SMACK, SMACK.

I snatched the flyer from Claire’s hand and turned up the wattage on my asinine grin.

“I’ll be there,” I said.

Tub shrugged and took a canary yellow flyer from one of the drama dorks.

“I’ll come for the doughrings,” he sighed. “Assuming I still have teeth.”

“Smashing, then!” Claire popped onto the toes of her hiking boots for a moment. “Noon, right here at Saint B. You chaps practice your sonnets and work on your brogues!”

“You know it!” Tub said.

More unsuspecting males were loping down the steps, and the girls swept over to woo them with the magic of RoJu.

“I have no idea what she just said,” Tub remarked.

I took him by the shoulder and shoved him down the sidewalk. Tub complained, but I held tight and focused on the goal of getting us out of the parking lot. Clutches of kids obstructed our path, but I kept weaving. The sound was closer now, faster, but I couldn’t pin down its origination point.

SMACK, SMACK!

Tub’s protests snapped off like a busted twig.

“Oh, crap. Crappity crap-crap.”

Tub pointed. Steve Jorgensen-Warner was wending his way across the parking lot, the basketball beating patiently against the pavement. Cars were making U-turns and peeling out and ripping around without mufflers, a driver’s ed film come to life, and yet somehow Steve never had to disrupt his gait. He saw us and put on a chilling, placid smile.

“Tell me you still have that fiver,” I hissed.

Tub shook his head.

“Vending machine. Sixth period.”

I gave him an aggrieved look.

“The human body needs food, Jim!” he cried.

I scanned for a safer route. A line of school buses idled along the front courtyard. Usually I walked home, a secret I didn’t share with Dad, but it would be easy to sneak Tub aboard. The driver was famously encumbered with cataracts. The only problem was that Steve and his basketball of doom were right in our path.

I dropped to my stomach and rolled under a parked truck.

“Jim? This isn’t shop class! No time for oil changes!”

“Get down here!”

His transition to belly took longer than mine, but the motivation of that smacking ball worked wonders. Greasy machine parts banged against our heads while our world narrowed to a cinematic rectangle: gray sidewalks, a sliver of grass, tires crunching over broken glass, and hundreds of disembodied feet hurrying by in all directions.

SMACK, SMACK! The noise approached the rear of the truck.

“Move!” I hissed. “Next car, next car!”

My elbows and knees throbbed from the day’s previous miseries, but nevertheless I used them to power me past the truck’s front wheels, into the blinding light of day for a couple of seconds, and then beneath the frame of a filthy four-door sedan. Tub was at my heels, gasping for air, pouring sweat. Bumpers and springs and exhaust pipes had already torn his shirt and pulled his pants down to crack level.

Steve’s ball was belting against the curb to our right. We could see his unscuffed designer shoes, the cuffs of his tailored pants. He stopped, as if detecting our position. I looked left at the thoroughfare being abused by cars. It was a dangerous, shifting maze—but then one of the cars paused to let another vehicle pull out.