An Incident by the Cart Corral

My big brother can’t stop making fun of what people wrote in the sympathy cards we’re supposed to answer. What makes him think he commands insight into the written word? He’s a twenty-two-year-old heating and air conditioning guy. I’m seventeen, and already my writing has been rejected by some prestigious sites and publications. I’ve been rejected by pretty low-rent operations, too. But I think I have a shot.

He flips another card across the kitchen table, this one off-white with gold script. As it lands it flies open. “Check it out,” he says.

It’s from Uncle George, our dad’s older brother. His wife died a couple years ago. Jacey laughs as I look at what Uncle George wrote: If you boys ever nede sumthing just say the WORD.

“What the hell,” Jacey asks, “is that?”

“Kindness?” I say. “Loyalty?”

Sometimes I wonder if Jacey comments on people’s English because of me, as if he’s pissed off because although I’m as much of a screw-up as he is I have a focus and a trajectory, and he’s a wanderer, plenty of trajectory but no guidance system to manage it. He’s always messing stuff up, too, correcting things that aren’t mistakes, like telling people they should not say, for instance, “He gave it to my friend and me,” which is correct, but should instead say “to my friend and I,” which isn’t.

In order to get out, I say I need smokes and that I’ll pick up groceries, too. Dumb ass says he’ll come with. I tell him no, it’s fine, he doesn’t need to, but he’s insistent in that big brother way. Eventually I think, screw it – maybe he’ll shut up if he isn’t trying to convince me coming along is so necessary. He drives. Of course he frigging drives. All the way to the store he won’t shut up. I put on Jay-Z.

Where our street intersects El Camino Real, he pulls out in front of a 1969 candy apple red Cutlass Supreme. It’s a four-barrel with dual exhaust, and it’s moving fast. There wasn’t a vehicle behind that Cutlass for almost two blocks. It’s not like he couldn’t see the guy, either; all but one of the remaining trees and bushes on our street are dead, posing no sight line problems. He’s just preoccupied. He’s always preoccupied.

Things have been a little rough. Wednesday I skipped school again and we started drinking pretty early, before 9 a.m., and the next thing I know it’s ten at night and we’re on the roof of the abandoned bowling alley, throwing concrete block onto the parking lot and launching electrical conduit at the light poles. Thursday I skipped again, but it was a defunct quarry we ended up at that night, with other people. This morning my – how do I say this? – my poop, it was violently red, bright blood red. It freaked me out. Am I dying, too? This’d be fantastic. Three months ago our parents, and now me. Except I’ll apparently be offed by some hemorrhagic eruption deep inside my body, whereas they went facing a semi barreling down the wrong side of 280. Then I remembered: Jacey and I had had dinner last night at our aunt and uncle’s, our mom’s sister, the first we’ve seen of them since the funeral. (Their only son was a few years older than Jacey. The summer before I went into kindergarten he broke a leg and arm riding on a bicycle Jacey had rigged with a two-stroke lawnmower engine. Jacey had been riding it for a month without a hitch; I’d even ridden it once when he was at the pool. But obviously it hadn’t worked out for Young Master Melvin, and they never came to the house again, until Mom and Dad’s wake the night before the funeral.) She had made this amazing beet soup, pureed and super smooth and thick. That soup had to be why my crap was the color of a San Francisco 49ers t-shirt. These past few months, with things being kind of different, I don’t always make connections like I used to. I also just get pissed off for no reason. Getting pissed off for no reason is something I’ve always been good at, but now it seems like it happens every quarter hour, or worse. And then I’ll just be numb, feeling nothing. I’ve started to distrust myself.

