

### Spacecraft

### By Benjamin Broke

### Copyright 2012 Benjamin Broke

### Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This ebook remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from an authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

## Table of Contents

Spacecraft

About Benjamin Broke

Also By Benjamin Broke

Contact Benjamin Broke

Insurgents Chapters 1 & 2

# 1

Donald Duck is the best. That's what everyone said, and I was starting to believe them. A half hour after we dropped the acid I was already feeling the effects. We were tearing down the freeway in Steve's Jeep and the ocean was still nowhere in sight. I wondered if Steve knew where he was going. He had the unnerving habit of rushing up on someone's bumper and slamming over into the next lane suddenly to pass them. Every time he did it the Jeep rocked and I had to brace myself. He must've been doing 85 miles per hour. We had the windows down and the Jeep seemed very light all of a sudden -I felt like we were in some kind of child's toy.

"HEY!" Colin shouted from the back seat, "SLOW DOWN, WE'RE GONNA ROLL THIS THING."

"DON'T TELL ME HOW TO DRIVE," Steve yelled over the freeway noise, "I'LL GET YOU THERE!"

He started going faster to scare Colin and I considered putting my seatbelt on. For some reason the act of reaching around to get it was too scary at that moment. I thought the instant I looked away from the road Steve would wreck. I gripped the door with one hand and the seat cushion with the other and stared straight ahead. When Steve changed lanes I'd lean into it like I was on a motorcycle. At that point I thought every bit might help.

I was relieved when he finally took an off-ramp. As the noise of the freeway faded I could hear the radio again, but it sounded wrong. It sounded like clowns being raped, but after awhile I realized it was just an ad for carpets. There were signs that the beach was close, I saw some seagulls, and we were passing surf shops and bike rental places and I could smell the ocean. "Are you guys as high as I am?" Steve asked.

"I'm definitely feeling it." I said.

"Me too." Colin said. "Are we close?"

"Yeah, just a few more blocks." Steve said.

I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. Steve asked me for one, and as I handed it to him I noticed a group of teenagers in the car next to us. Some girls in the back seat were looking our direction. I wondered if we looked strange or out of place.

It was a beautiful cloudless day, and everyone in the cars around us and on the sidewalk seemed to be smiling. The ocean was glistening with reflected sunlight and kicking up white froth. As we pulled into the parking lot I watched some kids playing in the shallow surf while their parents lounged under umbrellas. There were young girls sunbathing, and an elderly couple with wide-brimmed hats. The scene looked like a postcard, not because it was beautiful, but because it seemed fake or staged in some way. The whole beach scene- sun, water, sky, sand, birds, and all the people seemed to be participating in an elaborate hoax.

As I got out of the Jeep my joints felt stiff and I was aware of my internal organs for some reason, especially my lungs and stomach. I rocked back and forth on my feet, transferring my weight from my toes to my heels and taking a deep breath. Colin was staring at the ocean in awe.

Steve walked around the back of the Jeep with his towel around his neck. "I told you this was the best beach." The cigarette was still hanging from his lips. "Come on, let's find a spot."

He started across the sand toward the ocean and Colin and I grabbed our towels and followed. I took the last hit off my cigarette and dropped it in the sand, stepping on it as I walked. I wondered if I'd actually put it out or just buried the ember for someone else to discover with a bare foot. I was sinking a little with every step, which made walking feel unnatural. We passed a white-bread family going the other direction, and I was suddenly very self conscious. I hoped I didn't look as deranged as I felt.

We set our towels out as far away from everyone as possible. I sat, pulled my shoes and socks off, and dug my toes into the warm sand. I realized I'd been grinning for a while, so I tried to relax my face muscles but it took too much effort, so I kept grinning and looked down at the sand that covered my toes so no one would notice. Steve was taking off his shirt and watch, getting ready to swim. I heard Colin laughing. "Look at those kids playing with that dog man, that's fucked up." He said.

I watched as a young boy tried to pry a stick from a wet dog's mouth. There was a younger kid laughing and screaming next to him. The dog growled and twisted his head around in impossible contortions. It looked like the kid was going to twist the dog's head off. He finally got the stick free and hurled it into the surf. The dog barked and leapt in after it. "Aren't you gonna swim?" Steve asked us.

"Yeah, I'm up for it." Colin said. "You going in Nick?"

"Sure, we're at the beach." I said, trying again to relax the smile on my face.

"We should swim to that buoy out there." Steve said. "You think you could make it that far?"

I looked out at the buoy. It was ridiculously far.

"I can do it if you can." Colin said. "You think you can make it Nick-man?"

"Uh, sure. What's the worst that can happen?" I stood up. "Oh yeah. Death." I took my shirt off and put my keys, cigarettes, lighter and wallet into my shoes. If someone wanted to steal my six dollars they could help themselves.

The water was ice cold, so I ran in and dunked my head to get it over with. Steve and Colin were already out ahead of me, but I didn't care. I was going along for the ride, they were involved in some kind of macho competition. I ducked under the waves as they broke and kept moving forward. The feeling of all that water rushing and crashing over my head gave me a boost of adrenaline. I got out past the breakers and was going up and down with the swells as I pumped my legs and kept moving in the general direction of the buoy. I wondered how deep the water was. I imagined myself fifteen or twenty feet off the sea floor. I was feeling light and buoyant until I swam through a patch of cold water that shook my confidence.

I stopped for a moment and looked back at the beach. The people looked small, and they moved around silently. I turned and looked at the buoy. It still looked far away. Steve and Colin hadn't slowed and were increasing their separation from me. I began to move again, going wide around a clump of seaweed. I tried not to think of all the creatures that might live in there.

I concentrated on my swimming and kept moving until I felt like I couldn't go any further. I'd been out there for a long time, but it didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. My arms and legs were sore, so I changed my stroke to a more relaxed frog style. I was in no hurry. It seemed like I'd been swimming for hours.

I took another break and treaded water again. I could barely see the people on the beach. I thought about what a serious position I was in. I didn't belong here, it wasn't a place for swimmers, it was boat territory. If I got sucked under by some monster current and drowned, no one would realize I was gone for hours. I imagined Steve and Colin getting back to the beach and wondering where I was. They'd probably assume I'd gone for a walk or something. They wouldn't suspect that I was dead at the bottom of the ocean until the sun went down. By then the sharks would've discovered my remains.

I decided to keep swimming. The buoy didn't look so far away anymore, and I could see Colin and Steve hanging on to it. It was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. It was painted white with red stripes and had a bell at the top. There was bird shit all over it. "We thought you drowned, man." Colin said, grinning as I swam up. His eyes were all pupil.

"Yeah, what took you so long?" Steve asked.

"What are you talking about? We're in the middle of the fucking Pacific Ocean. I can barely see the beach." I said, grabbing on to the buoy. Even my hands felt sore. My leg brushed it's slimy underside as it rocked back and forth. The bell was making an eerie clang every once in awhile.

"We saw a jellyfish down there a minute ago. Freaked us the fuck out." Colin said.

"Nah," Steve said, "that was just a plastic bag or something. There's no jellyfish here."

"It had tentacles man, It was definitely a jellyfish. I wonder what else is down there." He said looking down. I looked too, and saw a chain attached to the bottom of the buoy stretching into the murk. I realized there was a massive amount of water beneath us. I tried not to think about sharks.

Steve was looking at me strangely. "You okay Nick? You got a big vein sticking out of your forehead."

I reached up and felt my forehead. I could feel the vein.

"Oh yeah," Colin said, "that's freaky."

"Thanks guys. That's exactly the kind of thing I want to hear right now. I appreciate that."

"You should get your blood pressure checked out." Steve said.

"Yeah, thanks."

Steve pushed off from the buoy and told us he was heading in. "I'll see you guys on the beach. Try not to drown." He dove under the water and came up far away. I wondered how he held his breath that long.

"He's on my nerves today." Colin said.

"Why?"

"He acts like he's better than us or something."

"He's okay. He has to act like that to justify hanging out with us. Look at it from his perspective, he's like thirty years old and he's hanging out with _us_."

"I'm too fried to care anyway." Colin said. He looked up at the buoy for a moment. "Hey check it out," he said, "doesn't this thing look like a church?"

"What?"

"Not a whole church or anything. Just the tower part. It has a bell and everything. When I was swimming out here I thought it looked like something your grandma would sell in her store."

"I guess it kind of looks like a steeple." I said.

"You should tell her."

"Yeah Colin, I'll tell her she should start selling buoys. Those should be a hot item." My grandmother has a shop that sells religious books and gifts. The bell clanged loudly.

"Being out here right now is messing with my head dude, I'm going in." He said. "Are you coming?"

"No, I'm gonna rest a minute. Go ahead."

I watched him swim away. I was glad to be alone. I looked at the structure towering over my head. It rocked away and then toward me again and again. The clang of the bell happened directly over my head. My breath felt heavy and damp in my lungs. An airplane was flying by and I wondered how fast it was going. I knew it was traveling fast, but from my point of view it looked slow. I thought it must be because it was far away, but I couldn't think of why that would make it look slower. When I was little my mom took me on a car trip to the mountains to see snow, and I remember staring out the window at the trees going by and wondering why the ones that were farther away seemed to go by slower than the ones that were close. I knew we were passing all the trees at the same speed. I wanted to ask my mom but I was sure it was a stupid question.

I don't know how long I floated there alone, but it was long enough to start thinking about the church-buoy connection. I thought maybe it did have some religious purpose -I couldn't see what other function it had. Maybe it was a church for the spirits of people buried at sea. It was some sort of ghost-magnet, that was certain. I didn't want to be near it anymore, so I headed in.

When I reached the shore my body felt heavy and cumbersome. The beach was alive with color and movement and sound. I dragged myself out of the waves into a twisted carnival. The seagulls were making metallic squawks in stereophonic sound surround and kids were screaming and splashing each other menacingly. There were two dogs barking and running circles around each other, and someone had a radio on that was playing a gross parody of rock and roll. People strode by me with confident expressions on their faces and a whole family sat under an umbrella ripping birds apart with their teeth. I couldn't see Colin or Steve anywhere and I was sure they'd left me. I tried not to show the deep fear that was screaming inside me.

I pushed the wet hair out of my face and moved up the beach to dry sand, careful to avoid a couple pretending to play Frisbee. When I thought I wasn't close enough to anyone to be noticed much, I looked around. The beach was teeming with life, Colin and Steve could've been ten feet away and I'm not sure I would've seen them. I looked out at the buoy. It was hard to imagine that I'd just been there. I realized I must've drifted down the beach when I was swimming in so I started walking in what I hoped was the right direction, careful to avoid eye contact and to give people lots of room. Every now and then I looked around, but there was no sign of them. I noticed a guy in sunglasses who was following me. He had one of those metal detectors that are supposed to find treasure in the sand. It was connected to headphones and he moved it back and forth as he walked. I kept going, trying to act natural, but I was starting to get very nervous about the guy. I was sure he was listening to my footsteps. I heard someone call me and I stopped and looked around. It was Colin. "Yo man, you walked right past me. It's a good thing I saw you." He said. He was sitting on his towel with an expression of concern on his face.

"Thanks, I didn't see you there." I said, walking over and sitting next to him. The guy with the metal detector looked at us strangely and kept going.

"That fuckin' guy is spooky." Colin said.

"I know." I said. "He was following me. I came out of the water way down there and I didn't know where you guys were. Where's Steve?"

"He went to the store to get something to drink." A soft breeze sent shivers across my body so I put my T-shirt on. I pulled my cigarettes out of my shoe and lit one.

"I can't believe the beach is so crowded on a Wednesday." I said.

"I know, and this time of the year too. It's making me kinda paranoid. You think there's cops around?"

I laughed. "No man, I think we're safe." I watched the smoke from my cigarette curl in silence. Neither of us had anything to say to each other. I finished my cigarette fast and laid back on my towel. I shut my eyes and let the sun warm my body as I listened to the soft beach sounds. After a few minutes my mind started creating images to go along with the sounds. I saw an imaginary beach scene come together bit by bit. First some birds to go along with the seagull's bickering, then some kids playing underneath them, and finally the beach and the waves. It seemed just as real as the beach I'd seen with my eyes open. I inspected all the details of my imagined scene and found nothing missing. I actually started to wonder if I had my eyes open or closed. I had to concentrate to open them, and when I did, I was staring up at the blue sky. I lifted my head and looked at the real beach and saw that it looked completely different than the one I'd imagined. I shut my eyes again and put my head back down on the towel. I was trying to recreate my beach when Steve walked up. "Hey you freaks, what're you doing?" He asked, sitting down on his towel next to me. He had a large blue cup.

"Nothing." Colin said. "Just trippin' on the waves."

"You want a sip of Slurpee?" He held the cup out and I took it and sipped.

"Thanks." I said. "What flavor is that?"

"It's all of them combined." He took the cup back. "I think the guy behind the counter at the Seven Eleven was fucking with me. He started asking me all these random questions and we got into a long conversation. He must've known I was tripping."

Colin and I laughed. "What were you guys talking about?" I asked.

"Communists. The guy was ranting man, talking about Vietnam and China and Russia. I swear it's like they found a homeless guy and stuck him behind the counter... Either I'm really high or that dude had mental problems."

"Or both." Colin said.

"Yeah, probably both." Steve said. He took a sip of his drink.

"We should go talk to this guy." I said. "Is it far?"

"Nah, it's right up the street. Let's go, the guy's a trip."

The Seven Eleven looked scary. As we walked across the parking lot I had the distinct feeling we were approaching a fortress. The building was hunkered down on a massive slab of cement, and large metal boxes that could've been gun turrets were looking down at us from the roof. The door had an electric sensor that made three loud _pings_ as we entered. There was a man at the checkout counter buying lottery tickets and a heavy woman waiting behind him with chips and a soda. Another man and a little girl were standing in front of the hotdog condiment counter. Everyone in the store looked at us, which sent a wave of fear through me. Colin made a b-line to the video game machine, Steve went to the cooler, and I walked up the candy aisle, pretending I was looking for something. Every movement I made was precisely calculated to appear normal.

It was very bright in that Seven Eleven. I could see all the individual hairs on my arm standing at attention. They were sticking straight up and they began to shake. I ignored it and moved down the aisle as if I couldn't find the candy I wanted. I glanced down at my arm hair again. Every single hair was swaying like a hula girl. I tried hard not to laugh. Colin's video game machine blared loud music and sound effects.

I noticed the little girl staring at me from the end of the aisle. I meant to smile at her, but it was more like a grin. She looked alarmed. Her father took her hand and sent a bolt of hatred towards me with his eyes. He pulled her to the counter where he bought two hotdogs with lots of toppings. I heard _pings_ as the other man and woman left the store. I finally got a look at the guy Steve was talking about behind the counter. He was skinny with long black hair and a goatee. He had deep lines in his face and dark circles under his eyes. He handed the man his change with a blank expression. There was a loud explosion from the video game machine. "Shit!" Colin yelled. The guy with the hotdogs took his daughter by the hand and left the store in a hurry.

"So, you're back huh?" The guy said to Steve who was looking intently at the label of a protein drink.

"Um. Yeah." He said, putting it back in the cooler. "My friend wanted to hear about... uh. Russia."

"Oh yeah? Which one?"

"Him." Steve said, pointing at me over the chips. I froze.

"Well, come over here son, I'm not gonna stab you."

I walked up to the counter, thinking he probably _was_ going to stab me, otherwise why would he have mentioned it?

"What's your name?" He asked.

"Nick."

"Are you afraid of the boogeyman?"

"Um... No."

"Well you SHOULD BE goddamn it!" I flinched and Steve laughed. The guy continued. "Trillions of dollars are depending on you being scared shitless of the communist boogeyman. Nobody gets rich if you aren't scared son. Didn't your momma ever tell you to eat your vegetables or the boogeyman'd getcha?"

I tried to process what he was saying. "Wow, um. I don't think..."

"HEY!" He said suddenly, snapping his fingers twice in front of my face. "Stay with me here. The trillions of dollars we shovel into the gaping maw o' the military industrial complex and all the secret programs and spy satellites and shit -that's the nasty brussel sprouts you have to eat. Why? Because you're afraid of the boogeyman. Never mind that he ain't real. Hell, if it wasn't commies they'd have to invent something else for people to be scared of. If the people ain't scared, the whole backbone of the economy falls to shit and nobody gets rich. Don't be one of the stupid people Nick. The whole show is crooked from top to bottom, ya understand?"

"...Yeah, got it." I said. There were a couple more _pings_ as a girl with high hair and her boyfriend came in. "Thanks." I added, backing away from the counter. Steve shook the guy's hand and followed me over to the video game machine where Colin was absorbed in a pixilated space battle. He must've been on a high level because everything was moving very fast. Little insect-like aliens were dropping bombs and Colin rocked his whole body from side to side as he slammed the joystick back and forth to dodge them. There were only a few aliens left, but they were moving fast and eventually his little ship was pinned in the corner and destroyed.

"SHIT!" He yelled.

"Hey, watch your language over there." The guy behind the counter called out. "This is a family establishment."

"Sorry." Steve said. We left the store.

I noticed a payphone on the corner and told Steve and Colin to go back without me because I had to call my Gram and tell her I wouldn't be home for dinner. I was tripping, but I wasn't worried about talking to her. I could probably talk to her on angel dust and she wouldn't notice. As I walked to the payphone on the other side of the parking lot I practiced the lie in my head: _I'm at Colin's. we're watching a movie on TV, I won't make it home in time for dinner._ I dialed the number and heard her feeble greeting on the other end.

"Hi Gram, it's Nick..."

"Nicky, where have you been all day?" She asked. This was a bad question -she knew I hadn't been at school.

"I'm at Colin's place Gram, we're watching a movie on TV." I said.

"I got a phone call from your school today Nicky, they say you've been absent for over a month! What in god's name have you been doing all this time?"

"Um... It's probably just a mistake Gram. Don't worry about it." I said.

"That's a lie Nicky!" She said. "You can't lie your way out of this. I've had enough of your manipulations. Come home right now. We need to have a serious talk."

"Uh... Sorry Gram. I'll be home in a few hours." I said. "That's the best I can do." She was saying something else but I hung up the phone.

# 2

The vibration of my wheels on the pavement transferred through the soles of my feet, up my ankles to my shins. It felt unusually rough as I picked up speed skating down the hill on Stott Street. I took my anger out on my rear wheels, kicking them out with my back foot repeatedly, which slowed me down and made a satisfying little screech. The acid left in my system made the streetlights look like they were giving off a yellow haze in the darkness. I tried to say I was sorry, but she wouldn't let up. Finally I couldn't take it anymore so it was _fuck you_ and I slammed the door behind me. My stomach was twisted in frustration and hunger.

_Consequences_ she kept saying there had to be _consequences._ I told her I'd go to church and pray with her for god's help, but it didn't work this time. It worked for the porn, it worked for the Olde English, but it wasn't going to work this time. Just, _good, but it still doesn't solve this problem_ , and more crying. So I was stuck going to church the next morning and I still had to face her _consequences_.

I'd thought I could make it until the end of the school year. Just lay low for another month or so and make up some excuse for not graduating. I'd tell her I couldn't pass algebra or something. I'd intercepted all the letters that came from the school, but I hadn't expected them to call. I thought they'd throw a party when I stopped going. I knew the situation could explode like this, but the timing felt particularly cruel. Nice day at the beach, tripping with friends, and BOOM: reality. Time to deal with your fucked up life.

I tried an ollie but my foot slipped off the back of the board and I stumbled. I picked it up and sat on a cement wall that borders an inclined row of bushes on that side of the avenue. I sat with my back to the cars going by and lit a cigarette. No one ever walks around there, it's car territory.

The fight with Gram had left me drained. I thought about leaving her sad little apartment for good and getting my own place somewhere. I could pass for twenty if I put on my Good Shirt. The problem was that I had a vague sense that having a job was even worse than school, so I needed to fix the situation somehow. In the meantime I needed a place to crash.

I went down the list of people I knew who might put me up for a night. Colin was probably in his room playing Nintendo or getting ready to sleep. His mom wouldn't even open the door for me. I knew Steve would put me up, but I'd had enough of Steve for one day. Besides them, my options were nil. I still owed Maurice some money for weed, and my other acquaintances in the neighborhood had uptight parents.

_I don't want a grandson who's a drunk with no future_ she'd said. _Drunk. Future._ Maybe it wasn't a bad idea, I could try to stay drunk for the rest of my life and see what happened. At least then it would be settled -I was a hopeless drunk. That would be me. I considered seeing if I could get someone to buy me beer at the liquor store, but I decided to skip it.

If you're in South Pasadena after dark and you don't have a car and you can't go home or to a friend's house, you'll probably end up at the strip-lot. The strip-lot is a hidden hangout spot in a kind of no-mans-land across the LA river from the 110 freeway. There's a beat up old couch and a cinderblock wall that's covered in graffiti and you can make a lot of noise there without bothering anybody. In the strip-lot you can't be seen from any roads or sidewalks, so it served a useful purpose. If the cops knew about the spot they didn't care.

I went through the small park, avoiding all the dog-shit landmines, and around some bushes to get to the access road. There were two posts with a chain hanging between them signifying that you weren't allowed past, I stepped over the chain and headed down the road which was so overgrown that you had to walk along the outer edge. It's dangerous in the daytime because you can be seen from the freeway and a cop might think you were trying to get into the LA river for some reason. They call it the LA 'river' but it's really just a cement drainage ditch with a trickle of piss and air conditioner coolant running down the middle.

As I walked along the road I became aware of voices and movement up ahead. There's usually some teenage wasteland hanging out at the strip-lot, but I was in the mood to be alone and I'd hoped no one would be around.

I realized that the voices were coming toward me and they sounded distinctly girlish. Ducking down, I headed into the brush, pushing my way through with my skate. I got as far as I could and crouched behind a thick patch of weeds. There was a branch sticking into my ribs and I had to put one hand on the ground for support. It was an awkward position, but I felt hidden.

I couldn't see them but I could hear them as they walked past. It sounded like two girls and I caught part of their conversation. One of them was saying that something had come out of nowhere.

" _Really_ ," the other one said, "as if it wasn't sick enough that he has that mustache. Who the fuck does he think he is?"

"Who cares?" The first one said. "They're just a couple of FUCKING FAGGOTS!" She yelled this back so whoever was at the end of the road could hear. There was a response but I couldn't make it out. The girls laughed and kept going. When I was sure they were gone I stood up and made my way back to the outer edge of the road, pulling some stray twigs out of my hair.

The strip-lot is a sketchy place, but I'd been there a hundred times and I thought I knew everyone who hung out there. Besides it was South Pasadena, home of yuppies and those who aspire to be yuppies, not exactly a rough neighborhood.

It was dark except for some light filtering through the trees from the freeway behind me. I recognized Martin right away, but the other guy I didn't know. He was a little bigger than Martin and he was adding to the graffiti on the wall with a can of gold spray paint.

"Hey, you guys working on an art project?"

They both looked up, startled and ready to run. I hopped down off the road so they could see me better. "What the fuck you sneaking up on us for? We thought you were the police." Martin said when he saw I was alone.

"Yeah," the other one said, "you think you're funny or something? You could get your ass kicked sneaking up on people."

I gripped my skate. "Come on Martin," I said, "you know the police don't come back here."

"You know this fucking guy Marvin?" The big one asked.

"I never saw him before in my life."

"That's funny, I remember you took the Just Say No pledge in front of the entire school last year." I said. His friend started laughing.

Martin walked toward me to get a closer look. "Oh it's just Nicky." He said. "Where've you been? I haven't seen you in forever, did you get expelled or some shit?"

"Nah, I just quit going."

"This fool lives in the same building as Colin." He said to his friend. "He's alright."

"Did you really take the Just Say No pledge Marvin? I wish I could've seen that shit." His friend said, giggling and shaking up the can of spray paint. The little mixer-ball in the can rattled. He wore pressed khakis that sagged down to his hips and a white tank-top. I could see a faint moustache and his hair was slicked back. He had Adidas shell tops on with fat laces. I tossed my skate on the couch and sat beside it.

Martin was shorter than him and his curly hair was trimmed in a tight fade so that it almost made a flat-top. He was wearing new jeans and a plaid button-up shirt. He had on some kind of Nikes. He was a thin kid, a grade younger than me. He liked to swagger around school like he was hard or something, but his mom drove a BMW. Colin and I used to crack on him all the time, but lately he'd been hanging out with some people who could kick our asses, so we left him alone. Everyone called him Martian, which I guess is where the Marvin thing came from.

"What're you writing over there?" I asked. The guy stopped for a second and looked over his shoulder at me.

As he spoke he turned back and started spraying again. His hand made graceful loops and arcs across the wall. "First and foremost I got to put up the N.T.P. that's my hood and my crew. Then comes the classic 'barbwire' tag, that's me, don't front like you haven't seen that shit, and, on the bottom," he paused for effect, "Marvin says Just Say No."

"You put that shit up and I'll kick your ass." Martin said.

"Oh you gonna be tough now in front of your friend? It's too late man, it's already up."

Martin went over to inspect his friend's piece.

"You have a way with words." I said.

"Yeah." He stepped back and looked at his work. "Words are my bitch."

"You can be a real fuck sometimes, Ricky." Martin said. "I just did that shit so they wouldn't mess with me. It worked too, Mr. Banse left me alone after that."

"Mr. Banse -that guy's a dick." I said. "I didn't even have him and he'd still stop me in the hall and check my eyes. Were you there when he flipped out on that blonde freshman girl in the lunchroom because her eyes were all red and she started crying. She was swearing up and down she had allergies and begging him not to take her to the principal."

"Yeah, I saw that shit. I wish I had some buddha right now so my eyes could get all red... I know you got some weed Nick, you're always smoking that shit."

"Nah, I'm tapped out." I said. "But you had those girls back here, so you suave-ass Latinos must at least have some wine or something."

"We're Chicanos, fool... And what we got is better than that. Give him a little sniff man, I want to see if he can handle his shit." Martin said. I got excited for a second, thinking they had some variety of snortable powder, but I saw that I was wrong when Martin's friend started spraying the paint into a paper bag. He walked over with a big smile on his face.

"You'll love this, hommie." His eyes widened. "It's like pac-man going through your brains and shit."

"Yeah, well that sounds great, thanks." I mumbled, taking the bag from him. I exhaled as I put it up to my face, covering my mouth and nose. I pressed it hard so that no air could get in around the edges and I inhaled deeply. It stung like hell and I pulled the bag away immediately to give myself air. I could taste the chemicals in the paint and I was choking. I coughed violently and doubled over for a second. There was a long trail of spit hanging from my mouth, but I couldn't feel it. I quickly wiped it away and sat up. The two of them were laughing, but I could barley hear them. I felt blood rushing to my head and I had to grab the arm of the couch for stability. I looked over and Martin's smiling face was right next to me. I thought I might puke.

"You put too much in that time." I heard Martin say. It sounded like he was far away. It wasn't dark anymore, it was the brightest daylight I'd ever seen. Then it was too bright. Everything around me was shining brilliant white light. I had a headache.

# 3

I woke up to the sound of a siren. It wasn't a cop car or an ambulance, and it wasn't a car alarm. It took me a minute to process where I was and what I was hearing. It sounded like the air raid sirens in old war movies when the enemy was about to bomb. I pictured Londoners running for cover. A long arabesque of sound from a dull moan to a high pitch squeal and back down again. I wondered if someone had finally declared war on South Pasadena.

Sitting up on the couch I felt a sharp pain in my temple. The strip-lot looked much better at night, in the daytime it took on a grim quality that felt strangely familiar. I didn't want to be there. It occurred to me that I'd promised Gram I'd go to church with her. I looked around, trying to gage what time it was by the sunlight, but I couldn't be sure. Gram liked to go to the 9:45 service on weekdays, and it was definitely past 9:00. I wondered why that siren was going off.

It took a while for me to find my skate, and for a moment I thought that Martin and Barbie had stolen it. But of course they were too cool to skate, they rode bikes or got fancy automobile rides. I pulled myself up onto the road and headed toward the park. I was in a hurry because Gram would be 'disappointed' with me if I missed church. Staying out all night was one thing, she was used to that, but if I missed church I had to hear about it in long lectures on 'the righteous path' and my 'immortal soul'.

Skating home that morning I was the loudest thing on the street. I could hear birds chirping and the wail of the siren in the distance, but mainly I heard my wheels on the pavement echoing off of the houses, trees, and parked cars. Hearing that noise spreading out around me made me think about bats, and how they use echolocation instead of sight. Usually that was a hard concept to understand, but right then it made sense because I could hear how my sound changed as I went by different things.

I was coming up my street when I saw Gram turn out of the underground garage in her dark blue 1983 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. She was wearing her sunglasses and a hat. I didn't think she saw me, but it was hard to tell because of the sunglasses. Either way, I felt relief, I wouldn't have to see her for at least two hours. On the other hand I'd have to hear about my soul when I did see her.

Walking into the apartment, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the fake mantle. I was startled for a second, and then I had to laugh. I had gold paint all around my mouth and up over my nose. I wondered what Gram would've said if she'd been there to see this.

She'd left a note on the fridge that I was supposed to vacuum the shop and turn the air conditioner on. She wanted it nice and cool in case someone strolling by was suddenly overcome with the urge to buy Virgin Mary nightlights for their kids. The note also said 'we need to talk' -an ominous phrase.

I took my shoes off and sand came pouring out. In the shower I immediately began the process of scrubbing the skin around my mouth with a wash cloth. I thought it was working because I saw gold on the cloth, but when I got out and cleared a spot on the mirror with my hand, I still had paint from the bridge of my nose all the way down to my chin. I brought the washcloth to the sink and held it under scalding water. After a few minutes of scrubbing as hard as I could using lots of soap, I looked at my reflection again. There was still gold, a bit faded in spots, but still very bright on my nostrils and nose and all around my mouth. I repeated the scrubbing process twice, hardly making any progress. I finally had to stop because my face was now bright red, as well as gold, from having been rubbed raw. I felt like crying or hitting something.

I dried myself and put on clean boxers and my Good Pants and Good Shirt. I left my Good Shoes where they were and put on my Chuck Taylor All Stars. If I was going to sit through grand lectures and watch Gram wring her hands all day, I was going to do it in comfortable shoes. I got the store keys and took one more look at myself in the mirror. My face was a disaster area, I was going to scare the shit out of everybody.

I skated slowly toward the shop, smoking two cigarettes as I went. Her store was called Trinity Gifts and she sold anything that had to do with the Catholic religion. It was in a two room storefront on Mission Street that was out of the way but got some foot traffic from an ice cream parlor around the corner and an antique store across the street. She sold five different kinds of Votive candles with illustrations of the saints and Christ's bleeding head, many different kinds of rosary beads from three-dollar plastic versions to handmade silver ones she kept in a glass case that cost over seventy dollars. She also carried _The World's Smallest Rosary_ , and a glow in the dark model. There were Scapulars, Sacrifice Beads, Blessed Virgin and Saint Christopher epoxy medals, Tiny Bibles, and light-up Our Lady of Guadalupe key chains, pewter Saint Christopher visor clips, inscribed Holy Nails, Prayer Box pendants, capsules of Lourdes Water imported from the Miraculous Shrine in Lourdes France, ceramic Praying-Baby Keepsakes, Angel Light-Switch Covers and Picture Frames, Laminated Jesus Bookmarks, Madonna of the Streets coffee mugs, Divine Mercy Magnets, bottles of Holy Oil from the Grotto of the Nativity, shirts and ties with stained glass-like images, various Ciboriums and First Communion Chalices, Inspirational Pocket Coins, Moral Compasses, Saint Jude Jigsaw Puzzles, First Communion Veils, Pope Charts with illustrations of all the popes through history, Monstrances, Angel Windchimes, Ten Commandment Paperweights, the flag of Vatican City, and Breath Mints made with genuine holy water. She had a rack with postcards and holy cards that featured images of various saints, the Pope, and Jesus going through the stations of the cross. The most expensive postcard cost three dollars and was a hologram image of the Annunciation in a 3D. She had pro-life and pro-Pope bumper stickers and those fish symbols that are so popular. For kids there were Guardian Angel baby blankets, Stuffed Lambs that played 'Jesus Loves Me', the Divinity board game, Illustrated Bible Stories and Aesop's Fables, Catholic Craft Kits, Religious Playing Cards, Nun paper dolls, Pope coloring books, Catechism Flash Cards, and Noah's Ark Shrink-E-Dinks. She sold cassette tapes of hymns and Christian folk-rock. There was a large box of dashboard statues including Jesus, Devino Nino, Virgin de Regla, Nino de Atocha, Our Lady Of Fatima, Our Lady Of Mt. Carmel, Our Lady Of Guadalupe, Our Lady Of Charity el Cobre, Saint Joseph, Saint Lazarus, Saint Christopher, Saint Anthony, Saint Francis, Saint Claire, Saint Therese, Saint Barbara, Saint Jude, and Saint Michael. And there were crucifixes, tons of crucifixes. Some were small enough to fit on a chain, others were so big it would take two people to move them. She had a five foot long wooden Crucifix mounted on the wall, high above the others. I don't think Gram ever meant to sell that one, it was just there to lend ambiance to the store. She had books about Catholicism and various editions of the bible. Some of the things in the store were expensive, like the hand painted Icons from eastern Europe, but mostly she sold low-end plastic crap, like the Virgin Mary nightlights or the plastic Saint Francis of Assisi figurines. By far the creepiest thing in the store was a painting by a local artist of The Infant of Prague. I don't know the back story on the Infant, but the picture was a baby in a long ornate robe and a huge crown. I think the artist used a Cabbage Patch Doll as a model. The thing was straight out of a nightmare.

The merchandise associated with the Catholic church is about equal to Star Trek. Books, posters, action figures, apparel, all sorts of products that appeal to fans who are obsessively devoted to obscure subplots -it's really a one to one equation.

I turned the thermostat down to 65 degrees and started to vacuum. By the time I was finished there was an old man looking through the books. I sat behind the display counter near the cash register and put my feet up on an unopened box of merchandise from Mexico City. "How much is this book?" The old guy asked, holding up a book about the Pope.

"Prices are on the first page." I answered.

"Oh," he said, flipping it open. He looked at me for a second. "What is that you have all over your face there, son?"

"I was huffing paint last night and I was kind of sloppy about it." I said.

"You were what now?"

"Huffing paint. You know -to get high." I said. The old guy got a sad look on his face and put the book down. He turned and walked out of the store. I wished I'd lied to him. "Come again." I called out.

When Gram arrived about an hour later, she had Father Billik with her. I knew the only reason he could be there was to talk to me. Gram thought Father Billik was the greatest person in the world, I thought he was a twat. I'd heard a couple of his sermons and he always managed to mention something really great he'd done for poor people or drug addicts. "Nicky, I brought..." She stopped and gave me a strange look. "What in the lord's name happened to your face?"

"Oh nothing," I said. "I had a little mishap while I was working on an art project."

"Well, it's very odd-looking Nicky. You can't just walk around like that, you should wash it off." She said.

"I tried Gram. It's spray paint. It won't come off no matter how hard I scrub." I said. The Father stood beside Gram looking at me as if I was the most pitiful thing he'd ever seen.

"I brought Father Billik here to talk with you Nicky," she said. "I told him about what's been going on, and he said he would help us work it out. I'm sorry, I just don't know what to say to you anymore. I had a long talk with your mother last night and we've come to an understanding. Father Billik will tell you everything." I realized right then how seriously she was taking this. As far as I knew my mother and Gram hadn't spoken to each other in over a year.

"Yes Nick, come with me, I'll give you a ride home and we can discuss your situation on the way." He said.

"Yeah, alright," I mumbled, picking up my skate. We walked to his gray Datsun and he opened the door for me. As he walked around to the driver's side I didn't bother to reach across and unlock his door. I could tell he'd noticed the subtle fuck-you because he seemed irritated.

"Do you think I'm stupid Nick?" He asked. I just looked at him. "I know why there's paint all over your face. You were using it to get high. I went to college in the sixties before I went into the seminary. I'm not as out of touch as you might think." He started the car and began to drive. "What is it you want out of life Nick?" He asked.

"Uh... I don't know."

" _Uh I don't know_ isn't going to get you very far. If all you want is to get high and play with toys I can take you downtown to a soup kitchen that's full of people who wanted the same thing. I volunteer there once a week and I'll tell you, it isn't about having fun for them anymore, it's about survival. You have to make a choice. Do you want to scrape by and survive, or do you want to _make_ something of your life?"

"I guess I just want to be left alone." I said.

"LEFT ALONE? LEFT ALONE?" He shouted. "You're a person like everyone else. You have a family and you have responsibilities. You have to eat and you need shelter. You're going to have to pull your weight, now how do you intend to do that?" He asked.

I could feel my pulse start to race. I wanted to scream at him as loud as I could. "I don't know." I said.

We sat quietly for the rest of the ride. When we reached the apartment building he pulled up to the curb and left the car running. "Here are the facts." He said. "You're a seventeen year old kid with a drug and alcohol problem who's dropped out of high school. You have no skills or money-earning potential of any kind. You've displayed a cruelty and indifference that has scared your grandmother and your mother on many occasions. You have no ambition that I can see. The future for you looks very bleak. I know you don't respect me or what I do, and I don't care. I'll tell it to you straight, your grandmother can't look after you any more. She's kicking you out of her apartment. This shouldn't be much of a change for you because I understand you spent very little time there anyway. We'll call this strike two Nick, because you've got one more chance. Your mother has agreed to take you back at her place, provided you get a job and pay for your room and board. Personally, I'd write you off entirely if you were my kid, but she's giving you another chance. You're to pack your things and move out of your grandmother's apartment tomorrow."

"Forty dollars." I said.

"What?"

"It's okay, you don't have to say anything. I think I know what you want. It's twenty for a hand job, forty for a blowjob and anything beyond that is negotiable. You don't have to play any games with me."

He looked at me for a long time. "Get out of my car." He said.

"Alright, I'm going... Pervert." I slammed the door and walked away.

# 4

I packed all the stuff I wanted to take in my backpack. It was just some clothes and a notebook full of shitty drawings. There really wasn't anything else I wanted. I went into Gram's dresser and took two tens out of the stash in her sock drawer. She would notice they were missing, but I thought she might feel guilty about kicking me out and not mention it. I wasn't going to spend the night there. I wasn't wanted. I also didn't want to give Gram a chance to apologize or try to explain herself which would just make me feel bad. I walked down the stairs and across the courtyard to Colin's apartment. He opened the door in shorts and a t-shirt. "I'm glad you're here," I said, "I thought you might've gone to school today."

"Nah. I'm takin' the rest of the week off. What's up with you?"

"Gram kicked me out. I have to go live with my mom for awhile." I said.

"Oh... That sucks. Come on in bro, I'm just playing this new Nintendo shit." He said, opening the door wider. I walked into the dim living room. There were dirty dishes on the coffee table and ceramic figurines on the mantle. "What are you playing?" I asked.

"Super Mario 2. 'Shit's addictive, but I can't get past level six. Little Brian finished it already." He said, walking into the room he shared with his brother. "Dude, what's all over your face?"

"Spray paint. I was with Martin and some guy named Ricky at the strip-lot last night and we were sucking it out of a paper bag. I passed out from that shit."

"You shouldn't do that. My one cousin from Montebello knows a guy who's retarded now from doing that." He said, picking up the game controller and unpausing it. There were dirty clothes in piles around the room mixed in with some of Brian's toys. Both beds were unmade and there was a half eaten bowl of Cheerios on the floor. The TV was sitting on a board supported by two milk crates, and Colin sat cross legged on the carpet facing it. I put my backpack and my skateboard down on the floor and sat on the bed beneath a BMX poster of a shirtless, long-haired guy flying over a dirt track. "Was he with Rick the football player, or barbwire Ricky?" He asked.

"Barbwire Ricky. He was writing up the whole wall with it."

"You're lucky he was cool with you, he's on some brown-power shit. He usually hates white boys." He said.

"He wasn't so scary." I said.

Colin misjudged the timing on a jump and his little princess character went falling off the screen. "Fuck!" he said. "I gotta beat this level, I always die right there."

"It's 'cause you're the princess, why don't you be a man character?"

"The princess is the only one who can hover. Her dress puffs out and she rides the air-current like a flying squirrel." He said.

"They didn't have a unicorn or a My Little Pony you could be?"

"Shut up man. You don't even have Nintendo. You probably never even played this." He said, restarting the game. "Did your Grandma kick you out just for ditching school?"

"Yeah. They called and told her I haven't been there this month. I guess it wasn't just that. We've had quite a few run-ins over the past couple years." I said. "It was the last straw. Anyway, fuck her."

"You shouldn't talk like that about your Grandma. Seriously, man. She's a nice lady. Here you come, all fucked up all the time, bringing drugs and Black Tail magazines up in her little apartment. Staying out all night. You must've scared the shit out of her. Fuck... If I'd have done that with my Grandmother when she was living, she would've beat my ass." He said.

