“Don’t worry about it,” I told him.

He gave me a look hard enough to curdle water and went on sweeping. After we finished cleaning the rooms, I split to Mary-Ann’s house.

Mary-Ann is just about my woman. Just about, because I haven’t really done anything to make it official.

I’ve known Mary-Ann and her brother Paul just about all my life. For a long time I treated her like a younger sister. Paul and I were close, too. If I had to call somebody my main man, he’d be it. We were just about the same age and had been going to school together, eating at each other’s house and stuff like that for as long as I can remember. Lately Paul had been hanging around with some of the cats at school who thought they were better than the rest of us. This was a new thing with him, and I couldn’t figure it, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Mary-Ann was something else. She had been Paul’s kid sister and I had liked her, and then one day she just wasn’t a kid anymore. I don’t know if she just changed or if both of us did. I remember being at Paul’s house one day, waiting for him to finish his shower, and Mary-Ann and I were playing checkers. I used to always let her beat me, and then I’d sneak a checker off the table and we’d wrestle around for it. Only this time, when she tried to wrestle me to the floor to get the checker out of my hand, I was suddenly aware that she was a woman. I opened my hand real quick, and she asked me what was wrong, was I getting weak? I just looked at her and she looked at me and we both knew things had changed between us.

I found myself liking her more and more, but I tried to keep it cool. I wasn’t really ready for no big love thing, but I liked the way I felt around her, and she knew it, even though I never said it in so many words.

When I got over to Paul’s house, he wasn’t home. Mary-Ann and her mother were there, mouthing off at each other like they always did.

About six months before, they had been arguing about the fact that Mary-Ann didn’t get a new coat for Christmas. Her mother came back with how bad things were and how much this cost and how much that cost and the usual noise people be handing out when they come up short. Then she starts saying that since Mary-Ann had just turned sixteen, she could go out and get her a part-time job or something and help get her own stuff. I guess she figured that Mary-Ann would work in the supermarket or something like that. But there’s an after-hours joint across from where Paul lives, and Mary-Ann gets a job there instead.

Mary-Ann’s job was to keep track of the liquor and stuff so that the bartenders wouldn’t rip off the money from the sales. She ordered stuff like peanuts, and potato chips, too. But her mother kept running down about how Mary-Ann was going to be a tramp because she worked in the after-hours joint, especially when the dude that ran it gave Mary-Ann her own room. Mary-Ann told her mama that the guy wanted her to stay there some of the time so in case he wanted to check things out, she could tell him what was what. Her mama didn’t want to hear a thing, so she just kept running the same old lines. Mary-Ann was making about three times as much as she could in the supermarket and she dug the responsibility, so she wasn’t about to give up the gig.