Because cigarettes are the most painful part of grocery shopping due to the fact that no one ever staffs the disservice desk, I start with that, my fake ID already out. Then Jacey decides he also needs smokes and makes me pay for his, too. He’s always doing crap like that. In fact, that move was probably why he came. We pick up milk, hot dogs, cold cuts, buns, bread, imitation Cheerios, imitation Casa Sanchez chips, salsa, ramen noodles, and the store-brand version of Dinty Moore. Three cases of beer and three handles of Jack Daniels round out the trip. After we have a short discussion, the fact Jack is so expensive makes us put it back – we have never actually gone ahead and purchased Jack Daniels – and we take three bottles of a whiskey that’s a lot cheaper. As we walk the aisles I kind of drift away while my arms autonomically reach for the shelves, like sleep-breathing, or peristalsis. For early November it’s warm out, and the store’s AC feels good. I think about what we’ll do for Thanksgiving, or if we’ll even bother. What’s the point? Neither of us can cook except for a steak or something. I don’t think we’ll be affording steak anytime soon. I’m sure Aunt Bridget (the soup maker) will invite us over, but I don’t want to see them on a holiday; it’ll just suck too much to be with one of our dead parents’ siblings. Seeing them last night was unenjoyable enough. Maybe instead of doing nothing – I’m kind of thinking I don’t ever want Thanksgiving again – and staring at each other all day, Jacey and I could head down to Santa Cruz and raise hell. Get a cheap motel right on the beach and stock up on drink. Maybe meet some girls.

Seriously, the two of us cooped up at home with or without relatives, on a holiday? We could kick the shit out of each other so bad that one of us ends up – what am I saying? – that I end up in the hospital. Since our parents’ deaths back in August, we’ve only fought each other once. That has to be a record. But we could snap any minute. I know it.

All of a sudden a little kid is hitting my forearm. He’s riding atop his mom’s cart. I guess we’ve paused beside each other; the kid and her going one way and me the other. He’s got curly dark hair, sort of like his mom’s, hers being dark but straight, and draping halfway down her back. He’s giggling, and between the giggles his brown eyes keep opening super wide. His fists are pudgy, his face, too. He taps my arm over and over, and alternates that with tapping his own chest, where, in the middle of his red shirt, there’s a white owl with big owl eyes. He keeps laughing and making other happy, gurgly sounds. I’m kind of lost for a second.

“Hi there, little guy,” I finally say. “What’s your name?”

His mom smiles, pushes some of her long hair behind her ear, and says, “This is Tyler.”

“Hi, Tyler. I see you like strained peas.” There is, I shit you not, probably two cases’ worth of strained peas strewn about their cart. She straightens one of his shirtsleeves, and seven or eight different colored metal bangles jangle on her wrist. She says, “Tell the man you love strained peas,” and smooths the sleeve of her cantaloupe-colored shirt.

I say, “Who doesn’t love strained peas?” and throw my hands up in the air.

She laughs and says, “Yes! Who doesn’t?” Then she smirks and quietly adds, “Except maybe a mom here or there.”

We part.

I realize something. I just smiled. I used to smile. I mean, sure, I always scowled and frowned and grimaced and was blank-faced, but I smiled sometimes. Now, however, I realize I haven’t smiled in twelve weeks. Twelve weeks, four days. A couple times I’ve laughed. But no smiling. What a great little kid, getting my attention like that, and then doing such a positive thing with it.

I catch up to Jacey and he says, “Come on, Brian. Focus.” He laughs. But he knows his advice is bullshit; he’s the one with the attention span of a lab rat on government-grade cocaine.

By the way, I’m sorry about what I wrote a moment ago, the part where it says “the kid and her going one way and me the other.” I know it’s supposed to be “she” and “I.” I’ll fix it. I’ve come a long way in my three-plus years of working at writing. (I started two days after my fourteenth birthday. It was so strange; I woke up that morning and thought – you should write. So I did.) I think I have decent clarity and rhythm in my writing. Because of the way I grew up and because the people I spend my days with aren’t super grammatical, though, I can still screw up. I do read good books, however. I started to when I was fourteen. It was hard at first because I wasn’t a reader. I’d hated reading as a kid. The words all ran together. When I finally started to read, for about the first two months, it was a battle; I used to fall asleep almost as soon as I opened a book.