"Yeah you're probably right, but the only reason she let me stay there in the first place was to make my mom look stupid. Her and my mom have been at war for like thirty years -they hate each other. So when my mom decided that I was no good and kicked my ass out, Gram figured she would turn me around, make an eagle scout outta me. She just wanted to show my mom that it was _her_ fault I was a fuck-up. She thinks Jesus can transform people, she talks about it all the time. I must be like kryptonite to Jesus 'cause his powers don't work on me. Anyway now I have to go back to Altadena to live with my mom again. I have to deal with her shit, plus the whole scene up there that's full of assholes." I said.

"Oh that's right, Jessie and Pat." He smiled. "I guess you're going to have to see them again, huh?"

"Not Pat -he's dead. They found his body in some woman's backyard." I said. "He'd been laying there for two days, dead as fuck."

"What? You never told me that. What happened?"

"I just found out about it myself last week. Maurice told me. The police found his mother's car smashed into a telephone pole, but Pat wasn't around. See, after he wrecked the car he saw the police coming so he decided to run for it -he was drunk and there were a couple of warrants out on him. So he goes cutting through peoples backyards and he got about a mile away before he dropped dead. He'd cracked his skull open in the accident. Two days later some lady is out pruning her bushes and sees Pat's bloated corpse laying there." I said. "The fucked up part is that if he'd gotten treatment right away, he would've lived for sure. He would have been arrested, but he would've lived."

"Holy shit."

"I think it's kind of funny. At least his stupid ass won't be stealing my mom's shit and getting me in trouble anymore." I said. "I just have to watch out for Jessie now."

I'd told Colin all about Jessie and Pat. They were always together and they supplied all the younger kids in the neighborhood with weed and acid and could even get angel dust and crank, or so I'd heard. They did a lot of other stuff too, including once stealing my mother's TV and stereo from our house. I know it was them because I happened to be home at the time. I tried to stop them, I was yelling and cursing, I even threatened to call the cops but they said they'd brake my arms and burn down the house if I did. The TV was worth way more than the money I owed them. When my mom got home I tried to act like I didn't know anything about it, but she could tell I was lying. She thought I'd done it. I told her it was Pat and Jessie, but she thought I was in on it, even if I wasn't the mastermind. It was one of the events that preceded my getting booted out of her house. "Hey I just had an idea," I said. "Does your mom have make-up remover?"

"Yeah, probably. She has enough shit in the cupboard." He said. "Why?"

"For this fucking gold paint. I couldn't get it off with soap."

"Oh. Don't make a mess man, seriously." He said, absorbed in Mario-land.

I found a bottle in the medicine cabinet behind the Pepto and poured a generous amount onto a washcloth. As I put the cloth up to my face the fumes were strong and I was light headed for a second. It took about half the bottle, but it was working, I could see the paint coming off. The scrubbing left my face red, but at least now when someone looked at me they wouldn't think _there goes a suicidal paint huffer_.

On my way back to Colin's room I stopped to look at the family pictures that were hanging in the hallway. They were mostly of Colin and little Brian over the years, in uniforms for little league, soccer, and BMX. If I didn't know Colin I'd never have guessed what kind of person he was from those pictures. "Hey, let's get out of here." I said walking back into his room.

"Yeah alright. I'm sick of this shit anyway. What do you want to do?"

"I thought you could pay a little visit to your cousin." I said.

"Maurice? No man, I don't have any money, and you owe him. He's not going to give us anything till you pay." He said.

"I have twenty bucks, I'll wait outside and you can go in and get us a dub sack. We'll go to the park and roll up a joint."

"Alright, but you gotta stay out of sight. If he knows I'm buying that shit for you he won't be happy." He switched off the Nintendo and stood up. "Wow, check it out." He said, looking at the screen. The TV had flipped to the six o-clock news when he turned off the game machine and they were showing footage of the space shuttle Challenger exploding. The anchor woman was saying it was the third anniversary of the tragedy. A fiery streak ripped across the screen and split into a bubble of smoke and debris. A piece shot out and pulled a long trail of smoke behind it.

When we got to Maurice's house I gave Colin the twenty dollars and sat at a bus stop on the corner a block away. Maurice lived with his wife and baby and his mother-in-law in a run-down house with aluminum siding and a low chain link fence around the dirt yard. It was the worst house on the street. There was a Doberman chained to a tree near the driveway, and if you wanted to see Maurice you had to either stand on the sidewalk and yell for him, or run past the dog to get to the back door. I was a yeller -Colin was a runner. I lit a cigarette and rolled my skate back and forth with one foot.

I was getting bored, so I skated across the street to check out a little wall between the sidewalk and a row of bushes that bordered a convenience store. It was about a foot high so I thought I could ollie up to it, the question was: could I stay on top of it without falling? It was pretty wide but I knew I'd still have to get a good landing. I got up to speed and put my feet in ollie position. I kept my eyes on the spot where I wanted to land, and I popped up. On my way, a fear of falling into the bushes came over me. I held my weight too far back which didn't bode well for my landing. I put my back foot down on the wall instead of the board. My front foot launched my skate into the bushes. I retrieved it and went back to my starting point. I told myself I had to attack that shit if I was going to pull it off. I went at it a bit faster this time. As I put the board down on the wall I knew I was off center. I wound up in what would've been a grind, but the skate chirped to a standstill and I had to run headlong for a few steps before I regained my balance.

I got my skate and was rolling back to my starting point when I heard a blast that shook all the windows around me and left my ears ringing. Maurice's dog started barking and a bunch of pigeons were startled into flight. It sounded like it came from Maurice's house.

Colin came tearing around the driveway past the dog and jumped on his bike. He raced over with wide eyes. "Hurry man, we gotta get out of here!" He yelled as he flew by me. I pumped hard to catch up.

"What the fuck happened?"

"Maurice's crazy, that's what happened." We turned down a residential street. "Did you hear that?"

"Everyone within a twenty mile radius heard that, what the fuck was it?"

He stopped and looked around nervously, he was still breathing hard. He reached into the pocket of his windbreaker and produced a five inch long red tube with a fuse coming out the middle. "This." He said. "It's an M-1000. A quarter stick of dynamite. He brought back fifty of these big fuckers from Mexico. I told him I didn't believe it was a quarter stick of dynamite, so he lit one and tossed it in his backyard. You think the cops will come now?"

"Yeah dude, that sounded like bomb. You could do some serious damage with one of those things. Did he just give you that?"

"Nah, I bought it."

"Tell me you didn't spend our weed money on dynamite." I said.

"No, dude relax. I bought a dime bag and this. I thought it was too good to pass up." He explained.

"You have done well. Let's go twist one and figure out what we're going to do with it."

I opened the back door to Gram's shop and turned on the light in the small storage room. Colin left his bike in the alley and crept in behind me. "Is this a break-and-enter?" He whispered.

"No, I have a key." I said in full voice. "Don't worry, I come in here after hours all the time, no one even notices. Relax."

"So what is it? What's the great idea?"

"It's right next to you." I said.

He stepped back and took a look. It was a five foot tall ceramic statue of the virgin Mary. It was hand painted and shiny with some sort of lacquer. The face had an exaggerated childlike quality, with big eyes and an angelic expression. I always hated it. "Holy shit, are you serious? That's sacrilegious man, we can't blow this up." He said.

"No no, you're looking at it all wrong. I don't want to blow it up just for the hell of it. It's for those astronauts who died three years ago on Challenger. It's a sacrifice offered up to them, a kind of prayer. We'll be sending this holy virgin to them the same way that they died." I explained. Colin thought about this for a second.

"You don't give a fuck about those astronauts, you just want to blow this thing up." He said laughing.

"Yeah but if anyone asks, it was a prayer to the memory of Challenger." I said.

"Alright." He said. "Where we gonna do it?"

"I'll show you, come on." I opened the door to the alley. It took both of us to move the statue. It wasn't heavy, but it was cumbersome and fragile. When we had it in the alley I turned off the lights in the shop and locked up. I put my skate near Colin's bike and went to the back of the office building next door. I stood under the fire escape and jumped, trying to grab the ladder. I tried twice before I finally got hold of the bottom rung and pulled it down with a loud clanging. I climbed to the first landing and Colin passed the statue up carefully. From there, we carried the doomed statue up the stairs, each of us holding an end like it was a rolled up carpet. We got it to the roof and put it down in the corner closest to the street. We turned it so it was facing us and took a few steps back. There was a street light behind it, and the virgin cast a long shadow across the roof. It was a cool night, and there was a strong wind moving dark clouds across the sky. "This is beautiful up here." I said, pulling the half smoked joint from my cigarette pack. I lit it and took a couple small hits. "I wish I had a camera."

"It looks like the cover of a heavy metal record." Colin said, taking the joint. "We're gonna have to bail quick after she blows. We could roll up Diamond and cut behind the library to get back to my place."

"Sounds good," I said. He handed me the joint and I took a hit, feeling the sting of the cherry on my fingertips. I snuffed it out on the sole of my shoe and dropped the roach.

We walked over to the virgin and I tilted her back. Colin put the M-1000 right in the center of the circle her dress had made in the gravel on the rooftop. He held the flame of my lighter close to the fuse. "Point of no return." He said. The fire jumped to the fuse with a sizzle. I put her back down on top of the bomb and we ran to the other side of the roof.

"It's a super long fuse." Colin said. "At Maurice's we thought it was a dud. We were about to check it when that shit went off."

"I wonder if she'll crack or disintegrate." I said.

We both looked at the statue in silence for a moment. "Hey man... Is this fucked up?" He asked me. "Maybe this was a bad idea. I'm not religious or anything, but I _am_ catholic, and we're blowing up the Holy Mother." He looked down at his feet and then back up at me "We shouldn't do this shit man, I'm going to get that thing out of there."

I saw that he was serious so I put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. "Are you crazy? It'll blow your arm off. Leave it alone."

"We have to do something. Quick, kneel down and say a prayer... I'm serious. I don't want to disrespect Jesus' mother." He said. He looked panicked.

"Alright man, let's kneel." He actually got down on his knees, so I did too. "Dear Lord," I began, "we hereby renounce you and all your teachings. Our souls are filled with the black hate of Satan's power..."

"Shut up man. Do it right." He said.

I continued, "WITH THIS DESTRUCTIVE ACT WE GIVE OUR SOULS TO SATAN. LEAD US INTO THE FIRE OF ETERNAL DAMNATION WHERE WE SHALL DO THY BIDDING..."

"You _FUCKING ASSHOLE_ ," Colin hissed, "leave me out of that satanic shit!"

"HEAR US O SATAN AS WE CALL THY NAME." I raised my arms to the sky "BRAND US WITH THE MARK OF THE BEAST! 6 6 6! PRAISE CAIN! PRAISE JUDAS! LET THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH, AS IT IS IN _HELL_!"

I was screaming this when the statue exploded into a million pieces and we were hit with ceramic shrapnel. One piece hit me in the face just below my eye. I could hear the blast's echo rolling up into the foothills and the sound of a thousand virgin fragments raining down on the street below. We must have sent pieces of that bitch five miles.

# 5

When I got off the bus at Topeka and Lake I could hear the siren again. It put me on edge. I looked at the people sitting in the Jack in the Box on the corner, but they didn't look concerned. I dropped my skate and stepped on, rolling in the direction of my old street. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon, and my mom wouldn't be home until after five, so I had no way of getting into the house.

Altadena is a little less than a city and a little more than a neighborhood. It sits on a long hill below the Sierra Madre mountain range and soaks up sunshine into it's massive volumes of asphalt and concrete. Like any other part of Los Angeles, the air is usually thick with smog, which gives anything that is over a mile away a yellowish look. You might get used to the smog and forget that it's even there, but then the rain comes and washes it away and the mountains look startlingly clear and vivid, and you notice details you'd never seen before. Lake Avenue is the commercial center where all the shops and restaurants are, and everything else spreads out from there in a more or less suburban grid.

The first person I saw was Mya. She was sitting on her porch, doing nothing in particular. Mya was okay when she wasn't with Julie. Together, they united to form Super-Bitch, but separately Mya was cool. Her house sat at the corner of a bright street and was once a light blue color that had faded to gray. There were generous portions of crabgrass in her lawn, and beside the cement porch a wild looking bush had grown to half the height of the house. "Whoa," she said as I walked across her yard, "blast from the motherfuckin' past. What are you doing around here?"

"I have no idea." I said, putting my skate down and sitting on her top step. "What's up Mya? It's been a long time... You changed-up your style." She'd always had red hair and bangs, now it was died black with white streaks down the front. The left side of her head was shaved. She was short and chubby with a prominent nose, and she was prone to acne so she usually wore lots of makeup to cover it. She wasn't pretty, but her attitude was open and raw, which made her sexy in an unusual way.

"I just dyed it last week, 'cause Julie and Eric and me went to the Circle Jerks show. We only saw half the show 'cause some skinhead bashed Julie's nose in with his elbow and we had to take her to the hospital. Now she's got a bandage on her face and gauze stuffed up her nostrils." She laughed.

"Sounds like a good show, I wish I'd been there." I said. "Who's Eric?"

"Oh, you never met Eric? He's Julie's retarded boyfriend. She thinks he's some kind of genius because he does these really big paintings. They look like shit, but they're really big so he must be a genius, right?" She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Where've you been all this time? It's been what? two years? Jeremy said your Mom kicked you out."

"My mom kicked me out, so I went to live with my Grandmother, now my Grandmother just kicked me out, so I'm back here. I'm back where I started, only now all my stuff smells like old lady."

"I know what you mean. I got the same thing with my grandma too. I know all about the old lady smell." She said.

"Hey, I've never met your grandmother, is she home? I'd like to say hi." I got up and walked toward the front door.

"Get the fuck away from the door." She said. "You're not going in my house. Sit your ass down on the steps and don't be bothering my grandma." I shrugged and sat down. Mya could kick my ass and wouldn't hesitate to do it. I knew her grandmother was some sort of agoraphobic who Mya didn't want anyone in the neighborhood to see. Not that having every window in the house covered with sheets didn't give it away. They even had newspaper covering some of the windows. I felt bad for Mya for having to live there. I pulled my cigarettes out and she asked for one. I gave it to her and tried to hand her my lighter, but she wouldn't take it.

"I can't use that. It's a white lighter, that's bad luck. Don't you know that? Here gimmie your cigarette and I'll light mine off your cherry." She said.

"What the fuck are you talking about? I never heard that." I handed her my smoke.

"Yeah, white lighters are bad. It's a well-known fact." She said.

"Oh yeah? Why is that?"

"They just are." She said.

"I bet you never walk under a ladder either. You gotta protect yourself from all the bad juju out there, huh?"

"Juju?"

"I don't know, whatever." I said. "You're the one with all the rules. What else is bad luck?"

"Well everyone knows about black cats, breaking mirrors, and Friday the thirteenth, right? You've heard of all those haven't you?" I nodded. "Well there are other ones not too many people know, like looking at the back of a mirror, lighting three cigarettes with one match, or picking up coins off the street..."

"Wait a minute," I said, "I thought finding a coin on the street was good luck."

"No wonder your life is a mess. It's easy to put a curse on a coin and leave it for someone to pick up. If you pick up the coin and put it in your pocket, you've accepted the curse. You should be especially careful of coins you find near your home or in places you go all the time, because then someone could've left the coin specifically for you." She said. "Which makes the curse more powerful. And it doesn't have to be a coin, it could be something else for you to touch or move. It could be a glass of water or a piece of trash or anything really. If you touch it or move it, you're cursed."

"What if they leave it somewhere where you have to move it? Like a piece of trash on your front porch or something? I mean what are you gonna do, just let it sit there forever?" I asked.

"Well the good thing is, those curses are easy to break. Curses that are easy to throw are usually easy to break too. If you absolutely have to touch or move some unknown object, you can protect yourself by making a dismissive gesture as you set it down." She waved her hand like she was shooing away a fly. "It's especially effective if you actually say the words 'dismissive gesture' while you're doing it. Then you're safe."

"So basically, you're telling me you're a witch. I leave for awhile, and when I come back, you've turned into a witch. Is there anything else I should know?"

"Just keep in mind that the dead walk among us, so you shouldn't disrespect them. They can influence your life in many ways, good and bad." She said.

"You're super creepy today Mya. Have you been listening to Morrisey or something?"

"Laugh if you want to, I'm trying to help you. Anyway, I fuckin' hate Morrisey." She said.

"Ahhh, you liar. I remember you used to have all the Smiths' tapes and you knew all the lyrics. Morrisey was all you and Julie ever talked about." I said.

She made a sour face. "Shut the fuck up. You used to listened to Michael Jackson."

"...I just thought it was cool he had a tiger. Come on, are you telling me you didn't buy a copy of Thriller when it came out?"

"No, never. Even back then I knew it was cheesy as fuck." She said.

"Well you must have been much cooler than me."

"I still am." She took a deep hit off her cigarette.

"So what's been going on around here since I left?" I asked.

"Like what? What do you want to know?"

"Does anyone want to kill me? I mean, I've been out of the loop. Where do I fit into the social hierarchy of Los Robles Avenue?"

"You're on the bottom as usual," she said. "Nothing's changed around here. Nothing ever changes around here."

"Bullshit. Julie's got a boyfriend and Pat's dead. There's two things right there that've changed." I said.

"Oh, you heard about Pat? Who told you?" She asked.

"There's a guy who lives near my Gram who knew Pat. -Maurice. They were in the same class in high school and I think they did some shady business together." I said.

"I heard his mom blamed the whole thing on the cops. She wanted to sue them, but a lawyer told her she didn't have a case." She said.

"It's not the cops fault Pat was a moron."

"What the fuck did I just tell you about the dead? Pat is definitely the kind of person who'd go out of his way to haunt you, so you better watch it."

"Fuck that asshole. I'm glad he's dead." I said. "Listen, I don't believe any of that shit. What's going on in the world of the living? What's up with Jenny?"

"Who cares?" She sneered. "She's not even real -she's just a filler-person."

"A filler-person?"

"It's my new theory. I figure about two thirds of the population is just filler. Haven't you ever noticed that most people aren't real? They don't have souls. You can tell they don't if you really look at them. They're like shells of people who just take up space. Their numbers are growing, and soon us real people will be extinct."

"That's a nice theory. So when I hear that thousands of people are dying of starvation in Ethiopia, I shouldn't feel bad?" I asked.

"You should only feel bad for a third of them." She said.

"Wow, maybe you're right. I'll watch out for filler-people." I said. "What's Jessie doing now that his partner's gone?"

"It didn't seem to slow him down much. He's running around with G's brother Steven these days." She said. G was a kid who lived down the street from me who skated and wrote graffiti. He was always with a bunch of younger kids from the other side of Lake. His brother Steven was kind of a local legend. When he was fifteen he punched a cop in the face. The cop was trying to break up a house party and Steven just walked up and clocked him. He broke the cop's nose and got sent to juvie for it. After that he was in and out of correctional facilities for a long time.

"He's out of jail?" I asked.

"Yeah. Jeremy told me he went over to Jessie's to buy some herb and they had a shotgun and a handgun just sitting on the table. His mom had a stroke and she can't get out of bed, so he's been turning her house into some kind of a crack-den.

"What about Jeremy and Don? What are they up to?"

"They hang out with Michael all the time now, the three of 'em skate by here almost every day. They're fucking ubiquitous. Jeremy got a job at Kinkos, and Don still plays with his band. Michael's the same as ever. His brother owes me twenty bucks." She said.

"His brother Jason? Why are you hanging out with Jason?" I asked.

"'Cause he's fuckin' hot, that's why. It's not for his brilliant conversation." She said.

"You're an easy trick, You fuck Jason and then _lend_ him twenty dollars." I shook my head. "You'd have to pay me a little more than that, but we could work something out."

"Who said I fucked him? And anyway your little ass couldn't satisfy me, I wouldn't pay you shit. I only fuck black guys. Jason could do whatever he wants to me." As she spoke there was a moan from inside the house.

"What was that?" I asked. "Does your grandma like black guys too?"

"Oh, just ignore her. She'll stop after a while." The moan started again, this time calling her name with exaggerated emphasis on the last syllable.

"Myaaaah.......Myaaaaaah....."

"Shut the fuck up!" She yelled, "I'll be there in a minute!"

"You better go help her before she shits herself."

"Yeah." She said, standing up, "It's like Night of the Living Dead, only I'm in the house with the zombie, trying to get out."

I went from Mya's house to the AM/PM, where I spent my last few dollars on a hotdog, an orange drink, and a pack of cigarettes. I sat on the steps of Saint Elizabeth Elementary School and ate. I had some time to kill so went over to the grotto behind the church to see if anyone was around. There was no one there, so I decided to see if my mom was home from work.

It was only five fifteen but my mom's gray Toyota Corolla was parked in the driveway. I noticed it had a Save The Whales bumper sticker on the back, which was new. It was a small, white, one story house in the middle of a long block shaded by many large trees. The wooden porch was bordered by a row of bushes that blossomed small white flowers at certain times of the year. The lawn was well cared for and the place seemed wholesome and warm. The flowers she'd planted on either side of the front walk completed this effect, and made me feel like an alien as I walked up to the front door. I didn't belong in a house with these delicate tulips in the front yard. Maurice's dog was more inviting. I knocked and she peered out the window before opening the door.

"Well, here you are." She said. "Gram told me you weren't there last night, so I wasn't sure you were coming..." I stood there holding my skate, not sure what to say. "Well, come in." She said. I walked into the living room. It hadn't changed much, the same cream colored carpet and faded orange drapes, the same white couch and easy chair, both pointed toward the TV. The only new thing in the room was a VCR. The coffee table had a vase with some glass flowers in it and two issues of Better Homes and Gardens and a Greenpeace newsletter. The living room was connected to a small dining area next to the kitchen. The two bedrooms were on the other end of the living room, separated by the hallway and bathroom.

"Why don't you put your things down in your room and come back so we can have a talk."

"Okay." I said. I walked down the hall to my old room. It was small, with wood paneling on one of the walls, and there was a mattress and box spring sitting on the floor underneath a rectangular window that looked out on the back yard. The mattress took up about a third of the space in the room. Everything I'd left was gone. All the pictures I'd put up on the walls, my boombox, my stacks of magazines in the closet, my Darth Vader head from when I was little, everything. I didn't expect her to keep all that stuff, but it was still a shock to walk into such an empty room. I tossed my backpack and my skate on the bed and went back to the living room. She was sitting in the easy chair, so I sat on the couch. "What do you want to talk about?" I asked.

"We have to discuss this living arrangement Nick. I spoke with Gram again today and she told me you stole twenty dollars from her and destroyed an expensive statue at her shop last night." She paused for a moment. "Well, I don't care. I just want you to understand that you can't get away with that crap here. If you steal from me or destroy any of my things, I'll prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. You're almost eighteen now Nick, so you won't be going to some Juvenile hall, it'd be regular prison. I'm not going to stand for any bullshit. Understood?"

"Yeah."

"Good. I've taken enough from you over the years. When I told you to leave this house I resigned from being your mother. Now just because I've decided to let you stay here doesn't mean I'm your mother again. I'm letting you stay here because I know that Gram can be horribly unfair, and she probably had no reason to throw you out, although you gave her good reason after the fact by smashing up one of her statues. Do you understand all that?" She asked.

"Yeah, I think so. You're not my mother anymore, and you'll throw me in jail if I mess with your stuff. That's okay with me." I said, trying to keep my voice neutral.

"Right. I don't care what you do or how late you stay out, or if you're in school or not, or any of that stuff. As far as I'm concerned you're just a person that lives in my house. I won't bother you if you don't bother me. You live by the rules of this house and pay your rent and we won't have a problem." She said.

"How much is my rent?"

"Your rent is three hundred dollars a month. That includes food and utilities. It's below market price, I did research. Now today is the twenty ninth, so I won't make you pay any rent for this month, but next month's rent is due the fifth. If you're late, it's an extra thirty dollars, that's how it works with most landlords." She said.

"Wait a minute. I have to pay you three hundred a month, and live by your rules? I could rent my own apartment for that much and live by my own rules." I said

"You're welcome to do that. It won't hurt my feelings if you do, believe me. But remember, you'd be paying for your own food, not to mention your electric and gas bills. You know you have to come up with two months rent just to move into an apartment, and right now you're not legally old enough to sign a lease. I'm giving you a good deal, and I suggest you take it." She said.

"So what exactly are the house rules?" I asked.

"I only want to tell you this once, so pay attention. Don't mess with any of my things. Period. No exceptions. I expect you to be quiet and civil in this house. No loud music, yelling, or carrying on. In fact, no company in this house, I don't want any of those street urchins in here. If you use a dish, you rinse the dish and put it in the dish washer. If you make a mess, you clean it up. Once a month you're going to mow the lawn. Oh, and no smoking. I gave it up, and I don't want my house to go back to smelling like an ashtray. Other than that, you can do what you want."

"So basically, I can eat and sleep here. That's it."

"That sounds about right." She said. "You could also read if you want. That would be okay."

"Alright, I don't have a choice anyway. But you should remember that if I'm paying three hundred dollars a month, that means you're not allowed to comment on my life, my looks, my behavior, or my friends, right?"

"Right." She said. "I resigned from being your mother, remember?"

"Yeah, which brings up another question. If you're no longer my mom, what should I call you?"

"Kate."

# 6

Money. I could do what I wanted as long as I came up with three hundred dollars a month. It wasn't that much actually, I thought I might be able to scrape together three hundred a month without having to get a full time job. I could get a part time job working behind the counter at a book or record store. It wouldn't take too much effort. Of course my salary would be supplemented with whatever I could steal out of the register. As long as I didn't have some manager breathing down my neck or have to deal with too many customers, it wouldn't be that bad.

The next morning I decided to go down to the mall to put in a few applications. I had to iron my Good Shirt, which I wore with my old jeans, so I was really only half well dressed. I left my skate at home, knowing I wasn't likely to get a job if I had it with me, and I got on a bus headed south on Lake. It was about ten in the morning and most of the people riding looked like they were going to jobs they hated. The poor bastards had to work on Saturday. Maybe next week it would be me, sitting there with dead eyes, wishing I was still in bed.

I walked into the air conditioned mall and went to a directory that listed the shops. I scanned the list for places I might not despise working. All the food court places were out of the question because you had to wear a uniform. It was bad enough that I'd be whoring myself for four dollars an hour, I refused to do it in a bright yellow Hot Dog on a Stick hat. I narrowed it down to three places: Kaybee Toys, Walden Books, or The Science Store. The first two seemed like they wouldn't require any concentration or effort from their employees, and the last one seemed like it might be fun. I pictured acetylene torches, Tesla coils, and sinister implements of experimentation.

The lady behind the counter at Walden Books told me they weren't hiring but I could fill out an application anyway and leave it for the manager. I borrowed a pen and used the edge of the counter to fill it out. It asked for a list of past jobs, so I put down Gram's shop and the name of a made-up landscaping business. I changed my birthday from 1972 to 1971 so I'd look eighteen. I wondered if they would want some sort of verification if I got the job. Good penmanship was never my strong suit, and when I finished filling out the form it looked like a small child had done it. I knew I had no chance of getting a job there. I handed the form to the lady behind the counter anyway and left.

Kaybee Toys was more promising. It looked like there had been a fight in the store and no one had bothered to pick up afterward. There were dirty stuffed animals on the floor and a scooter laying on it's side in one of the aisles. There was no one behind the counter and I had to search the store to find an employee. He was in the back absentmindedly rearranging model airplane boxes. "Excuse me," I said, "I was wondering who I could talk to about getting a job here?"

"Huh?" the guy said, looking at me as if I'd asked him to do math quick.

"A job," I said, "I was wondering who I talk to about joining the Kaybee Toys sales team?"

"Oh. The manager isn't here right now. Mike, that's who you want to talk to, he comes in around two and works until eight." He said.

"Thanks, I'll come back later." It seemed like a place I could work. The guy had looked surprised, like he didn't know why anyone would be standing in his store, and he'd said the manager would come in _around_ two. That meant if he was fifteen or twenty minutes late, no one would care. I pictured myself wearing a little name tag, sitting behind the counter doing nothing for hours. Maybe ringing up a slinky or two, but certainly nothing strenuous. As I walked down the escalator and headed toward the Science Store I tried to remember how much a tube of model airplane glue went for on the street. Ever since they started requiring an adult to be present when purchasing model airplane glue it had acquired a black market value.

The Science Store didn't look like a place I would want to work. It was clean and orderly. There seemed to be a vast inventory of products, all in their precise place. They had kid's picture books and videos about nature, stuffed animals and hand puppets, chemistry sets, junior electrician kits, and life sized skeletons. There were beakers, test-tubes, Bunsen-burners, soldering irons, petri dishes, protective eyewear and plastic gloves, charts of the lunar cycles, remote control robots and mechanical arms, super magnets, crystal radio kits, inertial guidance systems, prisms, a basket full of small polished rocks and geodes, Erector sets, clear plastic steam engines, calculators with special functions beyond basic math, science oriented software programs for home computers, special wristwatches that could keep time in up to five separate time zones, Happy Drinking Birds, water balloon catapults, Sea Monkeys, potato cannons, walkie-talkies, Currie-effect heat engines, magnetic levitation kits, telescopes and astronomical charts, and T-shirts and sweaters with pictures of Einstein saying things that were funny if you knew about Einstein. They had the Visible Man, Visible Woman, Visible Horse, and Visible Cow. There were hand-blown glass radiometers, infrared cameras, neutral buoyancy Frisbees, dinosaur Chia-Pets, binary wristwatches, Mexican jumping beans, compasses, sextants, pedometers, otoscopes, microscopes, kaleidoscopes, oscilloscopes, gyroscopes, periscopes, 3d mirascopes, laser pointers, the World's Smallest Motor, a game called Identify That Mineral!, pin-depression pads of various sizes, potato clocks, miniature wave pools, those metal balls that clack against each other, magnet powered kinetic art sculptures, metal detectors, analog Geiger counters, genuine moon rocks, petrified dinosaur dung, water pressure rockets, Bigger Bubble Builders, Rube Goldberg toast maker kits, frequency finders, custom kite kits, micro helicopters, magnetically crushed quarters, air cannons, voice changers, mini echo chambers, ant farms, bonsai potato kits, homemade hair-gel kits, model dinosaur bones made of balsa wood, anatomical models of the brain, ear, heart and lung, sugar crystal farms, young architect kits, origami architecture kits, cassettes of whale vocalizations, optical illusion posters, spiral spinning tops, invisible ink pens, black lights, snap circuit boards, magnetic Silly Putty, Light Bender kits, laser pointers, erupting volcano models, brew your own Root Beer guides, make your own bubblegum kits, dead tarantulas and scorpions encased in clear resin, lava lamps, true mirrors, bacteria farms, Jacobs ladders, infrared cameras, pixel cameras, and all sorts of puzzles and games and globes and maps. There were posters of the earth as seen from outer space, and many different products with names like: Glo-blo, Bananascope, Mega-Magnets, Mummy-Tummy, Geiserium, Geo-Polymer Fun-Cubes, Guess that Function board-game, Whirlpool Mania, the Gravitron, Instant Goop, Light-Absorbing Mini-Munchers, Multi-Directional Marshmellow Blasters, The Mad Scientist's New-Animal Laboratory, Particle-Timmy and the Micronauts Junior Explorer Kits and a handheld computer device called the Random Pattern Generator. There were sand art and spin art kits, 3D books and pop-up books, and books of puzzles guaranteed to waste hours of time. They had a device with mirrors in it for looking around corners. There were Magic Rock kits and Shrnk-E-Dink sets next to magnifying glasses and a case for the display of butterfly carcasses. There were 'mood rings' and 'mood bracelets' and even a 'mood headband'-they had decorative neon light cubes, and a make your own keytar kit. They had Legos. They even had a couple of those glass balls that shoot lightning to where your fingertips touch them.

The man behind the cash register wasn't paying any attention to me, but I was staring at him. He looked familiar but I couldn't place him. He was in his mid thirties and a bit paunchy. He had a bald spot surrounded by wispy blond tendrils, and wore rimless glasses and beat up tennis shoes. He finally looked over and it hit me. "Hey, Mr. Bennett, how you doing? Remember me?" I asked.

"Oh, hi." He said walking over. "Yes of course I remember you, you're one of my former students. I'm sorry, I'm unable to come up with your name."

"Nick. I had you in eighth grade science. I used to have longer hair." I said.

"Oh yes, of course, Nick. Hi, what have you been up to all these years? Still interested in science I see."

"Well, actually Mr. Bennett I just came in here to see about possibly getting a job. I already hit the book store and the toy store so I thought I'd try my luck with this place too." I said.

"I see... Looking for a summer job, huh? Always good to earn a little dough over the break from school, right? Good for you."

"Actually, I was looking for something a little more permanent. I don't go to school anymore Mr. Bennett. I'm a drop-out." It was the first time I'd said it out loud and I liked the way it sounded. I looked for surprise on Mr. Bennett's face but saw none.

"I'm sorry to hear that Nick. If I recall correctly, you were a promising student when I knew you."

"Actually, I got a C in your class. I don't think I did any of the homework."

"Well if you didn't do any of the homework and you still got a C, that means you must have done really well on the tests. And you must have participated in class discussions. Grades aren't everything... Now that I'm retired from teaching I can freely tell you that I gave many stupid, boring children As, and unfortunately I gave many of my brightest students Ds and Fs because they didn't bother to do the work. Grading is the worst part of being a teacher," he shook his head, "after all, the grading system is so narrow. Think about it! There are only five grades you can give: A, B, C, D, or the dreaded F. I mean it's completely unscientific. There are four hundred categories for the common field cricket for example, yet only five for the human student. It's silly. I never judge a person's intelligence by their grades, only by their curiosity."

"Wow Mr. Bennett, I wish I could've said the exact same thing to my Gram last year when my final report card came in. I never had good grades. I even got bad grades in classes I really liked, like your class, or world history."

He looked at me skeptically. "You say you liked my class? What'd you like about it?"

"Well, we did some good experiments in there Mr. Bennett... Uh, the thing with the light and the cardboard with the slits in it... One time we sprayed fog all over the room and bounced a laser around with some mirrors. It was interesting stuff. A lot better than any of my other classes that year. Also, just sort of considering the way the universe works, you know, the boundaries of space and time." I said.

"I appreciate that. I taught most of that stuff right out of a book to be honest. I was afraid to do anything else. I'm sorry if I taught you lies, I didn't know I was doing it at the time." He said.

"Lies? What do you mean?"

"Maybe not lies, not lies exactly, but not the whole truth either. You just said something about the boundaries of space and time for example. Well, there is no such thing as space. It's an illusion of time. I couldn't tell that to my eighth grade science class. The school would've fired me. So I perpetuated the ignorant view that we exist in something called space, which of course is not true." He said. I looked for signs that he was kidding or testing me to see my reaction or something. He looked very serious.

"Sorry Mr. Bennett, I think you lost me there. If there's no such thing as space, what are we standing in?" I asked.

"Time." He said.

"You mean the present?"

"Ah, see, I knew you were bright. Yes the present..." He was going to continue but a pear shaped woman who was also wearing a Science Store T-shirt was giving him the eye. "I'm not supposed to be chatting right now," he said under his breath. Then in a normal voice so she could hear he said, "always nice to run into an old student. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

"No thanks." I said. "I'll come back another time. Nice to run into you Mr. Bennett."

"Call me Chris," he said, then, in a conspiratorial whisper he added, "remember, the thing we call space only exists in the present. Yesterday is not a place we can go to, is it?" I shook my head no. As I walked back into the mall I wondered if Mr. Bennett was all-there mentally.

There was a Sam Goody record store on the ground floor near one of the exits and I decided it was too good to pass up. I didn't feel like killing another hour waiting for the manager of Kaybee Toys to show up when there was such a good money-making opportunity right in front of me. I strolled in and surveyed the place. There were two employees, one at the cash register, the other arranging the music magazines at the front of the store. There was no security system that I could see. Down near Gram's house there was a Tower Records that had been shoplifted so many times they started putting magnetic strips on all their tapes and records. This Sam Goody seemed to be lacking the gates at the entrance that would set off a security system like that.

I made my way to the Pop/Rock cassette section and acted like I was browsing. There was only one other customer in the store, so my exposure was high and I had to be careful. I pulled a tape out of the stack and looked at it with my left hand while my right hand pulled a tape out down low, and slipped it into my pocket. I put the decoy tape back and moved down the aisle as if I was searching for something. I repeated the maneuver and now had two unknown tapes in my right pocket. I was about to do a third when the employee who'd been arranging magazines walked up. She was chubby and blonde, a few years older than me. "Can I help you find anything?" She asked.

"Nah." I said. "I'm just looking."

"Well, let me know if I can help." She said smiling.

"Okay. Thanks." I said. I realized she had absolutely no suspicion that I was stealing from the store. Even when I was in a store to actually buy something the people who worked there usually treated me like a potential problem. I thought it must've been because I was wearing my Good Shirt, and didn't have my skate with me. I had to remember this if I ever wanted to go shoplifting again.

As she walked away I slipped another tape into my pocket. I saw the woman behind the counter look over at me, but I didn't think she'd seen. Just in case, I decided not to take any more for awhile. I acted bored and continued to amble down the stacks of cassettes, as if I was just there to kill some time.

Then I had a stroke of good luck. A group of young girls came into the store giggling and making a ruckus. They looked like Junior High School girls and two of them went right up to the counter to ask about some record and the others went for the magazine section. It was a perfect distraction and I grabbed four tapes and shoved them in my left pocket and two more went into my right.

With bulging pockets I walked past the girls at the counter and out of the store. My heart was pounding and I expected a security guard to grab me and pull me back, but I walked out of the mall and onto the sidewalk unmolested. I wished I had my skate for a quick getaway. After crossing the street I knew I could relax. I walked up a side street and stopped by a garbage can to inspect my booty. I had nine tapes. Krokus, The Atlanta Rhythm Section, Badfinger, Pat Benatar, Jane's Addiction, Supertramp, Spiro Gyra, Men at Work, and New Order. I began picking the plastic wrappers off the tapes. I took one of the tapes out of its container and wound it with my finger. It would look shady if I sold a bunch of completely rewound 'used' tapes. I did the same thing to another one and scuffed it a bit on the sidewalk. As I was doing this I noticed that the Jane's Addiction tape had a song called _Whores_ , so I decided to keep that one.

I walked up the street, vaguely satisfied with myself. I was unused to walking and since I was out of cigarettes I had nothing to do with my hands. I felt naked, a mere pedestrian. I wondered if it would be possible to shoplift three hundred dollars worth of merchandise a month. Before I reached the bridge that crosses the 210 freeway I heard the familiar rumble of skaters nearby. It was coming from behind a parking structure, and I decided to investigate.

I walked up the alley beside the garage and heard laughter echoing off the cement inside. Whoever was skating was inside the structure, and being loud about it too. I turned down a narrow walkway between the garage and the bank next door. It came out near the garage's exit, and when I saw it, I realized what was going on. To exit the structure you had to go down a tight, steep spiral that came out of the building in a straight decline and flattened out in front of the ticket gate. They were skating the spiral. I was jealous that I wasn't doing it, and jealous that I hadn't thought of it. I could hear the sustained rumble getting louder as they made their decent. The first skater flew out and carved a smooth arc along the decline. When he hit the flat part of the ramp he veered off onto the walkway where I was standing. He sailed by me about ten feet away. There were four steps in front of the bank, and when he got there he ollied down, landing perfectly and speeding off down the street. The second and third guys came out close together and took the same line. When the second guy reached the steps he tried a kickflip and couldn't land it, but the third guy did something incredible. He ollied up to the handrail and executed a perfect slide. He landed in a low crouch, barely losing any speed. The whole thing took under thirty seconds, and then they were gone.

Walking back up the alley I thought about what Mr. Bennett had said about there being no such thing as space, only time. I'd heard some confusing talk about how time slows down for you if you approach the speed of light, and I wondered if it worked on a smaller scale. How else could those guys execute such a long series of exact movements in such a short period of time. Maybe time slowed down for them because they were going so fast. No, I decided that couldn't be right. Maybe adrenaline quickened their reflexes, or they'd done it so many times it was just second nature. The only thing for certain was that as a skater, I sucked compared to them.

The guy behind the counter at Dusty Bins Record Shoppe looked like an old head. He was mostly bald and must've weighed about three hundred pounds. He sat perched up high, near a plastic record player that he kept occupied with classic doo-wop and soul. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans and had a pair of glasses propped up on his sweaty dome. The place was just a large room filled with row after row of used records. The tapes were all on the back wall, and I don't think Dusty had a single compact disc on the premises. I walked right up to the counter and pulled the tapes out of my pocket. "Hi," I said, "you buy used tapes right?"

"Yeah sure, I'll be with you in a moment." He pulled a record out of its sleeve and put it on the turntable. When the record was safely playing he turned to me. "Whatd'ya got there?" He asked.

"Eight tapes." I said pushing them across the counter. He nodded and picked them up. He opened each one and inspected the tape. When he was finished he put them in a neat pile and slid them halfway back to me.

"And how much do you want for these?" He asked.

"Uh... I don't know. Twenty bucks maybe?"

"You kidding?" He shluffed. "I never give out that kinda money for tapes. I'll give you a dollar a tape."

"Can't you at least give me fifteen?" I asked. "You're going to turn around and sell them for five bucks apiece."

He furrowed his brow and fingered the tapes. "No guarantee I'm gonna sell them. I'll tell you what, I'll give you ten dollars cash for 'em, or fifteen dollars store credit." He said.

