."

"Yeah, that's the reason."

"I thought so."

"It was a joke. Come on Henry, relax a little."

"It wasn't a joke. You never talk to me."

"We talk all the time."

"No, you talk to Rum. You talk to Alex."

"That's because Rum picks on you all the time. Anything I say to you would just set him rabid on you. I know the two of you have those ... issues with each other, so I try spare you the hassle. I know you stay quiet because of the way he treats you."

"At least Rum speaks to me. Yeah, he acts like a ... he acts like a ... But yeah, at least he acknowledges me. I feel like furniture when you're around. Maybe ... I don't stay quiet when Rum is around, maybe I stay quiet because you're around. Both of you just happen to be a package."

"A package?" Sierra gritted teeth a moment. "What's gotten into you? You don't normally act like this."

"How would you even know?"

Sierra turned away from the parapet, and Henry. "Okay, maybe I don't talk to you as much as the others. So what?"

"So what? What do you mean so what?"

"I mean, so what? It still doesn't mean I don't like you."

"What else could it mean?"

"Look ... it's really not your problem. It's mine."

"You mean, 'it's not you it's me.'"

"It is me!"

Henry backed down till her furious breathing faded. "Yeah, it's always the other person with the problem. Nobody ever wants to come out and tell me my problem. If you ever bothered listening to me, you'd know that a lot of people tend to have problems with themselves whenever I'm around."

Sierra faced him, grimacing slightly. "You idiot, of course I listen to you. It's because I listen to you that I can't talk to you."

"What's that even supposed to mean?"

"It means ... I mean ... it's just ... It's difficult to talk to someone when they lie as much as you do."

Henry shivered slightly. With it came a short pause. "I ... don't ... I didn't lie. When did I lie?"

"Come on Henry, own up. You've been with us all this time and you still won't tell us about your past."

"I-I told you ... I owned a shop and it ... burned down. I couldn't afford to..."

"Stop lying. I'm so sick of everyone lying to me. First Alex lies about being sick and now you're going to lie to me on the same night. Nobody believes that little story of yours, Henry. Hate to break it to you, but you don't seem like the kind of guy who could run his own business. Into the ground, sure, but that'd happen long before a random fire got its chance."

Henry hung his head low, expression speaking more truth than words could say. "I-I'm sorry. Y-you know, Alex said the same as you. I guess that's ... good, right? I look and act like a failure ... That's good right?"

"That's not it. You've been with us for a long time now. You said that you went bankrupt, and that's how you became homeless. You made it sound like you didn't need to be homeless."

"Why should I?"

"If you didn't need to be here you would have left by now. Any one of us can get some crummy little job somewhere and work our way back up, but we stay here because ... this is where we chose to end up. Nobody who lives in the gutter has to. Everyone who stays, stays because they've no place else to go."

Henry sighed some agreement with her theory.

"Well then?"

"Well what?"

"What really happened to you?"

"Nothing. Nothing happened."

"Stop it, Henry."

"No. Nothing did happened, that's the reason. My parents died. My brother went away for missionary work. I had nowhere else to go ... I was ... I'm a loser, a no good dud. Rum was right."

"Don't say that. Those three words together spell rock bottom."

"Why not? Even Rum's got more friends than I ever did."

"Drinking buddies aren't friends."

"How many drunks does it take to beat zero?"

"I'm sure you had some-"

"No."

Sierra found herself snagged for further thought.

Henry, reading it on her face resigned himself onto one of those blanket covered crates. Seating himself there, he breathed out heavily, in regret of all he said.

"Then what about your parents? They cared about you, right?"

"They're supposed to. Maybe they did too much. Maybe if I hadn't lived under their protection so long I might have become a little more adventurous, set out on my own - at least that's what I used to think. Now I know the truth."

Sierra waited expectantly.

"I didn't stay with them because it was comfortable. I stayed because I was afraid to leave. In school I was bullied. In work I was ignored. Even in queues I'd be skipped. It seemed every normal social situation proved difficult for me, and it wasn't always my fault. A lot of people just don't like me. That's what I saw every time I went out alone. So I became afraid to leave. Then my parents' died. It hit me like a wake up bell."

"It was a car accident, right?"

"Something like that ... I think of it as an act of God." Henry paused. "It happened during the hurricane a few years ago. They were driving home from work and ... Well, it picked up their car. We didn't find them till a few days after."

"That's awful ... What about your brother then?"

