This time Buffy was here and we were smoking out of a bong. Passing it around. The gurgling bubbling sound echoing off the walls of the basement. Buffy asked me about Kit's mom once and I told her to Think Xander and then she didn't ask again.

It was usually okay, all of us smoking together. Buffy put in money for it, too, which made Kit happy because she was always paying for me. Kit never bought wet again, said passing out ruined her high.

I couldn't smoke anymore. I was higher than I'd ever been, floating somewhere far off. Blades were reflected in Buffy's eyes and I wondered if we could take them out and use them to cut ourselves with. Kit and I did that sometimes, cut each other. On our thighs where no one could see. Buffy didn't need to, she just let the vamps get a few more punches in. Let them crack a rib or two. Vicarious self injury.

The tape kept playing after we finished smoking. We were all laying down; me in the beanbag chair, Buffy on the couch, and Kit across her bed. The disco lights flashed. I felt warm and relaxed.

Buffy looked at me lazily. "Do you think Willow's in heaven?"

I lit up a cigarette. I'd taken to smoking them just because I knew it pissed her off. "In Sunday school they said you go to hell if you kill yourself."

"Bullshit," Kit spat, gesturing at the ceiling with her cigarette. "That's just bullshit. I don't believe in all that God crap."

"I was in heaven," Buffy points out.

Kit looks at her like she's crazy. I feel like I have to come to her rescue. "She really was. She was dead. For like, three months."

She sits up then and gapes at my sister. "How the fuck did you do that?"

"Willow brought me back," she says sadly. Sad because she's back or sad because Willow's gone? "You know," she says, brightening, "We should bring Willow back."

"Fuck yeah," Kit says. "I wanna see how this shit works."

"No." I might be high but I'm not stupid. "Willow told me about that crap. There's no more Urns of Osi.. whatever.. and it's too dangerous anyway. And you suck at magic."

It's the truth. She tried a levitation spell once and set the couch on fire. We had to flip the cushions over to hide the burn marks.

She just frowns. "I want her back. Xander never even comes over anymore and there's all this pain and emptiness..."

Kit throws a pillow at her. "You're a real high-killer."

"Sorry." She doesn't sound real sorry.

I stand up. "I'm going for a walk."

"Dawn, no."

"I am not five years old. Get over yourself. I'm going for a walk. I've got a stake and I'll be back in awhile," I snap. She looks hurt. I soften my tone a little. "I'll only be gone a little bit, okay?"

She rolls over and lays face down on the couch, her face buried in a cushion. I shrug and climb out the window as usual to avoid Kit's mom and her vodka.

The fresh air feels good. Cleansing. Can't think about things.

Things like how I'm the one who found Willow. Buffy doesn't know. I played dumb. I hid in my room until Buffy screamed. I came in, bleeding from my thighs and arms but it was all covered with jeans and long sleeves so she couldn't see.

I came into her room. She was on the bed, empty pill bottles all around her. The note had blood on the corner and it was leaned up against the lamp. There was blood everywhere. Everywhere. It was red all over, just too much. Tears were dried on her face.

I touched one of the slits. Flesh, split, muscle, bone, blood. My fingers were red then. I wanted to ask why, but it seemed silly because I knew how she felt. That deep penetrating sadness that swallows you whole and you just wish it would be over.

She just had more guts than me. To really do it.

I spend a lot of time thinking about what she had that I don't that made her able to escape. What Kit had and lost...

Or maybe she didn't lose it. Maybe one day I'd slide into her basement window and find wreckage, her body draped over a piece of furniture with a bloody razorblade on the table and that fucking song playing on repeat.

It's all pent up and I punch a tree hard, pulling away with a set of bloody knuckles. I gaze at it for awhile and slowly lick them clean. Copper. Does Buffy know the taste, or is she only a donor? Yeah, I know. Angry puppy my ass.

The wounds bleed again and I turn back towards Kit's house.

I slide back in the window. This song is playing, Kit's gone and I hear her mother screaming about the laundry not being done. I glance at the dryer and see a stack of clean clothes, neatly folded. Damn.

Buffy's pacing back and forth. "This isn't right, Dawnie. I'm supposed to be Mom. This isn't right."

She's shaking. Schitzing, Kit says. She wrings her hands. "Did you smoke more, Buffy?"

"Yes. We smoked. It was different."

I rinse my hand in Kit's sink. "Different how?"

"Oh, god. Everything's so fast." She looks pained.

"Wet? Did you smoke wet?"

She might cry. "She said.. yes. Wet. Make it slow down, Dawnie. Make us stop."

"Fuck." I'd researched it. After Kit and I smoked it, I hadn't believed her about the embalming fluid. It's embalming fluid, mint leaves, and sometimes PCP. She'd mixed it with the weed. You could do that, they said on the internet. Or smoke it alone, but she'd said it was weed. I think. My sister smoked PCP.

It's a gang on PCP.

Would our faces look like that now? God the smoke was thick in here, didn't Kit ever crack a window? I had to get Buffy home. She was babbling about being Mom and being in the grave and Willow was in heaven now.

We couldn't go home. She shook. I couldn't get her out the window. Wouldn't do to run into vampires. When the fuck did I become the one in charge? I dug through Kit's underwear drawer. Thorazine. Downers. I shook three out--too much? Not enough? I made Buffy take them, no problem. She didn't care.

I heard her mother hit Kit.

Buffy laid in Kit's bed and fell asleep almost instantly. They give Thorazine to mental patients to calm them down. Buffy dreamt she was a schizophrenic once, that it was all fake. My memories are, maybe hers are too. They monks made her and me at the same time. I shake another Thorazine out and put it on my tongue.

I can't.

I spit it in the garbage and put the bottle back. Smoke a cigarette. Kit's not back. It's too quiet. I don't want to smoke anymore, don't want to do this fucked up thing with my sister-mom and some crazy abused suicidal girl who isn't Tara.

I'm not Willow. Never will be.

I won't come back to this basement, I'll be at school instead. Writing essays and learning polynomials. Smoking cigarettes on the lawn because I still need an outlet. Burning the witchcraft books.

I flip the tape over for the last time.

Sitting. Thinking until the song comes to the end and Kit stands before me with a split lip. And she knows, when I look at her, that I won't be coming back again.

"Well strike another match, yeah, go start a-new. Go start a-new. 'Cause it's all over now, Baby Blue.."