My breaths are coming short and fast; my heart is a jackhammer. “I don’t think so.” I raise the stick. “What do you say you guys just go away?”

Lamebrain laughs scornfully. “Believe me, Luke-ass, that ain’t in the cards.”

The goons begin to spread out. A couple of them reach down and pick up rocks.

Bang! With a flash, a firecracker pops behind me. The bad guys jump. “Mother of Mary,” one says with a gasp, and points behind me, where Milton’s standing with something dark in his hand.

“He’s got a gun!” someone says.

I don’t know where Milton got the firecracker, but he set it off and is now holding up something small and dark that he knows can be mistaken for a gun in the night. Pure genius.

“Don’t do nothin’ stupid, okay?” Lamebrain takes a step back. The others drop their rocks.

These bozos are buying it! I almost burst out laughing.

The hoods start quickly away, sand and pebbles crunching under their boots, looking back over their shoulders to make sure Milton isn’t following. My knees go weak, and I have to lean on the stick, using it as a crutch while I catch my breath. When the hoods are mere silhouettes down the beach, I turn to congratulate Milton on his brilliance.

But Arno speaks first: “A gun? What the fuck, Milton?”

“It’s not a gun, stupid,” I start to explain. “It was a —”

Milton lifts the dark thing in his trembling hand. No, it can’t be. . . . But it is: a black pistol with an unusual-looking brown wooden grip.

“Your father’s?” I ask.

He nods. Now I recall that after the birthday cake, when we told Milton we were taking him out to continue the celebration, he’d asked for a minute, then disappeared into the back of the house.

“Peaceful demonstrations aren’t going to change anything,” Milton says in the back seat of the GTO. The Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” is on the radio. A few minutes ago, when Arno started to drive home, no one said a word. I guess we were all in our own worlds and thoughts. I keep replaying in my head what just happened at the beach. Not the gun part, but the part where I almost got into a fight. I haven’t stopped alternating between relief and incredulity.

What was I thinking? I could have gotten the shit kicked clear out of me. But what choice did I have? The idea of those guys getting their hands on Tinsley. And what they might have done to Arno and Milton . . .