I took the cash.

# 7

On my way home I stopped for cigarettes and a bag of chips. The day had been a complete bust. I'd only made off with ten dollars from a high risk maneuver and was no closer to a job. I was wishing I'd stuck around to see the manager of the toy store. I knew the book store wouldn't be calling. The house was empty and after I'd changed my shirt I got a diet Coke out of the fridge and gulped down half of it. I thought about going out to skate, but the image of the three incredible skaters I'd just seen was still too fresh in my mind. I sat down on the couch and turned on the TV.

I flipped through the channels once and found nothing worth watching. Kate didn't have cable, so the only stuff on TV at that time of day was golf and infomercials. The brand new VCR sat on top of the set but I didn't see any tapes. After looking around, I opened the closet in the hall where I found a shelf with four tapes on it. There were also some empty boxes in there, including the box that the VCR had come in. There was a receipt taped to the box, and I pulled it off and looked at it. She'd bought the thing at K-Mart two months before for $185. She'd also bought some washcloths and she paid cash. I put the receipt back and looked at the videos. They were unmarked so I pulled one out at random.

It was a PBS program she'd taped about the hole in the ozone layer. I'd heard of this before. Human beings were destroying a layer of the atmosphere with all the deodorant we were spraying. There were shots of arctic wildlife and big cities and scientists talking about how the world was doomed. They showed some graphs that proved it. The whole thing was narrated by a man with a deep baritone. I drank my soda on the couch and felt reassured that the world was coming to an end, or at least all human civilization. I was completely justified in not giving a shit about my life. By 1995 we were all going to have to wear sunscreen all the time, by 2010 certain areas would be uninhabitable, and by 2025 sixty percent of the world's population would be dead from skin cancer. Here I was, worried about getting a job.

After it was over I put the tape back and got different one. It was another PBS program, this one about the rainforest and how we were destroying it. Before I had a chance to get into it there was a knock at the door. I stopped the video and looked out the window. Jeremy and Michael were standing on the front porch. They both looked exactly the same as I remembered except Michael was a little taller and Jeremy's hair was longer. I walked over to the door. "WHO IS IT?" I yelled.

There was silence on the other side. I opened it a crack and peeked out. As soon as he saw me Jeremy pushed the door open the rest of the way. "Yo Nick! You're back!" He said. "Mya told us you were here, but we had to see it for ourselves. How ya doin'?"

"I'm alright. What's up Jeremy? What's up Michael?" I said, slapping hands with both of them. "It's been a long time..." I walked out onto the porch and shut the door behind me, thinking of Kate's 'no company' rule. "What're you guys up to?"

"Shit... Nothing really, just hanging out. It's been what? Like a year since we saw you?" Jeremy asked.

"Longer than that." Michael said.

"Yeah," I agreed, "it's more like a year and a half." I sat down on the door jamb and pulled out a cigarette. I offered one to both of them, but only Michael took one. Jeremy sat down on his skate and Michael leaned against the railing.

"So your mom finally got over Lilly and let you come back?" Jeremy asked.

"No, I don't think so. She let me move back 'cause my Grams kicked me out. She wants me to call her Kate now, and I have to pay rent." I said. "She's never gonna get over that dog. She loved that thing."

"Whoa. Your mom's making you pay rent?" Jeremy asked. "That's fucked up. I guess you're going to have to get a job huh?"

"Yeah. I went to the fuckin' mall today to put in some applications." I said. "It sucked. No one's gonna hire me."

"I wish I'd known. We just hired someone over at Kinkos, I might've been able to get you the job instead of the dweeb we hired." Jeremy said.

Michael laughed. "Yeah, right. You're lucky they haven't fired you, and you're gonna put in a recommendation for him? They'd probably assume you met him at one of your twelve step meetings."

"Oh no. Don't tell me you're taking it one day at a time." I said.

"I have no choice dude. It's fucking court ordered. That's what you get for three disorderly conduct charges these days. I don't care though, it's better than jail."

"Hey I didn't know your mom kicked you out over a dog." Michael said. "What happened? Did you let it run away or something?"

"You never told him about that?" I asked Jeremy. "I figured you told everyone about it."

"I did but it was a long time ago. He must not have heard." Jeremy said. "He didn't used to come around as much back then."

"So what happened?" Michael asked.

"My mom used to have this dog, Lilly." I said. "She had the thing since I was like three or four. She loved it like a baby. She used to call the dog my little sister for fucks sake. Well this little hairy dog was hyper, and it was always into everything. I mean if you were reading a magazine, the dog had to stick it's nose on it, if you were writing, she would grab your pen and go running off. If you were eating, forget it. We had to put her out when we ate otherwise she'd drive us crazy. One day me and Jeremy were chilling in my room getting ready to drop some acid and do something -I forget what we had planned..."

"We were gonna soap the fountain at PCC." Jeremy said.

"Oh that's right. Well I pulled the blotter out of the tin foil and fucking Lilly jumps up and grabs it right out of my hand. It was four hits. It was supposed to be good acid too, it had a pig with a suitcase on it. We freaked out. We both jumped on the dog and I started going through her mouth, but the shit wasn't in there. It was gone. I guess she must've swallowed it right away. We didn't know what to do, so we started trying to get her to throw up. Jeremy was holding her mouth open and I was sticking my fingers down her throat but it didn't work. She bit the fuck out of my hand and hid under my mom's bed."

"Fuck." Michael said.

"I know." I said. "We had no clue what would happen. We didn't know if it would kill the dog, or permanently fuck up the dog, or if acid would even affect a dog. We thought maybe she might have spit it out right away, so we decided to wait and see if it would do anything to her. About an hour later we went to check on her under the bed and she was shaking like she was made of Jello. When I tried to pull her out, she would do this horrible whimper-growl thing I never heard before. I hated that fucking dog, but still, it was the worst thing I ever did."

"We were so crazy. We were going to kill the dog before his mom got home." Jeremy said.

"Oh yeah. We decided that there was no way the dog would recover from dropping four hits of acid, so we were going to run her over with Jeremy's mom's car. We thought it would be best to put the dog out of it's misery, and anyway, then it would look like an accident. Keep in mind neither one of us had ever driven a car at that point. I was going to hold her down and he was going to drive the car over her head. Then we were gonna just leave her there in the road..."

"It was so completely fucked up. I can't believe we were actually thinking about doing that." Jeremy said.

"Why didn't you?" Michael asked.

"We couldn't get the dog to come out from under the bed." I explained. "After she bit me a couple more times we gave up. My mom got home and made dinner like usual, and I was trying to act normal. When dinner was ready and it was time to put Lilly out, she wasn't around. My mom looked all over the place and finally found the dog freaking out under her bed. Lilly shit and pissed under there, so at first my mom was mad. She grabbed her by the collar and pulled her out and Lilly bit her. Lilly never bit my mom before. She knew something was wrong so she took her to the animal hospital. She didn't come home until like three in the morning. I guess the vet figured out that the dog was dosed. Either that or my mom just put two and two together. The vet had to put Lilly to sleep. When my mom got home she told me I wasn't human and I had to leave."

"Wow." Michael said. "You two are ruthless fucking dog killers."

"The fucked up thing about it was that she didn't have any proof that I did anything. She didn't know. She just assumed it was me and kicked my ass out." I said.

"It _was_ you." Michael said.

"Yeah but if she'd bothered to ask, I'd have blamed the whole thing on Jeremy."

"I knew it man. I was home waiting for the phone to ring." Jeremy said.

"So how much is your mom making you pay to live here?" Michael asked.

"Three hundred dollars a month."

"Shit," Michael said, "you could get your own apartment for that much."

"For three hundred?"

"Nah, I mean if you had a roommate who also paid three, you could be in a decent place. At least then you wouldn't have to deal with living at home. I'm getting my own crib as soon as I turn eighteen, I don't want to be like my fucking brother that's for sure. He just turned twenty four and he still has to sneak out the window if he's going somewhere late at night." Michael said.

"My mom don't even give a shit." I said. "She told me I'm just a person who lives in her house now. If I want to leave at three in the morning I'll be using the front door."

"For three hundred a month I hope so." Jeremy said.

"Yeah man. How you gonna come up with that?" Michael asked.

"I have no idea."

"Seems like everyone I know is getting a job." Jeremy said. "I got one, then Jason, and now you. Pretty soon you're going to be the only bum around here Michael."

"You don't have to worry about me man, I get money." He said.

"I know you get money." Jeremy said. "You'll probably also get three to five someday."

"Nah man, listen. You may be okay busting your ass for a tiny little check every two weeks, but not me. You're losing the game and you don't even know you're playing it." He twisted up his mouth and shook his head. "The object of the game is to get money, right? If you know the rules of the game you can analyze 'em and figure out how to most easily attain the large dollars. You have to look at it like it was an alien system that had nothing to do with you. The easiest ways to get money are also the most risky, and the least risky ways to get money don't pay shit. That's where you're at Jeremy. If you want to start winning, you have to find a way to get large amounts of money without taking unacceptable risks. Who wants to be the richest motherfucker in jail, right? It's just a complicated game. Everything is legal if you don't get caught." Michael said.

"Yeah, I like the way you think." I said. "You're a scientist."

Michael smiled, glad to have found a receptive audience to his money speech. "Yeah, I'm like a scientist, except I don't experiment. I always know how shit's gonna turn out. "

"I'll tell ya how it's gonna turn out, you're gonna end up in the pen." Jeremy said.

"Minimum wage at Kinkos is my idea of jail. _Copier number five is out of toner Jeremy. There's a woman here who says you fucked up her kid's birthday invitations Jeremy. It'll be coming out of your paycheck Jeremy._ " Michael said.

"Fuck off." Jeremy said. "Are we gonna skate or what?"

On our way down the street toward the grotto, Michael rolled up next to me. "Hey man," he said, looking to make sure Jeremy was out of earshot, "seriously? I think I know a way we could both make a grip of money."

"Yeah? How?"

"I don't want to J to know, I'll give you a call tomorrow. Your number's the same right? I have it in my old book." He said.

"Yeah it's the same. What's the risk factor?"

"Try zero."

When I got home that night Kate was watching the news in the living room. The lights were off and she had a glass in her hand. "Hi Kate." I said making a b-line to my room.

"Nicky," she said, "How'd the job search go?"

"Oh," I said stopping, "it wasn't going good at all, but then I ran into a friend who said he could get me work with his brother's landscaping business."

"Really?" She asked twisting around on the couch to get a better look at me. "Which friend?"

"Michael. Do you remember him?"

"I think so. Is he... African American?" She asked.

"Yeah, he's a black guy." I said.

"Yes, I remember him." She said. "Oh Nick, before you go to your room I have to ask you, did you throw a diet Coke can in the trash?"

"Um. Yes. Why?"

"This is a recycling house, Nicky. It's very important that all the tin cans we use go in the recycling bin next to the trash under the sink." She said.

"Oh is that a little business you got going on the side?" I asked.

"No, I don't get any money for them. It's for the environment. To lessen our impact on the environment. Did you know that the United States has one tenth of the world's population, yet it produces eighty percent of the world's trash?" I flicked a wheel on my skate and watched it spin. "That sounds about right." I said.

"Well, please make sure you put your cans in the recycling container next time."

"Sure Kate. Will do." I went to my room and shut the door.

# 8

That Sunday morning I was thinking about what Mr. Bennett said about space. He'd said space was an illusion of time. It was an idea I tried to turn around in my head a few times. Maybe he wasn't crazy. Everything exists in the present. Maybe he meant space _was_ the present. I felt like there was some big idea just beyond my mental powers. I hoped I hadn't huffed away the part of my brain that could figure it out.

I thought of the skaters I'd seen the day before. I'd watched them from a distance and could see what was in front of them and behind them and how they moved through space. I could see how they looked in the present, I could guess what their immediate future might hold, based on the direction they were going and the terrain in front of them, and I could _remember_ their past. That was the permanent state of things. The past was a memory in my mind, the present was visible, and the future was a set of probable outcomes. It was like the skaters were human math problems, eating up probabilities and spitting out memories.

My thoughts were interrupted by the phone ringing and a few seconds later Kate knocked on my door. "Telephone." She said.

"I'll be there in a minute." I rolled out of bed and went through my backpack for a fresh shirt.

"Hello?" I said picking up the phone in the living room.

"Yo it's Michael. Sorry to call so early."

"It's eleven-thirty. What's going on?" I asked.

"Nada. You wanna hear about how we're gonna get rich?"

"Uh, yeah..." I said. Kate was in the kitchen and could hear everything I was saying. "Listen, I'll come up to your place and we can talk about it there."

"Oh right. Okay. When can you be here?" He asked.

"It'll take me like fifteen minutes." I said

As I skated up the hill I was still thinking about Mr. Bennett. In his science class he'd talked a lot about starlight. He told us it took years for starlight to reach earth, and when you looked up at stars, you were seeing the light that they gave off a long time ago. I'd never forgotten that. Any star that we were looking at might've exploded and we wouldn't know it for years. Looking at stars was like looking into the past. In a sense you couldn't really see a star, you could only see the light it gave off. I thought it must be the same with everything, even the stop light on the corner. It's light must take some time to get to me, a very small amount of time, but it certainly wasn't instantaneous. The trees at the top of the hill were farther away, so their light was a little older than the stop light's. I couldn't see anything in exactly the same present as mine. There was a lag time between the world and my perception of it. I wanted to ask Mr. Bennett about it.

Michael's house looked different than I remembered and I wasn't sure I had the right place. I knocked anyway and soon a wrinkled black hand moved the lace curtain on the door's window, and I saw the scrunched face of Michael's Grandmother looking at me. "Who's that?" She asked staring right at me.

"I'm Nick. I'm a friend of Michael's. Is he home?" She let the curtain go and I heard her padding off down the hall. A minute later Michael opened the door.

"It took me longer than I thought to get up here." I said. "You live at the top of a big ass hill, you know that?"

"Yeah I know, I know. I have to climb the thing twice a day. Come on let's get out of here." We walked to the street and began skating toward Lake. "So listen," he said, matching my leisurely speed, "you and me are gonna sell my Uncle's car. He's going to Texas today and he won't be back till next Saturday, so we have some time to do it."

I had to laugh. "That's your great idea? Stealing a car?"

"I know where he keeps the pink-slip and where he leaves his keys. All you have to do is put an ad in the paper and take the first offer that comes along. No one will ever find out about it." He said.

"What about your uncle? He's gonna call the cops, they're gonna pick up whoever buys the car, which will lead them straight to me and I'll get thrown in jail." I said.

"That's the most beautiful thing about the plan. There's no way my Uncle's gonna call the cops. He's fucking wanted by the police. There's warrants out for his arrest. He won't be able to do shit about it." He said. "He'd call the Ku Klux Klan before he'd call the cops." We skated along in silence for awhile.

"Why do you need me?" I asked. "Why not just sell the thing yourself?"

"First off, take a look at me. I don't even look old enough to drive. I don't want to raise any suspicion." He had a point there, he looked much younger than his sixteen years. "Secondly, if something freaky happens and my Uncle runs into the guy who bought his car, I don't want the guy to describe me. I'll be suspect number one anyway. Plus some of his neighbors know me. If they see me driving his car around they might say something. No one's gonna ask you any questions."

We reached Lake and crossed it as I thought this over. "So you want me to be a cut-out." I said, summing up my role. "And how much would my cut be for this high risk service?"

"I'll give you thirty percent." He said popping off a nice kick flip. I never could do a proper kick flip.

"Are you fucking kidding me? You want me to commit grand theft auto and only get thirty percent? No. No way." I said.

"I'm providing the car, and it's my Uncle, so I'm more in danger of getting caught than you. Your risk is limited to the day you sell the car." He said.

"My phone number is appearing in the newspaper connected to the thing." I said. "Fifty percent. We split it down the middle, or you can find another cut-out."

"Alright man, deal. Fifty-fifty. It's a nice '84 Chevy, I got all the info written down so you can put the ad in the paper. We oughta be able to get two thousand dollars for the motherfucker. We're gonna be rich." He said.

We stopped at the top of Holliston Avenue. It wasn't a busy street and there was only one light, about three long blocks from where we were. "You wanna bomb this thing?" He asked.

"Yeah, alright." I said. "It's been a while, I forget what the timing is on the light. We used to have it down to a science."

"When the light turns green you wait for about fifteen seconds and then push off. On your way down it'll turn red and then green again right as you hit the intersection." He said.

Michael started counting when the light turned green and I sat on my board with my feet on either side. He reached fifteen and we both pushed off. I kept my wheels swimming in WD40 so I immediately went out in front. I had my hands gripping the sides of my board under my ass and my feet in front of me with my heels resting on the nose. I was halfway down the block when the light turned red. Holliston has no stop signs but you still had to watch out. In that low position, drivers couldn't see you. I stayed in what I thought was the safest place, the left side of the street so I wouldn't be surprised by a car coming up behind me, and near the curb so I could bail quickly if a hairy situation came up. I had half a block on Michael already, so I was worried about the timing with the light. When I was on the last block before the intersection, a truck sped through. I considered putting my feet down but I saw the light across from me turn orange. I hit the intersection just as the light turned green. When I was safely through I looked back and saw Michael closing the distance between us. At this point we reached the speed where you had to keep tucked nice and tight and go straight. Any slight shift in weight could result in uncontrollable speed wobbles. We were flying.

When we were a couple blocks from Washington, where the hill flattens out, I started slowing myself with my feet. Michael flew by me and at the last block, shoved his board into a shrieking skid. He stopped clean. "I never saw anyone do that on their ass before." I said. "I gotta work on that one."

"I bomb this thing to get to school five days a week." He said, standing up. "You feel like going over to Don's place with me? He's got a fat sack and he said he'd smoke us out when I talked to him this morning."

"You guys gonna be there for awhile? I was gonna head to the mall to see a friend of mine. They're open on Sundays right?"

He looked at me skeptically. "The mall? Yeah they're open. Sunday's like their busiest day." He said. "I'll probably be hanging out at Don's till late. His band practices in the basement every Sunday. You should come by later, Don wants to see you."

"Alright, I'll be there."

"Hey, before you go, take this information about the car in case you don't make it tonight. I want to get it in the paper as soon as possible." He handed me a folded piece of notebook paper. "If you call tomorrow they should print it on Tuesday."

"Alright man, but before we do this, I gotta ask you, why do you want to fuck over your Uncle like that? Won't you feel bad about it?"

"Man, fuck that asshole. He never did shit for me or my brother and he beats on my Auntie. What do you think he got a warrant for? Domestic violence. Beating the shit out of my mom's sister." He said. "Fuck that asshole. He deserves it."

Michael was right, the mall was crowded with grubby, mean eyed children and their fat mothers shuffling from shop to shop and young girls giggling and talking shit. This was where the mentally deficient joined in sexual communion with forces they didn't understand. Those girls had no idea why they were so turned on.

Mr. Bennett was demonstrating how to turn a couple of two liter soda bottles whose mouths were held together with a small plastic device into a mini tornado machine. He stood in the aisle in front of a man and a young boy and moved the device back and forth in a stirring motion. When enough force had been gathered, he held the bottles up and revealed a whirlpool tornado that curved and spun for a surprisingly long time. The young boy seemed delighted, but the father was bored and pulled the kid away saying they could make one on their own, without the Science Store product. Mr. Bennett watched them go and noticed me as he set down the bottles. "Nick! Back again I see... What brings you to my little corner of the mall?"

"Well, actually, I came to see you. I wanted to ask you something about what you said yesterday. About space." I said.

"Oh right, space." He said, scratching his chin. "No such thing really. Why is that so hard for people to understand?"

"Well, I've been thinking about it Mr. Bennett, and I think it's because light from all different times hits our eyes at once." I said, not sure if the statement made sense. "You know what I mean?"

"Yes Nick, I think so." He said. "You see our brains are good at connecting the dots for us. A movie is just a series of still images, but when you run them together, they appear to be moving. Well, our brain does something similar with time, which creates the illusion of space." He looked at me with a hopeful expression.

"Sorry. You'll have to explain that to me, Mr. Bennett." I said.

"Please Nick, call me Chris, I'm not your teacher anymore. I'd be happy to explain it to you in a more informal setting. Here is not the time." He looked around. "My shift is over in ten minutes, I could explain it all to you if you'd be so good as to buy me a strawberry Julius." He raised his eyebrows. "A small price to pay to understand your world a little better."

"Alright, I'll meet you over there," I said, "thanks."

"Thank you," he nodded, "for the strawberry Julius to come."

As I walked to the food court I looked at all the people who were shopping with glazed eyes and slack expressions on their faces, hustling around as if they were doing something important. A security guard eyed my skateboard suspiciously as if I was about to jump on it and lead him on a chase through the mall. I ordered two strawberry Julius' and sat at one of the small tables off to the side of the food court. It was some time before he showed up and I was almost finished with mine. "I'm surprised you're so interested in this." He said as he sat down. "I've tried to tell many people about it, but no one seems to care."

"Well, when we talked yesterday, it got my brain going a little bit, and now I can't leave it alone." I said. He nodded and I continued, "I was thinking this morning that our brain must lag behind the present, because all the information it's getting is slightly old." I said.

His eyes widened. "Yes, Yes. That's true. There are two presents. The hidden one that propels us along through time, and the one that our brains create to make sense of what we experience. They are very close, but the one we create is always a little behind the real one." He said. "It's like our soul is riding a wave of time and our brain is constantly playing catch-up."

"Does that mean that time moves at the same speed for all of us? 'Cause I gotta tell you, I've seen some skaters who might change your mind there." I said.

"Well, I think time does move the same speed on the hidden level -but our brain plays catch-up with that level at different rates. Say I'm in a car accident, it might only take five seconds before it's over, but I'll remember thirty different things happening in those five seconds, whereas if I'm sitting on my front porch doing nothing, I may only remember twenty things happening in an hour. That's my brain playing catch-up at different rates." He said.

"Right. So the faster you go, the slower time moves, right?" I asked.

"No, I don't think it's that simple. I think you can change your perception of time regardless of whether or not you are moving, it just takes a great deal of concentration." He said. "I haven't mastered it yet, but I'm working on it."

"So what'll you gain from being able to do that? Will you be able to dodge bullets like the American Ninja or something?"

"Perhaps!" He said with a laugh. "Take one second of time and divide it in half. Now take that half and divide _it_ in half. Keep on doing this as many times as you can and you're still never going to get to an indivisible unit of time, it doesn't work that way. You see there's an infinity in every single moment. William Blake knew it. I believe our brain leaves markers in time that we connect to make fluid, like the still images in movies, and we can learn to control how many markers we leave. Not changing the ultimate speed of time, but certainly changing our perception of it. And the more markers we leave per second, the closer we come to the hidden fluid present."

"Jesus. I guess you were right about not teaching that kind of thing to kids, they might've thought you were nuts." I said.

"Well, yeah. See, it's all connected to a new way of seeing space. Once you can actually experience space as the same thing as the present, all sorts of possibilities open up. That's what might've gotten me in deep with the principal." He said. "It's quite a simple idea really. Space is time, time written incredibly small, time you can see. Or maybe it's more useful to think of space as the surface of time. Take this table for instance, it has a history, it was built somewhere and shipped here to this mall where it sits, but we can't see any of that. We can only see it now, in the present. We are sitting at the forward edge of it's progress through existence." He took out his keys and dug one of them into the table's surface dragging a straight gouge in the plastic. "I decided to do _that_ , and now the table will never be the same. The past is set, and the future is uncertain right? That's common sense. So what's the present? The present is disconnected physically from the past. It's like the table has two existences, the historic path it made to the present and it's present form which is all we can see. Space is the surface of time, and our consciousness is trapped here."

"Um.. I have to ask," I said after a pause, "is this a religious thing? Is it like the moonies at the airport or something?"

Mr. Bennett took a long sip of his strawberry Julius. "No," he said, frowning, "of course not. It's just an idea. That's the whole point. If it doesn't work, or a better idea comes along, I'll scrap my hypothesis. It's not dogma, it's just a theory." I seemed to have hit a sore spot because he remained silent.

"Well I see a problem with the theory that space is time." I said, finally. "If space and time are essentially the same thing, what's an inch? What's a mile? What's a yard? Those are measurements of space, not time."

"Are you so sure? An inch is just an incredibly small amount of time. Doesn't any inch you can measure also have it's history in time? And anyway doesn't any distance have to relate to an observer? If something's an inch away from you, or a mile away, isn't it a distance in time that separates you? It becomes obvious when you're talking about the huge distances that separate things in outer space. They're measured in light years, or the distance light travels in a year. That's a measurement in time _and_ space, which is really what all the measurements you mentioned are. It's not as if you can move through space without also moving through time, unless you happen to be a subatomic particle." He slurped the last of his drink. "And with that, I will bid you good afternoon. I'm late to give my mother her medicine."

"Mr. Bennett, hang on," I said, "what if I have some more questions about your crazy theory?"

Mr. Bennett smiled for a second. "I work Wednesday though Sunday from nine to two, only don't expect to talk to me when I'm working, unless you want to buy some science crap. Goodbye."

# 9

"The problem is that _Reincarnated Abortions_ and _Little Jimmy Has Cancer_ are basically the same song." Scott said. "We can't play them back to back, we have to put something in between." They were in Don's basement standing on a beat-up Oriental rug laid out on the concrete. Scott's head was shaved except for long bleached bangs that hung down over his right eye in an extreme version of the skater-cut. Behind him was Kid Karl on drums, an unassuming looking skinny kid with short brown hair. Don was off to the side, half sitting on his big amp from the sixties. He was tall and slouchy and he usually wore a blank expression just this side of dopey. Scott stood in front of them making a triangle. He had a black guitar attached to a small Peavey amp and a microphone that was held together with duct tape. It was on the mic-stand I helped Don steal from the music room at school.

Michael was sitting on the couch with a Korean girl named Alice and her friend who was smoking a menthol cigarette with exaggerated pleasure. Alice was Kid Karl's girlfriend, I didn't catch the other girl's name. Next to Michael, a kid with short blonde hair sat on his skateboard. He was wearing a Sideout T-shirt and had his pants folded tight around his ankles. He said his name was Brian.

"What about _Who Robbed The Bake Sale_? That would go good after _Abortions_." Kid Karl suggested.

"Yeah, but I was thinking _You Forgot to Feed Me_ , that way it's not a total speed-fest, ya' know? I think sometimes you gotta break that stuff up or people get used to it." Scott said. The other two nodded in agreement. I sat down on my skate next to the nameless girl and lit a cigarette of my own. I'd walked down in the middle of one of their songs and I think the interruption had irritated Scott. He was very serious about Eat Feet. "Let's do _Box Lunch At The Y_ and call it a day." He said.

They sounded like the Dead Kennedys, only the guitar wasn't as good and you couldn't understand what Scott was screaming. He tended to separate all the syllables in every word, creating percussive yelps, and then he'd suddenly squeeze three sentences into one bar of music and draw out the last word into a comic warble. He was good, but the real star of the band was Kid Karl. He could play so hard and fast that if he wasn't sitting in front of you, grinding his teeth and wailing away, you'd swear it was a machine. Don looked like he might be playing for the school marching band. He would stand there looking down at his bass and nonchalantly let his fingers pluck the four fat strings in rhythm.

When the song was over Scott turned to Don. "That transition to the bridge is sounding tighter. We've got the party on Friday so we'll have another chance to practice it before the gig on Saturday. I'm not worried though, I think it's ready."

"Yeah it's ready man, don't sweat it." Don said. "Why d'you always get so nervous before a club gig? If we play it like a party, it'll go good. When we start stressin' the little details the songs come out all stiff and shit. You worry too much."

"Yeah," he nodded, "you're right. I just don't want to sound sloppy."

"You obviously never heard The Misfits live album." Don said.

Kid Karl stood up. "Good practice," he said to Scott and Don. He asked Alice if she was ready to go and she said yes, and she and her friend gathered their bags and headed toward the stairs with Karl close behind. "We're going over to the Bumblebee." Kid Karl said. "It's open mic tonight and Alice is going to read some of her poetry, if you guys want to come."

"Nah," Don said, "we've got an appointment with a fatty."

"Don't you have enough brain damage as it is?"

"NO!" Don yelled. Kid Karl and the two girls went up the stairs and Don came over and sat on the couch. He removed an extraordinarily fat joint from his cigarette pack and held it up. "This," he said, "was rolled especially for you. It's been a fuck-of-a long time since we've sparked one together."

"Would you just light the fucking spliff?" Michael said.

"No." Don said. "Nick should light it."

He handed it to me and I thanked him and lit the thing. I took a couple of puffs and passed to Don on my left. Scott pulled a chair over and sat near Brian. The joint went around four times before it was out. The whole basement was filled with smoke.

"Hey Don," Brian said, "can't your mom smell that?"

"She don't care." Scott said. "She'll come down here and ask for a hit. I've gotten high with Mrs. Parker before."

"Shut the fuck up." Don said. "You never got high with my mom."

"What about that time she took us to the movies?" Scott asked.

"We were high and she was high, that's not the same thing as getting high together." Don said.

"If you say so man." Scott leaned back in the chair. "Hey, are we gonna skate or sit around discussing your mom's drug habits?"

"Brian here says he knows a rich kid up on Mendocino that's got a half pipe." Michael said. "We should knock on his door and see if he's cool."

"Is it vert?" Scott asked.

"No," Brian said, "I mean yes, it's vert, but no we shouldn't just show up at the guy's house... I only met him a couple of times. His mom makes everyone who skates there sign a waiver, so they're not exactly, you know, drop-in-any-old-time people."

"Maybe we'll get lucky and they're not home." Michael said. "Call the guy and see. It couldn't hurt to call."

"Well, see, I don't know his number for one thing, and anyway it's kinda late." Brian said. "I don't think we'll be able to skate his ramp tonight guys, I mean, even if it's just him at the house, he's kinda weird about who he lets skate there, you know?"

"He sounds like a dick." Michael said.

"I guess he is..." Brian said. "His dad killed himself, so that probably fucked him up. He has flashbacks of finding the body."

"Whoa," Scott said, "that's fucked up. He found the body?"

"My friend David knew him back then, he told me all about it. The dad figured the maid would find him, but Morris decided to cut school that day so he found him instead. He hung himself in the basement with a note pinned to his shirt." Brian said.

Don squinted, trying to imagine the scene. "I wonder what it said."

"Actually I know what it said. It's kinda weird. All it said was _I'm Cold_." Brian shrugged. "Not much of a note."

"Fuck... No _I'm sorry_ , or _it's not your fault_ or anything?" Don asked.

"No, just _I'm Cold_." Brian said.

"That would be a great song. Wouldn't it?" Scott looked at Don for approval. "I mean I could write two songs worth of lyrics offa that. Fuck, I hope I don't forget that. I always have the best ideas for songs when I'm high and then I forget what they were. Don, you have to remember that okay? You'll remember right Don?"

"Uh, yeah sure. _I'm Cold_. A suicide song."

"Yeah it'll be from the perspective of a selfish asshole who doesn't care about his family or his life anymore. He fuckin' hates what he's become, like he used to have warm feelings for life but somewhere along the way he went cold. So he ties up a noose and heads to the basement." Scott said.

Brian looked nervous. "Um... I don't think Morris would appreciate you writing a song about his father, I mean, you're gonna use the suicide note in the song? If he ever hears it he'll probably freak out or something. He's been seeing a therapist about it... I don't think it's a good idea."

"It's two words." Scott said, his voice going higher. " _I'm Cold_. He doesn't own them. You can't take those words out of the English language to make Morris feel better. Besides I didn't know the guy, so it's not like it's going to be _about_ him. I'll change some things. I'll take, you know, what's that called?"

"Artistic License." I said.

"Yeah, Artistic License. I'll make the guy shoot himself instead of hang himself." He said.

"Don't look so worried Brian, no one can understand what this motherfucker's saying anyway." Michael added.

"This shit's giving me the heebie-jeebies." Don said. "let's get out of here."

We spilled into Don's kitchen and out the back door. It was a warm clear night, and I was so high I thought I was skating good.

Of course we wound up at the grotto. No half pipe that night. Scott was a good skater but Michael was better. Michael could ollie incredibly high and even though he often stumbled or fell, it was always in an attempt to do something outrageous or unheard of. Brian seemed pretty good too -at least better than me.

Monday morning I woke up around ten. I looked at the notebook paper that Michael had given me. It read: 1984 Chevy Cavalier Hatchback, excellent cond. AM/FM cassette and air. 50 K miles. $2,000 OBO. I decided it could go into the paper as it was, with my phone number which I had to look up. I got a newspaper out of Kate's recycling bin and found the classified section. There was a number to call to place ads and I dialed it nervously. I thought somehow whoever answered would be able to tell I was running a scam.

The lady told me it cost six dollars for up to twelve words and a dollar a word after that. She said I could pay by credit card or have the bill added to my account at the end of the month if I was a subscriber. I placed the ad and had it billed to my mother's account, which I knew I'd have to explain somehow. I was in for seven dollars now, so if we didn't sell the car I'd lose money on the deal. As I hung up I knew that I was fully committed to this dodgy scheme. My number would appear in the Los Angeles Times tomorrow morning, to be read by thousands upon thousands of people.

I smoked a thin joint, rolled with the last of the dime bag from Maurice, and had a brilliant jerk-off in the shower. I lounged around the house the rest of the day and did a couple of bad drawings in my notebook. Around five I decided to leave before Kate got home, so I took my skate and headed up the hill. I went to Michael's house and knocked on his front door. The scrunched face of Michael's grandmother appeared in the window again. "Who's there?" She asked.

"It's Nick," I answered, "is Michael home?"

"No." she said. She let the little curtain fall and I heard her shuffle away. I skated across Lake to Holliston. I wanted to bomb it again. The street lights were coming on and the shadows were growing darker. I sat on my board and looked at the distance that stretched out before me. I concentrated for a moment, trying to see it as time. I reminded myself that the light coming from the trees at the bottom of the street took longer to get to me than the trees at the top of the street, and that everything I was seeing was happening in a different present than mine. As the light turned green I began counting. It was time that I was looking at. It took concentration, but I could see space that way.

At fifteen I pushed off, not too hard, remembering how close I'd cut it the last time. I kept my mind focused on the fact that I was travelling through time. Every rotation of my Hosoi wheels could be divided into an infinite number of fractions, and I could feel as many of them as I wanted. I had to rein in my mind which continually wanted to jump forward to a new point, but I kept the points as close together as possible. Mr. Bennett was right, this was slowing down time. I was in control.

I cleared the intersection and was way down by Avocado Terrace when I saw the van. It was coming up Atchison and if it stopped at the stop sign it would be on a collision course. I immediately forgot about the time thing and put my feet down on the pavement rushing beneath me. I knew the driver didn't see me, he only made a cursory stop at the sign and proceeded to turn left onto Holliston. I was going to smash into the van. I couldn't veer right without being run over, so I veered left and hit the curb. My skate popped into the air and I tumbled across the sidewalk and was stopped by an iron gate at the end of a driveway. The van kept going.

I stood up quickly and felt a rush of adrenaline. A high pitched tone was ringing in my ears. My right leg was weak and my arm was tingling. My hearing returned as I walked over to get my skate out of the street. I did a mental inventory of my body. My leg was hurting, but certainly not broken. I'd landed hard on the meaty part of my thigh near my ass. It would be a large bruise. My arm felt strange but I could bend and straighten it okay. I touched it and realized it was wet with blood. I looked at it and saw gravel stuck in my flesh which I brushed off. It started to sting. I turned my skate over and stepped on. My shirt was all ripped anyway, so I wiped some of the blood off on it.

I felt battered and beaten as I skated home, but not just physically. I was filled with an overwhelming sadness and guilt, and I didn't know why. When I was in my room, sitting on my bed it hit me. It was the memory of an awful event that was burned into my brain. I had no idea where it came from, it just appeared in my mind and I knew it was real.

I was afraid, and I was hiding in a high place and looking down from above. I could see Michael running, and there were two men closing in on him. He was trapped in a corner and he looked desperate. He turned and ran toward them and they shot him again and again. He hit the ground and blood slowly spread out in a dark circle around the upper half of his body. Looking back, I don't know why I didn't question this memory or try to pin down _when_ exactly it had happened, I just knew it was real. I accepted it the way you accept things that happen in dreams. In a dream you never ask yourself why you are flying or how you are doing it, you just fly. I had seen Michael shot to death, and I should have stopped it. I was looking down on the whole thing and I could've done something, but I just watched. I was a coward. I sat on my bed reliving the moment again and again. I cried softly and buried my face in my pillow. I was ashamed.

# 10

I woke up early the next morning to the sound of the phone ringing. It was a little after seven and Kate hadn't left for work yet. I heard her telling the person on the other end that they had the wrong number.

Michael had been shot to death and I felt a gnawing guilt in the pit of my stomach. I could've stopped it.

The phone rang again a minute later. It must have been the same person because she told them they still had the wrong number and she wasn't selling a car. Instantly, I was fully awake. All of a sudden the idea that Michael had been shot seemed ridiculous. He wasn't dead, I'd said goodbye to him two nights ago at the grotto. He was fine. I had no idea what could've caused me to think that Michael had been killed. I didn't have time to think about it because I was gripped with the fear that Kate would discover my plans. I silently prayed that no one else would call before she left. If more than one person called about the car, and she got the bill for the classified ad at the end of the month, she might put those things together and start asking questions. She would definitely call the cops if she suspected I was using her phone for criminal shit.

Finally she left and I could relax. I sat in bed wondering how I could've remembered something that never happened. It was so real. It couldn't have been a dream, I'd been fully awake the night before when it hit me. Possibly it was some sort of hallucination, I'd smoked some herb earlier that day. But I'd been smoking for years and I'd never experienced anything like that before. I wondered if I'd scrambled my brain somehow when I took that spill. I thought maybe I had a concussion. I felt around for lumps on my head, but I couldn't find any. Last night I'd been sure he was dead, now I was sure he was alive. I decided I'd better monitor myself carefully for awhile to make sure I wasn't going crazy.

I picked up the phone and called Michael. His mother answered and I half expected her to tell me he'd been killed. Instead she asked me to hold on and I heard her tell Michael not to talk long or he'd be late for school. "Nick? What's up man?"

I decided not to mention his being gunned down in my broken mind. "Hey, someone already called about the car but my mom told them they had the wrong number. It looks like this thing is gonna go down today, but I don't know what to tell people who call here. What's our next move?" I asked.

"Yeah of course I got it. It's in my backpack." Michael said. "What'd you think I was going to forget?"

"Oh, is your mom right there or something?"

"Yeah. I'm leaving for school now. I'll see you in ten minutes." He said before hanging up the phone.

I decided to take a shower and think about what had to be done. I let the hot water hit my face as I tried to establish an identity for myself. I was a guy selling a car, that wasn't so far-fetched. Why was I selling it? Because I was going to college back east and I couldn't take it with me. NYU. That was in Manhattan, so it wouldn't make sense to take a car. I was playing the part of a smart guy, a college boy. This would require my Good Shirt and my Good Pants. My skate would have to be nowhere in sight. I could do it.

I was a dead man.

The phone rang as I was drying off and I thought it might be Michael. The woman on the other end asked about the car. I told her I had my hands full and I'd have to call her back in a few minutes. I took down her number. I was feeling very nervous about the whole thing as I got dressed. I was trying to make my hair look respectable when there was a knock at the door. "We're gonna be rich." Michael said as I let him in.

"Yeah well, two people called already, I guess there's a lot of interest in it. How are we doing this shit exactly?"

"Tell them to come up to my Uncle's house. He's at 452 Altadena Drive. It's one block in from El Molino. Tell them to come an hour apart so we have enough time to sell that motherfucker if someone wants to buy."

"Alright, here it goes." I picked up the phone. Michael sat down on the couch and put his skate under his feet on the carpet as I dialed the number. "Hi, you called earlier about the car?"

The woman on the other end sounded well prepared. "Is the car's inspection and smog check up to date?"

"Yes."

"Has it ever been in an accident or had any major repairs?"

"No." I said, then thinking about it I added, "just the usual oil changes and a break pad replacement." Michael nodded his head vigorously in approval.

"We'd like to come take a look at it and go for a test drive if possible." She said.

"Sure, how about today?" I asked.

"Alright. Where and when should we meet you?" I told her the address and to meet me there at noon. I was a little concerned about the 'we' she'd used. I hadn't thought of having to deal with more than one person at a time. All I could think of was the questions they might ask that I wouldn't have the answers to.

A gruff sounding man called almost immediately and I set an appointment with him for one. There wasn't another call for a half hour or so, and Michael and I spent the time trying to think up plausible answers to questions that might be asked. When the phone rang again it was an older sounding guy with a New York accent. I tried to set the appointment for two but he told me he couldn't make it until three thirty. He said his name was Jordy and he had to drive in from Culver City. He gave me his number and told me to call if I couldn't keep the appointment. We waited another hour for the phone to ring again. We were about to give up when it did. It was another older sounding guy who talked to me like I was a friend. He said he needed to buy a car for his daughter and wanted to make sure it wasn't anything too flashy. I set it up for two, and told him the address. He made me nervous when he said he lived close.

