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  “Okay, look, I’ll grab us a pair of Sprites, and we’ll sip ’em by the curb. C’mon, it’s a nice night. Mack, I’m not gonna bring out my sister, okay?”

  I force myself to trust him and grab some curb where the street slopes down by the sewer. Crazy stars tonight. Tony’s up and down the block in a minute with the coldest Sprites. We sip with no need for words passing between us, and I’m real glad I answered that sign in Vic’s window saying he was looking for a dishwasher that rainy day last March. I’ll miss Tony maybe more than anybody I ever met. “Yo, Tony, man, the army, you make up your mind?”

  Tony smiles. He’s checking the sky. “See that slow mover way up there, the brightest one? It’s a satellite.”

  “Nah, serious?”

  “That thing just might still be sailing long after we’re all gone.”

  “Yo, I hope you don’t do it, man.”

  “Mack, if I go, I need a favor.”

  “You got it, man. Anything.” I almost look him in the eye.

  “Céce.”

  “Huh?”

  “My sister. I need you to look out for her.”

  “What, like, keep the dudes away?”

  “No, she can handle herself,” he says. “It’s just that she’s . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Tony, man, stay, man. You don’t have to go over there.” He takes in the sky and then the neighborhood, which is kind of run-down but quiet with these little old one-family houses. He gets a little sad-looking, but he real quick smiles that away and punches my arm soft and heads up the block.

  THE SECOND DAY . . .

  (Saturday, June 13, morning)

  CÉCE:

  My mother, Carmella Vaccuccia, is insane. Would you name your daughter Céce, especially when you know it means chickpea? You say it like chee-chee. Like Vaccuccia isn’t bad enough. It means little cow.

  Carmella just has to go to Costco, because everybody needs sixty-two thousand rolls of toilet paper and four assemble-it-yourself closets to store them, all to save a nickel and a half, even though the closets never come out right because they cheat you on the screws.

  I tell her, “Carmella, I have a bad feeling about this one, I swear.”

  “Babe, we’re not gonna crash, I swear.”

  We borrow Vic’s car, more rust than ride. On the way back from Costco this ninety-six-degree morning, the Vic-mobile’s air conditioner craps out. Ma swerves to avoid hitting a sign that says AVOID SWERVING. The tire blows, and she plows the wall.

  I look at her with slitted eyes.

  She winks at me. “You don’t have it.”

  “I do.”

  “It isn’t even real, sister.”

  “It is.”

  ESP. Grumpy had it—my grandfather. The gift skipped over Ma, so I bear the curse doubly, I’m sure of it. For example, my neighbor’s cat Lola? Thing was looking at me weird one day, and I thought to myself, That cat is gonna die, and it did, squashed by a Prius in silent mode. Swear to God. It was like a year and a half later when chica became wheel grease, but still.

  We pull out the toilet paper, Ma’s smashed beer, everything covered in hand soap and Heinz, to get to the jack and the slippery spare. Ma’s like me with the big rack, bent over the tire to show her cleavage to the world. This little chump in a Benz convertible yells out the window, “Yo baby, you got some junk in that trunk,” which around here means you have a big ass. He could be talking to either of us. Trucks are about to cream us because there’s no shoulder for a loser to swap her loser tire. Ma’s laughing. “Babe?”

  “Yes, crazy lady?”

  “Life is gorgeous.” That smile. Her pimp gold caps. She, like, dated this dentist once, I don’t even want to know. The woman is a mental.

  We bring the car back to Vic. “Cannot tell you how sorry I am about the baked ketchup stink,” Ma says.

  Vic shrugs. “Don’t sweat it.”

  “It’s a potent scent, Vic.”

  “Potent is good.”

  “I’m gonna get the crashed part fixed, babe.”

  “Nah, leave it,” Vic says. “Adds character. Anybody up for some Wiffle ball?”

  “Always,” Anthony says. He’s working with us now at the Too. He grabs the bat and heads for the alley.

  Peeking out of his back pocket is a picture of the American flag and that damned army brochure he’s been thumbing the past few weeks. The recruiter called the house the other day and left a message for him. I deleted it.

  I can hear them out there, Ant and Vic, talking about it between pitches. “Should I do it?” Anthony says.

