“There was no mail,” I told her.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she said, and she cupped my chin in her hands. “Listen now—you be good.” She let go and shut the door.

. . .

I’d been bumming pins from Fellis for months. Maybe even close to a year. One every three or four days, then one every other day, then one once a day, then two a day, then three a day. Maybe now is when I should stop bumming them. Or go see the doc. No—I can’t see him. But I can’t not take them. The world without them feels too muggy. Too stuffy. Like I can’t breathe.

“You be good,” my grandmother said. It’s worth a shot.

On day three with no pins I asked Fellis again if he knew anyone who was selling. I did good the first two days without them, probably because I drank both nights, once in the silo and then once at Fellis’s because it rained and the silo was all wet.

“I told you,” Fellis said. He was putting in Signs, that alien movie with Mel Gibson and that little girl who leaves glasses of water all over the place. “That fucking kid Meekew has some.”

I waited for the movie to be over before I left. I needed time to think it through, think about how I’d get the money. When I got up and told Fellis I’d be back, he asked me where I was going, and I lied and said to get some money from home, and he asked if he could come.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. “Just wait here.” I took one of his smokes before I left.

I put my hood up and walked down the road and smoked a cigarette dotted with rain splatter and I thought—no, I asked—should I do it?

Over my grandmother’s empty kitchen sink, I busted up the window frame and I pried it open and crawled inside, and I was crying not because I felt bad about doing it but because I didn’t feel good one bit.

I drank a glass of water and splashed water on my face.

I didn’t think I’d find any money, and so I suppose I tricked myself into thinking that that was a fact, and that that fact would absolve my attempt to take the money I convinced myself was not in the house.

Then why look? I can’t remember.

My grandmother’s house wasn’t too big. It had an upstairs with two bedrooms and a bathroom, and above that there was a small attic I’d never been in before. The bottom floor had the kitchen and living room and another bedroom, the one my grandmother stayed in even though the stairs weren’t nothing for her to climb.