Winley had experienced a growth spurt since I’d handled him last, and he’d put on a few pounds. Maybe a hundred of them. The bug-eyed kid picked me up and threw me clean across the room into the kitchen counter, which sent a rack of dishes and glasses to the floor. Nick hung off him like a backpack, but he tightened the headlock until Winley’s eyes started rolling up in his head. Winley went to his knees and the two tangled on the floor. I rejoined the fray, and Nick and I shoved the kid into the tiles.

“Winley!” I put my knee in his fleshy back to get his attention. “You’re caught, buddy. Give it up!”

The kid growled and howled a bit and then burst into tears. “Don’t let them take me!”

“Who’s going to take you?”

“The doctors. The scientists.”

“This kid is whacked,” I told Nick. Typical newbie drug taker shuffling through emotions, grasping at anything. He was crying like a toddler, huffing and sniffing. I sat him up in the glass and cereal and mess on the floor and Nick and I watched as he sobbed into his hands, the ferocious rampaging killer suddenly reduced to a blubbering child.

“Don’t tell my mom,” he cried. He’d obviously completely forgotten that he’d manhandled her only minutes earlier. “Oh God. I’ve gotta clean this place up before she gets back!” He tried to get up. I shoved him down.

“Winley, what did you take?”

“Nothing. I didn’t—” The sobs racked his big body. “They’re coming for me!”

“He’s on something,” I told Nick. “This doesn’t look like the joy and exuberance of glorious youth.”

“The what?”

“Never mind.”

“Don’t call the police!” Winley said.

“He is the police, son.” Nick grabbed Winley’s big shoulder and shook him.

Winley wasn’t giving up. He cried and begged us to keep his mother out of it, his dazed state blocking out the reality of what he had done. I stood and walked into the living room, where I saw through the smashed window that neighbors were gathering to console Ellie Minnow on the immaculate lawn. Derek Minnow was in the room, sitting in an armchair by the big kicked-in television set. Winley had knocked pictures off their hooks, punched holes in the drywall.

“I’m so tired of this.” Derek looked up at me. A hopeless father.

“This is a regular thing?”

“We knew he’d been smoking weed. But it’s never been this bad.”

“I’ve got news for you, Derek,” I said. “This ain’t weed.”

I returned to the kitchen, saw Nick trying to talk Winley out of his mumblings about scientists and doctors. I went to the kid’s room and looked in. Curtains drawn, clothes on the floor two feet deep, an unmade bed, and a strange damp feeling to everything. Typical teenage bedroom except for the burn marks on the cluttered desk under the window and the scraps of aluminum foil and cigarette lighters. There were cans of beans lined up on the windowsill and empty ones stacked in the bin by the door.