Michael and I agreed that four prospects was enough. I checked myself in the full length mirror in Kate's room to make sure I looked like an upstanding young citizen. "Listen," Michael said as we skated up the hill, "if someone's ready to buy, just take whatever they offer. I mean, you have to act like it matters to you, but we both know it's all profit. It'd be much better to make a quick six hundred each than to hold out for more money and extend our risk another day."

"You don't have to tell me man, I don't want to do this any longer than I have to." I said.

"Cool. See, you have a professional attitude. I like that. I couldn't pull off something like this with Jeremy, he'd be gettin' all into it with the buyers and haggling over a hundred dollars or some shit. A bird in the hand is worth two bitches you know?"

"Yeah, I know." I said.

Michael's uncle was named Herbert Weller. He lived in a small one story house with a palm tree in the yard. The lawn was mostly crab grass and the paint on the front porch was peeling, but all in all it looked like a nice place. The car was sitting in the driveway next to the house, its white body shining in the sun. I didn't see so much as a scratch on it. Michael tipped a potted plant on the front porch and revealed a key underneath. We opened the front door and stepped over a pile of mail into the living room. "Don't touch anything." Michael said. "I don't want him to know anyone was in here."

I followed him into the bedroom where he opened a drawer in his uncle's desk. He dug around in the files for a minute and came out with a manila folder. "Here." He said, opening the folder. "The car is legally ours now, we have the pink-slip."

I looked at the document. "So, I just sign Herbert Weller and date it, and they sign their name and the car's sold?" I asked.

"No, Herbert already signed it, I think just the buyer has to sign. See there's a place for signatures to go right down here." He said pointing to the bottom of the paper.

"Oh, right. But look at this, it says it has to be witnessed by a notary public. That's gonna fuck us up right there." I said.

"Nah, nobody actually pays a notary public on a person-to-person car sale. Don't worry about it. Besides anyone can become a notary public, tell them you're a notary public and sign the damn thing Herb." He said.

"Ah fuck, that's shady. We could run into some serious trouble right there. I'm telling you now, if I even suspect for a second that someone's calling the cops I'm gonna bail." I said.

"I hope so. I'll be right behind you. Listen, it's past noon. Don't worry about it. Once they've decided to buy the car they're not going to let that stop them, believe me. I mean, it's just a bunch of bureaucratic red tape bullshit, people don't care about that."

"All right. Where's the keys? Our first customer is due any minute." I said. We went to the kitchen and he took them off a peg beside the fridge. I connected the key ring to my house keys which Michael thought was a brilliant touch. He told me he'd be in the house in case there was an emergency or I needed something. A car pulled up at around twelve twenty with two women in it. They sat looking at a sheet of paper, unsure if they had the right place. "Here we go. No turning back now." I said to Michael. He went to the kitchen and I stepped onto the front porch.

Both women looked up at me for a moment before they got out of the car. The driver looked like she was in her late forties and had dyed blonde hair pulled back in a pony tail except for a tuft of bangs that sprouted from her forehead. She wore a cream colored silk top and black leggings with sandals. She was a plump woman and if she wore any makeup I couldn't tell. The other one was in jeans and sneakers with a Culture Club T-shirt. She had brown hair and looked about nineteen or twenty. I immediately knew they were mother and daughter. "Hi," I said in my most friendly voice, "you here to see the car?"

"That's right. We had a hard time finding the place, you didn't tell me it was practically in the foothills." The mother said.

"Oh. Sorry about that. You know I forgot to ask you your name when we spoke on the phone. I'm Herb by the way."

"I'm Rebecca and this is my daughter Sam." The woman said. There was an awkward pause. "You're very young to be selling a car all by yourself."

"Don't worry, I've been well coached. My dad always wants me to do things like this by myself. I bought the car myself too, when I was sixteen. I could've used his help on that one, but he's big on teaching me independence," I said, "so here I am."

"Hmm. Well, let's have a look at the car." She said. As they walked across the lawn to the Chevy, the young one, Sam, gave an excited look to her mother.

"It has lots of space in the back. We could fit most of my stuff in here for the move." She said.

"Hold your horses, Sam." The woman said before turning her attention toward me. "We'd like to look under the hood."

"Oh, alright." I said. I pulled the keys from my pocket, opened the driver's side door and stuck my head in. Lights, turn signal, radio, trunk-opener, windshield wiper, but no hood. They stood at the front of the car watching me expectantly. "Sorry, I dropped my keys under the seat here." I said, stalling for time. While I pretended to be looking for the keys I noticed there was a lever to pop the hood down on the floor. I pulled it and heard the hood unlock. The woman opened and propped it up.

"When was the last time you changed this air filter?" She asked as I walked around to the front of the car.

"Um, to be honest, I don't really know," I answered, "I took it in for a tune up a couple of months ago, and they might've changed it then, but I'm not sure."

"It doesn't look like it's ever been changed." She said, fingering a particularly filthy part of the engine.

"Well, that could be." I said. "I really don't know much about cars. I put gas in it and get the oil changed every two thousand miles but that's about it." I saw a faint smile flicker across her lips.

"Would you start the engine please?" She asked. I walked back and put the key in the ignition. As I turned it I was worried for a second that it wouldn't start, but it did. It sounded good too. I got out and walked back around. She seemed to be listening to the engine carefully. Sam looked bored. "Well," she said, "it sounds like it's in good condition, can we take it for a test drive?"

"Yes, of course. Be my guest." I said. She shut the hood and walked over to the driver's side. Sam stood by the other door, but I told her she should ride up front and I'd ride in the back. Once we were in, the mother slid the seat forward and made some adjustments to the mirrors. They both put their seatbelts on, and she backed out of the driveway slowly. She crept down the street and made a right on Lake. It was obvious that Sam was excited about the car.

"Very sensitive gas pedal." The mother commented, as we picked up speed going down the hill. "It's comfortable to drive Sam, I think you'll like it better than the last one we looked at."

"I love this car." I said. "I hate to have to sell it, but it doesn't make sense to bring it with me to New York."

"Oh, are you going to school there?" The woman asked.

"Yeah, NYU. They have a strong film department." I have no idea where that one came from, I think I'd heard someone say that once.

"Oh, did you hear that Sam? We could be buying a car from the next Francis Ford Coppola."

"What can I say? I love movies."

She began testing every lever and button in the car as we made our way down the busy street. When she switched on the radio it was tuned to a sappy Christian station. I wondered if that would raise suspicion. I was now a film student who listened to gospel music. When the woman was satisfied that everything worked, she asked Sam if she was ready to try it out and Sam gave an enthusiastic yes. She pulled over in front of the Dairy Dee and they switched places. Sam made a big deal about adjusting her seat and the mirrors. "How should I take us back?" She asked me.

"Go to that light down there and turn right. Two blocks after that is El Molino which will take you right up to my street." I said.

She sped up quickly on El Molino. "Careful Sam!" Her mother scolded "It's not your car yet." I liked the sound of _yet_. We made it back up to Altadena Drive and she turned in to Hebert's driveway.

"So, whatd'ya think?" I asked.

"I like it." She said. "It's the best one we've looked at."

"Well, I'm ready to sell it today, if you're ready to buy." I said. We sat in the car while the mother seemed to be doing arithmetic in her head.

"Well, we'll need a new air filter, and of course we'll have to have the brakes checked out... I guess we could offer you sixteen hundred for the car." She said.

"Wow. Um, that's very low... The blue book value of this car is twenty three hundred. I was thinking that two thousand was as low as I wanted to go." I said.

"You know, hardly anyone ever gets blue book value."

"Oh, I know. That's why I was asking so much less. I want to sell the thing." I said. "I'm sorry, you'll have to do better than sixteen."

"Well, two thousand is more than we can afford." The woman responded, drawing a look from her daughter. "I guess we could go as high as eighteen and meet you half way." I acted like I was pondering this. "We could go to the bank and get the cash right now and come back." She added.

"Oh alright." I said. "You've got a deal. Go ahead and get the money, I'll get the pink slip and you can take the car. I think eighteen is a good deal." We all got out of Herb's car and they told me they'd be right back. Sam did a little skip of excitement as she crossed the lawn. I leaned on the car and watched them drive off. Michael let me in the back door and I could see that he was in a state of nervous anticipation.

"Well, how'd it go?" He asked.

"They're going to the bank and coming back with one thousand eight hundred dollars cash dude. That's nine hundred apiece. You were right man, we're gonna be rich!" I said.

"That's awesome! You did it." He yelled. We were actually jumping up and down when our celebration was cut short by a loud knock at the door. "Fuck." Michael said. "Who could that be?"

I was about to grab my skate and run, but then I remembered. "What time is it?" I asked.

"A little after one." He said.

"It's probably just the next guy here to look at the car."

"Oh yeah, you're right." He said. "You better look out the window just in case though. Whoever it is knocks like a cop." I peeked out the window and saw a prematurely bald man in a windbreaker standing there. He didn't look like a cop. I opened the door and stepped onto the porch. "Hi," I said, "you must be here about the car." I shut the door behind me, but not before he noticed the pile of mail.

"That's right." He said looking me over.

"I'm sorry. I was just kicking myself for not getting your number. See, I just sold the car a minute ago. I'm really sorry."

"That's not it in the driveway?" He asked.

"Oh, yes. That's it, but the woman who bought it just went to the bank and she's going to come back and pick it up."

"I see," he said, staring at me. "You don't mind if I take a look at the car anyway do you? You know people have a way of saying one thing and then doing another. She may never come back you know."

"Oh I'm sure she'll come back. She seemed like a very honest person."

"Come on, show me the car. I came all the way out here, and you never know, she might stiff you."

"Sorry. The car's sold. There's absolutely no reason for you to look at it." I said.

"Well, just out of curiosity, how much did she pay you for it?"

I shook my head. "That's between me and her." I said.

"She gave you two thousand for it didn't she? You know you got robbed? The car is worth more than that." He crossed his arms. "It's real strange, a young kid like you, selling a car for so much less than it's worth."

I forced myself to look him right in the eye. "Strange? What are you talking about?" I asked, as if he'd said something incredibly stupid.

"I think you know what I'm talking about." He said.

"Listen mister, You're making me uncomfortable. I want you to leave right now." It seemed like what an innocent person would say.

"I just want to take a look at the goddamn car." The guy growled.

"If you don't leave right now I'm calling the cops." I said. I went into the house and slammed the door behind me. Michael was standing by the window looking nervous. He'd been listening.

"I doubt it!" The guy yelled. He stormed off and we listened to him drive away.

"Fuck man, what are we going to do?" I asked.

"Don't worry about it. Even if the guy calls the cops, we're gonna be long gone before they ever get here." He said. "They have no way of tracing it to us."

"They have no way of tracing it to you. They have my telephone number, remember? Fuck."

"He's not gonna call the cops. Don't worry about it. You were brilliant, you know that? When you threatened to call the cops on _him_ I nearly shit. He was just mad 'cause he thought he was gonna get over on someone today. He was a shady dude, he wont call the..." He stopped when we heard car doors slam shut in front of the house. We both froze. Michael looked out the window. "It's them." He whispered. He must've seen that I was about to run because he added, "not the cops, those women."

Before I opened the door I scooped up all the mail and shoved it on a nearby shelf. Michael handed me the manila folder and a pen and retreated to the kitchen. I opened the door. "Hi... That was quick. I thought it would take at least a half hour." I said.

"Oh no, there's a Bank of America right down the street." The woman answered.

"Well, come on in and have a seat." I hadn't planned on inviting them in, but it seemed odd to be doing paperwork and a large financial transaction on the front porch. I felt light headed and jittery from my encounter with the bald guy and I wondered if it was noticeable. They sat down close together on the couch. "Can I get you something to drink?" I asked. "I'm not sure what we have."

"No thanks." The woman said pulling out an envelope. "Here's the money. Go ahead and count it now." She said handing it to me.

My hands were shaking as I opened the envelope and pulled out a large stack of new twenties. "Who's this in the picture?" Sam asked gesturing to a photo in a gold frame on the coffee table. It was a black couple, probably Herbert and Michael's Aunt.

"Um. That's some friends of my father." I said. They looked at me. "He does missionary work in Zaire." I thought I heard a snort from the kitchen, but they didn't seem to notice. I began to count the twenties while they sat quietly. I was afraid they would notice my hands shaking. Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, one, twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, two, until I reached eighteen. "It's all there." I said. "Here's the keys, and of course the pink slip. You're going to have to sign and date that and we're good to go."

I handed the manila folder and the pen to Sam and she opened it. "Oh wait." She said. "This has to be witnessed by a notary public."

"Oh does it?" I asked.

"Yeah. It says so right here." She held the document up and pointed at the place where the notary was supposed to stamp it.

I glanced down at the money sitting in a neat stack on the coffee table. "Hm. I don't even know where we would _find_ a notary public." I said. "I mean, are they in the phone book you think?"

"Banks have notaries." Sam said. "We could go right down to the bank."

I fought the urge to jump out of my chair and run. "...I guess we could." I said. "But it seems like a waste of money to pay a notary for something like this."

"That's right." The girl's mother agreed. "And if a notary witnesses it we have to pay the taxes Sam. Mr. Weller here is doing us a favor by not _insisting_ on a notary." I took a deep breath and smiled at them through clenched teeth.

"But the car's legally mine right?" Sam asked.

"Oh yes." The mother answered. "You have the pink slip. The fine for not reporting an auto sale is about thirty bucks, whereas the tax on a sale like this would probably be seventy five or eighty. No one pays taxes when they buy a used car from it's owner." She explained.

I nodded at Sam as if I had already known everything her mother just said. We stood up and I slipped the stack of twenties back in the envelope and put it in my pocket. "Good luck with the car, and god bless." I said. I shook hands with both of them and walked them to the door. Sam got in the stolen car and the woman got in the one they came in and they were gone. I put the mail back on the floor and went to the kitchen where Michael was standing by the back door with our skates.

"Let's get the fuck out of here." He said.

I shook my head in disbelief. "Holy shit man, it's more cash than I've ever seen in my life."

# 11

We went to my place to split up the loot. I had nine hundred dollars, my money problems were over. I'd had some fun stealing it too. Sure, I was still worried about the bald guy and his suspicions, but I erased all the car-related messages from Kate's machine and I felt better. I called Jordy in Culver City and told him the car was sold, and he was nice about it. Michael had a huge smile on his face. "What are you gonna do with the money?" He asked.

"I guess I'll pay my rent for the next two months. Of course I'll have to spread it out to avoid raising suspicion with Kate. Other than that, I don't know." I said. "How about you?"

"I'm gonna get some Jordans and a CD player. I'll still have a gang of money left over. I gotta save some of it though, 'cause eventually I want to get a car. I can't be riding my skate everywhere for the rest of my life."

"This shit's incredible isn't it? We should celebrate. You want to go in on an O-Z?" I asked.

"Fuck yeah, that sounds good. I never bought that much all at once before. We could roll nothing but super fatties for a long time." He said. "You wanna go see if Sheck's holding?"

"Don't Jessie and them still sell weed?"

"Yeah, they sell weed. Jessie's gone all paranoid though, so you gotta approach him the right way." He said. "You think he'll remember you?"

"Oh he'll remember me, don't worry. We have history."

"Alright, we'll go check him out, but no way am I going over there with all this money in my pocket. Jessie'd probably strangle his mother for nine hundred dollars. I'm gonna go home and stash this, I'll be back here around five and we can go celebrate."

"Alright man... and hey listen. Thanks for including me in this little business deal. You solved my money problems."

"Thank _you_ man." He said. "You were good. I think you're a natural liar, and I mean that as a compliment. There'll be more where that came from too, watch." He picked up his skate. "I'll see ya in a couple hours." He said, with a big smile on his face. In my room I took the cash out and counted off a hundred dollars. I rolled up the rest as tight as possible and put a rubber band around it three times. In the small front compartment of my backpack was a discreet pouch for change or erasers or something. I put the roll in there and Velcroed it shut. I zipped up the compartment and put my backpack in the closet. The hundred dollars I folded neatly and put in my wallet. I could do whatever I wanted with that hundred dollars, it was all party-money. I stepped out onto the front porch and lit a cigarette.

Jessie's house was in a state of disrepair. Walking on his front porch I noticed the wood was weak, and I thought it might cave in. A tree in his yard was growing into the roof and there were branches and little acorns that crunched underfoot. "I don't think anyone uses the front door. Maybe we should walk around back." I said.

"I think it's better to be direct so they know we're not trying to sneak up on them." Michael said.

He was about to knock when the door opened. Skinny Jessie was standing there, looking at us with indignation. He was wearing tight jeans and work boots with a white tank top and a pair of wrap-around sunglasses sitting on top of his head. His hair was long and he had color tats down his right arm and black and white ones down his left, giving the impression that the work was unfinished. I didn't catch much of their actual content, but skulls were featured prominently. "Well look at this- black as night and pale as fuck." He said. "What're you doing on my porch?"

"I haven't seen you in two years and that's how you're gonna act?" I said.

"Holy fuck, what're you doing here?...Nick, right? What happened? I thought you must have joined the witness relocation program boy, damn. I ain't seen you since that time you gave me your mamma's TV." He said.

"Gave it to you? Is that what I did?"

"I don't remember much of a fight. I hope you didn't wait all this time to come back for revenge."

"No man, we just want to buy some herb." Michael said.

"Oh is that all? Come on in." He opened the door. We walked through a dark hallway with boxes stacked along the wall and came to the living room, which was sparsely furnished with a couch, a mismatched easy chair, a coffee table, and a big screen TV that was playing the Home Shopping Channel loud. On the wall behind the TV hung a confederate flag. There was a full ashtray and some open beer cans on the table. "Sit your asses down for a minute." He said pulling the sunglasses down over his eyes. "How much you want?"

"We were hoping to get an O-Z." Michael said as we sat on the couch. The Home Shopping Channel was selling a small statue of a boy in overalls and a straw hat holding a fishing pole.

Jessie stood there scratching his head. "Really? That much huh?" He was suspicious. "Are you two going into business together or something?"

"No man, it's just for us to split. We're gonna party with it." I said.

"Good, cause I aint giving you kiddies no wholesale price. I could just as easily sell that shit by the dime bag. It's forty bucks a quarter, so that's a hundred and sixty dollars for the ounce." He said. Michael and I pulled out our wallets and each counted off eighty dollars. Jessie stood there and watched. It was hard to tell if he was surprised because of the sunglasses.

"Here you go." Michael said handing him the money.

"Fuck... All you little brats around here are loaded. Whatd'ya have jobs or something?"

"We've been saving up." I said.

Jessie counted the money. "Hang on I'll be right back." He left the room and we heard him go up the stairs.

"Hey man, check it out." Michael whispered. He was looking at a shelf under the coffee table. There was a big handgun and a black plate with a sizeable pile of yellowish clumpy powder. There was a rolled up twenty dollar bill sitting next to it, and a credit card. I noticed that the name on the credit card was Paula Riley.

Jessie came down with four bulging packets made of newspaper. "Here you go boys, an ounce of Buddha. Don't smoke it all in one place." He said, handing two envelopes to each of us. "And I have another little item you might be interested in." He produced an M-1000, identical to the one I'd used to blow up the Madonna. He held it out to us in the palm of his hand. "It's a quarter stick of dynamite. A guy I know brought back a bunch of these from Mexico. Only twenty bucks apiece."

"Maurice right?" I asked. "You got that from Maurice?"

"You know Maurice? How the fuck do _you_ know him?" Jessie asked. He seemed impressed.

"He's my friend's cousin. I owe him ten bucks."

"I wouldn't owe him money for too long. He'll cut your nuts off."

"Nah, Maurice's a sweetheart. He likes me."

"Let me see that thing." Michael said. Jessie handed him the M-1000. "This is no fucking quarter stick of dynamite."

"Actually I think it is." I said. "I've set one of those things off, and it's crazy loud. I bet you could blow a hole in a brick wall with one of those."

"I can't believe you know Maurice." Jessie said. He sat in the easy chair. "I've known that fucker since high school."

"Yeah I know. When I first met him and told him I lived on Los Robles he asked if I knew you and Pat right away. He's the one that told me how Pat died." I said.

"Oh, you heard about that? Those fucking cops man. Some day, I swear to god, I'm gonna kill a cop just for Pat."

"I guess he was more afraid of the cops than he was of the concussion." I said.

"What?" Jessie shook his head. "No way. He wasn't afraid of any fuckin' cops. Come on. That shit was fun to him, he loved running from the cops. He died on the Ho Chi Minh trail."

"The what?"

"Haven't you ever heard of the fucking Ho Chi Minh trail?" Michael and I looked at each other. "All we used to do was run the Ho Chi Minh when we was your age. Me and Pat used to be able to outrun any goddamn cop who ever said boo to either one of us. We had routes through backyards all over this whole neighborhood, it was beautiful. We used to time each other to see how fast we could do certain routes. There's hiding places all over too. We used to start up on Mendocino and run all the way down to Woodbury through backyards in a half hour. No cop could come close. We used to strategize and shit. One of our best moves was to double back on ourselves to confuse them. If we had a young cop who was actually keeping up with us, we'd take him through Henry's yard, 'cause of his big-ass dog. The cop didn't know that Henry kept the dog on a chain back there, all he knew was there was a fence and a dog goin' apeshit on the other side. No cop ever followed us over Henry's fence."

"I like that." I said.

"Yeah." Michael agreed. "The fucking Ho Chi Minh trail, just like in 'Nam."

"Don't you remember we used to call Pat King Cong? That's why, 'cause he was the king of the trail." Jessie said.

"I didn't know that was why." I said. "I thought it was because of his personality."

"So you wanna buy one of these fucking things or not?" Jessie asked.

"Not today." I said.

"Me neither. If I think of something I want to blow up I'll be back though." Michael said. We thanked him for the weed and picked up our skates. He took us through the kitchen and out the back door. There was a motorcycle and an old pickup truck in his backyard. We skated to the grotto and rolled up a fat joint using two papers.

"We should take this shit over to Jeremy's house. I told him I'd smoke him out, and he probably has some beer or something to wash it down with." Michael said.

"Alright. We can't smoke it here." I said, putting the joint in my cigarette pack. "I've never had this much weed. The most I ever bought all at once was a quarter. How 'bout you?"

"My brother and me went in on an ounce one time." He said. "But I'll tell you this, nine hundred dollars is more money than I've ever had before. I mean I can get money any time I want, you know, fifty bucks here, twenty there, but this shit's on a whole other level. Too bad we can't do it again."

"How do you get money whenever you want?" I asked. "Just stealing shit?"

"Yup."

"Like what? What do you steal to make fifty bucks?"

"It doesn't matter what you steal." He said. "You can steal anything. The question is, how do you sell it? That's the hard part. Take a bike for instance. Anyone can steal a bike, it's the easiest thing in the world. But unless you _need_ a bike what good does it do you? It's not worth anything until you can sell it. I happen to know a guy who pays fifty or sixty bucks for used bikes and he doesn't ask any questions. I don't waste my time thinking about what I should steal, I only think about what I can sell."

"We should do it man, we should rip off some bikes." I said.

"Yeah, okay, we could do that." He said. "But it was just an example, there's a million ways to make a buck."

"Yeah I know. You ever return shit you never bought? You know, find a receipt for a shirt, and then walk into the Gap and just grab the first shirt you see that cost that much and take it to the return counter for a quick twelve bucks?"

"No, but I knew a guy who used to do that at a recycling center. I guess they were backed up on the processing or something, because there were boxes of bottles stacked beside the road near the depot. He'd stop on his way in and put a couple of the boxes in his back seat, then drive to the depot and the guy there would pay him seven dollars a box. He used it like a cash machine." Michael said.

"You think shit like that would work at K-Mart? Like on a high dollar item like a VCR?" I asked.

"If you could find a receipt for one. But you'd still have a problem with the merchandise pickup at the store. The electronics department is always far away from the customer service desk. It could still work on a busy day, but you'd have to start with low dollar shit to test it out." He said.

It was a warm night and we were rich with money and weed. Our ride was cut short when we heard a loud cackle from Julie's front porch. Mya was with her, and they were laughing at us for some reason. We stopped to say hello.

" _The streets are filled with cretins!"_ Julie yelled as we came up her walk. _"For the love of Christ -what bothersome creatures you are!_ " There was white medical tape from the bridge of her nose down to her nostrils that formed a triangle on her face.

"She's possessed by demons." Mya explained.

Julie walked into her house and slammed the door. Mya, who seemed unimpressed with Julie's performance, looked at Michael.

"Tell your brother I want my money." She said.

"How much does he owe you?" Michael asked.

"Twenty bucks."

Michael laughed. "You'll never see it." He said. "What's up with your friend?"

"She's pissed off 'cause her boyfriend was supposed to pick her up tonight and he never showed." She said. "I brought her some wine to help her forget her troubles."

"Whatd'ya got going?" I asked. "A little Caber-nyea-Soven-yough?"

"Nah, Boones Strawberry Hill." She said. "And you can't have any."

"Then you can't have any of my dope. I'm just gonna light up my joint, and smoke that shit right in front of you and not give you any." I said.

"You have a joint?"

"Yup."

"Well, why didn't you say so? I'm sure we could work something out." She banged on the door. "JULIE," she yelled, "quit being a baby and get out here."

"She have a nose job?" Michael asked.

"No I didn't have a fucking nose job, you dick." Julie said sticking her head out the door. "What are you doing here anyway? Who asked you to come?"

"Quit being such a drunken banshee," Mya said, "they brought weed."

"Am I supposed to be impressed?" Julie asked, stepping onto the porch.

"Why are you such a bitch?" I pulled the joint from my cigarette pack. "Why does everything have to be some high-drama bullshit?"

"Yeah, that guy Eric's a dweeb anyway." Michael said.

I put the spliff between my lips. "Oh my god," Mya said, "is that real? It look's like a Bob Marley joint."

"You can't smoke that here," Julie said, "my mom can smell it a mile away."

"We could smoke it on my porch." Mya said. "My grandma has tubes up her nose. She can't smell shit."

As we walked down the block to Mya's house, I lit up the joint and nonchalantly took a couple puffs. It was like sucking on a chimney. I tried to pass it to Julie.

"That _is_ illegal you know, you can't just smoke it on the street." She said.

"You gonna turn us in?" Michael asked.

"No," she said, taking it from me finally. "If I did that, you might never bring your brother around again."

"Oh no, not you too. Does every woman on the planet want to fuck my brother?"

"No," Mya said, taking the joint from Julie as we walked across her yard, up to her porch. "Just the ones who've seen him."

Mya took a hit and passed it to Michael. "My dick's bigger than his. Just so you know." He said. He took a big hit and sat on her steps. We passed it around until it was burning our fingers. We were laughing and talking loud, all of us very high. Mya unscrewed the cap on the bottle of Boone's and we passed that around too. It was the first time in a long time that I felt happy.

When Julie started talking about Eric and how great his paintings were, Michael scoffed. She said she had one in her room that she looked at every night before she went to bed that made her cry. Michael asked her what it looked like and she gave a long description. When she was done, Michael said it sounded fugly which made Mya and me laugh. "You don't know shit about art." Julie said.

"So show me this brilliant painting then. I wanna see it for myself." He said.

That was when I realized what he was up to. They walked off toward her house together. It was a masterful setup and now he was getting exactly what he wanted, which wasn't to look at a painting. I'd lost my virginity to an Armenian girl named Yeva at a house party when I was fifteen, but since that sordid mess I'd been unable to repeat. The closest I'd come was with Jenny the filler-person. I'd fumbled around in her panties after school one day. Some of her friends were in the other room watching TV and she was nervous that one of them would walk in on us, so we stopped.

Mya and I were alone on her porch, and although she wasn't pretty or anything, I wanted to fuck her. The idea never seemed to cross her mind. "She's so stupid. I can't believe she's wasting her time worrying about Eric-The-Genius. His paintings are lame anyway. _I fuckin' hate art_." She said.

"You hate art? Why? What do you have against paintings?" I asked.

"I guess I don't hate art... I hate artists. Paintings are fine, but the idea of some fuck in a smock putting his deep soul onto a canvas and then expecting everyone to make a big deal over it is just... Pathetic. Who fucking cares about your feelings? It's really all about getting attention and making money, but they'd never admit that. Making a piece of art is like making a billboard or any other dumb advertisement, they're just trying to grab peoples attention so they can have everyone make a big fucking fuss over them and get some money. They're advertising a product and the product is _them_. Artists are fucking losers." She said.

"Yeah, well so what? They've gotta eat, right? If someone's gonna pay them to smear paint across a canvas, who cares?"

"Yeah, that would be fine, but see they wanna act like it means something. And of course everyone's too paranoid to admit the obvious, which is that it's totally fucking meaningless. Artists are like politicians who say like they want to help people so they can get elected, but the only person they ever really help is themselves. It's all bullshit. Fuck art, it's like everything else, it's just a bunch of assholes desperate for respect and money. Everybody wants that money."

"You act like there's something wrong with making a little money. Shit... You act like there's something wrong with money itself."

"There fuckin' _is_ something wrong with money." She said. "It's infected every goddamned thing that exists. There's not one thing that exists in this world that isn't about making money."

"What about a tree... or the moon?"

"A tree? Have you ever heard of the timber industry? It makes Billions. The moon? You know how much money we spent to put a motherfucker up there? And you really think that they're not gonna sell property on the moon? As soon as it becomes normal to go up to the moon and people start doing it all the time, the fuckin' maggots will invade and make trillions off the moon - _please_. Someday they're gonna make a projector powerful enough to project images onto the moon and then, bam! Moonvertising. One night you'll look up and the moon won't even be there, just a big Pepsi symbol looking down at you. It's inevitable. And why is it inevitable? Money, that's why." She shook her head in disgust. "And this is it? This is the best we could do? In all of human history, this is the best world we could come up with? What a joke! Our entire lives are controlled by a system that crushes the weak and rewards the heartless. The only real crime is being poor. Society is a fuckin' machine that doesn't care if we live or die as long as we have a little money to spend while we're doin' it."

# 12

The next morning I had to pee before Kate left for work and I couldn't avoid running into her in the hall. She was in her work clothes getting ready to leave. "Nick, I've been meaning to ask you something." She said. "Did that landscaping job come through?"

"Yeah it did. What do you think I've been doing all this week? I been busting my ass with a shovel, trying to level out some old lady's back yard."

"Oh. I thought it must've fallen-through because I never see you in the morning. Most landscapers work early." She said.

"Yeah well, you don't know Michael's brother. Not exactly a morning person... Oh and Kate, while we're talking, I might as well tell you. He's paying me more than he pays the Mexican guys from Home Depot, but it's still not enough for me to make the rent next month. Would it be okay if I paid you two hundred on the first and the other hundred on the fifteenth?"

"Nicky, if the rent is late you have to pay an extra thirty dollars. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to hold you to that." She said.

"Okay. Oh Kate, one more thing," I said, "Jason, my boss, um, he asked me to try to get some new landscaping jobs on my own. Everyone who works with him does it. And anyway, I put an ad in the classifieds. Since I don't have a credit card I had them put it on our monthly bill..."

" _Our_ monthly bill? You mean _my_ monthly bill." She interrupted.

"Right, sorry. It's an extra seven dollars, so I can give that to you now if you want." I said.

"Well, just leave it on the coffee table. And Nick, next time, ask."

On my way to the mall, I skated past Kinkos and saw Jeremy behind the counter wearing a black apron. I decided to stop in and say hi. I could tell right away that he was a little drunk. "Drinking on the job?" I asked. "What if you have to use the big paper cutter over there? You might cut a finger off."

He looked around to see if any of his co-workers had heard. "How could you tell? I drank a forty with lunch -they never card at that zipperhead deli around the corner. I did mouthwash an' everything... You think the customers'll notice?"

"No," I said, "I know you. I can tell when you're lit, I doubt these fools could." I looked over at a college boy with bad posture who was collating slowly.

"So what's new Nick-man? Your mom still a cunt?" He asked, a bit too loud.

"Yeah, but she's not giving me any headaches at the moment. Me an' Michael were coming to see you last night, but we got sidetracked with Julie and Mya."

"Ouch. Bad combination. Why were you coming to see me?"

"No reason really. We got some herb and we were gonna smoke you out." I said.

"Yeah? You still have any? I need to smoke a joint. I been stressed about work. My manager's all on me about stupid shit."

"Really? That's not fair. Take malt liquor out of the equation and I bet you're employee of the month." I said.

"Fuckin' A." He said. "So where'd you get the bud?"

"Crazy Jessie. Me an' Michael went over to his house. He has guns and explosives and crank and confederate flags and the TV's blarin' and it's like, _fuck_ Jessie! Nice atmosphere you've created over here. I love what you've done with the place."

"I know. Last time I went over there he scared the shit out of me. Steven was there and they had a shotgun and a handgun just sitting on the table like they expected a gunfight to break out at any moment. Remember when his mom was running that house, how nice it looked?"

"Yeah, now it looks like the set of a snuff film." I said. "He was telling us some funny shit though. Have you ever heard of the Ho Chi Minh trail?"

"You mean like in Platoon?" He asked.

"No, in the neighborhood. Him and Pat had a whole network of backyard trails to get away from the cops. I guess Pat was running one of the routes when he dropped dead." I said.

"Huh. I never heard that. Did it work?"

"I guess so. He said no cop could catch them. They used to race each other from Mendocino to Woodbury all through backyards. He said they could do it in a half hour."

"A half hour? That's not that fast. I could do it faster." He said.

"I thought that was real fast. I mean through backyards, on foot? You gotta take into consideration all the fences to get over and shrubs to go through and shit. There's no way you could do that in a half hour, I'll bet you twenty bucks."

He was about to answer when a co-worker, a short guy with spiky hair, interrupted us. "Jeremy," he said, "I'm going to the Rite-Aid. Gimme two of the forty nines and a ninety nine." Jeremy handed him some small squares of paper and the kid left.

"What was that about?" I asked.

"Oh, there's this really stupid lady who works at the Rite-Aid, so we copied some bar codes from the store onto sticky paper and now we pay whatever we want for anything in there." He held up a pile of various sized squares of paper with bar codes on them. "Wherever the bar code is on the product, we just put one of these stickers over it and it rings up forty nine cents. We have ninety nine centers, and a couple dollar sixty fours. One of these days I'm gonna see if they'll sell me a clock radio or a fancy cooler for a dollar sixty four."

"Do you realize how brilliant that is? I mean, that's huge. We could make some serious money off that shit." I said.

"Nah." He said, shaking his head. "I think the only reason it works is because it's small amounts of money, no one really cares. I mean we're getting king-sized candy bars for regular-sized prices. I think they'd notice if their most expensive item rang up one sixty four."

"Yeah, you're probably right." I said. "But they sell Walkmans in there. On a busy day you could buy a couple of thirty dollar Walkmans for five or six bucks each and then turn around and sell 'em for fifteen or twenty and pocket the difference."

"Bad idea. You'd get caught and they'd figure out where you made the stickers and I'd get fired." He said. "I hope you're not that hard up for money."

"No. I'm not hard up. You don't have to worry... I just think it's cool that you found such a genius way to get over on the Rite-Aid."

"Well, whatever you do, don't tell Michael about it, he'd be cleaning the fucking place out tomorrow." He said. "What the fuck were we talking about?"

"The Ho Chi Minh trail." I said. "You think you could do it in a half hour, I say you can't."

"Oh yeah, well, maybe I couldn't do it in a half hour, but I sure as shit could do it faster than you." He said.

"Alright, alright, I'll race your ass. We'll spark one up at your place and do it tonight." I said.

"Alright. Tonight then."

When I got to the Science Store Mr. Bennett was leaving. He still had on his Science Store T-shirt but he was wearing a baseball cap and saying his goodbyes to the pear shaped woman. He looked surprised to see me and we stood on the tile walkway outside the store for a moment. "Nick, hi. I was wondering if I'd see you again." He said.

"Hey Mr. Bennett. I hope I'm not bothering you, I just had a couple of questions about that stuff we were talking about the other day. Are you in the mood for another strawberry Julius?"

"No, I don't have time. You can walk me home if you want. I'm only six blocks away." He said. We began walking toward the exit. We passed the easy-to-shoplift Sam Goody. "I'm glad you're taking such an interest in this."

"I'm hoping it will make me a world-class skater." I said, half joking.

"Oh, how interesting. I'd never thought of that one. Track, skiing, automobile and horse races, even football, they're all excellent examples of time compression, but skateboarding hadn't occurred to me. The object of skateboarding is to execute more and more elaborate tricks right?" He asked.

"Uh, not really. Maybe. I'm not sure there _is_ an object to skating." I said.

"Oh, self expression then? I think I had this conversation with a surfer once." He said.

"Yeah. Self expression. That, and scaring old women."

He smiled. We exited the mall and were out on the sidewalk. It was a hot day. "Well, what do you need to know?" He asked.

"If I concentrate, I can see space as time. And I can feel the difference between the hidden present, and the one my brain creates like you said. I can even feel like I've slowed down time, or at least my perception of it, but it does me no good. I can't react to things any faster. See I was skating down a big hill, and there was a car coming. I thought I was going to hit it, so I ditched onto the sidewalk and jacked up my arm, look." I showed him the large scab on my forearm. "I'm sure there was some path I could've taken to not crash and not to get run over, but I couldn't see it. I had time moving very slow, but my reaction was slow too. Does that make any sense?"

"Who's the best skateboarder in the world?" Mr. Bennett asked.

"I don't know. Natas Kaupas I guess." I said.

"And he can do things you could never dream of doing right? He can do the seemingly impossible?" I nodded. "And do you suppose he's discovered and mastered the things we're talking about?" He asked.

"I don't think so."

"I don't either. You want to control time, well I'll tell you, it takes practice. Many people have learned to do it without knowing. If someone practices something every day, A skateboard trick for example, they're compressing time. What they do is break a movement into increments and slowly train their body to react to minor variations within those increments. They put more and more markers in time, bringing them closer to the hidden present. Eventually they're able to speed their body's reactions up too, so that they can accomplish everything they need to in an incredibly small amount of time. Of course the mind and body resist that. It takes lots of practice. The body has set speeds that it likes to work at, like default settings, and even if you can slow your perception of time, that's not the same thing as speeding up your reaction." He said.

"I guess I'll never get sponsored. So, Mr. Bennett, what happens if you catch up to the hidden present?"

"I'm not sure it's possible, but I think time would stop for you." He said.

"And if you go faster, would time move backwards?" I asked.

"Good question. I don't know. Possibly."

"So you believe in time travel?" I asked.

"Yes of course. We're traveling in time right now -forward. As far as science fiction and making machines that can go to any time in the future or past, no. I don't think that's possible. Of course it _might_ be possible for a person to travel back in his own life. Not to go back and meet a younger version of himself, but to go backward in his own life and relive it. There's a path through time that leads up to the present for every person, and it may be possible to travel backwards along that path, or even for your consciousness to jump to points in the past."

"And if you could do this, would you be able to live it differently than it happened?" I asked. "Could you change the past?"

"That's a good question, but I think a better question would be: Could you remember your future? What if human beings are incapable of remembering the future? You might go back to a shameful moment in your history with every intention of making it right, only to relive it again exactly as it happened, because you were unable to remember the outcome. That would take away any practical purpose that time travel might have." He said. We turned off the main boulevard and walked up a side street that was shaded by large trees. Their branches met in the center of the street, forming a canopy.

"And how would you do this?" I asked.

"Well, have you ever heard of Schrodinger's cat?"

"No."

"It's an interesting thing. Basically it's this: You put a cat in a box with a vial of poison gas and a machine that will break the vial fifty percent of the time. You close the box and after awhile you know the cat is either alive or dead, right? It's got a fifty-fifty chance. But here's the thing, it's a mathematical fact that before you open the box to find out if the cat made it, there is both a dead cat and a live cat in the box. Two possible outcomes, two cats. But when you open the box it's either one or the other. It needs an observer to become one, otherwise it's both. The reason I bring it up is because life is full of things that could go one way or the other, like your skateboard wreck. You might've been run over, you might've made it, you might've been injured in any number of ways, it's endless. Well a moment like this may create what I like to think of as a heavy point in your history. An instant when all the possible outcomes fan out and send all the hypothetical Nicks on their way. It's a point in time that has a sort of gravitational pull. You can return there much more easily than you could return to this conversation for example. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah I think so. But I still don't know how to do it." I said.

"Neither do I. It's just a thought. But even if you could dip back, away from the present, and hit one of those moments, I'm not sure it would do you any good. I think in all likelihood you would do the exact same thing you remember doing, only you wouldn't remember that you were doing it." He said.

"You lost me Mr. Bennett."

"Sorry. You know, it's impossible for human beings, or any matter for that matter, to travel at the speed of light, because as you accelerate to the speed of light, your mass becomes infinite. Things just can't go that fast, but information can. So maybe time travel is the same way. I doubt that human beings can travel backwards through time, but even if _we_ can't go back, it seems likely that we could send back information. But only back to ourselves, through the path that our consciousness has taken to the present." He said. We had arrived at a two story white house with blue trim and an oak tree in the yard. "Thanks for the conversation Nick, this is my house and I must be going now." He said. "Good luck with the skateboarding."

"Thanks Mr. Bennett, that's a lot to think about." I said.

"I've told you before to call me Chris."