Anyhow, this day at the supermarket, it’s a pretty momentous day in our lives. In the last three months we’ve had many momentous days. Wake. Funeral. Meetings. A lawyer, a bank teller, the mortgage person at the bank, the lawyer again and then again, explaining a letter from Social Security, and of course, to kick it all off, highway patrolmen and doctors and nurses. And then there are the people from Family Services, especially the woman who wears the glasses with a little chain attached to the bows. Family Services hasn’t done anything yet, and hopefully won’t ever, but they’ve made noises. They’ve made noises about someone having to move in with us, or us having to move somewhere or at least me having to move somewhere. They’ve said Jacey might not be the best guardian material, even though now he’s on-site, staying at our parents’ house instead of his apartment. It’s infuriating even to consider that he could have true and legally sanctioned power over me, but I would rather it be Jacey than anyone else. I don’t care if he’s a dick. About something like that I don’t think he’d ever be a dick. Not truly.

We’re at the open trunk of Jacey’s car, a used Celica he’s put a supercharger and aftermarket exhaust headers in. A lot of other modifications, too, all done with the aid of forced labor from guess-who. We’re loading up. Out of the corner of my eye I see that lady with the bangles and cantaloupe shirt and her son, Tyler. I tell Jacey to finish up because I have to take off for a second.

I jog down the parking lot. It’s a spur-of-the-moment thing; I have to do something kind; I don’t know why. I’m not a dick to people, but it’s not like I’m into going out of my way to be kind, either. I just leave people alone. But this kid, I want his mom to know that he did something special, as embarrassing as that could turn out to be. I just have to. But is this impulse trustworthy? What if it’s invasive? Why the fuck would she care about some reaction I had to something her kid didn’t even know he was doing? I stop jogging. I realize it’s a stupid idea. But, is that trustworthy? Then I start on again, but walking. Screw it. Go for it.

I head over to her rig, a sky blue mommymobile with a tinted rear window. She’s putting the last bag in, and Tyler is still high on his perch, his red shirtsleeves making patterns as he punches the sky. He looks so unburdened, so overflowing with dewy life. When Jacey and I were kids we found two hatchling sparrows in the backyard. The body of an adult lay a few feet away, on its side. We ran into the house and grabbed a shoebox, and we lined the bottom with newspaper and grass and put the little birds in it. We fixed them a spot in the garage on Dad’s bench, and for heat we scrounged an old desk lamp that looked like the Pixar desk lamp. We fed them worms and we took one of Mom’s tiny Pyrex bowls and an eyedropper to give them water. For eight days they lived. On the morning of the ninth we ran out and found them dead. Jacey saw a tear on my cheek and punched me and told me to knock it off.

I excuse myself to the bangles woman, and I say that her son did something really cool. Except it doesn’t come out simple like that. It comes out stopped up and started and stopped up again.

I take in her entire face, not just her eyes. She doesn’t look frightened or even nervous so I must not be coming off like a homicidal maniac. Just an idiot, I guess. A breeze blows hair into her face and she brushes it away, making the bangles jingle. I try to continue.

“It’s just that – well, something pretty bad happened to my brother and me a few months ago. Actually, it didn’t happen to us, but to – doesn’t matter. But inside the store, after meeting you and Tyler, I realized I had just smiled. Your son made me smile. Maybe you did it, too. And then I also realized I hadn’t smiled in twelve weeks. Twelve weeks and four days, actually. So,” I’m lost again, pausing, searching, “thanks.”

The wind grabs an empty soda can, and it rattles by us.

She looks into my eyes. “Are you,” and now it’s her turn to pause, to search. I have to seem so strange. “Are you in any danger? Or difficulty?”

I laugh. “No.” I feel so stupid. “I’m fine. I just wanted —”

“No!” I hear Jacey’s voice. “You put the cart in there, fat ass!”

