—Where’s everybody? he asked, recognizing Hush as the same girl who stayed at their house back in the day before prison. She was with Dallas when he got arrested.

—Sleeping. It’s like three in the morning.

Hush had grown. Had she always had those eyes? He opened the refrigerator door to do something with himself. The refrigerator light revealed her in small parts. Eyes like big chocolate almonds. Her nipples poked out from under her tank top; he imagined they looked like Hershey’s kisses. His mother had to have some chocolate hidden somewhere.

—You’re Bobby, she said, remembering her crush on him. —I heard you were back, but I hadn’t seen you around.

—I’m just avoiding people. Can’t be outside without folk bothering me. I don’t want to get myself in trouble, that’s all.

—It’s gotten pretty bad since you were last here. It’s called Operation Clean-up. The cops are everywhere, undercover.

—Worse? Been having cops feeling me up since I was eleven years old, waiting for me to fuck up. Where you going, son? Got no business standing around, son, and now you telling me it’s worse? I guess they gots to find peops for all those prisons they’re building.

Bobby walked over to the fridge to get something to drink, forgetting he already had a beer opened on the table. He started to laugh at himself. He was so out of it. He handed it over to her so she could take a swig.

—It’s only good when it’s cold, she said.

—You too young to be drinking?

—Who says? Besides, if you’re gonna give me a hard time, why did you offer? Hush curled up on the chair at the table. Pulled out the dish from the microwave for Bobby. —Eat, you look hungry.

—You’re funny, he said and his cheeks hurt from all the smiling he was doing. Hush was a bad idea. She was Dallas’s friend. Dallas’s age. Fifteen years old. His stomach turned with the thought.

—You shouldn’t drink around men, they can take advantage of you.

—You’re not a man, you’re Dallas’s brother.

—Got a dick like any other man, especially the way you dressed; I’d be more careful.

—Don’t that dick have a brain?

Hush slipped on Esperanza’s housedress, hanging on a hook by the sink. She wrapped it around her.

—That’s more like it, Bobby said, nodding and smiling.

—It’s a hundred degrees in here and I gotta cover up ’cause you don’t trust your own dick. I thought you were a different kind of man, Bobby.

—You talk like a woman, Bobby said.

—What?

—You don’t talk like a girl, you talk like a woman.

Hush assumed it was because he had been incarcerated so long that he had lost touch with things.

—Well, I’m surprised you talk so much. I heard juvie ate your tongue.

—My mother told you that? She be starting rumors.

Hush tucked wisps falling into her face behind her ear. Hid her smile away from him.