  “Family is the most important thing,” Vic says, never mind Vic has no family except us. He leaves out the I know what I know and You need to do this. Because Anthony doesn’t need to do this, and everybody knows this except Anthony. Vic’s a vet. He did two tours in Vietnam.

  “So, you’re saying I shouldn’t do it, then?” Ant says.

  “Whatever you do, it’s the right decision,” Vic says.

  “That’s not helping me much,” Ant says.

  “It isn’t meant to.” Vic throws a moon ball, and Anthony creams it.

  He better not do it. Great harm will befall him. I will be the perpetrator. I swear.

  Lunch shift is hell. The restaurant is seven thousand degrees because like Vic’s so-called car, his dive joint isn’t hospitable to working air-conditioning. Plus there’s my lip. I burned it on a slice and it looks like the herp. Here I am walking up to the giant table with all the cutie-pies from the fastpitch league. “For your dressing, you want French, Russian, or creamy ranch?”

  The guys are wincing as they try not to look at my mouth.

  I suck my lip to hide it and head back to the kitchen to hang my order ticket. I nod to this dude waiting for his take-out. “Howya doin’, Derek?”

  “Super, Céce,” he says, but his eyes say, Except I just completely lost my appetite at the sight of that pus-leaking bubble on your lip.

  Lunch shift ends, and I’m sitting with my butt in the ice machine as I turn my crummy SAT II bio workbook upside down to read the answer I got wrong.

  Anthony hangs his apron as he swings out the back door.

  “Where you going?” I say.

  “Buy running shoes.”

  “Running shoes? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Shoes you run in.”

  An hour and a half later, we’re gearing up for dinner shift. Ant runs into the kitchen, tying his apron. “I ship out in two weeks,” he says. Like he won the mega on a quick pick.

  “Thought you were going out to buy running shoes?” I say.

  “I did,” Ant says.

  “As you swung by the recruiting station?”

  “After.”

  “My one and only brother slips out between lunch and dinner shifts and signs an army contract? How is this possible?

  “Two weeks.” Ma nods. She smiles and winks, which means inside she’s weeping. “No college, huh, babe?”

  “When I get back.”

  Except he’s not coming back. I feel it. He’s going to die over there.

  He got into a good school too, was supposed to start this fall, nice financial aid package because 1.a., we’re broke, and 2.b., Anthony was an all-state quarterback.

  Ant nods to Vic. “What do you think, Vic?”

  Vic pats Anthony’s shoulder. “Proud of you,” he sighs. He gets back to mumbling over one of his stupid crosswords. “Prescient.”

  My girl Marcy is ready to slide out of her crappy polyester waitress skirt as she drools over Anthony. “Army uniforms are hot,” she says.

  I go out of my way to get her a job here, knowing full well she’s the suckiest waitress alive after getting fired from two other places, and she pays me back by macking on my brother, in front of me, no less? She was voted eleventh-prettiest in our grade in a Facebook poll, never lets anybody forget it, uses tanning spray daily because she has this idea that orange skin w
ill maintain her ranking. The sucky waitress thing isn’t her fault, though. Her left arm is messed up from this, like, freak childhood accident. She has enough nuts and bolts in her elbow to open up a Lowe’s. You kind of need two arms to be a rock star waitress, so we all cut her a ton of slack. Poor Marcy. She always wears long sleeves. She’s like my only friend who’s my age. One’s enough. I can barely stand myself at this age.

  Ant nods to me. “Howya doin’, kid?”

  “I hate you.”

  My brother is leaving me alone with crazy Carmella to go get his ass shot off in the desert. I need dessert. Cheesecake. Now. I sneak into the walk-in fridge and hunker behind the Parmesan wheel and scarf a slice.

  The door opens, and this guy comes in, kind of tall, clean cut, definitely nice-looking, but there’s something wrong with him. He strikes me as both wounded and perhaps a little dangerous. His eyes. He’s got a dark sparkle working there. He sees me behind the Parmesan wheel, and he freezes. I freeze too, cheesecake two inches from my blistered mouth.

  “Sorry,” he says. He drops his eyes and backs up.

  “Foh whah?” I say, a plug of cheesecake in my mouth.

  “Just need some grated for the takeout.” Eyes on the floor.

  I scoop some Parmesan into a to-go cup and hand it to him. “New delivery guy?”