I turn my head and see Jacey standing at a cart corral. He’s yelling at a hefty woman who’s opening the passenger door to a red Mustang, but not a GT. Next to her is an open parking spot, with an empty shopping cart standing loose in it.

Jacey shouts again. “Do you think that’s safe? What if the cart rolls into a kid? Is that safe? What if a driver has to maneuver, and doesn’t see an old person or a kid in their blind spot? It doesn’t matter how slow a car’s moving once you’re knocked down and get a concussion!”

The wind blows up some of the hefty woman’s thin, sandy-colored hair. She turns her head. “Cool your jets, buttercup,” she says. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

“No? That’s why they’re called accidents, dip shit!”

Oh God. This is a huge nothing, a huge less than nothing, and Jacey is berating someone over it. Shit, verbally, it’s an assault. On a woman. We don’t mistreat females. If they could see us right now, Mom and Dad would be disappointed because that’s not the way they raised us. At a family picnic once, when I was eight, my cousin Tammy wouldn’t stop kicking me. Wherever I went, she would follow, kicking. After half a day of this I went over to the food table and scooped up two sticks of sun-soft margarine. I turned around and smeared it through her hair. She of course started screaming. When she got nuts I even held her down on the grass so I could really work it in. And of course by holding her down I got it on her dress, too. My dad dragged me out behind the pavilion and disciplined the shit out of me. I never mistreated a girl again.

“Oh shit,” I say to the lady with the bangles, the swear word spoken before I can stop it. “That’s my brother.” I start running over.

The fat lady’s husband gets out of the car. He, unfortunately, isn’t fat. He’s just a big, big dude, six-six. He has five inches and fifty pounds on Jacey. And of course he’s wearing – why wouldn’t he be? – a wifebeater, with a greasy smear at the abs.

I get up to Jacey and stand facing him, my back to Wife Beater and his ugly wife. I grab Jacey’s shoulders and start trying to push him backward. I can only edge him back a few steps, but at least he’s not advancing. “It’s not worth it, Jacey,” I say.

Behind me, Wife Beater says, “Apologize to my wife!”

“Fuck you!” Jacey says. He swats my arm away. I put it right back.

“Jacey!” I say. “Man, it is not worth it. Let’s go home. Let’s just go the fuck home and forget about this.”

And then, around Jacey’s shoulder, I see her walking toward us – the woman from Family Services. She has jeans on and her glasses hang against a blue sweater. The cart corral is out near the street, and she’s close, which means she’s been outside a while, which means she’s likely seen this entire thing, including the fact that Jacey’s the instigator. Why can’t bad shit just happen? Why does it have to happen in concert with other bad shit?

“Fuck!” I say. “Jacey! Knock it off!” And then I put my mouth up against his ear and tell him that the woman from Family Services is seeing all of this. He stiffens. Then just as suddenly, all his muscles relax.

Jacey turns around, and we’re side by side facing her. I feel us actually put our arms around each other.

“Misters Shaughnessy,” she says. The chain on her glasses catches sunlight.

“Yes, Mrs. Hayes?” we say.

I hear Wife Beater say, “Hey, lady, I’m talking to these two.”

She looks past us. “Apparently,” she says, “I’m talking to them now.”

And then, screw job of screw jobs, a cop car rolls up. Great. You just know that however this goes, we’re going to get the shit end of it. Then, behind the windshield, I see it gets even worse; we know this cop. Officer Asswipe. That’s not his real name. His real name is Officer Major Asswipe. He must have been coming for a baker’s dozen of cop pleasers, or, some do-gooder must have decided to call in the cavalry over a disagreement in a parking lot. Either way, I love people.

Officer Major Asswipe brakes his car. It’s a Charger that no doubt has been boosted in a lot of ways not available to regular people. All the Redwood City cops drive Chargers now. He gets out. Nobody does anything.

