I should've expected trouble the second Jessie came on the scene, really.

I keep doing a double take every time I look up at Eli, see Curly staring back at me from behind his plate. He seems younger, God forbid sweeter, with his hair messed up from sleep and red marks from his pillowcase on his face. That's how I don't think to intercept this situation until it's much too late.

"Who are you?" Jessie asks him like she's got no home training, almost tipping over the syrup jug when she slams her Raggedy Anne onto the table.

"We talked about this, honey," Sally starts nervously, "this is your new brother, Eli, remember, he's gonna live with us now?" Eli raises his hand to give her a little wave. "Y'all have the same daddy and different mamas."

"If you lived with your mama—" I brace myself for whatever insensitive remark leaves her four-year-old mouth— "why do you live with us now? Don't she miss you?"

He doesn't even look up before he says, "She's too dead to miss anyone."

"Oh. How'd she die?"

"Jessica." I try to stare her down, but it's a futile effort— little girl's too damn young to understand anything about tact, and she's got bad genes to start with. "Come on now, mind your business."

"It's cool." He shrugs, just to prove how cool it is, and shovels more pancakes into his mouth. "She had lung cancer. Smoked like a chimney."

He talks about it like he's giving the weather report— sucks ass that there's a light drizzle, and by the way, his mama's dead and never coming back. I'd be a lot more disturbed if he didn't look as though he was going to be sick for a moment, throw up all over the tabletop.

I try to do what I do best, iron out practical details. "You need to go to school today, get registered— what grade are you supposed to be in?" Based off of his birthday, he should be in the ninth, but if he's been in and out of juvie, I wouldn't be surprised if he's behind.

"I don't go to school."

"Excuse me?" I put the paper— something about Carter and those goddamn gas prices— down to glare at him. "You're fourteen. You do so go to school, I ain't fixin' to explain to the truant officer why you ain't."

He gives me both a shrug and a shit-eating grin, just what the doctor ordered. "Man, you can send me, but ain't no guarantee I'm gonna stay there."

"Either you stay there or I come to school and personally tie you to a desk." I stab a piece of bacon with nearly enough force to puncture the plate. "You got three seconds, kid, eighth or ninth."

"Tim," Sally cuts in, because she's always had far more patience than me, "I'll handle this. Sweetheart, we're going to find out from the principal anyway—"

"Tenth." He makes sure to look me right in the eye as he says it. "Yeah, you think I'm just some dumb hood, huh? They put me up a year in grade school, my momma had me tested."

"Good for you." I'm not about to be taken down that easy, though secretly, I'm impressed by Ponyboy Curtis Junior. I didn't even graduate myself; maybe at least my kid will. "Was that really so hard?"

"If Eli doesn't hafta go—"

"See what you're doin'?" I say as Sally stops her whining with a forkful of pancakes into her open mouth. "Settin' a bad example, that's what. You're her big brother, she oughta be able to look up to you."

"Put Mister Rogers on the TV," is the rejoinder he doesn't pause before delivering, "I ain't fixin' to be no kind of role model. Most of the parents at my old school told their kids not to end up like me."

Wish I could argue with him there.

I wasn't (just) being a smartass to Tim, I really can't handle the inside of a school for longer than ten minutes at a stretch. For all their talk about how I could be a rousing success if I only applied myself to, you know, going to class on a regular basis instead of selling dope, pulling out some test from first grade that says I've got a 145 IQ, the place makes me start bouncing my leg up and down and wanting to run for it. Juvie only made the claustrophobia worse.

Don't know why he's crawling up my ass about it, anyway— Lorraine never cared whether I went or not, as long as I wasn't hanging around the house, and Rick—

Well, he's the reason why I'm slipping out of second period geometry and heading out towards the payphone across the street. I got some things I want to say to him, all right.

Too bad I almost wuss out as the dimes thunk to the bottom of the machine, groan and press my forehead to the dusty glass for a minute. I don't know if I can do this, hear the truth spoken out loud, but my fingers move mechanically anyway, dialing a number I hope is still connected.

"If you're callin' me before noon, you better be my PO, swear to God."

"Rick?"

"Oh. Hey, kid." He sounds like he's asleep with his eyes open— probably been hitting the bong already. "So where'd they end up sendin' you?"

"Oklahoma." My mouth is so dry I can barely swallow. "I'm livin' with my dad and his wife now."

