In August, Fellis had started school at the community college off the reservation. He said he only attended to get a refund check from financial aid, which was distributed around week three. After that, he checked out. Tuition was waived for us skeejins, and so since his mom, Beth—who he’s lived with for twenty-six years—made crap teaching at the rez school, Fellis got this nice fat financial aid check that he wasted on Amazon: red-and-black Jordans, sixty—yeah, sixty—pairs of white ankle socks, a smart TV, and an iPhone that he stopped paying for. Now he only used the phone as a flashlight. He dumped the rest of the check on cigarettes, beer, and pot, which I didn’t mind.

One night Fellis bought whip-its, and we huffed four boxes each, and I got so lost in fourteen straight that my father’s voice spoke to me—he said my name—for the first time in nine years and I gave Fellis the rest of mine, and another night Fellis bought some coke from this skinny skeejin named Meekew, and Fellis bitched about him even though Meekew didn’t rip him off. But anyway, all that stuff Fellis bought was a bargain—except the drugs—and since Fellis was a student Amazon gave him a six-month free trial to Prime, and so he never paid shipping.

But that Prime was the culprit in our binge-watching marathon, the reason why I was damn tired of sitting. These past two weeks Fellis and I dumped six, seven hours a day watching The Sopranos for free, and we only ever left his mom’s house to pick up our methadone take-homes or to get smokes. And so when the series was over and Fellis was ready to start a new one, I said hold up, told him I was tired of sitting and said we should go to the bar, but he suggested we play cards. Something different, I suppose, but it was still sitting.

The toilet flushed. It flushed again. Then once more.

Fellis came out of the bathroom and down the hallway.

“I don’t know what’s more satisfying,” Fellis said. “What I just did in there or that feeling you get when the car behind you also runs the red light.”

Fellis went to the cupboard and grabbed the box of spaghetti we used as gambling chips. He shook the box of spaghetti and the uncooked noodles slid onto the kitchen table.

“Let’s play with money,” I said.

“You don’t have any money,” Fellis said.

“Loan me twenty bucks. I’ll play with that.”

“How you going to pay me back when you lose?”

“I’m not going to lose.”

“But you always lose,” he said.

I had no way to get him the money. I was laid off last summer, had been working tribal maintenance part-time and mowing the graveyard. I was on unemployment for about three weeks, but I forgot to send in the form that showed I was looking for work, and they kicked me off. The only money I’d seen lately came from bringing dead porcupines to Clara over on Birch Hill who paid twenty bucks a stinking carcass. She used their quills in her regalia.