Chapter 75

Donnie and Wes were hanging on Mrs. Dance’s back porch, huddling in the back, along with Nathan (Neo, from The Matrix) and Vince (Vulcan—no, not the race of the dudes from Star Trek but the X-Man.)

Fritos and orange juice and a little smuggled Red Bull were the hors d’oeuvres and cocktails of the hour.

“So, what’re you? Like, grounded?” slim, pimply Vince asked.

Wes sighed. “My mother’s running that case, that thing at Solitude Creek, where the people got killed. And the Bay View Center?”

Nathan: “No shit. Where people jumped into the water and drowned. She’s doing that?”

“And she’s like all paranoid he’s going to come around and mess with us.”

“Get a piece, dude. Really. Waste him, the fucker shows up.”

“I don’t think so,” Wes said.

Vince asked, “How’re you gonna play the game, man? Jesus.”

Wes shrugged. “I gotta have rides to school, and home. But I can still get away. Just have to be careful about it. Not when my mom’s here. But Jon? I can tell him I’ve got a headache or need to take a nap. Get out through my window. I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”

Donnie waved to Mrs. Dance’s boyfriend, Jon, who Donnie thought was spying on them, though maybe not. The guy actually seemed friendly enough and sure as shit knew machines; he hacked epic code and showed Donnie how to write script for games. Donnie had this fantasy about taking the Defend and Respond Expedition Service game onto the net, making millions. Where you’d fuck with people in the virtual world.

Yeah, it could be a good game. Mucho more interesting than wasting zombies with machine guns.

Donnie shifted on the bench and he must’ve winced. Wes noticed. “Yo, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, bitch. I’m fine.”

Except he wasn’t fine. His father’d noticed the missing bike and, even though he seemed to believe the lie that Donnie had lent it to a friend, he’d whacked him a half-dozen times with the branch for not asking permission to lend out a present. (“And you know how much it cost?”) He was under orders to produce the bike tomorrow, or face even worse punishment.

And, with Donnie’s father, worse always meant worse.

Big Nathan, who didn’t take as many showers as he ought to, moved his hair out of his eyes. “So here.” He flashed a picture on his Galaxy of a STOP sign, uprooted and sitting in Vince’s garage. His mother never used the place. His father may have killed himself in there—that was the rumor—so nobody in the family ever went inside or did anything with it. So the place sort of became their clubhouse.

“Can I get an amen?” Nathan asked. “Team Two scores.”

Fist bumps.

“Cool,” said Wes. “How much did it weigh?”

“Tons,” Vince said. “We both had to carry it.”

“I could have,” Nathan said fast. “Just, it was long, you know. Hard to get a handle on.”

If anybody could muscle it, Neo could. He was a big fucker.