Henry laughed.

"What?"

"You didn't give me your sympathies."

"I think I've given you enough of those already. Besides, after all this time I can't imagine saying sorry will mean much."

"Thanks ... I-I guess." Henry paused. "My brother? His name was Leon. He moved away after the funeral."

"How considerate."

"It wasn't his fault. He had to leave. He'd been through too much already. The death of our parents just cut it for him."

"He had it rough living here?"

"An understatement. One day the launderette he worked in got robbed. A customer interfered and well, things went wrong. If he hadn't fainted he'd probably have been shot too."

Sierra remained quiet a moment to vex her sympathies on Leon's horrible situation.

"Then there's that other story, the one I told you was mine."

"About the shop that burned down? That actually happened to Leon?"

"Except nobody died in his version. Leon did run away, and a co-owner did get trapped in the fire, but that guy made it out okay, in a sense. He'd been badly burned and wound up with more than a few lost marbles. Since the man lost his mind the search for the arsonist couldn't go forward successfully. The whole case was dropped and they never found the person responsible."

"That's awful. To think that person could get away so easily. He could still be out there. Creepy."

"It was probably just one of the many dissatisfied customers the co-owner left behind. He was a crook, a con-man. It could have been anyone. Not that I really care. That co-owner probably caused more problems for Leon than the other things. I guess that's why Leon wouldn't comment who was responsible. If the fire hadn't made that man mad, his conscience should have,"

"Then why did Leon decide to go away on missionary work?"

"Leon was ashamed of himself for running away, just like he was ashamed for fainting during the robbery. He collapsed emotionally, and well ... became a recluse. He started to believe he wasn't meant to have a normal life. To be honest, it was first time I actually started to relate to him. And that's when he went to a church."

"A religious calling?"

"Sort of. It was the church a woman who died in the launderette robbery belonged to. Leon went to pay his respects when he started talking to the priest. It turned out he was the woman's son and was actually present during the incident. They got to talking and somehow the priest managed to talk Leon into taking up a cause."

"Let me guess, the priest had a plan."

"He somehow convinced Leon to try missionary work. One month later he shipped off to Africa. I haven't seen him since."

"Manipulative freak."

"No. That isn't fair. It was Leon's choice in the end. The priest just gave him an opportunity. I guess it was fate in a sense, meeting again the way they did. I'm glad something came from it all."

"Forget about faith, how did you feel?"

"I don't know. I guess I didn't want him to leave. I was just too gutless to argue, too gutless to understand my feelings at the time."

"And now?"

"I don't know ... Maybe if I found out where about in Africa he is I could give him a call sometime. Wonder if he'd mind visiting his good for nothing bum brother."

"Don't say that. we're all in the same boat y'know."

Henry smiled. "The boat that's always shaking, the boat that never sinks."

Sierra returned a grin. "That's so stupid, like something Alex would say." She licked her lips in contemplation. "And John."

"Like John? Hey I'm not that depressed."

"Not him. I mean my foster father - John. You two are a lot alike in a lot of ways."

"I see, so you're trying to recover yourself now. A moment ago you thought I was too shady. Well I'm not letting you away with it so easy."

"I lied about that."

"You ... lied?"

"That's not really reason I avoided talking to you, at least not the main reason. I just said that to find out a little more about you. It's just ... whenever I hear you speak it reminds me of the way John spoke, even down to those awkward little stuttering moments of yours. You act like him so much you actually started looking like him ... sometimes. I try my best to avoid thinking of him, so I avoid you."

"Did ... you two have a falling out?"

"Sure did. I killed him."

Henry gasped. The action allowed him the slightest weight in his chest to prevent falling backward.

"At least I thought I did. All this time I believed I was responsible for his suicide. All this time I stayed in the gutter punishing myself. Only then it turned out to be all in my head. I thought I'd done something bad to him, when in reality it was stupid child shit hyped up in my own imagination. I always thought those I left behind would loathe me for it, but they didn't even consider it. Now it feels worse."

"Shouldn't you be happy? You were looking for redemption now you don't even need it."

"I guess, for a long time I've assumed I was the only thing in John's world. Turns out he had bigger things weighing down on him than a spoiled little girl. A lot of things I didn't even know about - a lot of things I didn't know about John. Reality is ... now I realise ... when he was alive ... I didn't try and know him better. He was just there, and I took him for granted."

"I think you knew him better than you think."

"How could you know?"