"Take our skates and go down to Woodbury and wait. Whichever one of us makes it down there first, wins." Jeremy said. He was talking to Don and Michael who had agreed to officiate our little contest. I handed my skate to Michael. We were standing under a streetlight on the sidewalk, in the middle of the block between Hill and Holliston. "No cheating, you have to run through backyards unless you're on one of the cross streets." He said.

I nodded. We'd decided to start two houses apart from each other so we wouldn't follow the same line. I picked a white house with a tile roof and a well manicured lawn as my point of entry and Jeremy picked a two story house with an open driveway. Michael and Don stood midway between us.

"Ready?" Don said. He looked at Jeremy and then at me. "GO!" He shouted.

I ran down the driveway between the house and the family car, into the backyard. There was a hedge on one side, and a wooden fence across the back. I went straight for the fence and took a running leap and got most of my arm over the top. It made a surprising amount of noise. I hauled myself over and landed in a sandbox in the yard behind the fence. There was a jungle gym and a tree to dodge as I ran across the yard. I hopped up the steps onto the cement patio and ran past the house, crouching low under the windows to avoid detection. At the end of the driveway was a high gate and my first impulse was to jump over it, but then I thought using the latch might be quicker. I slipped through and ran across the front yard as the gate clanged shut behind me. I crossed the street and looked over to see if Jeremy was keeping up but I didn't see him.

I ran past a truck and into another backyard. This one was divided into two sections by a hedge. I went around the hedge onto the lower level where there was outdoor furniture and a grill. It was enclosed on all side by tall hedges and none of the trees looked sturdy enough to climb. I felt trapped. I started poking around the shrubbery for a place to get through, but I was discouraged by a chain link fence on the other side. I went to the corner and crashed my way into the hedge, getting jabbed in the stomach and arms by stiff branches. I made it to where the fence connected with a cinderblock wall and I climbed while the evil branches scraped down my back. As I made it over the top, my calf was punctured by one of the metal wires on the fence. I landed in dirt on the other side. This yard was dark and I couldn't see which direction to run. It took me a second to realize I was behind a garage. I found a narrow walkway and when I came out on the other end, a security light went on. Right then I heard a dog barking but I couldn't see it. I kept running and I realized the dog was in some other yard far behind me to my right. It occurred to me as I ran past a parked mini-van that it might be barking at Jeremy which would mean I was winning. I ran down the driveway and crossed the street.

The house that was directly in front of me had all it's lights on so I went to the house next door which was mostly dark and was enclosed by a short iron fence. I opened it and was careful to close it quietly behind me. Half-running down a brick path, close to the house into the backyard, I saw a Jacuzzi surrounded by large potted palm trees. past this tropical paradise was another wood fence, but the panels of this fence were tapered into spikes at the top, so it looked dangerous to climb. It connected to a high brick wall in the corner so I ran and jumped, swinging my leg over the top. A light went on behind me and I knew it wasn't a motion sensor. Someone had heard me. I put my feet on the narrow top of the brick wall and as I stood up, I hit my head on a tree branch and I almost fell backwards. When I had my balance, I scurried past the spiky fence and hoped down onto thick grass, taking a roll as I landed. I picked myself up and ran toward the driveway at the side of the house. I was met halfway by a small dog yapping crazily and nipping at my ankles. I gave him a shove with my foot and kept moving. He followed close but didn't try to bite again, he just barked like mad at my heels. A light went on in the house as I slipped through the gate. The dog tried to follow, but I shut it fast behind me. I hit the street flying and went directly past the next house.

I was on a cement patio enclosed by a chain link fence with green plastic strips woven in to provide privacy. There were children's toys scattered around and I had to be careful where I stepped in the dark. I stopped, realizing it was a good opportunity to take a breather because there were no lights on in the house and I figured the people must be gone or asleep. I walked to the back of the yard and hopped up and down a couple of times to see what was on the other side of the fence. I'd made it to the long block before the apartment buildings in front of Woodbury, my finish line. I went to the right corner of the yard and climbed the fence, stopping up there to plot my course. The rows of backyards that stretched out below me were all bordered by the same brick wall. On the other side were thick hedges that enclosed the opposite set of yards. Between the wall and the hedges was a narrow dirt strip. I hopped off the fence and pushed my way to the strip where my only obstacle was the occasional branch to duck under or push back. I wondered if this would be considered cheating since, strictly speaking, I wasn't in anyone's backyard. I made the last cross street and went straight for the alley. Michael and Don were waiting there. "Hey!" Michael said. "You made it. You won."

"We almost went looking for you guys. Did you see Jeremy anywhere?" Don asked.

"No, not since we started. That was fuckin' harder than I thought it would be." I said, catching my breath.

"Check it out," Michael said, "you're all dirty, look." I looked down and saw that my shirt was muddy and I had some kind of sap on my pants.

"How long would you say that took?" I asked.

"About an hour." Don said.

"Less than that, like forty minutes or so." Michael said.

"It seemed like a lot less." I said.

"Any problems?" Michael asked.

"Yeah it was pretty fucking crazy. I'd like to try it again for stealth, going for speed made me noisier than I should've been." I said. I told them about the dog and showed them the puncture wound on my calf which was sending a stream of blood into my sock. Finally Jeremy came lumbering down the alley.

"Oh my god." He put his hands on his knees and wheezed for a moment. "I fucked up my leg. That's so fucking hard. Do you have any idea how many fences there are? I had to dodge big-ass dogs like three times. I'm never doing that shit again. I ran into one backyard and there was some dude sitting on a lawn chair smoking. He said he was calling the cops -we gotta get out of here. That shit was stupid."

"I win." I said.

# 13

Lafyette Elementary School occupies two blocks on Washington Avenue, a wide busy street that still had some houses on it despite being mostly commercial space. The school was a four story, dual level brick building with small windows and a few eucalyptus trees that shaded picnic tables arranged in two rows near the front entrance. The large building stood beside two basketball courts, blocked from the street by a high chain link fence. On the other side of the basketball courts was the playground, which was on a higher level, separated by a large hedge. Connecting the playground to the courts were stairs and a long cement ramp. The place looked empty.

Michael skated out in front of me holding his brother's large bolt cutters. I wondered what the people driving down Washington Avenue were thinking when they saw him holding those things. He stopped by the chain link fence beside the basketball courts and waited for me. We both picked up our skates and walked up the alley. "What time is it?" He asked.

"I don't know." I said. "Early."

"Most schools have a morning break around ten." He said. "You think it's close to ten?"

"Nah."

At the top of the alley, next to the upper playground was a long row of bike stands with at least a hundred bikes chained to them. "What'd I tell you?" Michael said. "The mother load."

"Let's crack one of these fuckers." I said. "How 'bout this one?" It was a silver Schwinn that looked brand new. Michael squatted down and looked at the chain.

"No way, this lock is too thick. It'd take forever to bust through it." He said. He walked down the line eyeing the chains. "Here," he said, "we could bust this one." It was a red dirt bike with pads on all the bars. I walked over as he was getting the bolt cutters in place around the lock pin. He put one of the long handles against the ground and held it with his foot while he shoved his full weight down on the top handle without moving it much. He tried again with a grunt. "Fuck." He said. "I'm barely making a dent." He tried again and the handles twisted, almost knocking him over. He picked up the bolt cutters and kneeled down to look at the lock. "It's tougher than it looks." He said. "Help me out with it."

I put my skate down and watched him reset the blades in the grooves he had made on his previous efforts. He put one handle down on the ground and held it in place with his foot again, and we both took hold of the top handle. He counted to three and we slammed down as hard as we could. I felt a little crunch. "Almost there." He said. He counted to three again and this time we felt the satisfying little snap of the blade's teeth closing. Immediately afterwards the school bell started ringing. It was loud and it startled me. For a second I thought it was an alarm we had set off. Michael stood up and looked at the school building. "Maybe it's just the end of a period." He said.

"It's an elementary school, they don't have periods." I said. "It's recess." He squatted back down and pulled the lock and chain off the bike. I watched as kids came streaming out of the building onto the playground.

He shoved the bolt cutters at me. "Here. You better do it quick. Just take that one." He said, pointing to a small bike nearby.

"That's a girl's bike." I said. "It's pink."

"But look at the lock." He said. "We gotta hurry." I took the bolt cutters over to the pink bike and kneeled down by the lock. A second ago there had been silence, now there was the roar of hundreds of screaming kids. As I was putting the blades in place I noticed Michael was edging away from me down the alley. I stood and pounded down on the handle, but felt no give. I looked around and saw a group of kids standing about ten feet away on the other side of the fence, staring at me. I slammed all my weight down on the handle again, without success. As I was preparing to try again the lock slipped out and I had to reposition it between the blades. "Hey!" I heard a little voice shout accusingly. "That bike's not yours."

I looked up and saw a pudgy kid in a t-shirt with his hands gripping the fence above his head. "Fuck off!" Michael said, walking toward the kid. "Mind your own business."

"No." The kid said. "I'm telling."

I went back to work on the lock and was pounding it again as I heard Michael's response. "If you tell on us we'll find out where you live and we'll kill your mother. Understand you little shit? We'll kill her."

I looked up to see the kid giving Michael a defiant look. "I don't even care!" He said. "I'm telling." He turned and ran off as I finally managed to bust through the lock. I ripped the chain off and yanked the bike free. Michael hopped on his bike and started pedaling fast. I dropped my skate as I was getting on mine, and it took me a minute to pick it up. By that time Michael was gone. I had to balance the skateboard and the bolt cutters between the handle bars. I rode down the alley, past the basketball courts and onto Washington Avenue.

Michael went down the middle of the street, and I followed about a block behind. The bike I'd taken was small and I had to pedal fast to keep up. There were multi-colored tassels on the handles that flapped against my wrists. A couple of cars passed on our right and one of them honked at us for being in the road. Michael turned down Holliston and when I got there I saw him waiting halfway down the block. "Is that your idea of low risk?" I asked.

"If the bell hadn't rang they wouldn't have known the bikes were gone till three in the afternoon." He said. "C'mon, we gotta hurry."

On that side of Washington the houses looked a little more run-down and a lot of the windows had bars on them. I had to work hard on my pedals to stay next to Michael. "Is it far?" I asked.

He looked at me and laughed. "Why, you self-conscious about riding a girl's bike?"

"No dickhead, I just don't want to get busted. It might be a little obvious that this isn't mine, and the bolt cutters don't help any."

"It's down on the other side of the freeway." He said.

It took us twenty minutes to get there, and it seemed that every driver that went past had to take a look at me and laugh. I must have been an odd sight on the little pink bike with tassels. It was a hot day and by the time we got there I was sweating.

The guy lived on a dead end street with cracked sidewalks in a one story house. There weren't any trees around and the sun reflected brightly off a white Monte Carlo sitting halfway up the driveway. I saw a sign on the front door that read: Courson Sound Engineering Around Back. I followed Michael past the car and through a small gate into the back yard. Behind the property there was a car-wash and you could hear the sound of pressure hoses and compression engines whirring in the building. The back of his house had an enclosed porch with sliding glass doors. We left our skates and the bolt cutters by the side of the house and walked the bikes up to the glass doors. Michael knocked loudly.

A thick face looked out at us from behind a heavy brown curtain and then the latch clicked and the door slid open. "You again?" The guy said to Michael. He was in his late thirties and stood stooped over in a strange way. He had black hair and bushy eyebrows. He was barefoot, wearing sweatpants and a faded Rolling Stones T-shirt.

"My cousin asked me to sell this for him, and my friend here wants to sell his sister's old bike." Michael said.

"She doesn't use it anymore." I added.

"Alright, come in." He said opening the sliding door to reveal at least ten other bikes on his porch. "Let's see what you got."

We stood there while he inspected the bikes. He turned them upside down and pushed the pedals around with his hand, looking at the chain. He slammed the pedals back to test the brakes, and then he looked at all the bolts on each bike before turning them over again and putting the kickstands down. "I could give you forty for 'em." He said.

"You gave me fifty last time." Michael said.

"That was a better bike." The guy said. "These are for kids. Forty's all I can give you."

"Ah, my cousin's gonna be _pissed_." Michael said. "I told him I could get fifty for it." The guy looked at him and shrugged. Michael sighed "Alright, forty." He said. "Whatever. I'll take it."

"And you?" He asked me.

"Sure." I said.

"Well come on in guys, I'll get the money and the paperwork." He opened the door to a dimly lit room. "What was your name again?"

"Bobby." Michael said.

The guy looked at me as I followed Michael into the house. "Uh, I'm Brad." I said.

"Nice to meet you." He said. "I'm Raymond." He shut the door and told us to sit down. The room had a lime green couch, facing away from the door, and a coffee table stacked high with sound engineering magazines. There was a chest of drawers opposite the couch that had a small television on it with tin foil on the antennae. There was a lamp on the end table with a crochet lampshade, and on the wall hung three neon beer signs and a wooden owl with a clock in it's chest, leering down at us. The place smelled strongly of onions.

When we sat down on the couch a cloud of dust billowed into the air. Raymond told us he'd be right back and left the room. "What'd he mean _paperwork_?" I whispered.

"Don't worry about it." He said. "It's nothing."

"This place is fucked up."

"Yeah, check out the carpet over here." He said. I looked down to the right of where he was sitting and saw a rough spot. It must've been some kind of grease or oil, with bits of food mashed in. It looked like someone had stomped french fries into the rug about a month before and left it there.

Raymond came back and handed us each a sheet of paper and a pen. "Write your name, address and phone number." He said.

"What's this for?" I asked.

"Well if those bikes turn out to be stolen I could get in trouble." He said. "I have to keep records so the cops don't shut me down." He sat down in a wooden armchair.

"Oh, right." I said. I wrote that my name was Brad Kaupas and that I lived on Hermann Way in Pasadena. After I put seven random numbers down I handed the paper back to Raymond. When Michael had done the same, the man counted out our money in fives and tens. "You're a sound engineer?" I asked as I put the money in my wallet.

"Yeah, I sure am." He said. "Bicycles are just a sideline. A little extra income."

"What does a sound engineer do?" I asked. "Record music?"

"Yeah, and other things." He said. "I've done some commercials and stuff too. I could never work on a movie or a TV show because I'm self taught. They won't even look at you if you don't have a degree. I've been a professional sound engineer for fifteen years, but that still doesn't get me through the door with the movie people."

"That sucks." Michael said.

"Yes it does." He said. "But I don't really care. In my studio, _I'm_ the boss and I can do things my way, which I think is better than having some high profile gig, you know what I mean?"

"You have your own studio?" Michael asked.

"Yeah, it's in the basement." He said. "You want to check it out?"

We both said that we did. We followed Raymond through a hallway into a gray kitchen. He opened a door and led us down some stairs into another hallway and through a door that made a scuffling sound as he opened it. When he turned the lights on we saw that it was a small room with black sound-insulation panels on the walls and ceiling that looked like egg crates. There was a drum set on a raised platform with microphones all around it and behind the drum set was a window to a smaller room in the back that held a large mixing console. There were a couple of speakers high up on the wall and three guitar amps of various sizes around the room.

"Cool." Michael said. "You built all this yourself?"

"Yep, took me many years." He said. "There's still a lot more to do, but of course it takes money."

"But you probably make good money renting this place out." I said.

"Not as much as you might think." He said. "Here check this out." We followed him into the small room at the back. Beside the mixing board there was a large reel to reel tape recorder with three VCRs stacked on top of it. There was a padded swivel chair and shelves stuffed with reels and videotapes. He gestured towards the mixing console. "This board here cost eight thousand dollars." He said.

"What's all the VCRs for?" Michael asked.

"Oh well, reel to reel tapes can be expensive, so sometimes I just record onto videotape. The sound quality is actually almost as good."

"What kind of stuff do you record here?" I asked.

"Oh blues, rock n' roll, different stuff. We recorded a Raiders fight song that got played on the radio a few times last year. They even played it at the stadium." He pulled a videotape off the shelf and put it into a VCR. "Check _this_ out." He said. He flipped a couple of switches on his eight thousand dollar mixing board and hit play. It sounded like classic rock from the seventies only with weaker guitar sound and no vocals. It sounded like Foghat.

"This is real good." Michael said. "Who is it?"

"Me." He said.

"What are you playing?" Michael asked.

"Everything." He said. "With this equipment I can record as many parts as I want. I've recorded hundreds of songs. All original material. This one's my latest, I call it Perpetual Motions."

"Good title." I said.

We listened awkwardly for another few minutes. The song seemed to be going on forever. Finally he must've gotten embarrassed because he turned it off. "You guys drink beer?" He asked. We said we did. He led us back through the hallway and up the stairs to the kitchen, where he got three beers out of the fridge and opened them on a metal bottle opener attached to the wall. We sat around his kitchen table sipping our beer and listening to him talk about his music.

"Our friend's in a band." Michael said. "They might want to record some songs sometime. Do you have a card or something I could give him?"

"Yeah, sure." He said. "I'll give it to you before you go. Is it a garage band or something?"

"Yeah, they play gigs here and there." Michael said.

"I'll give you the sheet that has my rates too." He said. "They'll probably want the demo package. It's eight songs or ten hours in the studio for two hundred and fifty bucks. Then it's just fifty cents for every tape we make off the master."

"Twenty five bucks an hour isn't too bad." I said.

"That's the demo package. It goes up to thirty five after ten hours. I like to work with new groups, that's why it's so cheap. Believe me, I'm never gonna get rich doing this. If it wasn't for my social security I couldn't pay my bills."

"What do you get social security for?" Michael asked.

"I have Multiple Sclerosis." He said. "I got the diagnosis right after my parents died five years ago now."

"Oh, sorry." Michael said. "That sucks."

"Yeah well, they left me the house, so at least I'll always have a place to stay. I'm better off than most people with MS. It's just hard to pay the medical bills. You'll understand when you're a little older and you have to pay your own way in life. It's like this weight is constantly pushing down on you."

"I think I know what you mean." I said. "I have to pay rent... it stresses me out."

"Yeah, but you probably have a job. I don't. I scrape together money here and there." He sipped his beer. "I can't get a job. No one wants to hire a guy with MS, and anyway I can't work for more than a few hours before I get tired."

"I don't have a job." I said. "I scrape together money too. Why do you think I'm over here selling my sister's bike? But I'll tell ya this, I'd rather be broke than have a job any day."

Raymond sipped his beer some more and looked us over. "Well," he said, "a couple of young guys like you could make some money whenever you wanted. There's lots of stuff you could do."

"Like what?" Michael asked.

"Oh I don't know." He looked down at his beer. "There's all kinds of people in this world. Are you guys straight?"

Michael shot me an amused look. "Yeah." He said. "We're straight."

"Well I know a guy who'd pay you each fifty dollars just to watch you jack off." He said. "You wouldn't even have to touch him, just let him watch you." His face went red as he spoke.

"What the fuck?" Michael said, standing up. "I'm not gonna let some fag watch me _jack off_ , I don't care how much money he pays." I started laughing at Michael's reaction to the proposal.

"Alright, relax." He said. "I know lots of strange people, that's all. I was just telling you a way you could make money _hypothetically._ "

"Yeah, well keep that sick fag shit to yourself. C'mon Nick let's get out of here." I followed him down the hall and through the den we'd been sitting in before. The guy called out for us to wait a minute.

"You forgot to take the information for your friend." He said. Michael walked out the back door but I waited until the guy came around with a business card and a sheet of paper. I thanked him and folded it up, sticking it in my front pocket.

Michael was standing on the sidewalk next to his skate, holding the bolt cutters. He shook his head as I came out. "Can you believe that shit?" He asked. I started laughing again.

When we finally got back up near my house I asked him if he wanted to hang out for a while. "Nah," he said, "I gotta get home and erase the message from school or my mom's gonna bitch me out for skipping. Do you think you could come by my place tomorrow night? My brother wants to talk to you."

"Jason? Why?"

"He wants you to help him out with a scam down at the flea market this Sunday." He said.

"Like what?" I asked.

"He wants you to help him sell a guitar." He said. "He can explain it better than me."

"Why don't you do it?"

"We look like brothers."

# 14

When I opened the window above my bed I heard the siren again. I was starting to get used to hearing it. It wasn't loud, but it was noticeable and I wondered what it could possibly mean. With some difficulty, I pulled the screen out of the window and tossed it on my bed. I got my lighter and cigarettes from my pants pocket and stood on the bed, leaning out of the window to smoke. Kate had just left for work but I thought she might be able to detect a lingering cigarette smell when she got home. I savored every drag and watched the smoke twist and curl and dissipate as it floated up to the trees. The sound of birds chirping competed hopelessly with the siren.

When the ritual was finished, I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out my notebook. I flipped through the pages of sketchy, misshapen drawings, and had to laugh at my own lack of skill. I tried to vary the subject matter because without a conscious effort to draw different things, I'd have a notebook full of faces. I did my best drawings from a method I'd stumbled on by accident. It was like a game- I'd draw a shape at random and then look at it to see what it could become. At first I tried to make the shape an outline of whatever I decided it would be, then I began drawing more elaborate shapes and I would sometimes have to draw two things touching to make it into a coherent image. Eventually I even started using the shape as negative space in the drawing. This method gave me drawings of all sorts of things that I never would have thought to draw otherwise. Birds, a table, a car, a tree being blown by the wind, a naked woman, a man with a large hat, a tank, an elephant, a desert landscape, a helicopter, a fat man eating a strawberry, etc. etc. They were far from good, but at least they weren't repetitive.

Feeling too impatient to draw, I decided to get dressed and skate a little. After I put my shoes on, I sat for awhile without moving. I was thinking about Mya's theory that two thirds of the population were filler-people with no souls. It was an idea that made me nervous because I thought I might be one of them. Everyone I knew had a distinct personality and defining characteristics that made them who they were, but not me. I was a blank person. I could be anyone in the world, or no one. The only thing that was uniquely me was my particular history and memories, but these were hardly reliable. If I was honest with myself I knew that my memories were distorted and inaccurate. I could vividly remember things that never happened, like dreams, or Michael being killed, so the thing that defined _me_ was highly suspect.

I was about to leave when I decided to call Michael just to be sure he was still alive. His brother answered the phone. "Is Michael there?" I asked.

"No Michael's at school now. Who's this?"

"It's Nick." I said. "This is Jason right? I think we only met a couple of times. Michael said you wanted to see me..."

"Yeah, I do. You're supposed to be a natural liar, right?"

"I don't know. Maybe." I said. "Why?"

"It could be helpful. You want me to tell Michael you called?"

"Nah, that's okay. I'll be by tonight anyway."

"Alright then, I'll see you tonight." He said. I hung up and left the house. I skated all the way to East Pasadena for no reason. There are hardly any trees over there, and the wide busy streets are bordered by strip malls and discount furniture stores. I stopped at a Del Taco for lunch. I sat on my skate in the parking lot to eat and I almost choked when I noticed a 'barbwire' tag on the building across from where I was sitting. It was written in toxic gold spray paint. I decided to go see Mr. Bennett.

The mall was practically empty but the muzak played anyway. I carried my skate through the air conditioned corridor to the Science Store. It was two fifty-two according to the outer-space clock in the store. I didn't see Mr. Bennett anywhere. The pear shaped woman was behind the counter pretending to be busy. She looked at me suspiciously as I walked up. "Hi." I said. "Is Mr. Bennett here?"

"No. I sent him home early today." She said. "I've seen you here before haven't I? Why is it that you keep coming around here?"

"He's a friend of mine. He used to be my teacher and now I just like to talk to him about science." I said.

"Well, given his _history_ , I don't think it's such a good idea for you to be coming around all the time. It's not good for him, for you, or for the store." She said.

"What are you talking about? What _history_?" I asked, mimicking the emphasis she'd put on the word.

She looked embarrassed. "It's none of your business, but trust me, it doesn't look good for him to be spending a lot of time with a young boy." She said.

"What? Listen lady, first off, I'm eighteen, secondly, we're just friends, and besides, Mr. Bennett's married. I've seen his wife."

"Well, like I said, it's none of your business," she said, "but he's no longer married and there _were_ accusations. Why do you think he stopped teaching?"

I thought about this for a minute. I decided it had to be false. Maybe he was gay but he certainly wasn't a child-fucker. Part of me wanted to explain this to the woman, but I knew there was no convincing her. "Well he's my friend," I said, "and all I know about you is that you talk shit. No. I don't believe you." I turned before she had a chance to respond and walked out of the store.

I left the mall and skated directly to his house. What she'd said made me want to see him right away. I thought seeing him and talking to him would be the easiest way to forget what his coworker had said. I rang the bell and waited a minute before I heard someone walk to the door. "Who is it?" Mr. Bennett asked.

"It's Nick." I said. "I tried to catch you at the mall. I wanted to ask you something."

"Oh. Hold on, I'll be right out." He said.

There were white wicker seats on the porch with thin plastic-covered cushions on them. I sat and put my skate down sideways between the chairs. I flicked one of the wheels to watch it spin. There was a wicker table that went with the chairs, and I put my feet up on it. I put them down right away because I thought it might look disrespectful. Despite what the woman at the mall had told me, I still wanted to show Mr. Bennett respect. I decided to pretend I'd never heard the ugly woman's words.

Mr. Bennett came out in shorts and a white T-shirt. He was barefoot. "Nick, what a surprise. You know I don't get many visitors here. I'd invite you in but I'm afraid the house is a mess at the moment, do you mind if we sit out here?"

"No, not at all. I'm sorry to just drop in like this, if you're busy I could come back another time." I said.

"It's fine really, I'm glad to see you. You make me feel like a teacher again -in a good way. So, what's on your mind this time?"

"Well, I'm wondering about time travel. You said you thought it was possible to send information back in time right? Well, why not try? It could be an experiment, like, you know, we could send back information that would prevent Hitler from killing all those Jewish people." I said.

Mr. Bennett laughed. "Sorry Nick, I don't mean to laugh. It's great really. You're thinking very big, and I like that, but your mental picture of the way time works is different than mine. My theory only allows for a person's consciousness or a piece of information to travel backwards through their own life, so I'm afraid there's little we can do to prevent the holocaust. And I don't want you to forget an important fact. As soon as you successfully alter the past, you negate the present."

"Negate?"

"Sorry. Um, here it means destroy. You destroy the present. Say you sent a piece of information back and it altered the outcome of some event. The instant you succeeded you would cease to exist. Everything you'd learned or experienced since that moment would be gone and you'd live from that moment in your past forward. The current you would be gone. It would almost be like committing suicide really. If you actually could alter the past, the present-you would be gone, so it had better be worth it." He said. "Unless of course the many-worlds theory is correct..."

"Isn't there a way to send information back in time without altering anything? You know, send back some useless information just to see if it could be done?" I asked.

"How would you know you'd done it? Let's say you saw a photograph that you liked, and you decided to send a mental picture of it back to a younger-you. You could pick a moment from your life that might've had many outcomes, a heavy spot in time. You could focus on the image and on all the individual markers your brain left in time during that heavy moment, and you might actually do it. Right after that moment in your past, the image would flash through your head. It would change nothing in your life, and you would go along the same path that you would've anyway, and then one day you'd come across the photograph. You would probably think _wow, that picture looks familiar_. But you wouldn't assume you'd just traveled through time would you?" He looked at me and waited.

"No I guess not." I said.

"No. And the second time you saw it, you might not think to try to send it back, so you wouldn't know what had just happened. It has to alter an outcome in order for you to know that it'd happened for sure." He said.

I thought for a minute. "I think I've got a way we could stop Hitler." I said finally.

"Oh, are we still on that? Go ahead, I'd like to hear."

"See, I could send back instructions on how to send back information to a younger version of myself, you know? And that younger-me could teach it to an old man, who would do the same thing. Then I could send back any information to the young-me, who would tell it to the old guy, who would send it back to a young-him. It would form a chain going back. We could send information back as far as we wanted if we did that. Does that make sense?"

Mr. Bennett smiled. "Who's to say that's not what's happening right now? I think you have a good idea, except when you say you'd teach it to an old man. How many old men do you know who are ready to receive time control lessons from a young Nick? Not many. What you want to do is wait until you're old and teach it to a young person. They'll be able to give you messages from a time after your death, and you could send the messages back and tell them to me, and I could send them back and tell them to Will Brimmel who put the notion in my head. So Nick, I ask you, do you have something you'd like to tell me?"

I looked at him. He looked back at me for a long time, then he gave a little laugh. "You look so serious." He said. "It's just an idea m'boy. I don't actually expect you to have a message from the future. You're one of the brightest people I've ever tried to explain this to, and I've tried a lot. If it were possible, you wouldn't be a useful link in the chain until you'd come to a better understanding of the nature of time. Our consciousness is trapped on the surface of time, or what we call space. It's the forward edge of time and it pulls our little bodies ever forward. It's like riding a wave. It takes practice to send a thought, or an image, or a memory back, away from the forward edge, but it can be done. Maybe there are lots of chains back through time. Who knows? The past might be changing as we speak."

I let his words sink in for a minute. "Is it real?" I asked. "Do you think there are chains like that? Because if you're serious and you think it can actually be done, I want to do it. But please, tell me if you're just fucking with me."

"I'm not fucking with you. I don't know if it can be done. Think about it. Understanding the concept and actually doing it are two different things. If we did change the past, we might cease to exist instantaneously and two new versions of us would take our place. We would never know. Or we could be eliminated completely. Say we opened up a chain to the distant past and used it to ramp-up scientific achievement. We could send airplane designs back to some engineer in the 1820s and we might put air travel ahead a hundred years. But if your grandparents met on a train? You wouldn't exist anymore, and who would send back the information? Your existence would be purely theoretical, and you might only exist in an alternate reality, or a reality that was instantaneously destroyed. A phantom limb of time. On the other hand all reality might be alternate reality. There could be any number of 1989's happening simultaneously. Some might include us, some might not... You know it's hard to get out of the habit of thinking in straight lines all the time. We experience our lives linearly but that might not be the whole story. What if after we die we live our lives from the beginning again, and it's a new roll of the dice? New outcomes on all the chance occurrences in the world around us? Your life might follow the same path for a while and then veer off in some unexpected direction. To a creature that views time differently than us, our lives might look like trees, with the end of every branch being another death. It's a funny thing about trees -the variations they can take are infinite, the number of branches, the twists, the leaf distribution, the angle -it's infinite. And yet every tree looks like a tree." He looked at his watch. "Well, it's almost four. I have to run some chores."

"I have to go too." I said. "I'm supposed to see a man about a job. Thanks for the talk Mr. Bennett."

"My pleasure. And good luck with the job."

"It'll be an easy four hundred dollars or so." Jason said.

"You really think that shit'll work?" I asked.

"It works, believe me. I've done it before. Ask Michael. He's seen lots of people go for it, and the beauty of it is, it's not illegal."

"You'd be surprised how many people fall for that shit." Michael said.

I took a hit from my cigarette and thought about it for a moment. "Yeah, I'll do it." I said. "As long as you promise you won't get pissed at me if I fuck it up."

"No ones gonna be pissed at you man. If it don't work -fuck it. That's life." Jason said.

"Alright so, when and where?"

"This Sunday at the PCC flea market." Jason said. "You have to meet me down by the tennis courts at 8:00 in the morning OK?"

I agreed, but I was ninety-nine percent sure that I'd fuck it up. The car thing had been lucky, but this seemed like it would take more skill. There were variables that had to go our way for it to work. My only consolation was that if it failed, I'd only look foolish, not get arrested, so it passed the risk-benefit test.

"I gotta go." Jason said. "I'll see you Sunday Nick. Just remember, the key is to stay cool. You can't over-sell that shit or it's obvious. The guy has to think he thought of it on his own."

"Alright, man. I'll see you Sunday." I said. He walked down the steps of the porch and got into his car. It was a gray hatchback, and when he started it we could hear the thumping bass of whatever he was listening to in his tape deck. Michael and I watched him back out of the driveway.

"Hey man, lemme ask you something." I said when his car was out of sight. "Has your brother ever been arrested?"

"Yeah, he's been arrested. It wasn't shit though, he never went to jail for longer than a night or two. Why, are you nervous?"

"A little."

He made a dismissive gesture. "You'll be fine." He said. "Oh hey, there's a new addition to the Ho Chi Minh trail... A thing of beauty. I was over at Jeremy's last night and we were talking about the Viet Cong when it hit us."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. 'Cause see they were smart. They didn't just have trails _through_ the jungle, they had trails _under_ it too. Tunnels. They knew GI Joe wasn't gonna follow them into a hole in the ground. So that's what gave us the inspiration. You know that house behind Jeremy's that's empty? It's been for sale forever and it's got that crazy overgrown backyard? We're gonna tunnel over there and dig an underground bunker." Michael said. "We already finished the tunnel on Jeremy's side. It goes from the side of his garage up to the fence."

"What do you mean tunnel? Like a prison-break tunnel? What if that shit caves in?" I asked.

"Well that was the problem. That's what we tried to do at first, but it was too fucking hard. We dug this deep-ass hole and started to tunnel toward the fence, but after we got a few feet into it, it collapsed. So we figured out a better way- trenches. We dug a deep trench up to the fence and covered it over with some scrap plywood. We camouflaged it with dirt and boom, we got a tunnel. You wouldn't even know it was there if you were looking at it. You can even walk on it no problem. We got Don bringing a bunch of two-by-fours and plywood over tonight and we're gonna dig a bunker in the neighbor's yard and connect it to our tunnel. Jeremy said he could get a couple of flashlights from the Rite Aid near his work, so we'll have light down there and everything."

"Man, that sounds good... So if we're running from the law and we make it to Jeremy's yard, we can just hit the hole and disappear. I like it."

# 15

We were like grave robbers, digging in the dark and speaking in hushed tones. Don showed up in his mother's truck with a bunch of wood from a ramp he'd planned to build but had never gotten around to. We threw all the wood and the shovels over the fence, making a lot more noise than we should have before climbing over ourselves. We started by clearing out all the vines and dead branches in a large square in the center of the yard. We put it all in a pile to use later as camouflage. There were only three shovels, so we worked in shifts. I soon had two large blisters forming on my right hand. Eventually they broke and got dirty and started to sting. Jeremy had a single pair of gloves that he let Don or Michael use when he wasn't digging. The way the rotation worked out, I never got them. We were all covered with dirt and after a while when you got in the hole, you could smell the wetness of the soil. We decided the bunker should be about seven feet deep, and the trench four or five, that way the roof of the trench would be high enough that we could run through it hunched over, which would be faster than crawling.

I brought over a couple of packs of cigarettes and whoever was on break would smoke one, which took about five minutes. This meant that we'd spend fifteen minutes digging and have a five minute break. It was a good system and soon we had a nice deep hole. We were trying for a rectangle but it wound up being oval shaped, about six feet across at its widest point. Eventually, with much sweat and cursing, the hole was so deep that it was difficult to climb into and get out of.

Once we were satisfied with our hole, we got to work on the trench. We started at the end of the trench that Jeremy and Michael had dug the night before and continued it under the fence. My arms and back were sore and aching. Despite our fatigue we continued until we had connected the trench to our bunker. It was after four in the morning when all the digging was done. We were dead tired and covered in dirt, but we looked at our work with pride. Jeremy had the idea to put an old rug and a couple of folding lawn chairs at the bottom of the hole before we covered it. The rug fit almost perfectly.

We started laying two by fours across the bunker and trench, being careful to dig them in a little so they'd be flush with the ground. We actually had more plywood than we needed and the whole network was soon covered over. We walked over the hole and made sure there weren't any soft spots. It felt stable, and although it wasn't likely that someone could walk over it without knowing it wasn't solid ground, at least we were sure it wouldn't cave in. We put a thick layer of dirt over the wood. When it was all covered there was still a huge pile of freshly dug soil, and it took us a long time to spread it out so it wouldn't be too noticeable. We finally threw the vines and branches back over the thing, and by the time we had the yard looking like it hadn't been completely violated, the sun was up. We threw our gear back over the fence and dragged our asses back over it too. We'd done a ridiculous amount of work and we were all exhausted and ready to sleep.

"Alright," Michael said, "gimme a flashlight, I want to check this thing out." We walked down the narrow dirt strip between Jeremy's garage and the side wall of his yard. Michael lifted up a piece of wood that covered the entrance to our tunnel. "It's too small for four people." Michael said. "Me and Don will go first and check it out. When we come back you guys can go."

Don and Michael turned on their flashlights and disappeared down the rat hole as we'd taken to calling it. Jeremy and I stood there and smoked. We hardly spoke as we waited for them to emerge. At that point the only thing I could think about was sleep. After a few minutes I sat down on the ground with my back against the garage, and Jeremy did the same. I finished my cigarette and I was nodding off when Don and Michael popped out of the hole laughing and smelling of herb smoke. "We found another use for the bunker." Don said. "A hot-box. There's a half a joint on the chair for you guys. I'm going home, I gotta get some sleep."

"Me too." Michael said. "It turned out really good. Check it out." He handed me the flashlight.

After they left I dropped into the hole and began to make my way down the narrow trench with Jeremy close behind. It was longer than I thought it would be. The air felt thick and I wondered if we should've put ventilation holes somewhere. I could see the light from the other flashlight at the end of the tunnel and when I got to the chamber it was thick with smoke. I hopped down into the narrow bunker and marveled at what we'd created. Jeremy bumped into me as he hopped down, and we both stood there in the smoky den we'd dug for ourselves. Maybe it was lack of sleep, but it seemed like we'd crawled into a dream. We didn't belong down there, it was worm territory.

"WOW." Jeremy said. "This is cool as hell."

"Yeah, I never saw anything like this." I said, picking up the half-smoked joint. "I'm beat though. Digging is fuckin' hard."

"Tell me about it, my back is killing me right now." He said. We sat on the folding chairs facing each other. I could've slept right there. I lit the joint and we passed it back and forth, each getting a couple of good hits before we were burning our fingers on the roach. He put it out on his shoe and dropped what was left on the rug. "We should do an escape route too." He said. "We could dig it out that way and come up near the house. That way if we're ever really trying to get away from someone and they see us go down here, we don't have to leave the same way we came in."

"Yeah, good idea. We should do two. That way if someone follows us down here they won't know which one we used. We'd have a fifty-fifty chance of ditching them." I said. "Schrodinger's rat hole."

It was around seven thirty when I finally got home and Kate was up puttering around in her bathrobe. She must've thought I was in my bedroom because I startled her when I opened the front door. "Oh Nicky! Jesus, you scared me. Look at you, you're caked in dirt."

"Yeah, I been digging all night. I'm beat." I said.

"Take those shoes off, you're getting dirt everywhere." She said. I took them off and told her I'd clean it up later. I shut my bedroom door and closed the blinds but the room was still filled with morning light. I stripped naked and got into bed, not caring about the dirt that got in with me.

I woke up sometime in the afternoon and went directly to the bathroom to take a shower. I watched the muddy water go down the drain. When I scrubbed my head I could feel the grit on my scalp. I used a large amount of Kate's shampoo, and washed my body with the washcloth which was soon covered in dirt as well. I had to keep rinsing it.

I put on some clean pants and a T-shirt and stuffed my sheets in the washing machine. I took my notebook and a pen and sat in the living room. I didn't feel like skating because every muscle in my body was sore. After drawing a shape at random and looking at it for a long time, I couldn't decide what it wanted to be. I thought I'd put on some music for inspiration, so I got my Suicidal Tendencies tape and put it in Kate's stereo. Really aggressive music makes me feel calm. I was looking at my shape when I heard the sound of a skateboard coming down the hill, so I went to see who it was. From my front porch I saw Don rolling down the middle of the street. He was all slouchy and bobbing his head a little, like he was listening to a rhythm only he could hear. He saw me on the porch and took a curved line up my driveway and picked up his skate. "Yo Nick." He said. "You're just the man I wanted to see." We slapped hands. There was still dirt under his fingernails.

"What do you want to see me for?" I asked.

"I was gonna ask you something. You're mom's not home is she?"

"No she's at work. You can come in, but you gotta take those shoes off. Those things are dirty as fuck." I said.

He kicked them off and left them where they landed on the porch. I opened the door and let him in. "What are you listening to?" He asked as he dropped his skate on the carpet.

"Suicidal Tendencies." I said. We sat on the couch and I wished I'd put my notebook away. It was sitting on the coffee table and I saw him eyeing it. I was glad I hadn't gotten any farther than the initial shape. "You like them?"

"Yeah, they're alright. I pretty much only heard that one song they play on the radio. The _all I wanted was a Pepsi_ song. It's pretty good." He said. He looked around the room as if he was sizing it up. "I came by 'cause I was wondering if you got any of that weed left."

"Yeah, I got a bunch. Why, you wanna get high?"

"Nah, I was actually wondering if I could buy some from you. Sheck's dry and I gotta replace some I borrowed from my mom's stash before she finds out." He explained.

"Oh yeah? You think she won't be able to tell the difference?"

"No, I do it all the time. Either she doesn't notice or she doesn't care. Either way I'm cool you know? Can you help me out?"

"How much?"

"Like a couple of buds or something. A dub sack." He said. "I got a twenty."

"Nah... You can have it for free." I said, feeling rich.

"Really? That's cool man, thanks."

"But you gotta do me one favor though."

"Like what?"

"Take me to that house party you're playing tomorrow night." I said.

