He thinks about it. “No, I suppose not.” But the look on his face says he’s not so sure. Atlanta figures that if that’s the kind of racist she is, so be it. Last year, they found a dead Guatemalan kid under the bushes around the water tower at the edge of town. Beaten and kicked. Story goes that it was because he was dating a white girl. Atlanta doesn’t truck with that kind of racism. She thinks people deserve whatever niceness they can squeeze out of this world no matter what their color or creed. But she also figured that, you know, you give a Latino kid a chance to cook, he’s going to make a chalupa. Or an enchilada or burrito or whatever. Now that she’s thinking about it, she figures that probably does make her a racist. Maybe it’s all just part of a spectrum. Great. Now she feels like an asshole because of Mexican food. Or the assumption of Mexican food. Dangit.

“Thanks again for earlier,” he says.

“Yeah. Well. They were looking to hurt you.” She points to his head. “Guess they already did. How’s the head?”

“Hurts, but okay.”

“How’d you get cut?”

It’s like he doesn’t want to tell her, and she gets that, she really does. Finally he speaks. “The one, the muscle guy, he had a ring. A skull ring. He turned it to the inside of his hand and then he slapped me.”

“Slapped you. Kind of a bitch-ass cheap shot, huh?”

“I guess.” He watches her then. He seems on the edge of something, like he wants to say something, and finally she just turns her index finger in a barrel roll—a gesticulation meant to say, Get on with it. So he does. “Why’s your mom in the garage?”

“She likes it there,” she lies.

He blinks. “The story. About you. Is it true?”

“I do not have man-parts.”

“Not that story.”

“I did not bite the head off a bat on stage at a Black Sabbath show.”

“What?”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah. The story’s true.”

“Do you still—” But he stops. Then he leans in. Voice low. As if nobody should hear. “Do you still have the shotgun?”

“I do. Told the cops it was my mother’s.”

“And you didn’t have to do time?”

She shrugs. “Felt like I did. Six months of therapy. Not here at home, either. But . . . away. Place called Emerald Lakes. At least I didn’t have to go to school.”

His mouth forms a reverent O.

“You should go home,” she says abruptly around a huge mouthful of grilled cheese—it comes out ooo shoul guh, but then she swallows the big hunk of greasy goodness and says it again. “You need to go. We’re good here.”