Betty G’s been my girlfriend since seventh grade, and there was a time she liked nothing better than getting high and doing the nasty. But lately—like just now in her apartment over the laundromat—she’ll smoke a joint and fall asleep, leaving me stoned and forsaken with my dick in my hand.

I think about whacking one out by myself, but then I remember how Lloyd might walk in any minute, so I zip up and light a cigarette. Betty G’s in her swimsuit, and I flick the match against her naked back.

She jerks. “God, Mitch, grow up,” she says for, like, the fortieth time this week. I’m sixteen and she’s eighteen, but before she dropped out we were in the same class, on account of her being in and out of juvie.

I should be in juvie myself, but my dad’s the town marshal, so draw your own conclusions on that score. He’s tried every which way to civilize me, the most recent being this drug camp outside Fort Wayne, with canoes and rope climbs and fried old hippies explaining why we do what we do.

It starts tomorrow, and Dad says he’s driving me there at gunpoint.

So, seeings how in twenty-four hours I’ll be up to my ass in stoners jonesing for hit, Lloyd and I and Betty G are headed to Fish Lake today to snag a package at the Hilltop Inn, where a guy called Zoom sells Dr. Pepper and burgers and weed by the bag if he thinks you’re cool.

Zoom wears wifebeaters and flipflops and calls me “Little Dude” because I had rheumatic fever and will never be taller than five-foot-four. He was weird about being my dealer because of my dad, until I told him that not doing business with me was the surest way for Dad to find out.

Betty G snorts awake. “We going swimming or what?” A dryer starts up downstairs. The floorboards hum.

“Soon as Lloyd gets here,” I say, and just like that the big goober walks in, combed and spiffed after chores. His folks are Amish, so you might think he’s a weird match for a fuckhead like me, but he likes drugs and cars and rock and roll better than most people, maybe because he’ll have to dump all three once he joins the church.

“Crank it up, girls,” he says.

“I smell cow shit,” Betty G says.

“Nature’s cologne,” he answers.

We smoke what’s left of the roach, then take Lloyd’s car to the lake, me in the passenger seat and Betty G in back, her big feet on the cushion beside my head. She’s kind of horsey to be honest—all gums and teeth and a lopey way of walking—but guys like her because she says fuck a lot and wears cutoffs so short you can see where her butt starts. She had notions of being a model until she showed up high for a cattle call and had a panic attack when it came her turn on stage.

Later she thought she’d be a stewardess, but now she wants to start a bakery. Everybody likes cookies, she figures, and, besides, the one time she was on an airplane she threw up.

She’s three inches taller than me, but outside appearances don’t mean anything, she says. We’re all butterflies, nestled in our cocoons, waiting for the spring.

I’ve been around for sixteen springs, I answer, and shit never changes, but she says she’s talking about another kind of spring—that place each of us is meant to be.

“You’ll know it when you see it, babes,” she says.

When we get to the Hilltop, I yell in the window for Zoom to get my package together, and we head down to the lake. Lloyd sits on the pier—Amish kids weren’t allowed to take lessons at the Y like the rest of us—as Betty G and I swim to the raft. There’s a dozen guys out there already, and she stretches among them like a kitten among pit bulls. I float on my back and let the sun cook my eyeballs.

I kind of hate everything, if you want to know the truth.

I hate the sky because it’s blue and water because it’s wet.

I hate my parents for thinking I’ll shape up any day and become a Rotarian.

I hate Lloyd because we both know he’s only playing the hoodlum until he marries some chick named Miriam or Etta Sue and starts shoveling cow shit full time.

Mostly, I hate Betty G for being so snotty and adult lately, for telling me to grow up all the time, for flashing her stuff at anything in pants and then saying I’m paranoid for noticing.

After a while I see her yakking with this guy people call Jesus. He has long hair and a beard and a dreamy way of gazing at you, but I know him and his friends to be everyday punks from Churubusco, a town north of here. He’s talking to Betty G all warm and thoughtful like he’s looking into her soul, when what he’s really looking into is the nubby top of her two-piece.

I climb the ladder and ask—seeings how chatty they are—do they have anything to say to me, and Betty G says, “God, babes. Can’t two people talk?”

Jesus is sitting cross-legged, face level with my waist. His chest is cheesy white, with something like three black hairs per nipple. “Yeah, babes,” he says, and I catch him one in the mouth.

Things go fucked up from there. Betty G yells. Jesus’ buddies grab me. He punches me in the ear. I fall back into the water like a wounded duck.