"Are you serious? Dude, you don't want to go to that party. It's some rich fucking college geeks who're trying to get all their friends from high school back together. It's gonna be a bunch of assholes drinking beer and seeing how many underage girls they can fuck now. It's way out on the west side, in some mansion. You know, preppy meatheads and shit. They'd hate you."

"How do you know? I'm likable motherfucker."

"Well, you'd probably hate them." He said pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

"Don't light that in here. My mom's very sensitive to smoke. She could have another seizure." I said, lying for no reason.

"Are you serious? She has seizures?"

"Yeah, the last time she had one she almost ripped her ear off on the mantle when she fell. Luckily it was only part-way off and the doctor was able to sew it back on. Any strong smell could set it off again, especially smoke. She even has the toaster set to light, 'cause she's afraid that if she burns her toast she'll go into hyperbarric shock again." I said.

"That's fucked up. I never heard of that." He said.

"I'll get you that weed man, hang on." I went and got the unopened newspaper fold from my backpack in the closet. I set it on the coffee table in front of Don and went to the kitchen for a piece of tin foil to put it in. I came back and put three big buds in the tinfoil. "Is that enough?" I asked.

"Yeah, that's actually more than I need. I'll have some left over." He said. I folded it up and handed it to him.

"So you gonna take me to this gig or what?" I asked. "If I don't meet some girls soon I'm going to turn Chinese from all the jerking off."

"Yeah I'll take you man. But I'll tell you right now, it's gonna suck. I seriously doubt they're even gonna like our music, they just thought it sounded cool to say there was a punk band playing. They hired a DJ too, so it'll be us versus the latest top forty shit. They're a bunch of posers. The guy who's throwing it thinks he's some kind of criminal mastermind because he sells dime bags to all his college buddies. He wanted to pay us in weed. We were like _pay us in money and we'll buy our own weed_. Kid Karl's girlfriend's friend got us the gig. If I didn't have to play, I wouldn't go."

"Yeah, but there'll be girls there."

"Yeah, there'll be girls there. Sean's little sister Anna goes to school out there now. She might actually be at this party. After all that shit went down, her parents took her out of PHS and started sending her there. I guess they thought she needed a fresh start where no one knew her brother. It's a private school with the name of a cigarette. Marlboro I think."

"Who's this?" I asked.

"You remember Sean and them, from up the block?"

"No."

"Maybe you never met him." He said. "I only knew him through Scott. He was the one that went crazy on that voodoo shit and wound up in the looney-bin. I forget what they called it... Disappearing-ghost I think. Or disintegrating. Yeah, the disintegrating-ghost. It was on TV and everything. They made a big deal out of it. Didn't you hear about that?"

"No," I said, "they believed in ghosts?"

"Nah, it was like a religious thing."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Well it started off just fucking with this kid, Sean. He was real gullible, he'd believe almost anything you'd tell him. He was friends with this guy Mike, and they used to hang out with Scott's brother. They were three or four years older than us. Mike loved to tell Sean all kinds of shit to get him going. One time he told him that Barry wanted to kick his ass just so he could watch him try to dodge Barry everyday. Remember Barry?"

"The football player?"

"Yeah. So of course Sean started trying to dodge Barry everyday, which was hard because they were in the same homeroom. Sean started ditching homeroom all the time so he wouldn't run into Barry, and if he saw him in the hall or the cafeteria he would run to the bathroom and hide -it went on for months. Finally the school called his house and told his mom that he'd been missing homeroom and Sean told her that this guy Barry wanted to kill him. His mom flipped out and went to the principal and Barry got suspended over it. Of course after that Barry really _did_ want to kick his ass. They did lots of stuff like that. We used to tell him these beautiful girls liked him and that he should go over and ask one of them out. We'd be laughing our asses off 'cause he'd just walk up to them and make the biggest fool of himself."

"That's not nice. You're a bad person." I said.

"Yeah, I know. But that was nothing compared to what Mike did. Sean and his family was super religious, you know? Sean thought he'd go to hell if he drank coffee. They were Amish or some shit. One day Mike wants us to help him pull off this elaborate prank on Sean. He said he was bringing him over to Scott's house the next day, and he needed our help. Well, he explained it, and we thought it was pretty funny or whatever, so we agreed, but what we didn't know was that Mike dosed Sean about an hour before he brought him over. He put a hit of Donald Duck acid in some Bubblicious."

"Donald Duck is the best." I said.

"Yeah, tell me about it. Mike brings him over and we're all just hanging out, playing video games or whatever, and Sean's being real quiet, just sitting there chewing his gum. After awhile Mike scratches his right arm, which was the signal, and we all started to throw some gibberish into our conversations. Not so much that it was obvious, just a nonsense word here and there. I wouldn't have done that shit if I knew Sean was tripping, I swear to god. He's just sitting there with this strange look on his face, and he started doing these weird little twitches. We were pretending we didn't notice, but really we were just trying not to crack up. So that went on for awhile, and then Mike gives us the second signal and we switch to all gibberish. That's when it got fucked up. I couldn't tell if Sean was laughing or crying. He was making these weird sort of heaving snorting sounds. We went on speaking in nothing but gibberish for fifteen or twenty minutes and then Mike gave the third signal, he clapped loud three times, and we all froze completely still. He went over to Sean and whispered something in his ear, I don't know what he said but Sean did this long moan, like he was terrified. Mike pulled Sean up off the couch and they left together. We thought that shit was hilarious. We didn't know he was dosed. I still feel guilty about it, but we didn't realize what we'd done until much later. At the time, we just thought it was some funny shit."

"That's cold blooded." I said

"Yeah I know, but it turned out to be just the beginning. Mike laid this whole religious head trip on him. He explained it to me last summer. He told Sean that god had come to him in a vision and revealed the secrets of existence. Basically it was that there's two types of people in the world, the ones who pull god apart and the ones who pull him back together. God was this ghost who was disintegrating you know? And we were all ghost particles, that's what our soul was, a little piece of god. He had this whole thing figured out. Some people would go back into god when they died and some would just float away. So it's like god is this disintegrating ghost, and each one of us was also disintegrating too, and only the people who could hold themselves together could help god stay together. I think that was it. It was more complicated. God was purifying himself through the world or something. Eventually it developed to the point where they thought the soul-disintegration thing was contagious, like a disease. So they had to avoid certain people you know? And they had these elaborate rituals too. The whole thing was so stupid."

"So what happened, did Sean just go crazy with it?" I asked.

"They both did, that's the bizarre thing. At first Mike was just fucking with him you know? He was trying some mind control shit. He wanted to turn Sean into his slave or something, but eventually he started believing it himself. Sean bought the whole thing so completely that it actually rubbed off on Mike. I talked to Mike about it and he told me he didn't know where the idea came from. He said he just started talking shit and the disintegrating-ghost thing was what came out of his mouth. He actually thought god was communicating through his bullshit, you know? They got deep into it man, it was spooky. They were like a two person cult. They used to stay together all the time and they started drawing this symbol everywhere that was supposed to hold the ghost together and keep it from disintegrating. It looked like a house on fire. Like a kid's drawing of a house with flames coming up. They drew it all over school. They drew it so much that the principal even made an announcement that if the people drawing the symbol were caught, they'd be expelled. Of course Mike and Sean took that as some kind of proof that they were right. They thought the powers that be were trying to silence them. They used to draw that symbol real big on their chests with a permanent marker every morning. This went on for almost a year, and Mike had complete control over Sean. Then, one night, Sean's dad heard this big commotion in Anna's room. He went to see what was wrong, and Sean's in there strangling his sister. Luckily she was thrashing around and she knocked over her nightstand. They took her to the hospital and of course the doctors got the police involved. Sean explained the whole thing to a police psychologist and his parents decided to charge Mike in court. When it hit the papers they made Mike out to be the suburban Charlie Manson or something, but they couldn't make any of the charges stick."

"Why was he trying to kill his sister?"

"She was a disintegrater." He said.

"Did you have to testify?"

"No, I guess he never told anyone about the whole gibberish thing, cause no one asked us anything about it, and the papers didn't mention it. After the trial Mike got expelled, Sean went to an asylum or somewhere and Anna went to the cigarette school. She'll probably be at this party."

"Is she pretty?" I asked.

# 16

Kid Karl was packing his kit into his mother's Volkswagen when Don and I got to his place. His girlfriend Alice and her friend from the other night were hanging out, watching him. He seemed surprised that I was there, but he made a point of welcoming me. I thought he was doing it for Alice's benefit. Maybe they'd had a fight about her friend coming, and he was glad that now _he_ had an annoying third party that _she_ had to accept. After we moved Don's gear from the basement to the back of the car, we all piled in with three of us squeezed into the back seat. Alice's friend slid over to the window so we had to sit girl-boy-boy.

Alice's friend had her window part way down because she was smoking, and when we got on the freeway wind whipped into the car loudly. Alice turned the music up to compete with the wind. It was some British techno-pop. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE LISTENING TO?" Don yelled.

"DEPECHE MODE." Alice yelled back.

"IT SOUNDS LIKE SHIT."

"WHAT?" She screamed, pointing at her ear.

"IT SUCKS."

"I LIKE IT." She said. Kid Karl smiled a little. The 110 freeway took us winding from South Pasadena past downtown Los Angeles. It was a beautiful warm night and it seemed as if everyone must've been going to a party or a movie or to some other activity of no importance. The Kid drove like he played the drums, fast and precise. We got off on Melrose in what looked like a serious ghetto. "Are you sure this is the right exit?" Alice asked. "I thought it was supposed to be in some big mansion."

"I think so... They said get off on Melrose and make a left at the light." He said.

"Oh my god, look at _them_." Alice's friend said as a couple of prostitutes in short skirts walked by.

The little stucco apartments and liquor stores we were passing had bars on the windows. There were groups of guys standing around and every surface was covered in urban calligraphy. "Look at that. That's cool as hell." Kid Karl said as we passed a large graffiti piece on the side of an apartment building.

"This can't be right." Alice said. "I think we took the wrong off-ramp."

"It's right. Here's La Brea right here. This is where I'm supposed to turn." Karl said. We turned and turned again and watched the houses go from poor to rich, to really rich, to filthy rich. The front lawns got bigger and bigger. Finally we turned down a street that was full of parked cars and people driving around looking for parking places and walking in small groups. "This must be it. I think it's that house right there." The Kid said, pointing to a palace with a U-shaped driveway that was full of foreign and classic American cars. "I'm not dragging my whole kit up the block. I'll pull up here and you guys can wait with it while I find a place to park, okay?"

"Yeah, all right." Don said. Karl stopped in the middle of the street in front of the house and we jumped out of the car. There were already two cars waiting behind us as we walked around to the back of the station wagon. I hoped they were people going to the party and not random traffic. We quickly pulled all Karl's gear onto the sidewalk along with Don's bass. The last piece of equipment to be unloaded was Don's amp, and while I was hauling it someone in a car behind us honked so I took an extra long time getting out of the way. Don shut the rear door of the wagon and Kid Karl and the girls drove off down the street. I lit a cigarette and gave one to Don and we stood there smoking mutely as some girls who looked like movie stars walked by. There were also some guys in white baseball caps and the latest in high-dollar footwear going in. Everyone was entering the party through the side gate which led to the backyard. We could hear the music thumping and the occasional scream or loud laugh coming from back there. I'd washed my pants, but my shoes were still dirty and my T-shirt was ripped in the back. Don looked even sloppier than me, but he had an excuse, he was in a band.

Kid Karl and Alice came up the sidewalk holding hands with the other one trailing behind. I flicked my cigarette butt into the street and picked up the kick-drum. Don and Karl got the other drums and amp and Alice and her friend carried the cymbals and the bass. A burly guy in a black T-shirt was taking money at the gate, there was a line, but he waved us in ahead of everyone.

Behind the house was a swimming pool and a large patio bordered in an L shape by the lawn. The sound system was set up on a deep wooden porch that ran the length of the house. There were four long steps from the porch to the patio and lots of people were casually sitting on them, drinking out of red plastic cups. There was a big tree at the back of the yard and a narrow pool-house up against the wall. People were milling around in groups of three or four, talking, laughing, smoking, and drinking. Everyone seemed to know each other.

The DJ was playing wild rap music with lots of cursing. I'd never heard it before but it was cool and I wished I knew what it was. Scott was standing by the turntables nodding his head. When he saw us he waved us over. There was an oriental rug laid out next to the DJ and Scott had his mic, guitar and amp set up on it. I put down the kick drum and watched Kid Karl spring into action, setting up his kit with military efficiency. When I saw that I wasn't going to be any help, I turned and surveyed the party. There were about two hundred people there, but it was early and there was a steady stream of new arrivals. It was dark except for a light in the pool and two big ones above the porch. I smelled ganja but I couldn't see where it was coming from.

A crowd of people was waiting by the pool house with cups. "Hey Don, you want a beer?" I asked. Scott gave Don a look.

"No, not 'till after we play." He said. I walked by a group of well groomed preps on the stairs and thought I heard one of them snicker as I passed. I ignored it and walked casually over to where the kegs were being mobbed. I stood patiently at the back of the crowd. There was a thin girl with black hair and lots of makeup standing next to me and we made eye contact for a second. I said hi but she looked away and pretended she hadn't heard.

"Damn, I guess she didn't like the looks of _you._ " Someone said behind me.

I turned and saw a normal looking guy standing there. "No, I forgot my white baseball cap." I said. "No one told me that's what everyone was wearing."

He laughed. "Me neither." He said running his hand over his nearly shaved head. "Don't you have a cup hommie?"

"Aren't there cups up there?" I asked.

"No, you gotta buy the cups over by the porch. They cost two dollars."

"Aw, fuck."

"Don't sweat it. Today's your lucky day." He said. "The dude gave me two stuck together, so I have an extra." He pulled them apart, spilling the dregs of what was left in the cup on his hand. He shook it off and gave me the extra cup.

"Thanks, man. What's your name?"

"Lazlo, yours?"

"Nick." I said as we got to the kegs.

"Have you seen Fly Rob?" He asked me as I pumped a cupful.

"I don't know who that is." I said.

He gave me a strange look. "This is his party." He said, putting his cup under the spigot.

"Oh. I came with the band, I don't know Fly Rob."

"You came with the band?" He asked. "What do you play?"

"I'm not _in_ the band, I'm just friends with the bass player." He nodded as we made our way out of the crowded beer area. I pulled out my cigarettes. "You smoke Lazlo?"

"Just weed." He said.

"I got some of that too."

"Are you selling it?"

I lit my cigarette. "Nah, I just brought a joint." I answered.

"Oh... You and my friend Jake should collaborate on that joint. He brought some coke and we were going to roll up a coco-puff." He said. "You ever had one of those?"

"No, is it nice?"

"Mad nice." He said. We had walked up to a mismatched couple who were both sitting on the edge of a reclining lawn chair. The guy was short and stocky with a spiked flat top that looked like it had a lot of gel in it. He wore shorts and sandals and a surfer necklace with fat beads. She was taller than him, with brown hair and a face that was mostly nose. Her eyes were puffy and she wore tight jeans and jelly bracelets. She held a thin cigarette which she smoked with an air of indifference. "This is Nick." Lazlo said, gesturing to me. They looked up and nodded in greeting. "And this is Jake and Aloni." I said hello. "Nick was just telling me he brought a joint." Lazlo continued. "He said we could use it for our coco-puff."

"Yeah? Is it good weed?" Jake asked.

"Pretty good. There's no seeds or anything." I answered.

"Cool. I don't see Fly Rob anywhere. We'll have to open up your joint and re-roll it with the yayo. Do you have papers?" He asked.

"Nope."

"I got some." Lazlo said pulling a pack of zig-zags out of his pocket.

"We have to wait for Jen you guys." Aloni said. "She'll be here any minute."

"She lives three blocks away, what's taking her so damn long?" Jake asked.

"She's probably trying on different shades of eye shadow. Either that or her mom won't let her out or something." She answered. "If she's not here in a little while we can do it without her, but I promised her we'd wait." Just then a piercing blast of feedback startled everyone. The whole party looked over to where the band was setting up.

"This dude came with those guys." Lazlo said.

"Really? Are they any good?" Jake asked.

"Yeah, they're real good if you like hardcore. They're loud, fast, and funny." I said, sipping my beer.

"What's their name?" Jake asked.

"Eat Feet."

"There's a word for that you know." Aloni said. "It's called shrimping." We all looked at her. "You know, people who like to lick and suck on feet... They're called shrimpers." She explained.

"You _would_ know some sick shit like that." Jake said. Aloni laughed and took a luxurious hit off her cigarette.

"Seriously," Lazlo said, "where'd you hear that?"

"It's just something I know, that's all."

"You should tell Scott." I said. "He's the singer. He'd probably use it in a song." She smiled and looked away. There was a huge group coming through the gate and my new acquaintances looked at them intently, trying to spot their friend. I told them I'd be right back and walked toward the porch. The place was getting crowded, and as I walked up the steps I noticed three incredible looking girls standing together in a tight group. Scott was doing the sound check over the rap music. It consisted of him saying 'peaches', and 'beaches', and making some squawks on his guitar. I walked over to Don, who was messing with his amp off to the side.

"This ain't a bad party, you dick. You just didn't want me here 'cause you wanted all the rich pussy for yourself." I said.

"She-it... I didn't know it was going to be like this. I thought it was gonna be some glorified frat party." He said.

"I already met some heads who wanna smoke a coco-puff with me."

"What the fuck is that?" He asked, plucking a deep note on his bass.

"That's when you mix some coke in with the joint." I said as if I'd known it my whole life.

"Ooh, shit. Could you save me some?" He asked. "We're about to play as soon as Rob gets out here. I guess he told the DJ not to introduce us 'till he makes his grand entrance."

"Yeah man, I'll save you the roach... Hey there's a lot of motherfuckers here, aren't you nervous?" I asked.

"Nah, I don't get nervous. Scott's nervous though, look at him. He takes a sip of water every two seconds, watch... See? There he goes. Now he's gonna set it down and pretend to adjust something on his gear. There, this time it's the pedal. Now, he'll take another sip... There he goes, now he'll set it down and look at the crowd. See? He's been doing that since we got here."

I watched Scott go through the whole routine again. "Hey, have you seen that girl? The one whose brother tried to kill her?" I asked.

"Anna. No, I haven't seen her." He said. He looked down and thumped out a simple bass line. "Hey, that's probably Rob right there." He nodded toward a guy with slicked back blonde hair and a short sleeve button-up shirt who was opening the sliding glass door of the house. He had a dog on a choker leash and it was straining so hard that it's front legs were off the ground. It had a round mean face. Rob was wearing an expensive looking watch and a silver necklace on the outside of his shirt. He went over to the DJ and they gripped hands and talked for a minute. He walked to where the band was set up and the dog sniffed and strained and looked around excitedly. He shook hands with Scott and said something to him I couldn't hear. He glanced over to where we were standing and gave a sharp nod. "You ready to fuck it up?" He called out.

"Sure." Don said.

He nodded again and walked down the steps into the party where he was swarmed.

"He's real popular _._ " I said.

"If you threw keggers and sold weed you'd be popular too." Don said.

"I guess you're gonna play pretty soon, so I'm gonna go do this joint." I said. "Have a good show. I'll start the pit right there."

"Don't be disruptive." Don said.

I made my way through the smoky, beer-soaked crowd. The rap music came to an abrupt stop and the DJ's voice came over the system. "Direct from Altadena, The greatest band no one's ever heard of... Give it up for Eat Feet!"

No one clapped. Kid Karl slowly banged out four hard beats before they launched into a ear-splitting skreech-fest. Everyone in the crowd was looking at them, a few people were nodding their heads but more were making sour faces. The girls instinctively moved away from the porch. I hadn't heard the song before, but it was definitely one of their better ones. Scott was alternating between screaming in agony and doing his incomprehensible motor-mouth thing.

My trio was looking bored as ever and there was no sign of Jen. "Eat Feet's real good." Aloni deadpanned. "Oh look Jake, people are slam dancing. Are you going in the moshpit?"

"I might." He said. "It wouldn't be my first one you know... Hey fuck this, I'm not waiting for Jen anymore. Nick, gimme that joint and I'll go re-roll it in the bathroom."

I pulled the joint out of my cigarette pack and handed it to him. It was as big as my index finger. He held the joint up to Lazlo. "This is a lot of weed. Should I just roll up the whole packet?" He asked.

"Yeah why not? It'll have to get four people off, so you might as well." He said. Jake walked away, toward the pool house.

I watched him walk away with my joint. "Is this some kind of scam?" I asked Lazlo. "I mean I don't really care about that weed, so if this is some kind of scam, you didn't have to go to all the trouble."

"What? What kind of scam?" He asked. "You think I burned you?"

"I don't know."

"If I just burned you why am I standing here?"

Aloni snorted.

"It just reminds me of something I heard once." I said.

"You need to relax Nick..." He put a hand on my shoulder. "You gotta learn to trust people. He's coming right back with it, and we'll spark that motherfucker up right here." He seemed offended.

"I didn't mean anything by it." I said.

"So this singer, you really think I should tell him about shrimping?" Aloni asked with a crooked smile.

"Oh yeah, he loves anything that has to do with sexual perversion. He sings about rim-jobs, feltching -all kinds of sick stuff. He even has a song about the Peruvian yucca plow." I said. "This song he's singing now, it's about bestiality."

"Yeah, I thought I heard him say _goat_." Lazlo said.

"That's real nice." Aloni said. "You boys need a hobby other than your dicks."

"That sounds just like one of his lyrics!" I said. I went into a barking imitation of Scott's singing. "I NEED A HOBBY... OTHER THAN MY DIIIIIIIIICK..." Aloni smiled again and took out her Virginia Slims.

I watched the band play. They were on their third song when I noticed Fly Rob standing with his dog, surrounded by his friends and their girlfriends. He looked like he was trying to flex every muscle in his body. Now and then the dog would start barking, or lunge at someone, pulling it's choker tight. You could see that Rob loved that. He would yell at it and tell it to heel. He reminded me of a roman soldier or a Nazi. There was a lively moshpit flailing and stomping in front of the band. Jake finally came back and held out a pregnant joint. "It's not as pretty as the one you rolled, but now it's got a little something extra." He said.

Lazlo pulled out his lighter and handed it to Jake, who put the joint between his lips and lit it. He stopped for a second to blow out the flame that had jumped to the end of the joint before taking a deep hit. He passed it to Aloni who took a couple of shallow puffs. "Careful, it's running." She said as she passed it to me.

I licked my finger and touched it to the end of the run to keep it burning evenly. I took a deep hit. The end of the joint sizzled a little. The thickness of the smoke filled my lungs but it wasn't harsh at all, it was like inhaling a cold winter cloud. I passed it to Lazlo, still holding my breath. I thought I must've taken a small hit because I couldn't feel it, but when I exhaled I saw that I'd sucked down a massive amount of smoke.

By the time it came around again my heart was racing. I took a smaller hit this time and passed it on. People were looking at us with envy, but we kept our circle tight. It went around two more times. I was feeling detached from my body. My lips were dry and my jaw was tense. Jake was saying something, but I wasn't comprehending him. I nodded and licked my lips. "See?" Lazlo said, slapping me on the back. "I told you it was nice."

Jake put out what was left of the joint by licking his fingers and pinching the cherry. I pulled out my cigarettes and lit one. It's smoke felt harsh in my throat after the softness of the cocaine hits. I watched the movement of the crowd with curiosity. "Everyone here looks so exaggerated." I said to Lazlo.

"I know what you mean!" He said. "Like everything they're doing is way too big. Hey, here comes the dude I was telling you about. Here comes Fly Rob."

He was walking toward us with his dog leading him, and people were getting out of the way and giving him props as he went by. When he approached us he yelled for the dog to heel and it walked close to him and sat down when he stopped. "Yo Rob, nice party man." Jake said, walking over and slapping hands with him. Lazlo did the same.

"Yeah," Lazlo said, "this is even better than the party at Rachel's last year."

"Cool, cool. I'm glad you're havin' fun." He said, nodding. He turned his attention to me. "Who're you?" He asked.

"Nick." I said.

"This dude came with the band." Lazlo said. "He's friends with those guys."

"Oh right. If you need anything I got dub sacks. I'll be up by the DJ." He said. He gave the dog a tug and as he was leaving he glanced over at Aloni. "What's up?" He asked without stopping.

"Hey Rob, hang on a minute." She called out. He stopped and looked at her. "I just wanted to ask you... What's your dog's name?"

"Teef." He said. He turned and continued his stroll, walking slowly all the way around the pool, stopping now and then to talk to people. He was making sure everyone at the party saw him, soliciting weed sales was just his excuse.

"He's such a prick." Aloni said to no one in particular.

"I think he's an alright guy." Jake said. "You just don't like him 'cause he doesn't remember your name."

"Fuck you. I don't give a shit if he remembers my name." She said.

We stared at the band and the wild moshing. My mind was on a million subjects and I was uncomfortable with restless energy. I wished I had my skate so I could spin. I could usually do one and a half or two full turns, but right then I felt like I could do fifty. I needed to move. I started nodding my head in time to the music. I had set my beer down to smoke the joint, and when I remembered it and picked it up again I nearly gagged. It was warm and flat. I puffed my smoke, nodded my head, and tapped my foot. All of a sudden I had the urge to explain time control to someone, but Aloni was snuggled up to Jake, watching the band and Lazlo was in his own world. It occurred to me that I didn't really know these people. I didn't know anyone there except the guys making all the noise. I probably wouldn't see any of them again for the rest of my life. The thought was comforting. "I'll be right back." I said.

I walked to the pool house where there was a line for the bathroom. There was a couple in front of me and the girl looked drunk. In front of them was a guy with a backwards baseball cap who obviously had to pee badly. I stepped on my cigarette butt and pulled out another one. It felt like someone else was doing it. It was someone else's hand bringing the cigarette to someone else's lips. Someone else flicking the lighter and holding it to the end of a cigarette. It was all far away. I felt supremely confident. The backwards baseball cap guy banged on the bathroom door. "Come on! You been in there twenty minutes." He yelled. I suppressed a laugh.

Three girls came out of the bathroom, careful not to make eye contact with the door-banger. I watched them walk away. They were acting nonchalant in a hyper way and they had the sniffles. When it was finally my turn, the light in the small room made me feel sick. I thought I could see the individual light particles. It was probably just smoky in there. After I pissed and washed my hands I looked at myself in the mirror. I recognized my face but my eyes were strange -they were bright red and glassed over. _Next time you smoke cocaine, toke lightly,_ I said to my reflection.

As I walked back toward the patio I saw that my new acquaintances had moved to the edge of the mosh area. Scott, Don, and Kid Karl were still going strong, and all three of them were covered in sweat. I stood next to Lazlo and he looked at me and smiled. He was grinding his teeth and throwing little punches in the air to the music. Jake stood beside him with his arm around Aloni. Every once in awhile we had to move back suddenly or duck to avoid getting hit with an elbow or a foot. On the other side of the pit Fly Rob stood in a wide stance with his chest out. He was nodding slowly, as if in approval of the violence. Teef was at the end of his choker barking and snapping. The moshers were keeping their distance from Teef.

I have no idea why he did it. I couldn't tell you what was going through his mind, although I saw the whole thing. He pulled the dog in close, opened up the choker and slipped it over his head, releasing him. The dog charged into the pit and immediately jumped up and snapped at a big guy in a letterman jacket, just missing him. Everyone in the vicinity looked shocked, and backed up quickly. Rob was laughing. The dog stood in the middle of a growing circle of fear and confusion. Many people continued moshing, unaware of what was going on. The band kept playing.

The dog ran in my direction and I jumped back. He passed me and went straight to Jake and bit into his ankle. Jake screamed as the dog jerked it's head down twice. It began trying to scramble backwards with Jake's ankle in it's teeth. Jake pushed Aloni away, and she started screaming too. There was a moment of blind panic in the crowd as people realized what was happening. Jake managed to kick at the dog with his free foot. Fly Rob walked over with the leash, still trying to maintain his cool posture. When Jake finally got free of the dog and turned to run, it lunged and grabbed his forearm, surprising him and pulling him down to his knees. Aloni screamed louder now, and I saw blood pouring from Jake's leg. He flailed wildly, but the dog held on and I knew it would go for his throat next.

I didn't have to make a decision. It was as if I'd merely considered a course of action, and then I was in the middle of doing it. It was scary because I wasn't in control. Some primitive part of my brain had taken over. I was watching the beast pull Jake to the ground, and then I was stomping it's abdomen with the full force of my weight. I felt it's ribs breaking under my foot. The dog screeched and let go. Amazingly, it looked around as if it was going to attack me in spite of having it's chest caved in. I jumped down with both feet on the dog's head. I felt it's skull crack, and I fell backwards onto the cement. I don't know what happened next. Chaos. There were people running and yelling and Lazlo had me by the shoulders and was saying something to me. "What?" I asked.

"HE WENT TO GET HIS GUN. YOU HAVE TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! HE'S GONNA KILL YOU!"

# 17

"Steve, thank god you're home, it's Nick. Dude, I need a huge favor. There's a psycho frat-boy who wants to shoot me and I'm fuckin' stranded in Hollywood." I said, still catching my breath. Steve started laughing. "I'm not kidding around. Please, you gotta come pick me up. I'll pay you twenty bucks. Just get me to South Pasadena, I can take a bus from there."

Steve sighed. "Where in Hollywood?" He asked.

"On Melrose and ... Fuck... I can't see the cross street. La Brea's near here." I said. An ambulance and a police car sped by with their sirens wailing.

"Only thing I know on Melrose is that hamburger joint, Sammie's Spacecraft." He said. "You know where that is? It's a few blocks west of La Brea I think."

"Okay man, I can find it. Listen, are you on your way? This guy seriously wants to kill me." He started laughing. "IT'S NOT FUCKING FUNNY. I'm not kidding."

"I can be there in an hour." He said.

"An HOUR? What the fuck?"

"I'm in the middle of something. I'll meet you at Sammie's Spacecraft in an hour." He said. "Your ass is lucky I'm doing _that._ I hate driving in Hollywood."

"Alright, I'll see you, in an hour." I said.

I heard him say "You're welcome" as I hung up the phone. Another police cruiser went by with it's siren on. I knew it must be headed toward the aftermath of the party. The feeling of the dog's head cracking under my feet was stuck in my mind. It was like someone else had done it through me. I was scared of myself. What else was I capable of? Maybe I'd had an out-of-body experience like the new-age people talk about. I was sure that I was losing my mind.

There was no time to think too deeply on it, I had more immediate concerns. I was sure that Fly Rob would drive up in an expensive car and put a hole in my head at any moment. My salvation was that there was so much traffic leaving the party, he probably couldn't get out of his driveway. If he did get out, and the cops didn't intercept him first, he could find me easily. It must've been one thirty in the morning and there was hardly anyone on the street. I walked close to the buildings and kept my hands in my pockets and my head down. Every car that passed sent my heart racing. I expected to be gunned down at any moment.

The farther down Melrose I went, the more crowded it got. It seemed to be a nightclub area, and there were lots of sketchy-looking people staggering to their cars or smoking in little groups. I passed some kids with green and purple hair and a couple of skinheads. It wasn't the kind of crowd you could get lost in, but it made me feel safer. If he shot me here, at least there would be witnesses. I saw Sammie's Spacecraft, which is a fifties style diner with lots of chrome edging, like on an old Cadillac. Their sign looked like a flying saucer. The place was full of people who must have come from bars all over Hollywood to have a late-night burger. I considered sitting down and having a cup of coffee, but I thought I would be too exposed sitting alone. The place had big windows, so if Fly Rob came driving by, he'd see me in there.

I continued walking, careful to keep my face turned slightly away from the traffic going by. There was a store that was still open, so I decided to go in and kill some time. It was an adult bookstore -a porn shop. I guess I must have looked eighteen because no one even noticed when I walked in. I'd been in places like this before, and about half the time I was asked to produce ID. It was brightly lit and smelled of stale cigarette smoke and cleaning products.

There were rows and rows of videos divided into sections by little signs. There was oral, anal, lesbian, gay, bisexual, group, S&M, masturbation, shaved, hairy, mature, just eighteen, she-male, tranny, classics, loving couple, fatties, animation, golden showers and special interest. There was a rack against the wall that had every porno magazine you've ever heard of, plus some. They even had some imports from Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. Next to the magazines were the dildos and vibrators which came in an astounding assortment of shapes and colors. They had day-glow pink and purple, various flesh-tones, white, orange, glow in the dark, and pitch black. There were small ones that were only a few inches long and gigantic three foot monsters with heads on both ends. There was a vibrator cleverly disguised as a dolphin sculpture, tongue shaped vibrators, vibrating eggs, glowing light-up dildos, blown glass dildos, dildos shaped like various animal penises, a scary dildo shaped like a fist and forearm, and a futuristic model called The Thumper which had three sections divided by clear joints filled with little multi-colored balls and a small appendage near the base that was meant to provide clitoral stimulation. There were a few different kinds of strap-ons, including one called The Accommodator that was designed to strap to your chin for obvious reasons. They had whips, riding crops, paddles, nipple clamps, leashes, ball gags, pig noses, queening chairs, sybians, and black leather face masks. There were extra large diapers, rattles, bonnets and pacifiers for adult babies, they carried a line of furry underwear, crotchless underwear, edible underwear, assless chaps, regular cock-rings and cock-rings with vibrating clitoral stimulators, they had cock-socks, ball-cozies, free-standing rubber vaginas, Magic Fingers electric panties, edible body paint, glow in the dark body paint, paint on latex, Ben-Wa balls, French ticklers, dental dams, nipple tassels, sex swings, lubes and oils including some that came in fruit flavors and a brand that warmed on contact. There were butt plugs of various shapes and sizes, anal beads, amyl nitrate poppers, numbing creams and lotions, clit pumps, dick pumps, pussy pumps, male and female blow-up dolls, an anal douche kit, Kama Sutra Position of the Day calendars, little wind-up dicks, and a five foot inflatable penis punching bag that was weighted at the bottom so it would always bounce back. There were novelty boxes of pasta shaped like tits and penises, bottles of fake pills labeled Horny Pills and Boner Pills, a coffee mug shaped like a women's naked torso and one with a dick for a handle, cake pans and ice trays shaped like dicks, pornographic playing cards, pornographic stanhopes, maid outfits, cowgirl outfits, Naughty Nazi outfits, and elaborate cow, dog and pig costumes. They had an item called the full body condom, and lollypops shaped like dicks, pussies and tits. There were t-shirts that had pro-sex slogans and shocking statements like _No one knows I'm gay_ , _No one knows I'm a lesbian_ , and one that simply read _Pervert_ with an arrow pointing up. They had t-shirts that made the wearer look like they had large, porn star breasts. I think they even had some regular old condoms.

I surveyed the people milling around, looking at magazines and videos. There was a punk in a leather jacket, an old guy with bad posture, a young giggling couple, and a black guy looking at a lesbian magazine. The guy working the counter was extremely skinny and had dyed brown hair that was moussed up into a ridiculous pompadour.

The place felt safe, I couldn't imagine Rob looking for me there. I walked over to the 'shaved' section and picked up a video at random. It was called _Shaved New World_. I flipped it over and looked at the pictures on the back, which were your usual triple x stuff. Big cocks stuffed in mouths and asses. Maybe it was the lingering effects of the joint I'd smoked, but it seemed more funny than sexy.

I looked at a few more videos before I noticed a rack of books. It seemed odd that anyone would want to _read_ pornography in the age of the VCR but there they were. They all had the same style artwork on the cover, like the illustrations in a Hardy Boys novel, but with big tits and asses. I picked up one called _Filly Ranch_ that had a woman tied up with a bit in her mouth on the jacket. I read the first couple pages and then flipped to the middle. From what I could gather it was about a guy who ran a ranch and had three daughters who were super horny. He wound up treating them like horses, keeping them tied up in the stable, putting bits in their mouths with reins and everything, and of course fucking them. He had to 'break' each one successively, and the main point seemed to be that the girls really liked being treated this way and getting beat up and fucked by their father. The author made a point of mentioning that all the girls were over eighteen, which struck me as funny. As if raping your daughters was fine, but you'd have to be sick to do it before they turned eighteen. The book was decidedly creepy and wrong, which was probably it's appeal.

After I thought an hour had passed I left and walked back to Sammie's Spacecraft. There was no sign of Steve so I sat on a bus-stop bench nearby and lit my last cigarette. I was almost finished with it when I noticed a black Mustang creeping up the street. I could see two people in it, and they seemed to be looking for someone on the sidewalk. As they got closer I thought about running. A black mustang was exactly the kind of car that Fly Rob would have. When it was a block away my heart began to race. I threw the cigarette in the gutter. I was about to dash across the street and look for a place to hide when the Mustang suddenly sped up and drove past me. It was a girl driving the car.

I exhaled.

I recognized that I was in a ridiculous situation, sitting at that bus stop, waiting to get shot. And all because I wanted to go to a party. Mr. Bennett's theory was that you could send information back to yourself through time. If it was possible to do it, I could warn myself not to go to that party, and maybe save my own life. I'd have to find a heavy point in time, a moment when time slowed down and there had been the possibility of many different outcomes. Somehow I could project the image of what had happened at the party to that moment. I had the discouraging thought that if I was successful I would already remember it, but I decided to try anyway.

I was searching my recent past for the right moment when I saw Steve's Jeep pull around a corner and stop in front of the diner. He was leaning over the passenger seat, trying to see if I was in the restaurant. I startled him when I opened the door. "Hey man, thanks for coming."

"Yeah, what else am I going to be doing at three in the morning? Sleeping? So what the hell happened, why's a frat-boy want to kill you?" He asked as he turned off Melrose.

"I killed his dog." I said.

"Are you serious?" I nodded. "What the fuck is it with you? Do you hate dogs or something? That's the second dog you've killed."

"No I don't hate dogs, I fuckin' like dogs. It's not like I've ever gone out of my way to hurt a dog. It just happened."

"Yeah? Well, I'm a lot older than you, and I've never killed a dog. Not even once."

"Come one, you know the first one was an accident. This one was kind of an accident too. It was attacking this guy... I thought it was going to rip his throat out, I swear to god, so I stomped it... I had to do it. I mean, I might've saved the guy's life." I said.

"You know how rare it is for a dog to actually kill someone? People get bit by dogs all the time, but for a dog to actually kill someone is rare." He lit a cigarette and thought for a second before he continued "It probably would've bit the guy a few times and he would've had to get some stitches. It's fucked up, but that kind of thing happens all the time. If someone gets bit by a dog you don't go stomp it to death. What's wrong with you?"

"You weren't there Steve. The dog would've killed him, I know it." I said, trying to keep my voice from going up to a whine. We got on the freeway and Steve immediately slammed down the gas pedal and we were screaming along the 110.

"So where have you been Nick? I haven't seen you all week." He asked.

"My Gram kicked me out, so I'm back at my mom's in Altadena." I said.

Steve smiled. "What happened? Did she find some more interracial porn in your room?"

"No, it's 'cause I stopped going to school and I lied to her about it." I said.

"You dropped out? Why the hell would you do that?" He shook his head disapprovingly. "Don't you know you'll never have it that easy again? As long as you're in school you don't have to get a job and support yourself. I was never a good student, but I stayed in school as long as I could... I wish I was still in school, it was a great time for me. When I was going to SMCC I actually started to enjoy learning. If my grades had been a little better I would've transferred to a university. Then I could've stayed in school even longer. You fucked up Nick. As long as you're a student, you can put life on hold. Now you have to earn your keep like the rest of us."

"Yeah, well, fuck it... I don't know why I stopped going. I guess I didn't like how I was being treated by the teachers. Not that they were mean or anything, it's just -I couldn't give a shit if I got an A or an F, and they didn't really give a shit either, but they had to act like they did. So I went through all this play-acting with them, which got old after awhile. Like this one teacher, Mrs. Prough, she would always hold me after class and tell me I was failing, and she would tell me all the old homework assignments I needed to do to get my grade up. She knew I'd never do them. She just had to tell me so she wouldn't feel bad about failing me, you know? I think giving me an F made a lot of my teachers feel bad. Not because they cared about me or anything, but because flunking me made them feel like bad teachers. I was fucking up how they saw themselves. Then there was this one big English assignment, it was supposed to count for half our grade that semester. We had to compare and contrast these two boring books in like eight pages or something. I never even read 'em. So the due date comes around and everyone hands in their paper except me, you know, big deal, I always got incompletes. But for some reason this time the teacher got it in her head that she was going to motivate me to do the assignment. She gave me a two week extension and helped me with an outline and all this shit. She asked me how it was going every day, and I'd say like, 'oh it's tough, but it's coming along' or something, and of course I wasn't doing any work on it. The day before it was due she tells me how much she's looking forward to reading my paper and how she's really proud of my effort and she even gave me a hug. How could I go back there without the fucking paper? It was so much easier just to stop going."

"Well, I never got as much pussy as when I was in high school. I would've stayed if for no other reason than that." He said. We got off the freeway and after a couple of turns we were in front of the apartment building. He stopped the Jeep on the ramp to the underground garage. "Well, here you are in South Pas. I believe there was some talk of financial compensation?"