"Shit, they managed to track that guy down? Lorraine never could." He clears his throat. "You likin' it okay?"

He could've been asking whether I'm okay with having ramen for dinner— again. "It's fine," I say, and I guess it is, for now— there's food, a lot of it, and a bed, and clothes to wear. I've lived in a hell of a lot worse. "But you could've done something." If I start crying like a little bitch... "Gotten a lawyer, tried to keep me, I dunno. They ain't my people."

"Kid, I didn't have lawyer money when you were arrested." He snorts. "I wasn't even married to Lorraine, I dunno what you thought was gonna happen after she died. They're the only people you got."

I'm silent for a couple moments and he starts talking again, filling up the space. "Don't tell me you miss me." I can imagine the smoke curling around his head from the joint, his face shrouded in shadow, the Texas sun glinting off his colorless eyes. "We was always fightin', come on. We was even fightin' the day you went inside."

I absently rub the scar on my temple, where he'd whacked my head against the edge of the coffee table. Yeah, me and Rick were always scrapping, especially when Lorraine was in the hospital and couldn't yell for us to cut it out— like two rams locking horns on a mountaintop, fighting over the same broad, the same territory. "Keep dreamin'," I say. "I miss Austin. Ain't nothin' to do with all these inbred hicks." I bet they think drinking a couple lukewarm beers in someone's basement is enough to damn you to hell.

"You brought in good money," he says, and the admiration warms me right up, though I hate myself for still giving a fuck. "I mean, not that I really need it now—"

I wonder if he's lonely, now that Lorraine and I are gone, not that our old apartment is large enough to feel lonely in. I wonder why I care. "I'm gonna come home, once I get enough dough together," I make sure to warn him, or maybe it's reassure him, I'm not quite sure. Love and hate all mixed up inside. "You better not rent out my room while I'm gone."

He gives me this nervous half-laugh, half-snort that comes from the back of his throat. "Shit... listen, buddy... I know you left stuff behind here... well, I sold it."

Any of that 'love' evaporates right then and there. "You fucking did what."

"Watch your fucking mouth," he says, sounding more like my older brother than my stepfather— that's what it always felt like, anyway, growing up with him. "I didn't figure you were comin' back for it, okay— it was just takin' up space." When I continue silently fuming, mouthing a string of cuss words I can't quite bring myself to yell into, he keeps on trying to justify himself. "Most of it was trash anyway, you would've taken it with you if you gave two shits about it. Don't be a goddamn baby."

He's right, that's the worst part— most of it was just garbage. But I'll bite off my own tongue before I admit to being wrong about anything, Lorraine always said. "You owe me," I hiss hard enough into the receiver to leave flecks of spit on it. "You fucking owe me, I'm the one you sold up the river for your operation—"

Of course he just slams the phone back down on the hook, doesn't think I'm worth the time he'd waste on a reply. I want to slap the shit out of him, something I managed to do a couple times after I turned fourteen, but he's hundreds of miles away in his underwear in his shitty apartment, and all I can do is slap the heel of my hand against the glass as I walk out. Hurts like a son of a bitch, and it didn't accomplish nothing, did it.

There's a kid around my age sidling up to me, my type, if he's out here by the payphones and gas station and not in World History or whatever. His sandy brown hair looks like it hasn't ever seen a comb, and he's got this whole 'I get beat at home' posture to him— boy, do I know that one. "Hey." He sticks his hands in his pockets and slouches forward— fortunately, he doesn't ask any dumbass questions that ain't his business, like who I was talking to. "You got a smoke?"

"Not for free." He scowls at me until I give him a grin in return, then he relaxes— you gotta razz his type a little so they figure out they can't push you around, but I'm not going to take it too far on my first day. "Shit, I'm just messin' with you, here."

He squints at me as he lights up. "Haven't seen you 'round much, you new?"

"Yeah." I breathe in deep and almost hack up a lung— I'm out of practice, bad, 'cause God knows prison cigarettes are the shittiest thing ever.

He gives me a look like, you really gonna make me pull it out of you? "Where'd you come from?"

I smile at him and blow out a mouthful of smoke at the same time. "Travis County Juvenile Detention Center. In Austin."

"Sweet," he says, trying to look unimpressed, but I can tell this guy hasn't been inside yet and he thinks this makes me hot shit. "What were you in for?"

