As the elevator doors opened Mac walked like a zombie through the Neptune Grand. Logan and Veronica were in his suite upstairs and though they’d tried to get her to stay with them, she couldn’t stand to take in more grief to go along with her own. She knew she was supposed to hate Cassidy now, but she just couldn’t feel it, his scared face from the bed earlier that night was still in her mind.

There were reporters crowded outside, their flashing cameras mixing with the blue and red lights of emergency vehicles. Mac froze in the middle of the lobby, staring at the outside world, realizing she wasn’t ready for something that intense. She knew none of the reporters would know her, not yet anyway, but she couldn’t face walking out those doors into the insanity. She looked to the side and saw with shock that Graduation party was still going on.

With chills running all over her body, she realized that Logan, in his grief over the loss of Keith Mars, hadn’t thought to find Dick.

‘I can’t let Lamb tell him this,’ Mac thought and because it felt good to think about somebody other than herself, she walked back into the party.

The loud, obnoxious music filled her ears while bright lights overloaded her eyes and it took her a moment to adjust to the extreme happiness of everyone around her. With dread filling her entire body, she saw Dick on the other side of the room, still talking to John Enbom like he had been when she and Beaver had left the party an hour before.

“Dick, I…” Mac started to say but Dick interrupted her.

“Oh, man, did Beaver chicken out AGAIN?!” Dick exclaimed with a loud laugh. “Where is that little shit? I’m going to pound on him for being such a homo.”

“No, Dick, he didn’t…” Mac tried again but he drunkenly interrupted her again.

“What, you walked out on him ‘cause you finally realized big brother always does it better, huh?” he asked as he put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a drunken kiss on the cheek.

“He’s dead,” Mac said, but she was starting to feel choked up again and could only get the words out in a whisper.

“What?” Dick asked, unable to hear her above the music.

“Dead,” Mac forced out of her lips, slightly louder. She was starting to hyperventilate and felt like the walls were closing in on her.

“Who’s dead?” Dick asked, looking down at her in confusion.

“I can’t breathe,” Mac gasped out and Dick felt himself sober up.

“Come on,” Dick said, gently grasping her elbow as he led her out of the party. They reached the lobby and then sat down on a couch together as Mac tried her hardest to catch her breath. “What’s going on outside?”

Mac’s eyes widened in horror as Dick started to stand up so he could get a better view of what was going on outside. She quickly grabbed his arm, digging her nails into it in her urgency to keep him from going outside.

“Don’t go out there,” she gasped out.

“Mac, what the hell is going on?” Dick asked, starting to feel angry.

“Cassidy…is…dead,” she finally managed to tell him with deep breaths between each word.

“What? No he isn’t,” Dick said, shaking his head and standing up. “There’s no fucking way he’s dead.”

But there was a ringing in Dick’s ears that was suddenly preventing him from hearing all of her words. Certain words were breaking through the ringing, though. Words like “bus crash,” “killer,” “molested,” and “raped.” Dick’s eyes looked across the lobby and into the ballroom where the graduation party was and he longed to be back in that room. Was it only an hour ago when he was smiling and joking with his brother, asking him if he thought it was nice to feel like a man once in a while?

“You’re a fucking liar,” Dick said as Mac finally stopped talking. He was backing away from her and toward the front doors. “If he’s not up in that room, it’s your fault. You did something and he left and now you’re making shit up just to piss him off even more.

“Dick…don’t go out there,” Mac tried to tell him, but it was too late. He was out the doors and suddenly a reporter shouted “there’s the brother!” and Dick was being blinded by flashing cameras as he tried to walk through the crowd.

He got close enough to Madison’s car to see that there was a dead, bloody something smashed into the windshield before Deputy Sacks was putting on a hand on his shoulder.

“You don’t want to go over there, kid,” he said kindly.

“Is that…” Dick tried to ask before swallowing thickly. “Is that my brother?”

“Keep the Casablancas boy the hell away from here!” Sheriff Lamb yelled from where he was taking notes next to the car. “But don’t let him leave. I need to know how much he had to do with this!”

And that was enough of an answer for Dick before he turned to the side and started throwing up more violently then he ever had before in his life.