"Oh. Right." I said taking out my wallet. I pulled out a twenty and handed it to him. "Here you go _pal._ "

"Thanks -and Nick? If you ever get around to actually killing _a person_ , don't call me. You're a nice kid, but I'm not going to jail for you." I got out of the car and shut the door. His Jeep disappeared into the garage. It was cold and I wished I'd worn a long sleeve shirt. I was missing my skate, walking seemed so slow and hard. My legs were fatigued, and I had to force myself to keep moving. I wanted to lie down right there on the sidewalk, but I knew I'd have to get up again, which would take more energy than to keep walking. I made it to Fair Oaks Avenue, which was empty that time of the morning. All the stoplights were blinking yellow. I crossed the street to the bus stop and sat on the bench. I concentrated on not falling asleep.

About an hour later I realized that no bus was coming. For some reason I'd always thought they ran all night, but now I knew that I was wrong. I'd have to wait till daylight. The strip-lot was a good place to crash, but it was too far. I couldn't imagine walking that far, and by the time I got there it would be time to turn around and come back. I walked toward an inviting patch of grass across the street and down the block from the bus stop. There was a three foot brick wall that bordered a Sav-On parking lot, and between the wall and the lot was a small strip of lawn. The Sav-On was closed and the lot was empty, so it was entirely out of view. I lay down on my side with my back to the parking lot and used my arms as a pillow. I was hidden and the grass was soft. Before I fell asleep I wondered why they would bother putting a strip of grass in a sea of asphalt. Someone had to mow this pointless patch of nature. I decided that if anyone asked, that's who I was: the grounds keeper of the Sav-On parking lot. The thought made me smile as I drifted off.

When I woke up I felt like dog shit. Both of my arms had fallen asleep and they flopped lifelessly as I sat up. I wiggled my shoulders until some feeling came back. After the pinpricks subsided, I realized that the Sav-On was open and there were some cars in the lot. I must've looked like a bum to the people who'd parked there. I stood and tried to smooth out my hair as I walked back up to the bus stop. My mouth tasted foul and I wanted to be home.

An hour later I walked into Kate's house drinking a strawberry Quik I'd gotten from the AM/PM. She was up reading the paper and having her morning coffee. She always had to work on Saturdays. I guess she knew I hadn't been home because she didn't look surprised when I walked in the front door. "Good _morning."_ She said, as if I might not have known it was morning.

"'Mornin'." I said, gulping down my sugary drink.

"I suppose you were out landscaping again?"

"No. I was at a party... I pay rent, remember?"

"Wow, all-night party, huh? Must've been fun." She said.

"It sucked. My friends left me stranded in Hollywood, and I wound up sleeping in a parking lot." I said. I had no idea why I was telling the truth. I hoped it wasn't because I wanted her to feel bad for me.

"Oh, your _friends_ ... They sound like wonderful people."

"It wasn't their fault. I left in a hurry and they had no way of knowing where I went, so it wasn't like they ditched me." I said.

"Of course not, I'm sure they were worried sick about you."

"Why do you assume the worst about my friends?" I asked.

"Let me tell you something, nobody has any 'friends' the way you mean it. Kids always think they have lots of friends, but when you get older you learn that everyone is just looking out for themselves." Kate said.

"Maybe you just have sucky friends."

"There aren't any friends on earth that aren't using each other for something. Could be something simple like money or clothes, or it could be something else. Maybe it's sexual, or they feel smart around someone who's dumb, or pretty around an ugly person. Think about it, why would any two people logically decide to be friends? _You_ think friends are people who just magically like you." She said.

"Well, maybe I magically like them, so I know it's possible. Why can't I just enjoy someone's company? You should learn to trust people, not everyone is out to use each other Kate."

"In one way or another, they are." She said.

"I have friends that just make me laugh, you know? They're fun to be around." I said.

"Okay so what if they stopped making you laugh and they weren't fun to be around anymore? Would you still hang out with them?"

"No, I guess not." I said.

"No of course not, because they would have nothing to offer you anymore. Or more to the point, you couldn't take anything _from_ them anymore. If you're not getting anything from them, why be their friend? Why bother? You think there's love between you and your friends? Trust me, it's just a bunch of people who know each other and love themselves."

# 18

"That's fucking insane." Michael said. "Do you think this guy's still after you?" We were sitting on his back porch. I'd come from Don's house where I went to get my skate. I had to walk the whole way there, and he wasn't even home. His sexy mom let me in to get it, but she missed her opportunity to bed me. I also wanted to see Don to find out what happened after I left the party, but he was already at Scott's house getting ready for their club gig. I decided to skate to Michael's and tell him about the incident.

"I don't know, I hope not. I mean, he knows my first name, that's all... Unless Don or Scott told him more. I don't think they would've. I'm not too worried. He's a rich kid who thinks he's all hard. I doubt he'd really kill me as revenge for his dog, you know? He might try _something_ though. He thinks he's a gangster. He's the type of guy that's seen Scarface a million times. You should've seen him at this party -walking around like he was Pacino or something."

"A wanna-be is way more dangerous than an actual gangster. You gotta be careful man. Don't kill no more dogs for awhile. Maybe just a Chihuahua or some shit, but no big ones."

"Yeah, I'll try to control by bloodlust."

He snapped his fingers. "Oh, man! I forgot to tell you, our bunker works. We didn't kill any pets or anything, but Jeremy and me had a fucking crazy night last night. We were over on El Molino trying to get this girl to let us into her house, she wouldn't let us 'cause she isn't allowed to have company when her parents aren't home or something. Anyway, we were in front of her house, just skating around, waiting for her to come out, and this cop car turns down the street. We didn't even plan it or anything, we just took off running. We ran through her backyard and tossed our skates under her porch. We hopped her fence and ran to the next street, and the fucking cop was there waiting for us -so we just ran past him! We smoked his ass! We went into another backyard and the motherfucker got out of his car and tried to chase us on foot..."

"Why were you running?"

"Just for the fuck of it. The question is- why was he chasing us? I mean, as far as he knew, we hadn't done anything wrong, you know? He just assumed we did since we were running. We made it to Jeremy's yard and went down the hole. The cop was right on us, but when we hit the rat hole it was all over. We stayed under there for about an hour, and when we came out again? No cop. Luckily Jeremy's mom wasn't home, because the pig saw us go into his yard. He might've knocked on Jeremy's door, I don't know. But that shit was funny as hell. You should have seen this fat-ass cop trying to chase us. He was all bright red and sweaty and shit."

"I wonder what he thought you guys did." I said.

"Who knows? We have to do that shit again though."

"Let's do it tonight." I said. "There's nothing better to do."

"Alright, but we absolutely can't get caught or my brother will kill me. He's sure you and him are gonna make a pile of money tomorrow at the flea market." He said. "He already got the guitar and everything. "

"Hey, you sure he won't be mad at me if I fuck it up?" I asked. "I'm not sure about this one."

"You got it dude, you won't fuck it up. The way you handled those bitches at my Uncle's house, this should be a piece of cake for you."

"What ever happened with that? Did you hear anything? Was your Uncle pissed?"

"Plenty pissed. I went over there that night and broke the window in his back door. I didn't tell you that. It worked -my Auntie called my Grandma when they got back from Texas and told her someone smashed the back window and stole the car keys. It was believable 'cause if you looked in the back window, you could see the keys hanging there on the peg. I guess they never realized the pink slip was gone too. I'm sure they didn't fill out a police report, my uncle hates cops more than me. We should be in the clear." He laughed. "That fool's gonna be riding the bus a long time."

"You're pure evil, man." I said. "Robbing your family members and shit... What's wrong with you?"

"You don't know the guy," Michael said, "he deserves it."

"I'm just kidding, I don't care. If I had an uncle I'd probably rob him too."

It was getting dark out and we were skating down Lake Avenue on our way to Jeremy's house when Michael stopped in front of Hamilton Elementary School (the pink prison). I rolled up and stopped next to him. "What's up?" I asked.

"Didn't you see that? C'mon, there's some graffiti heads behind Hammy. Let's go check it out." We went up the side street to the fence behind the school and looked down onto the playground. The yard of the elementary school is sunk down about seven feet from the sidewalk and the fence went up another seven feet or so, making it a fourteen foot drop if you were brave enough to try to climb it. Over by the basketball courts there were three guys standing in front of the wall of a big building. It looked like they were taking turns with some spray paint and their skates were laying nearby. They were being very loud which was odd considering what they were up to.

"Who is that?" I asked.

"That's G and Todd. I don't know who that other guy is."

"That's G? Damn, he got tall since the last time I saw him. How the fuck'd they get down there?" I asked.

"There's a hole in the fence on the low side over in the corner. Let's go see what they're writing."

I followed him around the corner and down a strip of cement between the fence and a row of bushes. We had to duck and push the branches back to get to the low side of the wall. At the corner, near the ground, the edge of the fence had been pulled up and out, probably with pliers. Michael ducked under and stepped down onto the court. I passed the skates through and crawled under myself. He casually jumped on his skate and glided toward the vandals. I followed.

"Look at these stupid motherfuckers rolling up on us." A kid in sagging jeans shorts and a Raiders hat said loudly. G stopped writing and walked over to where Todd and the other kid stood.

Michael laughed. "Calm down." He said as we stopped in front of them. "We just wanted to see what you were doing."

"Well now you've seen it so you can turn your asses around and get the fuck out of here." Todd said.

G giggled. "Hey hold up, it's Nick," he said, "I haven't seen your skinny ass in a long time. Were you in jail or something?"

"No South Pasadena." I said. "What's up with you?"

"Same old shit." He turned to Mr. Raiders hat, "cool out, this dude's from my street. What's going on Mikey? I never see you or Jeremy around no more."

"Well, your mom keeps me pretty busy so I don't have as much free time as I used to."

"You're always talking shit aren't you?" G said.

"So can we get in on this wall, or what? I feel like expressing myself." Michael said.

"Yeah, I guess." G shrugged.

"You can use some paint, but you gotta write over there, so no one thinks your weak-ass tags have anything to do with us." Todd said.

"Sounds fair." Michael said. "First show us what you're doing." We walked up and saw the word 'mayhem' written in block letters where a security light illuminated the wall. The outline was black and they were filling it in with silver. I'd seen the same thing on other walls in the neighborhood. Underneath it was _G_ , _$$$_ , which I figured was Mr. Raiders hat, and _Todd_.

"Why do you just write Todd?" I asked. "Don't you know you're supposed to come up with a cool sounding name?"

"Shut the fuck up." Todd said. G laughed a little.

Michael picked up the black spray can and G went back to filling in his block letters. We moved down to a spot on the wall that was lit up by another security light. "What should I write?" Michael asked me.

"Let's be the Ho Chi Minh crew." I said.

"That sounds good...Wait a minute though, how do I spell Minh?" He asked. "There's an H in there somewhere."

"I don't know. M I H N?" I said, not sure.

"I think the H is on the end, like M I N H."

"That can't be right. Why would the H be on the end?"

"I don't know it's fucking Chinese." He said. "I'll just write Fuck Tha Police."

He began spraying out the letters stopping now and then to shake up the can. When he was finished it looked very sketchy and angry. It looked good.

"Here, let me see that." I said, taking the can from him and giving it a couple of shakes. I made a circle with two dots in it and then a bigger circle around that. I put eyes and ears on it and had a pretty good pig face. Underneath I wrote _BITCH!_

"That's cool." Michael said. He took the can from me and drew some thunderbolts shooting up from his writing. He underlined my 'BITCH!' and took a few steps back. "This is a brilliant piece of work right here. Too bad it'll probably get painted over before all the kids can see it."

"Hey, gimme the can, I'm gonna write something else." I said. He handed it to me and I shook it a couple of times. In my most even handwriting, I wrote:

SPACE = THE PRESENT

"What the fuck does that mean?" Michael asked.

"Oh, it's this theory I been working on. Basically it means that what we think of as space, you know the world around us or whatever, that it's really the exact same thing as the present." I said.

"That makes absolutely no sense Nick."

"Yeah, it does. Think about it. Space only exists in the present, right?"

"No, there was space yesterday too." He said.

"Okay, but it's not there anymore is it? It only existed in yesterday's present. Yesterday isn't a place you can go." I said, parroting Mr. Bennett.

"That's a pretty deep thing to be trying to put across in some graffiti." He said. Todd and Mr. Raiders hat came over.

"I knew you'd write some stupid shit." Todd said. "Gimme that paint boy, you're wasting it." He grabbed it out of my hand.

"I'm done anyway." I said, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. Todd walked up to the wall and sprayed a line through what I'd written.

"What'd you do that for you dick?" Michael said.

"'Cause it's fuckin' lame. I don't want to be on the same wall with that retarded geek-boy shit. _Space, the final frontier._ " He said. Mr. Raiders hat thought that was funny. I could see that Michael was ready to fight over it.

"You piece of shit..." Michael said before he was interrupted by a shout from the street. There was a guy in a track-suit standing on the other side of the fence yelling. He said something about calling the cops. Michael and I had our skates right there, so we were able to get away first. Todd and Mr. Raiders hat had to run back and get theirs. G was stuffing cans into a backpack. We climbed out the hole and hit the street toward Jeremy's house. I didn't see which way the other three went. "I hate that fucking asshole." Michael said over the rumble of our wheels on the concrete.

"He's just trying to start shit. He's always looking for a fight." I said.

"A fight? That's a joke. I could stuff his ass down his throat."

When we got to Jeremy's house there was no one home but we saw light coming from under the door of the garage, so we knocked. The garage door lifted part way up and Jeremy was squatting down to look out. He gave us a loud greeting and opened the door a couple of inches higher so we could duck under. The garage contained an old Chevy and many years worth of junk. There were stacks of boxes, tools, sporting equipment and toys from Jeremy's childhood. There was a mini refrigerator, a beat up Lay-Z-Boy and a stack of cinderblocks with a television on it. The TV was playing a Laverne and Shirley rerun. Jeremy was drunk.

"This is where you're hanging out now?" Michael asked.

"I'm gonna clean it up and have this piece of shit towed and move out here." He said. "This is going to be my private little pad."

"That'll be a big improvement over your current situation." I said.

"Yeah it will." He took a sip of beer. "Hey, Don was looking for you."

"Why?"

"He said you broke up some big party last night and ruined their gig or something. He was afraid you were still stuck in Hollywood 'cause they left without you... You want a beer?"

"Yeah I'll take one. -So that's what he said? That I ruined his gig?"

"Something like that." He handed me a Coors tall-boy and gave one to Michael. "You killed the guy's dog and all hell broke lose."

"Yeah, that's exactly what happened. For no reason I just killed the guy's dog." I said opening my can.

"First Lilly, and now this. Man you're fucked up. You know most serial killers start out on dogs." He said.

"Most homeless start out in their mom's garage." I answered.

"You better watch out 'cause a lot of people think their dogs are family you know. Like their dogs are their children. This guy might come looking for you."

"I'm not worried. I know you got my back." I said.

"Yeah, I got your back. Your way, way back. Like back behind some bushes back." He said.

"Hey we ran into G and Todd and some other dude up at Hammy just now." Michael said. "Todd was trying to start shit."

"He's always trying to start shit. I hate that fuck. What were they doing?"

"Just fucking up one of the walls on the basketball court." Michael said.

"Oh the _mayhem_ thing? They put that shit everywhere. Who was this kid they were with?"

"I don't know. A short kid, busting a sag. I never saw him before." Michael said.

"Probably Bill. That's Max's little brother. Actually half brother, I think they had different dads. Remember we used to make him shoplift shit from the grocery store when he was little?"

"That's him?" I asked. "I remember that. He was like six or seven and you and Max would shove candy bars down his pants and he'd be crying. He'd walk out of the store all crooked."

"He grew up man. He's got mental problems now. Max told me." Jeremy said.

"You still talk to Max?" I asked.

"No. He moved away last year. He went to college in Oregon I think. He plays the violin and he got a scholarship for it." He took a sip. "I guess he's real good."

"That's right, I forgot. He always had to be at music practice. It's weird to think he'll wind up playing classical music in an orchestra somewhere and he used to do whipits with us and throw rocks at cars and shit."

"You threw rocks at cars?" Michael asked. "Why?"

"I don't know. I guess we were bored or something." Jeremy said.

"We were like ten or eleven and we had this whole ritual about it." I said. "We used Jeremy's house as our base. We'd all say we were sleeping over at his house 'cause his mom was the most oblivious. After she was asleep we'd put all-black clothes on and sneak out. We had different spots, but our favorite was the front yard of that big mansion up on New York and Holliston. We'd hide behind the hedge and wait for a car to come along. When it got close we'd jump up and just nail it with rocks. Most of the time we missed, but every once in awhile we'd hear a thunk -and we'd take off running. We broke some tail lights, and cracked a couple of rear windows doing that."

Michael laughed. "That's straight-up pointless and dangerous."

"Yeah, we had some fun doing it though." Jeremy said.

"Sounds like a good way to get your ass kicked." Michael said.

"Yeah, but we never got caught. We were so young anyway that if we did get caught, it would've just been a stern warning or a ticket or something. We tried to do M-80s and Black-Cats too, but we could never time it right." Jeremy said.

"And you did all this just for fun?"

"It _was_ fun." I said. "Why the fuck not? It's better than joining the boy scouts or some shit. And really, how much has changed? I mean, what the fuck is the point of running from the police? That's pointless and dangerous too."

"I don't think it's pointless." Michael said. "It's good practice for one thing. If we ever actually have to ditch them to get out of trouble, we'll know what to do. plus, it fucks with their heads. Put yourself in their position- say you're a cop and every time you see a kid, they start running and you can never catch them. Well, after awhile, you're gonna stop trying so hard right? Fuck, I mean, it makes a statement. When they say 'stop' we're supposed to shit our pants. Why? Who're They? Just a bunch of fat assholes. They only have power because _we_ give it to them."

"And 'cause they got guns." Jeremy pointed out.

"Okay, running from the police is _slightly_ less pointless than throwing rocks at cars." I said.

"So let's fuckin' do it then." Michael said. Jeremy took some convincing -he said he was still sore from the night before- but eventually he agreed. We finished our beers and walked over to Lake, leaving our skates in the garage. We had a good plan to get back to the bunker. We were going to split up and take different routes to Jeremy's neighbor's yard. Then we'd just have to go over the wall and down the rat hole to safety. If it worked, the cop would think we disappeared from the neighbor's yard, not Jeremy's.

We stood by Saint Elizabeth's for a long time before a cop car finally came by. We took off running. When we met at the hole's entrance we discovered that none of us had been chased. We gave up and went back to the garage to drink the rest of the beer.

# 19

Michael's brother was late. He'd told me to meet him at PCC, down by the tennis courts at 8:00 AM. I'd been a little early because I was nervous and I wound up sitting on a bench for over a half an hour watching some old guys play tennis. I couldn't even figure out who was winning. Finally Jason came down from the upper parking lot where the flea market was happening. "How's it going?" I asked. "Are you making any money up there?"

"Actually, yeah. I sold a few toys and some old records." He said. "And we had a stroke of luck. Some guy asked about the guitar and I told him that it was an antique that'd been in my family for years and I wanted at least six hundred for it. Of course the guy told me I was nuts, but I said that someone offered me eight for it once. The guy in the space next to me, the one who's watching my stuff, overheard the whole thing. You should go up there right now, it's pretty dead. It's the guy in the hat on the left of my space. I'm in the third row, four spaces in. I told him I had to make a phone call and use the john so you can't take too long."

I left my skate with him and walked through the campus trying not to think of all the questions the guy might ask. I knew that if I over-thought it I might give myself away by sounding rehearsed. The main thing I had to remember was who I was. If I could keep that in my head, everything else would fall into place. Once I was in the market area, among the tables of nick-knacks and refuse, I felt calm. I saw Jason's spot right away. I started at the end of the row and browsed a few other tables before I went to Jason's. Our guy was watching me from a folding chair. At least I think he was watching me, he had sunglasses on so I wasn't sure. He was a big guy in khakis and a button-up short sleeved shirt. I picked up the guitar and reminded myself what I was supposed to be thinking. "Hey mister," I said excitedly, "how much do you want for this guitar?"

"That stuffs not mine." He said. "I'm just keeping an eye on it for the guy while he's in the can."

I looked from him down to the guitar, as if I were studying it. "Well, do you have any idea how much he might want for this? I mean, he's just got it sitting here with this junk." I said, shaking my head.

"I heard him tell someone it was an antique. He should be back any minute, and you can ask him yourself." The guy said, a little annoyed.

I pretended I was thinking some more. "Um, hey, can you do me a favor? I have to go call my dad. He's definitely gonna want to buy this. Do you think you can hold it for me and make sure the guy doesn't sell it to anyone else before we get back?"

"Yeah, I guess I could do that. It's just a old guitar, I don't think anyone else would be much interested in it." He said.

I chuckled. "Mister, this is a 1932 Silvertone-P with pearl inlay. If anyone else knew it was here I think they'd be interested." I said.

"Oh?" Now he was curious. "It really is an antique huh?"

"Well, please don't mention it to him. He probably doesn't even know what he's got..."

"It's a black guy." The man said.

"There you go. A lot of old blues musicians in the south used these. Robert Johnson used one. The company only made like two hundred of them, and I think there's only five known to still exist. Can you hang on to it until I come back with my dad?" I asked. "He's a collector and he's been looking for one of these for a long time. This is going to make his year."

"Yeah, sure. I'll keep it over here next to my chair." He said reaching for it. I handed it over carefully. I could see the wheels turning in his head. "How much do you think this thing's worth?" He asked.

I looked at him for a second as if I was considering the wisdom of telling him. "You promise not to tell the guy when he gets back?"

"I won't say a word."

"Well one sold at auction last year for over three thousand dollars." I said. "And this one's in better condition." The guy let out a low whistle. "I'm going to call my dad, he should be here in twenty minutes. Don't let the guy sell it, _please._ " I said.

"Alright, alright."

"Thanks." I walked away fast. When I got back to the tennis courts Jason was sitting where I'd been. When he saw me he stood up.

"How'd it go?" He asked.

"I don't think it could've gone much better." I said.

"Good. I'll be right back. I'll be around to pick you up as soon as I can make the deal. I'll tell him I have to leave early to pick up my mom or something, if he hasn't thought of it already, that should force his imagination. I'll come around as soon as I can load up the car." He said.

I sat on the bench and lit a cigarette. I'd played my role well. If something went wrong now it wasn't my fault. I sat there for about an hour before I saw Jason pull his little Honda up to the curb. I ran to the car and jumped in with my skate. "We did it!" He said, smiling. "The guy was so fucking eager to buy that thing you wouldn't believe it. I don't know what you told him, but it worked."

"So how much?" I asked.

"Six hundred. The minute I walked up, he immediately offered me six. I wish to hell I'd told the first guy a thousand. That fool had a big ass smile on his face too." He said.

"Alright, three hundred each." I said. "Not bad for a morning's work."

"Actually, it's two ninety each, 'cause we gotta split the original cost of the guitar, but yeah, that's not bad at all. And there's more where that came from too. The Rose Bowl flea market is next weekend, so we can try this shit again if you're up for it."

"Yeah man, I'm in. I can't believe we got that guy's money and we didn't even have to break any laws." He stopped in front of my house and took out a wad of cash. He counted off three hundred dollars.

"You got a ten?" He asked.

"No, not on me. Can I get you later?"

"You know what? Forget it. It's cool, you did such a good job I'm not even worried about the twenty bucks." He said, handing me a stack of bills. "I'll see you later Nick, it was nice working with ya."

In my room, I got the roll of money from the car sale and the bike out of my backpack. It was six hundred dollars, and I had three hundred in my pocket. I took forty out and put it in my wallet, and added the rest of the money to the roll which was now worth eight hundred and sixty. I still had a large amount of weed too. I was rich. I wondered why anyone would bother working for a living, this was easy. I owed Kate a hundred and fifty for this month's rent, but she could wait. I liked having the money and not giving it to her. I had to pay the late fee anyway, so I might as well be as late as possible. I thought giving her all the money on time every month would've been a bad move. It was better to let her think I was sweating it and working my ass off to pay her, after all, that was what she wanted.

I went to the AM/PM to get some breakfast and ate it on the steps of the grade school. I was on my way back, still drinking my Big-Gulp, when I noticed Mya sitting on the steps of her front porch. She was in her pajamas -a light blue sweater and gray sweatpants- and she was eating a bowl of cereal. I picked up my skate and walked across her yard. "What are you doing running around so early?" She asked. "You just come from church?"

"Yeah, actually. It's big-gulp day down there." I held up my sweaty cup. "Bobble head Jesus day is next month." I sat next to her on the top step. I noticed that the milk in her cereal was pink. "You put strawberry Quik in your cereal?"

"No, it turns this color 'cause the marshmallow ghosts are pink. This is Ghostbusters cereal," she said, "ever had it?"

"No, too gay. All pink and shit... I only eat manly cereal like Raisin Bran."

"You eat man-cereal?"

"Manly cereal. Manly." I said. "You know, this is the first time I ever saw you in the morning. I thought you slept all day like a vampire."

"You shouldn't make assumptions about people, it's rude." She said.

"This is ruining my whole image of you, I always imagined you sleeping in some kind of nightie."

"Are you trying to tell me this outfit isn't sexy? You don't even know. I love the feel of thick cotton on my titties." She said.

"Yeah, that sounds sensual. Is it sensual Mya?"

"Fuck yeah." She held the bowl to her lips and tilted it, slurping loudly. When she was finished she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "I ain't afraid of no ghost." She said. I opened a new pack of cigarettes and offered her one. She took it. "You shouldn't smoke, it's bad for you."

"I know." I said lighting her up with my new red lighter. "But you have to admit, people who smoke _are_ cooler."

"Yeah, cancer is cool. That's why I don't have a dad."

"Well I don't care if I get cancer 'cause by the time it kills me the world will be burned up by the sun anyway. There's a hole in the ozone layer you know."

"You think I don't know that? And even if that doesn't get us, the big one will. This whole fucking state is rotten with fault lines and when the big one hits, it's all going to the bottom of the sea." She said.

"Don't forget nuclear war. Just 'cause Ronnie Reagan don't have the button anymore doesn't mean we're safe. George Bush would probably start a nuclear war to prove he isn't a wimp."

"Yeah, and what about an asteroid? I heard that an asteroid big enough to destroy all life on the planet hits earth every ten thousand years or so, and we've been due for one for like a thousand years." She said.

"I heard that too! Nova, right? I love that shit. Did you see the one about volcanoes? They said that Montana could turn into one huge volcano and kill everything in the western hemisphere. They even said it could knock earth off it's axis and trigger another ice age."

" _Nice_." She said. "What about killer African bees? You've heard of them right?"

"Yeah, of course. They kick ass. There's a swarm of them coming our way. The world could end today. I say smoke 'em if you got 'em."

"I know lots of people I wouldn't mind seeing get stung to death by killer bees." She said.

"Me too. Hey it might be happening right now... You hear that?"

"What?"

"That siren." I said. "It's quiet this morning, but you can still hear it, listen."

"...Oh yeah. I can hear it. It sounds like an air raid siren. I wonder what it means." She said.

"It means we're all going to die." I said. Mya stretched her legs out and yawned like a cat. I leaned over and tried to kiss her, but she put her cigarette in the way and took a hit.

"I gotta go feed my zombie." She said, standing up. She flicked the remains of her cigarette and somehow it flew all the way across her lawn into the street. "Bye Nick."

"Bye Mya."

I sat there alone and finished my smoke.

# 20

Even with both flashlights on, the bunker was dark. "He thinks you're a shit-starter, that's all." Don said. We were sitting down there with Jeremy, passing a fat joint around. It was tight with three people. Jeremy and Don had the chairs and I was sitting on the carpet, leaning against the dirt wall. The small space was filling with smoke quickly.

"What do _you_ think?" I asked.

"Some people stayed with the guy who got his arm and leg all fucked up, and I was talking to one of them. He said you did the right thing. And the guy who was all bit up thought you saved his life. But Scott knows a lot about dogs. He said that when a dog bites someone it's usually provoked in some way."

"So I must have provoked the dog, that's what he thinks..." I paused to toke. "That's bullshit," I said holding my breath, "anyone in my position would have done the same thing."

"Maybe so. But he thinks none of it would have happened if you hadn't been there."

I passed him the joint. "Well fuck him. Tell him to write a song about it. _The Shit-Starter Strikes Again_ or something." I said. Don took a hit.

"How about _Die Doggy Die_?" Jeremy said.

"Yeah or it could be from the dog's perspective." I said. "How about _I Was Provoked_?"

Don smiled as he passed to Jeremy. "Or _Ouch I'm Being Stomped To Death."_ He said.

"So what happened? Should I be worried about this Rob guy?"

"I don't think so. He was asking us where you went, like we were supposed to know. He had a gun, so I guess he was gonna shoot you. Kid Karl tried to talk him down. He told him killing you wouldn't bring the dog back, but Rob wasn't buying it. I don't think he was even upset about the dog. He kept saying _nobody fucks with me_. He was more worried about his reputation. When the police came he changed his tune real quick. All of a sudden he didn't have a gun anymore and he was all concerned about the guy who got bit. He told the cops that the dog was usually gentle and he didn't know what'd gotten into him." Don said.

The two beams of the flashlight were becoming more visible as the volume of smoke increased. One beam was pointed toward the ceiling and the other was pointed to the wall opposite me. I thought about Mr. Bennett's science class experiment with the fog and lasers. The yellow smoke curled and spiraled in the light. "I like it down here." I said.

"I was just thinking it was weird down here. What if this shit caves in?" Jeremy asked.

"It's not that deep, we could dig our way out." I said.

"Those Viet Cong fuckers used to live in underground tunnels for months at a time." Don said. "I couldn't do it man, I'm feeling claustrophobic in this thing."

"We need some ventilation holes in here." Jeremy said. "The air is all stale."

"Yeah, fuck this, let's go skate. We should hit the Dairy Dee and pick up some Nite Train. That mixes good with weed." Don said.

"That shit's closed," Jeremy said, "it's Sunday. I got some more tall-boys though."

"Hey whatever happened to the twelve steps?" I asked him.

"I'm still doing 'em, why?"

"I thought you weren't supposed to drink anymore. Doesn't it work?"

"Yeah it works. Lots of people who come to those meetings get off drugs and alcohol. It's really inspiring man, for real. It helps people get their lives together." He said.

"What about you?" Don asked.

"I can't build Rome today." He said, snapping off one of the flashlights. Don picked up the other one and climbed into the tunnel with Jeremy following. I was behind both of them, in the dark.

Skating with those guys was fun because we all sucked more or less equally. Jeremy had been much better than Don and me a few years before, but over time we got a little better and Jeremy started drinking and working and not skating as much. He could still do a few tricks that he'd had dialed in for years, things that I could never do, but he wasn't competitive. We just cruised around for fun, I think we'd all given up the dream of becoming incredible skaters. Maybe none of us ever really had that dream. I used to try a trick over and over for days, weeks, and months, and still make the same mistake as the first time I tried it. It took me a year to learn how to do an ollie. I read Thrasher magazine hoping that some skill might rub off on me. They had a section that was supposed to show you how to pull off new tricks. It was illustrated with step by step pictures of a pro skater and each picture had a caption. Step 1: Approach the wall with great speed, placing your feet in an L near the tail. Step 2: Do an end around kickflip while planting one hand on the ground. Step 3: Catch the skate between the wall and your feet, while placing the other hand perpendicular to the first. Step 4: Push off the wall into a handstand, balancing the board on your feet. Step 5: Land smoothly. I thought I couldn't do it right because I was a goofy-foot. I was probably the last kid who read Thrasher to figure out that it was a cruel joke.

My momentum felt strange that night. We were at the upper playground of Lafyette Elementary School on Washington. I thought my movements were part of an elaborate ritual that I was performing instinctively, and that I was casting a spell. The underground hotbox had twisted my head. The blacktop was gripping my wheels in a friendly way. I tried the impossible and fell, which just confirmed my belief that the ground was friendly because it practically hugged me down. It felt softer than landing on thick grass. I laughed.

The desire to smoke a cigarette finally got me out of bed. I put a T-shirt on and took my smokes and my lighter out the back door in the kitchen. I sat on the steps and lit up. There were a few puffy clouds in the sky and the air was unusually clear. I saw that it must have rained that morning because the dirt in Kate's garden was dark and there was a wet spot in the driveway in the shape of a skateboard wheel. I watched my poison smoke floating into the air. I concentrated on it, to see that it was traveling through time.

I took a leisurely shower and spent the rest of the day drawing. I did a wolf, a tractor pulling dead hippo, and an ashtray with a cigar in it. Kate got home around five thirty. Normally I would try to be out of the house before she got in, but I wanted to talk to her. I had a hundred and fifty dollars to give her for rent. When she got home I asked her how she was doing.

"Not too great. My boss is driving everyone crazy."

"You mean that old woman, Mrs. Fetter?" I asked.

"No, I only work at the pharmacy part-time now. I'm working for a nonprofit arts foundation the rest of the time." She said. "I'm on the panel that decides which arts groups and individual artists get funding. It's a lot better than filling prescriptions for Mrs. Fetter, but I still haven't been offered a full-time position there yet."

"Oh. This whole time I thought you were going up to the pharmacy every day. I wanted to give you the rest of the rent money," I said, "and to ask you something." I handed her the hundred and fifty dollars.

"Yes what is it?" She asked, walking into the kitchen. I followed her.

"Well, I know you've had that car for a while now, and I was thinking you might be ready to sell it... To me. I figured I could give you an extra hundred dollars a month for the next six months and then you could give me the keys and get yourself a new car. I'd keep paying you for another six months after that, so you'd get twelve hundred for the car over the next year." I said.

She set down her big purse and got a glass out of the cupboard. She took a bottle of vodka and an ice cube tray out of the freezer and poured herself a drink. "Nick, you don't even have a license, do you?"

"No, not yet, but six months from now I could have one. My only means of travel right now is my skateboard or the bus. If I miss a payment, you can take the car back." I said.

"Hmm... Well, let me give it some thought. I'm not sure I'm ready to buy a new car right now."

"Six months from now." I said.

"I guess you've put a lot of thought into this. Let me sleep on it. I'll let you know in a day or two." She said, taking a small sip of her drink.

"Alright Kate, thanks." I said. I went to my room and got my skate and I was headed out the front door when Kate stopped me by asking if I was going out. I had the doorknob in my hand so it was a pretty stupid question. "Yeah." I said. "I am."

"Nick..." She said, "please be careful."

"Yeah, okay Kate." I said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

I was rolling down Lake to the AM/PM for dinner when I had to stop to let a car pass in front of me. It occurred to me what an ugly thing a car really was. I stood there as a ton of metal and glass passed inches from my face. The street itself looked ugly all of a sudden and everything on it seemed foreign and hideous though I'd seen it all a million times before. Every inch of the landscape was filled with an advertisement or official reminder of some law or ordinance. The sidewalk was cracked and broken and there was trash everywhere. There was a plane passing overhead, leaving a long trail, and it seemed evil to me. I wanted to run away and hide from all this crap, or destroy it all somehow. It wouldn't be so bad to negate the present reality. If I could send the right information down the chain to some place in the past, it could keep this world from being created in the first place. I could turn all of it into a phantom limb of time. I didn't care if I ceased to exist as long as this place did too.

I sat on the steps of Saint Elizabeth's near the grotto and thought about annihilating present reality when a pickup truck flew around the corner. It passed me and went about a half a block down the street before it stopped and backed up. It idled in front of me for a second before I recognized the driver. "Hey little brother, hop in." He said. It was Jessie.

I stood and walked over to the truck's window, carrying my skate. "What's up Jessie?"

"Hop in and I'll tell you." He said.

"Do I look stupid or something? Why do you want me to get in your truck?"

"Dude, what do you think I'm gonna do? I need your help with something, don't be such a pussy. Get in." I wasn't feeling particularly concerned for my safety at that moment, so I got in. As soon as I shut the door he peeled out and went screeching down the street.

"What's up? Where we going?" I asked.

"First stop is the liq over on Woodbury." He said. "I gotta pick up some supplies. Then I got a chore to do that I thought you might be able to help me with."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"It's that fuckin' faggot G. I'm going to pull a prank on his ass and I need some help. Here check it out." He reached under my seat and pulled out a paper bag. He dropped it in my lap and turned into the liquor store's small parking lot. "I'll be right back." He said, getting out of the truck which he left running. I opened the bag and saw that it contained four M-1000s. I was holding an entire stick of dynamite's worth of black powder on my lap. I closed the bag and set it down between the seats.

Jessie came out of the store, opening a pack of cigarettes and throwing the cellophane and tin foil on the ground. He put one in his mouth and lit it before getting back in the truck. I was thinking about the explosives as he handed me the liquor store bag and backed out of the parking spot. I looked in and saw a plastic container of Mini Thins and a small bottle of Jack Daniels.

"Alright, here's what we're gonna do." He said. "You're gonna take two of them firecrackers and I'll take two. You're gonna drop one at the side of the house, and one around back, and I'll drop one around the other side and one in front. That little bitch is gonna think he's under attack from all sides. We'll try to light them all at once so they go off more or less at the same time, okay?"

"Alright, as long as you don't leave me there to get my ass kicked by his brother." I said. "You promise to take me with you when the shit goes off?"

"Yeah man, of course. Why are you so paranoid?" He was driving with his knees while he opened the container of Mini Thins. "Hey, open that bottle for me, will ya?" He poured six or seven pills into his hand. I opened the bottle and watched him pop the pills all at once. He took the wheel with one hand and swilled down a huge shot of Jack with the other. He started coughing, and when he caught his breath he immediately took another swig from the bottle. "Here," he said, handing it back to me, "have some." I took a big shot and enjoyed the burn as it went down. "You want some of these pills?" He asked.

"Sure, just a couple." I said. he shook three pills into my hand and I washed them down with more whisky. We pulled around the corner and started down my street. G only lives a couple of blocks down from me, and I wondered what Kate would think when she heard the explosions. When we got to G's block, Jessie turned off the engine and lights and we coasted. He stopped the truck one house up from G's.

"Alright." He said, picking up the bag of explosives. "Let's do this shit." As I got out I saw Jessie get something from the bed of the truck. He was trying to carry it so I wouldn't see, which made me more nervous than I already was. "Good, everybody's home." He said. I saw that it was a flashlight and a roll of duct tape. He set everything down and pulled out two M-1000s and a lighter.

"What's all that for?" I asked, pointing to the tape and flashlight.

"Nothing. Here you take this side of the house and the back. When the shit's in place, run to the truck and wait for me." Before I could protest he lit both fuses and shoved the little bombs in my hand. I ran down the side of the house, not bothering to duck at the windows. At that point I just wanted to get rid of the things. There was a high gate to the back yard that was locked, so I pitched one of the M-1000s over the fence. I heard a dog barking inside the house and I was glad it wasn't in the backyard or I might've had another dog corpse on my conscience. I turned and ran back the way I'd come, dropping the second explosive on my way. I raced up the street to Jessie's truck and got in. I looked at G's yard, but I didn't see Jessie anywhere. I was thinking it was some sort of trick and I was about to grab my skate and bail when I saw movement under Steven's beat up Camaro in the driveway. At first I thought it was a cat, but it was Jessie, crawling out from under the car. I felt like I was going to throw up. He ran up the street and threw the tape and the flashlight in the truck's bed and jumped in the drivers seat. He sat there breathing hard and smiling.

"Alright, come on. Let's get the fuck out of here." I said.

"Are you kidding? I don't want to miss this."

"When that shit goes off, cops are gonna swarm." I said. "We need to go, like now."

"Calm down, we won't get caught, I promise." He picked up the bottle of Jack and took a gulp. He handed it to me and I took a mouthful but it didn't go down right and I started coughing. He took the bottle back and was screwing the top on when the first explosions went off. They were very close together and all I could hear afterwards was ringing in my ears. Jessie started the truck and put it in drive. I expected him to fly down the street and get us out of there, but all he did was pull right in front of G's house and stop.

"What the fuck are you doing? Come on! Let's get out of here." I said. Jessie just laughed. The porch light went on and the front door of the house opened. I immediately ducked down, so I wouldn't be seen. Jessie leaned on his horn for a long time, then opened his door. I thought he was going to get out of the truck and leave me, but he just stood up from the drivers side so he could be seen over the top of the cab. There was a person on the porch, yelling, but aside from some curses I couldn't tell what they said.

I heard what Jessie said clearly. "YOU OWE ME MONEY ASSHOLE! IT'S TIME TO PAY." Right after he said it I heard another blast. It was much louder than the first two and it was followed by a roar and the sound of glass fragments landing on the sidewalk and the truck. Jessie finally sat back down and put it in gear. As we sped away I sat up and looked back. The Camaro was now crooked in the driveway and flames were pouring out of the hood which had been forced open by the blast. The tree next to the driveway was on fire too. I only saw it for a moment. Just long enough to get the image, and then we turned the corner and we were gone.

# 21

When I got home that night I half expected Steven to be waiting for me with a gun. All the commotion on the street had died down. The fire trucks and cop cars had left and all the curious neighbors had gone back to their homes. If Steven was going to load up his gun and go looking for someone to kill, he would do it now, he wasn't the type to put it off. I didn't think I'd been seen in Jessie's truck, but I might've been seen through a window when I dropped the M-1000s at the side of the house. As I was getting ready for bed I had a strong feeling that Steven was somewhere in the house, or just outside, waiting to kill me in my sleep. I went through the house and made sure all the doors and windows were locked, and then I checked the closets. I thought he might be hiding in one of them.