"Sold pot, back at my old school, on a couple of street corners." I spun a wilder tale for the guys I met in juvie, that I was supplying every school in the county, that I'd fended off near every other dealer in South Congress, but I can't bring myself to do it anymore. The truth is the truth.

He whistles at me. "Damn... we're always lookin' for some more devil's lettuce around here, if you catch my drift."

I don't like to use any of the stuff myself, actually, follow the old saying that dealers shouldn't smoke, snort, or inject their own product... not because I'm afraid of the high from the trivial crap I sold, just because it sends me back to shit I'd rather forget. I get one whiff and I'm in our old apartment again. "So what's this place like?" I ask coolly. "Seen a bunch of pussies so far."

The girls dressed better at my old high school in Austin— wore shorts, for one, were fixing their hair like Farrah Fawcett and not in poodle-caught-in-the-rain perms, smoked and swore and got into fights even. Everyone in Okie territory looks like extras from Leave It to Beaver.

"I mean, you ain't wrong." He lets out a cross between a cough and a laugh, and I'm secretly gratified to hear that he's not much of an expert smoker either. "Me and some of my friends, though, we come out here sometimes and get high. Better than sittin' in class all day."

These guys, they're still the JV squad, I realize, suddenly feeling very, very old and jaded— they smoke up some in one of their basements, cut class, scribble dicks on the walls on the men's room, think that makes them hot shit. "Damn straight," I say anyway, putting out the last of my smoke on the glass and flicking the stub. "You got a name?"

"Robert."

"Eli." The restlessness coils up inside me and strikes like a snake, making it impossible for me to go back to class and take my detention or whatever. "Shit, you wanna get out of here? Where does everyone go?"

"There's this place called the Ribbon, it's this strip with bars and drag races and shit, but it's always crawling with cops around now," he says with a scowl. "This girl I know, though, Michelle, her brother's got a ton of skunk in his basement. He sells some, like you did, 'round school. We could hang out there."

I smirk, I've heard that 'girl I know' line before, trying to play it cool. "She your broad?"

"I wish," he says, the corners of his mouth turned down. "She's the kind of broad who's everyone's broad, if you catch my drift."

I had a girlfriend back in Austin, Karen, who wore dark eyeliner and a Tulsa-style bad perm and was the kind of less-than-stable chick who'd look twice at me. She's probably with some other guy now, though, I catch his drift all right.

She's probably with a guy like this, and counts herself lucky she got rid of me.

"You have a what that you never told us about?"

"Angel, shit, quit shrieking into my ear," I say tiredly, cradling the receiver with my shoulder. In person, she no doubt would've punched me by now. "Ain't like I was keepin' him some dirty little secret, gimme a break, I just found out he existed myself."

"A whole-ass new nephew." She cackles. "That's somethin' that don't happen every day."

"Hey," comes out of my mouth fully-formed, "Curly's prob'ly given you some nephews you don't know about either."

She pauses for a second before letting out another loud snort of laughter. "Fuck, you're right. So who's he like?"

"Spittin' image of Curly when he was a kid," I say, "and the spittin' image of Dally Winston the second he opens that mouth."

Goddammit, I would've slapped myself for thinking it back when I was eighteen and the two of us spent half our time trying to knock each other's kidneys loose, but I miss the hell out of Dally Winston. Started remembering all the hours spent downing beers, calling the guys we could whip pussies and the ones we couldn't whip pussies too, more than all the fights we couldn't settle. "You're kiddin'," Angela says, "you never should've told me. I never liked that guy."

"Fourteen, and he's already got a record a mile long—" I shake my head ruefully. Greasers might be a thing of the past in 1978— I do a full-body cringe when I see pictures of myself at Eli's age, my hair so shiny and long it practically dripped onto my shoulders— but teenage boys haven't stopped doing the exact same shit they've been doing since the dawn of time. "Already gone inside for dealin', don't think even I had a paper trail like that at his age."

"Could be worse, you could have a fourteen-year-old daughter, then you gotta worry about every dick in the neighborhood instead of just one." I can imagine the face she's making at the receiver right now. "Donna, Jesus, that girl's in the sixth grade and she's already rollin' up the hems of her skirts and stealin' my mascara, can you believe it? She's gonna be hell on wheels in a couple years."

I bite back the urge to lecture Angela to keep an eye on her, because God knows I have enough problems with my own kid right now, and she doesn't need any reminders when she had Donna at seventeen. "You tell Curly yet?" she asks.

