Neither of them were going to budge on their positions, but the girls were already frightened by the fighting, and Patty had promised not to do it again, so even though he was still angry, Brad forced himself to calm down and nod. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay what?”

“You made a mistake, you learned from it, and you’re not going to do it again.”

“Oh, I learned from it?”

He shot her a look, and she stopped herself, glancing toward the hallway and the girls’ bedroom beyond. “Fine,” she said.

He took her hand. “I’m only making a big deal of it because there are fifteen people dead—fifteen!—and that bank manager…” He shook his head. “You didn’t see what happened to him.”

“I know. And I’ll be careful.”

“Okay.”

They hugged and made up, and both of them went back to get the girls and tell them everything was okay.

2

Nick met up with Aaron at lunch, the two of them sitting on the low brick wall in front of the band room. Once again, Victor was MIA.

“Where is he?” Aaron wondered, unwrapping his sandwich. “He’s been out for three days now.”

“Maybe he has mono.”

Aaron snorted. “Victor? Right. Who’d he be kissing?”

“Well…Stacey could have spit on him.”

Aaron laughed. Nick chuckled at the thought, too, but the truth was that he was worried. He’d tried to call his friend several times, had even gone by his house yesterday after school, but there’d been no one home. That was odd. Victor had always been something of a latchkey kid, but he took advantage of that, and when his parents were out, he was usually in, acting as though he were lord of the manor. But he was not at school, not at home, not answering his phone…so where was he?

As much as Nick dreaded the idea, he was thinking he might tell his parents and have them call Victor’s parents to find out what was going on.

“So are you rewriting your play?” Aaron asked.

Nick nodded. “Sure. It’s now called Diarrhea Jones Goes to the White House, and it’s about a man with irritable bowel syndrome who’s invited by the president to spend a weekend at the White House. Hijinks ensue.”

“Seriously, bruh, Nelson’ll have your ass if you don’t do something more…normal. Maybe something without shit in it?”

He chuckled. “I know. But I still haven’t come up with anything. Although I’m thinking of making a YouTube video of me reading my new poem, Mrs. Nelson is a Bitch.”

Aaron’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”

Nick laughed. “No. But it’d be cool, right?”

“It’d be awesome!”

“Maybe this summer we’ll do something like that. Post it anonymously.”

Greg Holloway and three of his jock friends walked by, and one of them threw a half-empty Coke can that missed Aaron but splashed soda on his backpack. The four boys continued on, laughing and high-fiving each other.

“Assholes,” Aaron muttered.

“Someone’s going to have to change the oil in our cars when we’re rich and famous.” Nick smiled. “High school doesn’t last forever.”