As I got under my covers a new thought occurred me. The only room I hadn't checked was Kate's room, and it was possible that he was in there. He could've come in and taken her hostage and had her tied up and gagged in there, just waiting for me to fall asleep. I knew it wasn't likely, but I hadn't seen or heard anything to rule it out either. I strained my ears listening for some noise that would tell me if I was in danger. The house was full of small noises. A creak in the floorboards could be a nervous gunman, pacing. Ice cubes falling in the freezer could be Steven dropping the chain he was going to beat me with. The furnace clanging could be someone trying to break the lock on the back door. I heard hundreds of these noises during the night and the sun was coming up when I finally fell asleep.

Sometime in the afternoon I woke up to the sound of a dog barking somewhere nearby. I turned over and pulled my blanket up to my nose. I must've drifted back to sleep, because I had an unsettled dream. I was a small kid again, maybe nine or ten, and I was in a basement with a bunch of other kids. It was cluttered and dark, and there were boxes everywhere. Duct work and pipes crisscrossed the ceiling and walls. Everyone down there was trying to get out. We were all going somewhere and this basement was the last stop before we reached our destination, the final stop in a long escape. There were small windows, and outside I could see a line of kids who were waiting to climb to the top of a fence one at a time. Once they were there they were floating away into the sky. In the basement we were waiting to leave out of a hatch in the wall. When it was my turn I climbed in and shut the door. I pulled a rope and got sucked up into water. I was on the bottom of a swimming pool and there were more kids swimming in a tight pack over my head. I knew I had to get out of the pool before they realized I was there. I nervously swam along the bottom and came up as quietly as I could. I looked at them and saw that they were all blind. They were listening for me and I had to be careful not to make a splash, or breathe too loud. I knew that if they got me I'd become one of them and lose my sight. I carefully pulled myself out of the pool and climbed onto the fence where I'd seen the other kids take off from. I stood and stretched out my arms. As I began to float away I looked back at the pool and I saw myself. I was blind, swimming, and I was also above, floating away. There were two Nicks. I felt sorry for the blind me, and at the same time I was glad to be leaving my sad double behind.

At around two in the afternoon there was a knock at the door. I was sitting on the steps around back having a smoke. I snuffed out my cigarette and went into the house quietly. The curtains in the living room didn't quite reach the edge of the window frame, and if you stood in the right place you could see the front porch without moving them. It was just Jeremy. He was walking away when I opened the door. He stopped and turned around. "Oh, you're home." He said.

"Yeah, come on in."

He walked in and set his skate down. I shut the door and looked out the window to see if anyone else was out there. "Are you by yourself?" I asked.

"No I brought my aunt Tilly with me, she's hiding in your bushes." He said. "What's up with _you_?"

"Nothing, just bored as usual." I said. "I was out back having a smoke."

"Oh, could I have one?" He asked. I said sure and took him to the back steps that had become my preferred smoking area. I lit a fresh cig and handed him the pack and the lighter. "Well the bunker is all fucked up." He said.

"Really? What happened?"

"It rained last night, and all this mud slid down onto the carpet. We're gonna have to reinforce the walls and come up with some sort of drainage system. The rug is ruined and the place needs some major work. Michael and me came up with a nice plan for it though. That's kinda why I came to see you."

"Yeah? Let's hear it." I said.

His eyes widened as he spoke. "Check it out. I know a guy who has the address of a seed bank in northern California, and he said if you send this guy forty bucks, he'll send you ten seeds. It's the best. Skunk weed. Don has a copy of that book, The Closet Cultivator, so we're gonna run electricity to the bunker and grow weed down there."

"Why don't you just buy some skunk weed with seeds in it and use those?" I asked. "Aren't you worried that the northern California guy will bust you?"

"Nah, my friend Taylor's brother used the guy, and it was fine. Supposedly the seeds that you get in commercial weed produce crap plants for some reason. You gotta get them from a seed manufacturer." He said.

"Yeah, but if you get lights and plants going down there, you could lose all of it in an afternoon. What if it rains again?"

"That's why we gotta reinforce it. I'm thinking we go four more feet in every direction and put a thick layer of gravel on the bottom. Then we build a large wooden box with a slanted roof. It has to be big, like eight by eight by six. We construct the box in the hole, with one big tube for air intake, and another one for exhaust, so we can keep the air flowing. We have a hatch that connects to our trench, and we put a plastic tarp over the roof. We'll have to seal the room up tight, and then we bury the whole thing."

"What about power?" I asked.

"We can run a line underground from my garage." He said.

"Well, what if they sell the house? Then you've got a weed farm going under someone's backyard. You think they wouldn't notice something like that?"

"That house has been empty going on three years now. They took the for-sale sign down last year and boarded up all the broken windows. It has structural damage from the earthquake. I think it's gonna be empty 'till they get around to demolishing it. Besides, Taylor's brother told me you could take a skunk plant to maturity in about four months. If we do it right, we may be able to get as much as an ounce per plant. If we get eight or nine plants, we could make a gang of money really soon."

"What's going on man? I thought you were mister nine-to-five. Why you wanna commit a felony all of a sudden?"

"That Kinkos shit is over." He said, flicking his ash. "I got canned. My shift supervisors all liked me, but the manager didn't. I gave some girl a bunch of copies for free and the fucker was watching. I didn't even know he was there. Anyone else would've got a warning, but since it was me, and I was on _probation_ , I got fired. I busted my ass there for two years, and they fired me just like that."

"So the new plan is to be a weed farmer?"

"I'm gonna enroll in the DeVry institute too. I want to get a degree, maybe in electronics or private investigation, I'm not sure. Most of the programs are four months, so by the time I get my degree I'll also have a harvest, and I can move out of my mom's house and get a good job somewhere. The weed money could be for a car and maybe a down payment on an apartment, you know? Start up money. By this time next year, I could have my shit all together."

"How much money is it going to cost to build this thing?" I asked.

"Michael said he can get the lights, I think he's gonna rip 'em off from somewhere. Other than that, it's wood, nails, sealant, tubing, fans, gravel, tarps, different sized pots, and potting soil, and of course we'll need plant food. All together we figure it should run about three to four hundred bucks."

"That's a lot of money." I said.

"Yeah, but if we all put in a hundred dollars or so, it won't hurt so bad. Besides, if we can each get a couple ounces out of it, you do the math. Anyway it takes money to make money right?"

"I guess."

"So, are you in?"

"I think so. I want to get that book and see what we're getting into first. I don't know shit about growing plants. If we kill them 'cause we fucked up the watering schedule or something, we lose all that money. Plus you gotta figure some people are gonna find out about it. If it gets around, we could wind up in jail. Like Don for example. He's our friend and everything, but he's not in on it, so he isn't risking anything by telling someone, and if that person happens to be pissed off at one of us, they could call the cops."

"That's paranoid dude, Don's not going to tell anyone. He didn't want to do it because he doesn't have any start-up money. He said he'd be our best customer."

"What makes you think I have the money?" I asked.

"C'mon, I know you have it. Michael said you're working the flea markets with his brother. He said you took a guy for a thousand bucks last Sunday. What's a hundred dollar investment when you can make five hundred bucks in one day?"

His words rang in my ear. Jason ripped off two suckers last Sunday and I was one of them. "Yeah well, I'll go over to Don's tomorrow and borrow that book. If it doesn't look too tricky -I'm in." I said.

"Oh, I almost forgot to ask. Were you here when all that shit went down over at G's last night?"

"The explosion? I was here. That shit was loud." I said.

"Me an' Michael skated down to see what the fuck happened and the fire department and police were down there. The whole tree was on fire, and Steven's Camaro was completely wrecked. We figured you missed it or something 'cause you didn't come down. Half the neighborhood was there."

"I came out to see what happened, but when I saw cops I went back inside." I said.

"Why? What the fuck are they gonna do? Arrest you for trying to see what's happening on your own street?"

"Maybe. I wouldn't put it past 'em. You get a bunch of assholes together with guns and uniforms and who knows what could happen? They're ready to shoot anything that moves when they're nervous. I mean, they shoot people by mistake all the time. My friend Colin told me about this guy who was robbing a bank, and the cops came and surrounded it. They told the guy to, you know, come out with his hands up or whatever, and the guy comes running out of the bank holding his fingers like a gun and literally shouting 'bang, bang.' And what do you think happened?"

"They shot him?"

"Yup. They fucking unloaded on him and killed his ass for yelling 'bang, bang.'"

"Michael thinks it was Jessie that did the car. Him and Steven are doing business together, or they _were_ anyway, and Michael said when you and him were over at Jessie's he tried to sell you dynamite."

"Yeah, it probably was him, but who knows? I'm sure Steven's pissed off a lot of people."

"Shit's gone crazy around here lately." Jeremy said. "I mean pretty soon we're gonna have bloods and crips selling crack and doing drive-bys and shit."

"Dude, it's still Altadena." I said. "I don't think there's many crackheads in the neighborhood."

Later that night I was eating chips in my room, drawing a picture of a goat being roasted over an open fire by two guys in baseball caps when Kate knocked on my door. I closed the notebook and told her to come in. She said she'd been thinking about the car and that she was willing to sell it to me. "I've been wanting to get a new one for awhile now anyway." She said. "And twelve hundred dollars is more than I would get for it if I traded it in."

"Great." I said.

"There are a couple of things that I'm concerned about though," she said, "I won't give you the car until you have a valid drivers license and insurance in your own name. Insurance can be expensive for a new driver like you, but it's illegal to drive around without it now. It's a new law. The police can ask for proof of insurance, and give you a ticket if you don't have it."

"Really? That sucks. I didn't know that."

"Yeah, it was a big controversy a couple of years ago. The other thing is, I can't give you the car until you've paid me nine hundred dollars, not six. It's not that I don't trust you, but I want to have enough for a down payment on a new car before I give up my old one."

I told her it was a deal and that I would get her the first payment the following week.

# 22

"Here they come," Michael said, "act like we're doing something shady." We got close together with our backs to the street and held our hands low, like we were trying to hide a drug deal. The black and white police cruiser slowed down as it approached us. We both looked up as if surprised. "RUN!" Michael shouted.

We tore up the driveway, past a minivan into the backyard. I heard a car door slam behind us. We slipped through a small space between a tool shed and a hedge which put us in the neighbor's yard. We doubled back and ran across the grass and through the gate in an iron fence that blocked the driveway. We cut close to the house and Michael peeked around the corner to see if the cops were in the street. He looked back at me and nodded. We ran across the street, past the cop car, and hurdled a low stone wall. We sprinted by the house into another backyard.

Without looking back I knew the street hadn't been clear because I heard a voice behind us shouting to get down on the ground. We kept running.

"Fuck!" Michael spat, realizing our brilliant plan hadn't worked as we dodged some lawn furniture. I pulled myself over the back wall as fast as I could, landing in a bush that ripped into my jeans and stabbed me in the thigh. I crashed my way out of it, doing more damage to my pants, and ran along the back of the yard. I heard Michael struggling in the bushes behind me as I ran. When I came to the corner of the hedge I lowered my head and slammed my way in, blocking my face with my arm. I caught a glimpse of the next yard and thought I was safely through, but I hit a short chain link barrier and stumbled badly. It was only about three feet high, and my momentum took me over. I hit my head on something as I fell forward and my shins scraped down the top of the little fence. I stood and saw that I was on a dirt strip between two rows of bushes where the backyards met. Michael had better luck getting through the hedge and he passed me. I followed him down the corridor until our way was blocked by a wooden fence. It was too high to jump and there was a dog barking on the other side. We turned left, running between the fence and a line of thick trees that grew practically right up against it. I was being scraped and slapped by branches and my pant leg below my right knee was shredded.

We came out beside a two-story white house and kept running. We were crossing the street, going toward another yard when the cop car came around the corner to our right. It's siren went on and I looked up for a second. I noticed there was only one cop in the car, which meant the other one was still after us on foot. We vaulted a small gate and ran past a converted garage into a backyard with lots of bushes and cactus plants. We picked up speed as we ran downhill past a large tree. The cinderblock wall was high along the back of the yard, and we both jumped up and pulled our bodies over at the same time. I landed hard on the concrete around a swimming pool. I saw Michael land on his feet, off balance, and stumble in with a splash. The pool took up most of the yard and the house was close. I sensed movement in there and a dog started barking. Michael was pulling himself out of the pool while I ran around it and down a path, past a tool shed to a gate. I was fumbling with the latch when I heard a woman's voice screaming that she was calling the police. I got it open as a black dog came running toward me, barking. I shut the gate in the dog's face and ran into the street which was a cul-de-sac. I went by a house that was walled-in like fort Knox, to the next one which had gravel in the small yard and a large enclosed porch. I stumbled on my way to the backyard, and when I regained my balance I found myself on a lawn next to an inflatable kiddie pool and a swing set. I didn't think anyone saw me run back there, so I looked for a place to hide. There was a brick wall at the back of the yard and I immediately knew what to do.

I pulled myself onto the wall and walked along the top to a large tree branch hanging over from the next yard. I climbed on, holding a branch above for support, and made my way past where the trunk split. I moved carefully along another thick branch until I was over the roof of a garage in the adjacent property. I let myself down on the roof as quietly as possible. It was slanted, and the tree was providing cover behind me, so I was well hidden. The darkness added to my feeling of safety. I got down on my stomach and rested my head on my arm trying to ignore the stinging pain in my shins.

A noise startled me out of this position. It sounded like something slamming against wood. I crawled up to the peak of the roof and looked down on the yard below. Michael was coming over the fence loudly. He landed with a stumble and ran in front of the garage. He was wet and moving strangely, I think he'd hurt his leg. There was another noise, like the first, and I saw someone else coming over the fence. It was one of the cops. I ducked for a second, thinking he might notice me. I put my head back over the roof in time to see the other cop entering from a side gate across the yard. I moved higher to see if Michael would get away. He was on the other side of the yard, looking for a way to get over the high wall. The cops came together as Michael turned to face them. "GET DOWN ON YOUR STOMACH NOW." One of the cops barked. They had their guns out.

Michael couldn't get over the wall. He was going to try to run past them. I knew because I'd seen this before. I was afraid, and I was hiding in a high place and looking down from above. I could see Michael was trapped in a corner and he looked desperate. The cops moved toward him. I remembered this perfectly. He was about to be shot to death -that's what came next. I had to do something. I stood up and shouted as loud as I could- "HEY FUCKFACE!" was what came out of my mouth.

When the two cops looked up I waved my arms to keep their attention. Michael made his move and ran past them. For a moment they didn't know where to look. "On the roof, on the roof!" One of them said. I climbed back onto the tree and heard a gate slam, which I thought must've been Michael getting away. I was almost back over the brick wall when someone grabbed my ankle. I tried to jerk it free, but the grip was tight. With two hands, the cop ripped me from the tree. My head slammed against the branch I'd been standing on. I don't remember hitting the ground.

I couldn't breathe and it seemed as if every part of my body was in pain. Unable to inhale, I felt the panic of suffocation building. The cop was digging his knee into my back. His full weight was on top of me, preventing my lungs from expanding. I'd landed on top of my arm, and the cop on my back was struggling to get it free. His own weight was preventing him from dislodging it. My other arm was held in place by the second cop. My body needed air and I started thrashing around involuntarily. This freed my lungs long enough for a quick breath before the weight of both cops came down on me, much harder than before. They were yelling, but I couldn't understand what they were saying, it just sounded like noise. In my panicked spasms my arm had come free and I felt the handcuffs go on. Finally the weight was off of me and I was pulled roughly to my feet.

They trotted me past a nervous looking short guy in a bathrobe who must've been the owner of the house. The police cruiser was parked crooked in the street and it's lights spun silently. They pushed me over the rear of the car and one of them began patting me down and going through my pockets. I started to understand some of what the cop was saying. "...running for?"

"What?" I asked, barely able to hear myself.

"What are you running for?" He repeated.

"For the fun of it." I said. The other one took my wallet and some change from my pocket. He put it beside me on the car and kept patting, taking extra care in the crotch area.

"People don't run for the fun of it." The cop said. "You're going to have to be straight with me or you'll be in even more trouble. If you have any drugs or paraphernalia or anything, we'll find it."

"Why'd you chase me? I didn't do anything." I said.

"We got dogs going over all the yards you ran through, so if you threw down some dope somewhere, they'll recover it." He said. "You're better off telling us where you threw it. The smart thing to do right now is cooperate with us."

"There's no dope. We just ran to see if you'd chase us." I said.

"Yeah right." The cop said, pulling me up off the back of the car. He walked me around and shoved me in the back seat by the head. When I was in, he left the door open and crouched down beside me. "Right now you're under arrest." He said. "For failure to respond to a police officer, resisting arrest, and trespassing. When we find the drugs we'll also be charging you with that too. You have the right to remain silent," blah, blah, blah. When he was finished he shut the door. I had a headache and I couldn't focus my eyes.

The cops were looking through my wallet and talking. The second one came around and opened my door again. He shined a flashlight in my eyes and looked at them for a second. "You hit you head pretty good there." He said. "Do you need medical attention?"

"No."

He shut the door.

They put me in a beige room with a metal bench and a metal toilet that had no seat. The only window was a small rectangular piece of Plexiglas in the door with wire crisscrossing through it. I sat there for a long time. Maybe an hour, or three or four, I couldn't tell. I was having a hard time focusing. When I touched my forehead I felt a lump where I'd smashed it against the tree. I tried to stretch out on the metal bench, but it was too short to be comfortable. I decided to lie down on the floor.

I woke up in a bed. There was a fluorescent light above me and I could hear the hum of electricity all around. There was tape on my arm that was uncomfortable and I wanted to rip it off. When I reached down, I felt something strange and I saw that it was an IV tube. I realized I was in a hospital. I had bandages wrapped tightly around my head. There was a curtain blocking the bed next to me, and I wondered if there was someone in there. The door to the room was open and I could see a sliver of hallway. Every now and then someone would walk past and I wanted them to come in and tell me what was wrong with me. I wanted to know if I was about to die.

There was a button on the side of the bed with a silhouette of a nurse on it, so I pushed it and it lit up. About ten minutes later a guy in a green shirt and matching pants came into the room. He was skinny, and his hair was slicked back. He wore a small cross on a silver chain around his neck and spoke with a South American accent.

"So, our young criminal-concussion is awake." He said in sing song.

"What happened?" I asked.

"You got a nasty bump on your head, that's what happened." He said. "You were talking a lot of nonsense when the police brought you in."

"Are they waiting to take me back to jail?" I asked.

He laughed. "No." He said. "They told us it was just a misdemeanor offense and that you'd receive a summons to court after you were released."

"Oh, good." I said. "What day is it?"

"It's Thursday night." He answered.

"Oh. Can I go home now?"

"Sorry, but no. We have to keep you here for a while longer. Head injuries can be unpredictable and anyway you need to rest."

"What's your name?" I asked.

"James."

"I'm Nick." I said

"I know. I have some work to do now, so is there anything else I can do for you Nick? Would you like me to turn on the TV?"

"No, I'm not really in the mood," I said, "but could you slide that phone over here?" He moved the phone on the nightstand over to me. "And is there a phone book around?"

"Sure." He said. He reached under the nightstand and pulled one out. He handed it to me and smiled. "You have to dial nine to get an outside line."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome. Just hit the button if you need anything else." He said. There were about fifty Bennetts in the phone book, but only two Chris Bennetts, and one was on the right street. I picked up the phone and dialed nine and the number. An old lady answered in a feeble voice.

"Is Mr. Bennett there?" I asked.

"No, I'm afraid not. It's just Mrs. Bennett now." She said.

I wondered what she meant. "Doesn't Chris Bennett live there?" I asked.

"Oh Chris. Yes, he does live here. He's not here at the moment though, who is this please?"

"My name is Nick. I'm a friend of his. Do you have any idea when he'll be back?"

"Well, there's just no telling with him. Sometimes he stays out very late and other times he hardly leaves the house. I have no idea when he'll be home. He doesn't tell me these things, I'm just his mother."

"Oh. Well, I'm sorry to have bothered you." I said.

"Would you like me to tell him you called?"

"Yes, and if you could give him a message that would be great."

"Alright dear, I have a pen. Go slowly now, I can't write as fast as I used to. Arthritis you know."

"Okay, tell him Nick called," I said, "and tell him I said _I can do it_."

"Do what?"

"Something we talked about."

"I don't remember talking to you about anything." She said.

"No, I mean it was something he and I talked about. He'll know what it means."

"Oh. So I tell him Nick called and you can do... What exactly?"

"It's complicated, I don't think I could explain it too well. It's just some science stuff."

"So what did you want the message to say?"

"Just that I called and I said _I can do it._ "

"Okay. I have 'Nick called. He can do the science stuff.' Is that alright?"

"Um... Sure, yeah. That's fine. And tell him I'll come around and see him in a couple days." I added.

"Alright dear, I'll let him know." She said. I thanked her, but she'd already hung up the phone.

# About the Author

Benjamin Broke is the pseudonym of an author who wishes to remain anonymous. He currently lives in Pittsburgh and works a regular job. Please download and read more of his books, it would make him happy. He can be reached by email at:

bennybroke@gmail.com

Twitter: @Benny_Broke

You can call or text Benny at: (412) 512-7732

-back to table of contents-

# Also by Benjamin Broke

Please go to Benjamin Broke's author page at your preferred ebook retailer and check out some of his other work.

-Short stories in the Second Civil War series

FULL EMPLOYMENT IN AMERICA

A radical proposal to end unemployment and repair our economy.

FREE SOUP

When a homeless man and a young girl go to a soup kitchen run by a UFO cult, they find out that there's really no such thing as free soup.

THE MANY ITERATIONS OF KENDRA DIXON

A brain surgery reveals the true nature of time to Kendra Dixon and allows her to freely roam all possible versions of her life.

ANNIHILATING THE PAST

An interview with the man who permanently erased the line between entertainment and brainwashing.

ANIMAL THEATER

UFO cults, mass suicides, clones, designer drugs, brain-implants, propaganda, mind control, war, politics and conspiracies big and small -this collection contains all 20 previously published Second Civil War stories.

In the chaotic aftermath of a complete economic collapse, the American people turn to a right-wing political movement, the Christian Nationalist Party, to restore order. When the western states refuse to enact some of the party's harsh new anti-terror measures, the military moves in, setting off a long and bloody civil war. This series of short stories explores the impact of the war on the lives of people from every level of society.

-Other ebooks by Benjamin Broke

INSURGENTS

How far would you go to help a friend in trouble?

Ben Perkins might go so far as to risk his job, but with a friend like David Telano, in the kind of trouble he's in, he'll wind up risking his life. With the encouragement of his girlfriend Jessie, a 24 hour a day weed smoker, Ben is soon mixed up in a war that's going on just beneath the surface of his quiet Ohio town. On one side is a lesbian newspaper editor, radicalized by the murder of her girlfriend, and on the other is a wealthy businessman running a drug-smuggling operation from a private airfield. In between them is Ben, who starts out trying to help a friend but ends up just trying to stay out of jail and continue breathing.

Crass marketing ploy- The first two chapters of Insurgents whether you want them or not:

# ONE

**Tuesday July 10, 2007**

I found Freddie's pinky in the small space between the stove and the refrigerator. I knew where to look because there was blood on the countertop next to the stove and a splotch on the edge of the stove itself. My flashlight illuminated the plump little digit among the dust and bits of food that had accumulated in the narrow crevice over the years. I used a broom to sweep it out onto the linoleum and, overcoming a small wave of queasiness, picked it up and plunked it bloody-end first into a Ziploc bag that I'd filled with ice. Luckily Freddie kept his freezer well stocked with ice.

I sealed the bag and rushed out the door of the trailer and down the steps, only a few minutes behind the ambulance that had taken Freddie to the emergency room. I knew that time was critical, and that reattachment became less likely the longer you waited. The car belonged to the Guardian Security Agency, and it came equipped with a spinning yellow dome light, which in the nine months that I had worked there I hadn't yet had a chance to use. I flipped it on and tore out of the mobile home park, making a left onto Raims Street heading toward the side-gate. I figured I didn't have time to stop at the gatehouse and explain the situation to James, so I gave him a courtesy honk and drove around the gate arm, skidding a little.

When I got to the hospital a doctor and nurse were waiting for the pinky, and they seemed pleased that I'd put it on ice. After they took it from me I sat in the waiting area for a while, not knowing whether to leave or stay and see how it turned out, but eventually I decided there was no reason for me to be there, and I was halfway down the hall when Freddie's sister, Meredith, walked by me. I knew who she was because her son was one of my oldest friends and I grew up across the street from her, but she either didn't recognize me or didn't notice me as she bustled towards the triage nurse's desk. She was wearing a loose housedress, and I could tell she'd been in bed moments before.

I turned and followed her and stood at a respectful distance as the nurse told her that her brother was in surgery and that she would have to wait to find out anything definite. "But what happened to him?" She asked.

"He had an accident, but he should be fine." The nurse said. "Why don't you have a seat and I'll make sure a doctor comes and speaks with you in a little while."

Meredith harrumphed and gathered herself up like she was about to argue with the nurse, but then just let out a sigh and turned around.

"Miss Divos?" I said.

"Ben? I didn't recognize you before. What are you doing here?"

"I'm working in Lakeview now as a security agent." I said. "I'm the one who called the ambulance to pick up your brother."

"What happened?"

"Well it's a terrible thing. He uh, he accidentally chopped off a finger." I said. "His pinky. They're reattaching it now, he should be fine."

"How in the world did he manage to do that?" She asked.

"I don't know. He said something about chopping carrots. I guess he slipped."

"Carrots?" She squinted as she said the word. "He cut off his _pinky_ chopping carrots? That doesn't make any sense."

"Well that's what he told me." I said.

"If you're chop-chop-chopping like this," she made the motion of chopping a carrot, "how would you accidentally hit your pinky for goodness sake? The only fingers in any danger are the thumb and the index finger." She looked at me as if I was supposed to have the answer.

"Maybe he was chopping some other way." I said. She was about to say something but I cut her off. "I really have to get going Miss Divos, but I'm going to give you the number of the guardhouse over at Lakeview. If you could call and let us know how things turn out, we'd appreciate it." I got a post-it note from the nurse's desk and wrote the number on it. "It doesn't matter how late it is." I added. "Someone's there 'round the clock."

When I got back to Lakeview I went to the mobile home park and pulled in front of Freddie's trailer. I'd left his door unlocked and I didn't want to be responsible if he got back from the hospital and found his TV missing, but I also had another reason. On the drive from the hospital I'd been thinking about what his sister had said about the improbability of hitting your pinky while chopping a carrot.

I flipped on the light and took a look around his kitchen. There was a big knife on his counter, and a cutting board, but there wasn't a carrot, or any other food in sight. There was also no blood on the cutting board or knife, just on the counter and stove. I made sure his door was locked and went back to the guardhouse. My shift had been over for a half hour by then, and I wanted to get home.

Jessie already knew about the pinky incident when I got there. She said she'd been worried when she woke up and I still wasn't home, so she called the guardhouse and talked to my boss, John Marchin, who also happens to be her grandfather. "Pap told me you saved a man's finger." She said.

"That's right," I said, expanding my chest, "just part of the job."

"We should celebrate."

"Jessie it's four in the morning, how can you even think about smoking weed right now?"

She got her bong off the floor by the bed. "Come on," she said, "I don't have to be at work for another eight hours and it's even longer for you." She opened the makeup bag where she kept her stash and pulled a chunk off of a large bud, stuffing it into the bowl. "We need to spend some quality time together." She said. She held the flame to the bowl and sucked greedily before handing the smoking water pipe to me. I took a hit, inhaling until the embers went black.

"I'm beat." I said. "This'll just put me to sleep."

"That's okay." She said, taking the bong and refilling the bowl. "I'll just lay with you." I took the first hit this time and passed it to her. She finished the bowl and set the pipe down on the floor. We made love in the smoky morning light and I fell into a deep sleep.

# TWO

When I arrived at the guardhouse the next evening I was greeted with applause from Chris and Niti. "Nothing exciting ever happens on my shift." Chris said, slapping me on the back. "You haven't even been here a year and you already save a man's finger. I fuckin' hate you."

"Yeah," I said smiling, "it was pretty dicey there for a while. I had to use my dome-light, but I got the digit in question to the hospital." All the male guards liked to speak in faux police jargon to pass the time.

"These came for you." Niti said, smiling as she handed me a bouquet of flowers. I didn't know what to do and I stood there holding the flowers like a dope. Niti laughed. "Read the card." She said.

"It's a thank you from Meredith Divos," I said, "That was nice of her."

"You should put them in water -here." She took the flowers from me and went into the little kitchen area at the back of the guardhouse. I told Chris the whole story of the severed pinky, and was going over some of the more grotesque details when we got a call that some day-guests had parked in resident spots over on Milbourne. I got in one of the Agency's golf carts and headed down. I wrote two tickets, one for a large black Ford Excursion, and one for a gray Mercedes. The rest of the evening was pretty average. I told some kids to be careful with a bike ramp they'd built, and took down a few unauthorized flyers from the community bulletin board.

It was almost time for my side-gate shift when I got a call on my walkie-talkie about a noise complaint on Lakeshore Boulevard. "Mrs. Mc Affie again. Probably just some kids setting off M-80s, could you check it out?" Chris said.

"Can't you go?" I asked. "The guardhouse is closer to Lakeshore than I am."

"Sorry, Niti's on her dinner break so I can't leave. Just go show your face so she doesn't worry."

"Alright I'm on my way." I said.

I drove to Lakeshore Boulevard and pulled up in front of Mrs. Mc Affie's house. She was waiting on her front porch. "Maybe ten minutes ago." She said. Her gray hair was pulled up and she was wearing an old-fashioned nightgown and slippers. "I distinctly heard two gunshots."

"Gunshots? Don't you think it's more likely that it was some kids setting off firecrackers left over from fourth of July?"

"I know the difference between firecrackers and gunshots." She said. "All my brothers were hunters, I've been around guns my whole life. It was definitely two gunshots and they came from his house."

"Whose house?"

"Junior Pierson's place." She said. "I told them all this on the phone."

"Well, I'll be happy to go check it out and make sure everything's okay." I said. "There's probably an explanation." By the look on her face I'd say she thought I was patronizing her and she wasn't too pleased about it. I tried to look more serious and gave her a nod. I walked over to her neighbor's front porch and knocked in a not-too-authoritative way. It took Junior Pierson a long time to come to the door. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and I could see through the window that he was coming from the garage. He was a middle-aged man with thin, dyed black hair that he wore slicked back. He was tall, about six three, and usually wore rimless glasses although he didn't have them on then. He opened the door and seemed out of breath. I got the distinct impression that he'd been in the garage masturbating and I'd interrupted him. "Sorry to bother you." I said. "I'm here because Mrs. Mc Affie says she heard something. She thought it was gunshots."

"Oh." He said, twisting his mouth up in a way that didn't seem right for a man of his age. "I think I heard it too. There were some kids down by the pier over there. I assumed they were setting off cherry bombs or some such. The fourth of July wasn't so long ago."

"Yeah, that's what I figured. I'm just trying to put her fears to rest." I said. "So can I tell her everything is fine?"

"You may tell her that everything is fine and that if I see those kids around here again I'll have a word with them personally."

I thanked him and went back to Mrs. Mc Affie's house to tell her what he'd said. She insisted that the noise had come from _inside_ Junior Pierson's house, but said that as long as he was alright that was what mattered. "He's fine ma'am." I said. "Is there anything else I can do for you today?" She didn't seem to like the question, so she didn't answer, she just sighed and shut her door.

The noise call had made me late for my gate duty and when I got to the side-gate Franco was annoyed. "Oh you're an agent now, I guess you don't have to show up for your shift on time." He said. He'd been giving me this routine for a month, ever since I was promoted from guard to agent. Everyone knew that the only reason I'd been promoted was because of my connection to John Marchin's granddaughter, but Franco was the only one who wasn't afraid to say it to my face. I guess he had a pretty good beef, he'd been there for three years and I'd only been there eight months when I got promoted, but I never asked for it, and with the yearly pay increases Franco was making a lot more money than I was. Seniority also meant that he could choose his own hours while I was still working the 7:00 PM to 3:00 AM shift like always. The main difference between guard and agent was that after I'd been an agent for six months I would get full health coverage.

"I was on a call." I said.

"Yeah." Franco said as he picked up his lunch box and a police textbook. "Have a fun night." He got into the golf cart I'd parked behind the gatehouse and drove away. When my shift was over I'd have to leave on foot.

Watching the side-gate was one of the most boring duties that you could pull. Usually I brought something to read when I knew I'd be at the side-gate, but that night I'd forgotten, so the only diversion I had was the small AM/FM radio that John had left there so he could listen to his Cleveland Browns lose every Sunday during the football season.

The reception out there was pretty bad, and all I could get was the evangelists, politics, or country. I listened to one of the right-wing guys talking about how things were going great in Iraq but the liberal media spin machine was focusing on the negative and trying to make us lose the war. He threw around the word _treason_ a lot and it was entertaining. I must have listened to him for an hour and a half before I heard the car coming up Raims Street.

I stood and leaned partway out of the small hut with my elbows on the counter and looked at the car coming toward me. It was a black Mercedes that didn't seem to be slowing down as it approached the gate. I considered the possibility that the person driving was drunk and about to smash into the gatehouse, but the car veered away as it approached the gate. I knew what the person was doing because I had done the same thing the night before. I saw a familiar face behind the wheel as the car skidded around the gate-arm. The driver saw me too, our eyes met for a brief moment before the car was gone.

It was my friend David Telano driving the car –Meredith Divos' son. I knew I had to call it in, but for a moment I considered pretending it hadn't happened. We'd gotten into some trouble together as kids, and the no-snitching code made me want to try to cover for him, but I knew it would be stupid. David was no criminal mastermind, and stealing a Mercedes was out of his league, so he would surely get caught. I didn't want any part of it. I picked up my walkie-talkie. "I just had a two eighty six over here at the side-gate. Repeat two eighty six at the side-gate."

It took a moment for John to respond. "Did you get a make and license number?"

"Black Mercedes, I didn't get the license."

"I'll pull it up on the surveillance and send Niti to check on all the black Mercedes' on the car list."

"Copy that." I said. "Will you let me know what you find out?"

"Sure." He said. Not more than five minutes later I heard John's voice on the walkie-talkie again. "Niti what's your twenty?"

"Milbourne and Lakeshore." She said. "The Norman's place is the first on my list. They have a black Mercedes."

"Junior Pierson on your list?"

"Yes he is."

"Better get over there first, I just got a noise complaint. It might be related." He said.

"OK." She answered. I wondered if it could be related to Mrs. Mc Affie's gunshots from earlier, but I didn't say anything. I cursed David in my head and wondered whether or not I should tell the police that I recognized him. I figured it wasn't important because I could've just as easily not seen the driver. The whole thing gave me a bad feeling. I didn't think that David could've planned to crash the gate while I was working. It was just a bad coincidence that he chose to steal a car on my shift. I _had_ once told him that the side gate was a joke and that you could just drive around it, but how was I supposed to know that he would use that information to pull a stupid stunt?

I expected the police to come question me, but they never came. I sat there for almost two hours before I heard anything. Finally my walkie-talkie spoke. "Ben, you'd better lock up the side gate and get down here to Junior Pierson's place. The police will want to talk to you." John said.

"It was his car?"

"Yeah. He's on his way to the hospital -he got shot. It's a bad scene over here, real bad. You'd better get down here."

"I'm on my way." I said.

As I walked towards Lakeshore Boulevard I found myself in a crowd of people who were going the same way. I asked Mr. Paul where he was headed. "Tolly called me on the phone and said they took Junior away in an ambulance. She said there were police all over the place and she even saw the coroner's van. I thought I'd go see what happened, see if maybe I could help." I nodded and picked up my pace.

The police had Lakeshore Boulevard blocked off with their cars, and there was a line of yellow police tape holding back a growing crowd of people on the sidewalk. I pushed my way through and saw Mrs. Mc Affie on the other side of the tape, talking to a man and woman who weren't in uniform. I ducked under the tape, which drew the attention of a policeman nearby who told me to stop. I was about to explain who I was when the woman who'd been interviewing Mrs. Mc Affie approached us. "He's okay Mike," she said, "we wanna talk to him." The cop nodded slightly and went back to looking tough. "You're the one who was here earlier on a noise complaint?" She asked.

"Yeah." I said. "I'm Ben Perkins." I stuck my hand out but she was busy flipping open her notebook and getting a pen out of her pocket.

"I'm detective Reyes," she said, not looking at me or my hand. I put it down. "How long have you been a security guard here?"

"I'm an agent." I said. "I got promoted a while back."

She sighed. "How long have you worked here Mr. Perkins?"

"Nine months and some." I said.

"The neighbor, Alice Mc Affie, called you here earlier tonight, what was that call about?"

I told her all about it and I told her about the black Mercedes crashing my gate, but didn't mention who the driver was. I said I didn't get a good look at him, but that I was almost positive it was a man, and I told her about the security camera.

"We'll want to have a look at that tape." She said. "When you were here earlier, did you see Mrs. Pierson? Was she in the house?"

"No, I didn't see her." I said. "Why? Isn't she here now?"

"She's here." Detective Reyes said. "Don't go far, we'll want to be reviewing that tape." She turned and walked back towards the man who was still questioning Mrs. Mc Affie. John was talking to some of the residents who were watching from across the street. As soon as he saw me he came over.

"What's going on?" I asked him. "Did Junior really get shot?"

"Twice." John said. "Once in the abdomen and once in the shoulder, but the paramedics said he has a good chance of pulling through. They couldn't do anything for poor Becky though."

"What?"

"Mrs. Pierson." John said. "She's been killed. Shot twice in the face."

"I didn't know." I said. "No one told me. I can't believe-"

"Just be glad you didn't see the body." John said. "Poor Niti wasn't ready for it. When I was on the force I saw some worse crime scenes, but not many. It's bad. Real bad-" Chris interrupted us on the walkie-talkie, asking for John. "Right here." He said. "What do you need?"

"There's a news crew here. They want to do a report from the scene."

"No!" John shouted. "No news crews, do you hear me? Under no circumstances are you to let them in. Understand?"

"Yeah, got it."

John was about to say something else when Chris spoke again. "They say they want to talk to me on camera. Should I tell them anything?"

"No!" John yelled. "Don't talk to them! Don't say a word, just keep them out. If they have any questions tell them to ask the police. If I see your face on the news tomorrow so help me god I'll wring your neck!"

"Alright, alright, jeez." Chris said.

"We're gonna have enough to answer for." John said to me, shaking his head. "This stuff isn't supposed to happen here, this is a gated community -and we're the ones supposed to be minding the gate."

"I gotta use the bathroom." I said. "I'm going down to the Sloop. I'll be back in a minute."

"Hurry up, we might need you." John said. I turned and walked away, past the growing crowd on the sidewalk. I went down to Main Street, past the movie house to Sloopy's Diner. I had a key, but I didn't go in, I stood in the doorway and called Jessie on my cell.

"Hi." She said. "You getting bored on gate duty again?"

"No. Listen, I don't have much time to talk. On the dresser, in my cigar box, there's a stack of cards and slips of paper. One of them is the number for David Telano. Could you get it for me? I think it's on a piece of a napkin. I need it fast."

"Why do you need that?" She asked. I could hear the creak of the floor as she walked into the bedroom with the phone.

"I can't really explain right now, but it's important. Just find me that number quick."

"If it's there I'll find it." She said. I heard her rummaging around. "Here it is. Do you want his cell or home?"

"Cell." I said. She read me the number and I repeated it to myself over and over, only stopping to thank her and tell her to watch the news. I dialed David's number and hit send. It rang three times before he answered.

"David, what the fuck is going on?"

"Oh, I thought that was you. Did you have to report me?" He asked.

"Yeah of course." I answered. "You're in a lot of trouble man, they're going to see your face on the security video."

"Who?" He asked.

"The police!" I said.

"Nah." David said with a laugh. "It won't even be reported stolen, watch. I've got the owner by the balls. He'll just say someone borrowed his car. The police won't be involved."

"Becky Pierson is dead." I said. "And Junior is in the hospital. The police are already involved."

There was silence on his end. "Dead?" He asked finally.

"Yeah, dead. That's usually what happens when you shoot someone in the face."

"I didn't shoot anyone!" He shouted.

"Uh-huh. I don't want to know okay? I just called you to say that I'm not going to lie for you. I'm not gonna risk going to jail to help you out of this shit. This is way over the line, and you _are_ going to get caught."

There was another moment of silence on his end. "I didn't even have a gun!" He yelled. "I've gotta get rid of this fucking car, quick! I-"

I didn't hear what else he said because detective Reyes had turned the corner and was walking towards me. I snapped the phone shut and slipped it into my pocket. "Who are you calling at this hour?" She asked.

"My girlfriend." I answered. "I wanted to tell her I'd be late."

"Oh? What time do you usually get off?"

"Three AM," I said, "I just thought I might be even later than usual because of all this."

She smiled at me. She knew I was lying.

