What are you doing with him, kid? Jake wondered. If you’re on my side, what are you doing with a jerk like that?

But as the younger kid turned around and they started to walk down the street again, Jake knew. The old boy’s features were heavier, and his complexion was badly pitted with acne, but otherwise the resemblance was striking. The two boys were brothers.

22

JAKE TURNED AWAY AND began to idle up the sidewalk ahead of the two boys. He reached into his breast pocket with a shaky hand, pulled out his father’s sunglasses, and managed to fumble them onto his face.

Voices swelled behind him, as if someone was gradually turning up the volume on a radio.

“You shouldn’t have ranked on her that bad, Henry. It was mean.”

“She loves it, Eddie.” Henry’s voice was complacent, worldly-wise. “When you get a little older, you’ll understand.”

“She was cryin.”

“Prob’ly got the rag on,” Henry said in a philosophical tone.

They were very close now. Jake shrank against the side of the building. His head was down, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his jeans. He didn’t know why it seemed so vitally important that he not be noticed, but it did. Henry didn’t matter, one way or the other, but—

The younger one isn’t supposed to remember me, he thought. I don’t know why, exactly, but he’s not.

They passed him without so much as a glance, the one Henry had called Eddie walking on the outside, dribbling the basketball along the gutter.

“You gotta admit she looked funny,” Henry was saying. “Ole BeBop Maryanne, jumpin for her newspaper. Woof! Woof!”

Eddie looked up at his brother with an expression that wanted to be reproachful... and then he gave up and dissolved into laughter. Jake saw the unconditional love in that upturned face and guessed that Eddie would forgive a lot in his big brother before giving it up as a bad job.

“So are we going?” Eddie asked now. “You said we could. After school.”

“I said maybe. I dunno if I wanna walk all the way over there. Mom’ll be home by now, too. Maybe we just oughtta forget it. Go upstairs and watch some tube.”

They were now ten feet ahead of Jake and pulling away.

“Ah, come on! You said!”

Beyond the building the two boys were currently passing was a chainlink fence with an open gate in it. Beyond it, Jake saw, was the playground of which he had dreamed last night... a version of it, anyway. It wasn’t surrounded by trees, and there was no odd subway kiosk with diagonal slashes of yellow and black across the front, but the cracked concrete was the same. So were the faded yellow foul lines.

“Well... maybe. I dunno.” Jake realized Henry was teasing again. Eddie didn’t, though; he was too anxious about wherever it was he wanted to go. “Let’s shoot some hoops while I think it over.”

He stole the ball from his younger brother, dribbled clumsily onto the playground, and went for a lay-up that hit high on the backboard and bounced back without even touching the rim of the hoop. Henry was good at stealing newspapers from teenage girls, Jake thought, but on the basketball court he sucked the big one.