When Jacey and I found those baby sparrows, Dad was away. I remember somehow clumsily, childishly thinking that using his bench to keep them alive made Dad present. He was about two months into a ten-month incarceration for an assault on his boss. That was the first time after Jacey’s birth that he was in jail. I hated it – I was so pissed that he would be in trouble when according to everything I overheard it was his boss, the head pressman, who was in the wrong. But Dad had a record and his boss didn’t, even though they say that’s not supposed to matter during a trial, only in a sentencing. Bullshit – it always matters. It’s like the first time Jacey and I got caught after breaking into a parts store. It was my first and only theft where I was caught (I never again let Jacey “plan” anything involving me.), but it was Jacey’s third. Sure, he’s five years older than me, but it was also his fourth run-in around the theme of stealing (two other burglary arrests, and a shoplifting incident). It was my first burglary arrest, but also my first time getting caught at anything like that. Before that I’d only ever had to deal with cops around fighting, although that’s never what they called it, and they never called it “defending” either, always “assaulting” or some similar stupidity.

“Well. If it isn’t the brothers Shaughnessy,” the cop says. What a fuckwad. No starting with a question, no inquiry of any kind, just our name on his pig lips. To my relief, Jacey doesn’t take the bait. I’m not about to, either.

Out of nowhere, Wife Beater speaks. And the asshole doesn’t just speak, he fucking lies. “Officer, that idiot grabbed my wife by the arm.”

Simultaneously, we both turn our backs on the cop (something I don’t recommend unless you are white – or intend to run, and we aren’t about to run here). We look at Wife Beater.

In unison we say, “What the fuck?!”

Jacey calls him a liar, but before he can get any further the cop is between the three of us, both his arms extended. He tells everyone to calm down, then speaks into his shoulder mic. Fuck. He’s calling for more cops.

Wife Beater, Jacey, and I stay in our proverbial corners. After other cops show up, they start interviewing us, separately. And of course, Mrs. Hayes has to butt in, too. I guess it’s true that social workers are underpaid, because why else would she be buying groceries in our neighborhood? I see her talking with a cop. But at least she can corroborate that they’re liars. I tell my cop repeatedly that Wife Beater and his wife are lying – she backed it up, of course. I see their cop inspecting her arm, and I think, good, but then I see her mouth saying what looks like it could be “I don’t bruise easily.” Fuck! They are really doing this! My cop tells me to stay put, and walks away. And in fact all five cops – count them, five – get together in a circle and talk.

As the cops talk, people out here in the parking lot are continuing about their Saturday, but there are gawkers. An ancient guy in a red windbreaker seems especially interested. The pharmacy must be out of Viagra.

My cop returns and starts in with when – not “Did,” but “When” – Jacey grabbed the woman. I tell him he never touched her and to talk to Mrs. Hayes, but he says Mrs. Hayes says she didn’t see anything until they – that is, Officer MA – rolled up.

Then, I see Jacey get handcuffed. Now I’m pissed.

“He didn’t do nothing!” I shout. “This lady was causing a danger, and he was trying to get her to stop it! That’s it! He never touched her!” My cop lays hands on me. I feel myself tense up but I hold back. If I go in, I can’t get him out. Not that they would release him to me because I’m a minor. But still, both of us shouldn’t go in.

It’s Major Asswipe who’s handcuffing Jacey. I’m sure when he looks at us all he sees is two young screw-ups on their way to becoming old screw-ups; he probably thinks, what are these two not capable of?  But Jacey would never do this. Never. Hell, each of us has beaten up guys who have hit girls (Although a few times I actually ended up getting beat up. But those times when I lost, the guy was too worn out, distracted, or bored to endanger the girl.).

Major Asswipe is putting Jacey in his car. What the fuck is happening?

I shouldn’t do it. God, I shouldn’t do it. But that fucker has my brother. I lean around my cop’s shoulder and say, “You fucking prick! He never touched her!”

My cop says, “Shut up, Shaughnessy.” Great. Apparently MA told him our name.