"Been tryna get a hold of him, no idea where the lil' shit is these days." A wave of irritation always washes over me whenever I think about my kid brother, and this is one of the reasons why. It's like herding cats and there's only one of him.

"Oh, damn, you didn't know he's back inside?"

"You have got to be fuckin' kidding me." I groan and rest my forehead in my palm. "Back inside? He just got out, for fuck's sake."

"Got busted for unpaid parkin' tickets, and the judge hates seein' him on the stand so much he threw him in the clink for a couple weeks," Angela blithely elaborates. "Claims Donna's daddy says hi— wish he'd tell me where the hell Missy's is at. I ain't gotten my check in three months."

"Hang on, someone's on the line—"

I shouldn't have been half as surprised as I was that Eli's school had complaints before lunch.

I walk in the door, see Tim at the kitchen table, and immediately know I'm busted— all parents got the same damn look on their faces, eyebrows raised, waiting for you to incriminate yourself before they bring down the hammer. "You have a good first day?"

I'm not playing this game with him— he fucking unnerves me, the way he seems to stare right through me like he's got x-ray eyes or something. Like a sperm cell between us makes us any less strangers. "Principal give you the 411 already?"

"You could say that." I expect a cuff upside the head, brace myself for it, and I'm surprised not to get one. "He ain't thrilled you spent all of two hours inside of his school before runnin' off, especially when your PO is supposed to get reports from him. Claims you're a flight risk."

"I got antsy, my first day an' all, ain't used to bein' locked up—"

"You don't just go wherever the hell you please, you need to ask permission, first of all," he says, sounding like a kindergarten teacher with a dirtier mouth. "And if you keep pullin' this shit you're really gonna be locked up again."

"I was just out with one of my friends," I unconvincingly lie, "lost track of time—"

"I got a nose, I can smell the nicotine on you from here." He pours himself some coffee with enough force to send a few drops flying. "I smoked when I was your age too, but that was before we knew it could give you lung cancer. You better quit while you can, Nicorette tastes like ass."

"Yeah." The back of my throat feels sealed shut. "Yeah, I know how people get lung cancer."

"Eli, shit—"

"You're not my dad," I say again, slowly, enjoying the feel of the words. "Okay? I might be livin' in your house—"

"Livin' in my house means you can't just do what you feel like." A shot of caffeine's made him brave. "Listen to me, if you don't go to school, it won't be me up your ass, it'll be your PO— and he's not gonna be nearly as understanding."

"Yeah, you'd know all about that, huh?"

He doesn't rise to the bait; I'm beyond shocked a former gang leader like him hasn't figured out that a solid slap would stop my motor mouth. Every time I spouted off at Rick, I made sure to put my fists up first, knew it'd end in blood and tears if I didn't defend myself right. "You think it's that crazy I don't want my kid to do the same stupid shit I did when I was your age?"

"Jessie's your kid," I try to cut off boredly, but my voice kind of wobbles on the last word. I need to get it together today, I don't know what my problem is— I could treat CO's with all the casual disrespect they deserved, but talking to my two fathers is making me unravel. "I'm what the state ended up forcin' on you. Don't give me that do-gooder shit."

"Don't you keep givin' me that mouth." Finally, an edge of anger, and he proves himself to be a normal enough guy after all; I was starting to think he'd meditated at Tibetan monasteries or something. "I know this is hard as hell on you, I know you don't want to be here, but I didn't—"

"But you didn't damn well want me here either, Tim?" I switch into a triumphant smirk before I can manage to feel hurt. I don't need him to say it out loud to know the truth, that he wishes the condom hadn't broken, that I didn't exist, that I could've kept living with Lorraine far away from him and left him in blissful ignorance. "That what you wanna tell me?"

"I ain't arguin' with you anymore." His jaw has gotten all tense; I've rattled him, even if he doesn't want to admit it. "Go to your room and do your homework, and I better not hear that you been cuttin' school to smoke up again, Jesus. Or there's gonna be trouble."

It sounds more like a question than a proclamation, and I sweep on out of there with my head held high, satisfied that I've accomplished what I wanted— pissed off my sperm donor a little, and even more important—

Fifty bucks in my pocket. I reach in to make sure it's still there, the crumpled paper sweaty from Michelle's brother's palms, and can't hide the first genuine smile I've had in on my face in months.