  He nods, but he won’t look at me. “Hoping to get promoted to dishwasher.”

  “But don’t delivery guys make more money than dishwashers ?”

  “I believe so,” he says.

  Wha? “Céce,” I say.

  “I know,” he says. “Tony told me.”

  “You got a name?”

  “Yep.” Like five seconds pass. “Sorry about that. Mack.” I nod. “Mack, I don’t have herpes.”

  “How’s that?” His eyes flick to my mouth and then away.

  “It’s a burn blister.”

  “I see,” he says.

  “Pizza.”

  He nods, head down, eyes to the side. “I’m real sorry for your pain.” He looks into my eyes for a sliver of a second and then his eyes go back to the floor and he backs out like a vampire stalking in rewind.

  Burn blister. Dude wasn’t even looking anywhere near my lip. I’m an idiot.

  We’re in the bathroom. I’m all about the Blistex and Marcy is doing her bit to keep the eyeliner companies afloat. “See the new delivery guy?” I say.

  “He’s weird.”

  “He won’t look at you.”

  “He won’t look at me,” Marcy says. “And what’s up with the way he talks? You ask him a question, and there’s this pause before he answers. I was like, ‘’Scuse me, but do you know what time it is?’ And you know what my hero says? ‘Yep.’ ”

  “You ask him for the time when we have a clock on every wall?”

  “I was trying to get him to sleep with me, Céce, duh. So I ask for clarification, speaking big and slow for the lip reader crowd: ‘What, time, is, it?’ And he pulls this cheap loser watch from his pocket—a watch, like who wears watches anymore?”

  “He wasn’t wearing it, you just said.”

  “And he’s looking at the watch, and it’s like ‘Well,’ pause, ‘it’s about twenty-seven minutes past four. Or, no, wait,’ pause, ‘it’s twenty-two past five.’ ”

  “He’s shy.”

  “He’s slow. Either that or he’s huffing rubber cement.”

  “He totally looks like Matt Dillon from The Outsiders.”

  “I know,” Marcy says. “It’s criminal, his gorgeousness.

  Thank God he’s stupid. If he was hunky and smart? I’d never have a chance.”

  “Who says you have one now?”

  “He’s the type to screw anything, trust me. Total player.”

  “Here’s what I know about him,” Ma says from the stall.

  “He’s a nice guy.” She comes out smiling, but you can tell she’s been bawling.

  I. Am going. To kill. Anthony.

  “How can you tell he’s nice when he’s only working here for like thirty seconds, Mama V.?” Marcy says. “For all we know, he could be dealing meth to kindergartners, and the delivery boy thing is his cover job.”

  Ma rests her arm over Marcy’s shoulders and kisses the Marce-arella’s fake tan forehead. “He’s nice because Anthony says he’s nice.”

  We wrap dinner shift, and we’re cleaning up the kitchen. Ma wants to talk with Anthony at the bar. “Mack?” Ant says, spinning a pizza. “Do me a solid, walk my sis home?”

  I roll my eyes. “I’m fine.”

  Mack is all about polishing the sink nobody is ever going to see way behind the dishwasher there. Freddy, our stoner dishwasher, did what he always does: Freaked and disappeared just when the rush hit. Mack jumped in and doubled on delivery, and he rocked it. He takes off his apron and waits at the door, holding it open for me, looking down at his sneakers.

  Marcy struts by, swinging her falsies. Mack doesn’t look. Marcy makes her fingers into an L behind his back and mouths Looooser.

  “You live around here?”

  “Yep,” he says.

  “I see. Where?”

  “Downhill.”

  “I see. How do you like Vic’s Too, as opposed to the now defunct Vic’s?”

  “I like it,” he says.

  “Good. Good.”

  “Defunk prob’ly doesn’t mean what I think it means, right? Deodorized?”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothin’. Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  He shrugs.

  “My mother thinks you’re a really hard worker.”

  No reaction.

  “She was singing your praises to Vic.”

  He gulps, eyeing the cracks in the sidewalk. “Nice laugh your mom has.”

  “She’s a wack job. What school you go to?”

  He frowns. “I dropped.”

  “Dropped out?”

  He nods.

  “Oh.” I trip on a sidewalk crack.

  He catches my arm and keeps me on my feet. Even now he won’t look at me.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Yep.” He takes his hands away fast. His hands are strong.