Screw him. I take a step back and look at all of them. Him, Major Asswipe, the other cops, Wife Beater, Ugly Wife, and Mrs. Hayes. “Do you know what you’re doing? You are fucking conspiring to bust up a family! Do you realize that, you fucking fucks? You’re liars and conspirators! I swear to fucking —”

“Watch your —” my cop says.

“Don’t you ever interrupt me!” I say to him. I go back to all of them. “You assholes are busting up – unnecessarily, I’ll fucking remind you! – a family!”

“That’s enough,” my cop says. “One more, and you’re going in.”

“For what? Not letting pigs falsely arrest my brother?”

Immediately I’m chewing asphalt, and this dick has his knee in my back. Fuck.

Now Jacey and I are both in patrol cars. From his car window, Jacey looks at me. I see him say, “Sorry.” I say, “Don’t be.” I don’t know if with his lip reading he can make out the next part, but in case he can, I add, “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Mrs. Hayes accepts a business card from one of the cops. What an asshole she is. Why couldn’t she just tell them what she saw, instead of omitting the part that wouldn’t have given her an excuse to rip us apart?

Wife Beater starts his shitty not-a-GT Mustang, and they pull out. Mrs. Hayes drives off, too.

We are literally two freckle-faced kids, trying to make our way. But nobody seems to care about that. Out of nowhere, I say, “Mother pus bucket.” This takes me by surprise; it’s something our dad used to say, from an old movie.

I turn the other way. Tyler’s mom is talking to Major Asswipe, my cop, and another. She gestures, and in the sunlight the bangles glitter. Tyler is still atop the grocery cart, and with her other hand she’s stroking his back.

The third time Dad got out, Mom ended up angry with Jacey and me, but especially me. That was two years ago. Jacey was twenty and I was fifteen, and he had already been on his own for two years. He straight-up told her he wouldn’t be waiting when Dad got home. (Mom always wanted us on the front stoop when he returned. The first time, when I was six, it made sense to me, but after that I never understood: your husband has been convicted of a crime – this most recent time it was a string of copper thefts – and his release is to be treated like an event to be celebrated instead of quietly noted with gratitude?) I told her the same thing Jacey did, but she wasn’t having it because I still lived under their roof. When she left to get Dad, I tried waiting. Then I went for a walk. I ended up walking to Mountain View, thirteen miles from their house. I walked back, twenty-six miles total, but to a friend’s parents’ place and not my parents’. I stayed there a few nights. When I came home Dad didn’t touch me, but Mom, she went ape shit. She just kept slapping me there in the kitchen, wouldn’t stop, probably couldn’t stop. Since I’d been ten I would hit Dad back even though it never went my way. But her, never. How can you hit your mom? So she kept whaling on me like she always did. She even closed her fists. Eventually, she ran herself down. When she was finished, she bawled. She bawled and bawled. I left for my room. I knew I had hurt her by not being there, but it still didn’t seem fair; even with all the stuff I’d done, I had never been locked up (for more than like six hours or so), and instead had always been put on probation or even diversion. And by then, at fifteen, it had already been more than a year since I’d been convicted of or pled to anything. Sometimes I just didn’t understand my parents’ minds. But now, there are no minds there to understand, no anything. And one of the things that’s so confusing is that I’m not grateful that they’re dead. Much of the time I’m sad. Or also ambivalent. I had thought I would be grateful that they were finally snuffed out. There hadn’t been a week in my life when I hadn’t wished them dead, and now most of the time I don’t even know what I feel. The only feeling that’s consistent is guilt, mostly for not knowing how I feel. It all seems so mixed up. And then there’s Jacey. That woman shouldn’t have been harangued for letting a cart stray, but I’m sure all Jacey saw was accident, accident, accident, which of course is how Mom and Dad died. I guess I don’t understand any of our minds.

