Steve O’Donnell made a turn off Campbell Road into a subdivision. It was Dan’s first time visiting Sticky’s house, and their plan was solid: a sleepover with little sleep—Sticky’s mom would come home, everyone would go to bed, and then the boys would duck out for a little late-night action downtown. Rick had warned Dan that spending the night at Sticky’s house was something special. As they pulled up, Sticky’s littlest sister, Mary Kate, was sitting in the oil smudges of the driveway, spinning the working wheel of a broken upside-down tricycle. There were a lot of half possessions littered across the front lawn. MK was the youngest of six and the only girl. Sticky’s oldest brother, Dennis, was gone for the weekend to a track meet in Houston. Since his parents’ separation, Sticky’s mother had been working as receptionist/reporter/copyeditor/ad sales manager/publisher for the Echo, Richardson’s local paper, so all the O’Donnell kids were latchkey. After St. Paul’s let out, the three middle boys—Connor and the twin eleven-year-olds, Brian and Brendan—roamed the creeks and strip malls of Little Saigon like wolf whelps. That MK was amusing herself, all right but unsupervised, meant the pack had made it home.

Stick sidled through the front door with a precipitous, checked-out weariness that made him seem like the man of the house. Nothing was on fire, but nothing was under control. School clothes, shoes, and book bags were strewn as if the front living room had been evacuated. At some point in the past, the kitchen had been raided for peanut butter and jelly, leaving jam trails and licked jars on the dining room table, along with a lice comb, literally called the Nitpicker. All of this mess weighed on Stick, who, finding his brothers in the back TV room wrestling over the gun for Duck Hunt, started barking orders at his siblings. Everyone was starving, and so Dan returned to the kitchen with Stick to help stack grilled cheese sandwiches for the toaster oven.

“When’s your mom get home?”

“Six usually.”

Dan knew better than to ask about Sticky’s father, but his absence was the invisible elephant looming behind any O’Donnell family conversation. Two years prior, Mr. O’Donnell had moved out of the house, and was living with a “roommate” down in Oak Lawn. He had also left his job in flood insurance claims and become a flight attendant for Southwest.

MK pranced into the kitchen with her permanent runny nose. Sticky stanched it with a paper towel, and MK started rooting through drawers she could reach.

“What do you want?”

“Scissors.”

“For what?”

“I’m gonna fix the tricycle.”

“Not gonna happen, baby girl. Want some Honey Nut?”

Sticky pulled the cereal box out of the pantry and then ducked his head into the fridge.

“Dang, no milk, MK.”