  The hot breeze blows back the trees, and overhead is this minor miracle. A bright light arcs across the sky, but really slowly. I point it out through the glare of the streetlights. “Slowest shooter ever.”

  “It’s a satellite,” the boy says. “Tony told me.” He’s tracking it. His eyes are big and dark brown in the streetlights.

  “You believe my brother?” I say. “Signing up like that?”

  “Your brother’s a really good dude.”

  “I’m gonna murder him. You have kind of an accent.”

  “Texas.”

  “Just a little bit. It’s nice, I mean. Sorry.” I put my hand on his arm the way I always do to people when I want to fake sincerity, except with this Mack, I find I am sincere: I do like his accent, and I am sorry if I in any way hurt his feelings, as I suspect they’ve been hurt enough. Yes, he’s wounded, definitely.

  He flinches at my touch, not violently, but like when you collect sparks crossing the carpet to pick up the empty beer can your loser mother left in the middle of the floor. I take my hand away from Mack’s arm. This guy thinks I’m a freak. I suck my lip to hide my pustule.

  Dog. Pit bull. Running at us.

  I freeze.

  “He’s all right,” Mack says.

  I make a noise somewhere between a screech and a moan and hide behind Mack.

  Mack goes “Tst!” and the dog stops and cocks its head. “Wait,” he says, makes his voice deeper to do it, says it quietly. “Sit.”

  The dog sits.

  Mack flicks his hand, and the dog trots off, wagging its tail.

  I’m still shaking. “How’d you do that?”

  “He didn’t mean anything but to say hello.”

  “But how’d you make him stop?”

  “His ears were back easy, and his eyes were soft.”

 
; “Huh?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “Thanks.”

  He shrugs, studies his sneakers.

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Nah,” he says.

  We walk, and after a bit, I don’t feel the need to fill the quiet. I keep sneaking peeks at him. First peek: nice face to frame those intense eyes, nose on the big side. Second peek: nice hair, thick, keeps it short. Third peek: good shape, skinny. Long legs.

  I can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to hold this boy’s hand.

  No. Friend material. Not even. Why would he want anything to do with me? He’s totally hot, could get somebody much better looking than me. Still, he can’t even look at me? Gotta be the lip.

  We approach the rotting, double-mortgaged vinyl-sider that is my abode. The Vic-mobile is parked by the dead hydrant in front of our house. I smell the hand soap and ketchup wafting out of the smashed trunk a half block away. Ma and Vic are out on the porch. Vic slurps coffee over a crossword and Ma sips her cheap beer. Carmella salutes us with her tallboy. “C’mon in, Mack. I won’t mind if you sip half a cup of beer. Just don’t tell your mother.”

  Mack waits at the curb. “Better get going,” he says.

  “I have cornbread in the kitchen,” Ma says. “You’ll love it.”

  “Totally burned,” I whisper to him. “She has this idea that starting up a cornbread business is going to get her out of insane credit card debt. We’re in the trial stages.”

  “Yeah, nah, I gotta go.” He heads downhill.

  Smack me, why don’t you? I spin to Ma and Vic. “What’s wrong with that kid?”

  “He’s perfect,” Ma says.

  “Ten letters, second is e, to make a net or network,” Vic mumbles over his puzzle.

  “Reticulate,” I say.

  “Atta girl.” Vic licks his pencil and scribbles it in.

  I downloaded this vocabulary-builder thing for the gifted and talented test. You take it over the summer. Two parts, multiple choice and essay. I’m no genius, but when I’m not working I’m home studying, and I have a ninetythree average, so I have a shot at the multiple choice. But the essay scares me. You have to tell them about your gifts and talents and goals. My only goal so far is not to end up like my mother: never married, twice knocked up and ditched, alcoholic with crippling bunions because at forty she’s been waiting tables at Vic’s Too since she was my age. The only gift I have is ESP, but I can’t write about that because people put you in the psycho slot if you think that kind of thing is real. If you kill the G and T, you can transfer to a rock star high school. That would get me into a decent college and after that a half-decent suburb, which one I don’t care, as long as it’s far away from here, preferably something with off-street parking and mature shrubbery that screens out the stinking world. I grab a sleeve of Oreos and go upstairs to study. I have to find a gift or talent between now and that stupid test.