My cop walks toward me. He unlocks the door and says, “Out, shithead.” When I’m outside he tells me to turn around and face the car. He takes off the handcuffs. I ask what’s going on.

“That woman over there is an officer of the court,” he says. “She said we should be releasing you two to your parents instead of hauling you in. When Kowalski,” that’s Major Asswipe’s alias, “explained your situation, she said she, as an attorney and an officer of the court, was willing to take you guys into her custody.”

But because the cops were also tagging Jacey with assaulting a peace officer and resisting – both of which are total bullshit – Jacey is going in regardless, at least until he’s processed, and if he can’t be, if he can’t get in front of a judge, it’ll be a night at Hotel Maguire Men’s Correctional.

The woman with the bangles had seemed so nice. Now she’s trying to work some scam. What’s she trying to pull? Obviously she thinks I’m a sucker, a total piece of shit. The cop and I walk over to her and the other cops.

“Hi, Brian,” she says, all smile and niceness like I’m going to let her screw me over with whatever it is she has in mind. “My name is Arianna. Arianna Dulaine.”

“What do I care?” 

 Major Asswipe tells her, “I told you he wasn’t worth it.”

She directs her gaze at him. She doesn’t say anything.

She looks back to me. What the fuck is her deal? Why does she want to mess with me?

She says, “Brian, do you —”

“How do you know my name? You fucks told her my name? That’s got to be invasion of privacy or something.”

The cops just stand there.

I know, I know – you surrender most of your privacy rights once you’re out your door. But I was pissed, and besides, the cops are likely so narrowly and also inaccurately educated about the Constitution that they didn’t catch it.

The woman says she knows she doesn’t know how I feel, or what I’m going through, and wouldn’t presume to even guess. But she does want to help me, she says, however she can. She says the house she, Tyler, and her husband live in isn’t far. All I can think is wow, our neighborhood really is changing if rich people like that are living here now. I tell her I don’t care how close she lives, what she does for a living, any of it.

“You’re no better than me,” I say.

“I don’t think I am, either,” she says. “But I do think I can help.”

“Who asked you to?”

“No one. Including you. But if you don’t come with me, you’re going to jail.”

“So?”

She looks at me for a while.

“Brian, and I’m just asking, how has anything you’ve ever done up until now made your life better?”

I don’t know what the answer is. I think. I stand there like an idiot. She reaches out and puts her hand on my shoulder.

But hold it, I think. I don’t have anything she could remotely want to steal. Or game, pilfer, or sabotage. I’m a nobody. I don’t matter enough for someone like her to try to take anything. So – I have to ask myself – what “scam” could she possibly be working?

Out of nowhere I feel so bad. Her hand is still on my shoulder and after a moment or so I feel a slight pulling pressure from her fingers. She’s urging me to hug her, or her hug me, something. I don’t know what to do. She moves toward me and starts hugging me. My arms stay at my sides. Everything is so strange. She just keeps hugging me. And keeps hugging me. Double-u tee eff, double-u tee the effing eff? After what feels like ten hours of this shit, I … I hug her back. It’s so weird, but I do it. Behind me I hear MA say, “You’re alright?” and she doesn’t say anything, but I feel her head nod.

By the time we stop hugging, the cops have walked off.

MA gets in his car. I watch Jacey ride out of the parking lot, down the street and on past the first stoplight, until at the next light the car makes a left and he leaves my vision entirely.

I look at Arianna. She smiles. I smile, too. A second time.

“How about Tyler and I follow you to your place so you can get your things?”

“Sure,” I say. “And then can we go to the jail?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you for doing all this.” I feel like an idiot again.

I realize Jacey has the keys, and I tell her I’ll actually have to get a ride home from her to get the spare set. I really, really, really don’t want the first thing she sees me engage actively in to be breaking into a car, even if it is my big brother’s. She says that’s not a problem. She gets Tyler snugged in.

She gets in, I get in, and then we’re leaving, leaving this parking lot and leaving for something, I don’t know what, but leaving for something new.