Fish Lake is twelve feet deep at the raft, and I sink as far as I can to clear my head. I love going to the bottom. The pale fingers of sunlight, weeds swaying in the muck, a million gallons in your ears… it’s peaceful as death. I’d stay down there forever if I didn’t have to breathe.

When I come up, Betty G is swimming to the pier, and Jesus is grinning from the raft like he’s admiring his own reflection. His look has gone from dreamy to devilish on account of the blood in his beard. “Don’t leave yet, babes,” he says. “Climb back up here and get your ass kicked some more.”

I’m tempted. I got no problem getting my ass kicked so long as I get in some kicking of my own, but including his disciples there are six of them, so I give a wave that means Another time, and swim to the pier myself.

There Betty G doesn’t say anything about the fight, because what else is new? Once, though, as I’m toweling off, I say “Hey!” real loud, just to watch her jump.

“Whaaaaat?” she says, all falsely accused.

Truth is, I knew I was going to punch Jesus before I climbed the raft, because once I get an itch I can’t help but scratch it. Same as when I sliced my hand open in biology class and thought it would be cool to pour ink in the cut. Or the time I figured a buck knife at the hardware store would fit perfect in my pocket, and old Mr. Newell caught me and ratted me out to my dad.

“Christ, boy,” Dad said on the drive home, “I’ll buy you all the knives you want.”

Uh-huh. Tell that to my itch.

We head up to the Hilltop and grab a booth, and after a minute Zoom comes over with Dr. Pepper in plastic cups. He’s thirty or sixty—don’t ask which—with a bald skull and a string for a ponytail. He’s usually half-baked, but today he’s locked on me like a teacher when it’s time for a talking-to.

“Can’t be fighting out here, Little Dude,” he says. “That shit attracts attention.”

“He didn’t start it,” Betty G says.

Zoom turns real slow like he only just realized she was there. “And you, honey-butt. You can’t be twitching your tail and getting the boys riled up. That’s the opposite of copacetic, which is how shit needs to be.”

This strikes Lloyd and Betty G as the funniest thing ever. They wheeze and hug each other. “Can’t be twitching your tail, honey-butt,” Lloyd says.

Zoom isn’t laughing. “For real, man. Wilkey told me to put the kibosh on troublemakers, or he shuts me down.”

I’m not laughing either. My ear hurts, and I’m pissed how la-dee-da Betty G is, seeings how if anybody started the fight, she did. Wilkey owns the Ford dealership and also the Hilltop, and he threatens to close the latter every month or so, on account he’s a deacon at Mount Moriah Baptist and has a giant stick up his ass.

“You got bigger problems than Wilkey,” I say.

“Like what, man?” Zoom says. His wifebeater rides up to show a roll of cookie dough hanging over his shorts. His eyes look like somebody blew matches out in them.

“Like this,” I say, sweeping the cups off the table. Dr. Pepper and ice fly everywhere. “Do what you want with other punks out here, but fuck with me and you get a visit from my dad.”

He blinks once or twice. “That’s bogus, dude,” he says.

“So, get what I came for and I’m out.”

“Thing is”—he rubs his belly and glances around—“my guy needs the paper up front. Shit’s getting hairy lately.”

He knows as well as I do there’ll be no paper until drug camp is over. We’ve had that deal before. “You’ll get your money,” I say.

“Them’s the terms, though. I’m just the messenger.”

In the parking lot Betty G hangs on my neck and giggles. “Can’t be fucking with Little Dude.”

“He’ll tell his dad on you,” Lloyd says.

I have to laugh. “That’s bogus,” I say.

We’re almost to the car when I hear a yell. I squint down at the water, and there’s Jesus waving from the raft. His buddies are gone and it’s him alone, rimmed in afternoon sun, skinny as a refugee. “Come back, babes,” he shouts. “We got unfinished business.”

Lloyd shoves me along. “Not now, Mitch. We got shit to figure out.”

He’s right. It’s only hours ‘til drug camp, and I need money bad.

 

“What about the old lady with the wad in her mattress?” I say in the car.

Betty G’s in back again, twirling bubblegum on a fingernail. “Who?” she says, though I can tell she knows what I mean.

“Violet or whatever.”

“It’s Rose, and that’s not happening.”

Rose used to foster Betty G on Milton Street, but now she lives in a place called The Point, where old people sing around the piano and try to pretend they’re not almost dead. Her husband was a banker or something, and Rose always had a roll stashed in her bedroom, where twelve-year-old Betty G peeled off a twenty for herself now and then.

She kicks my seat. “I mean it.” Rose was sweet, she says, and foster parents are sometimes the opposite of sweet, what with the family being all hard-ass with rules and regs, or the man of the house a tad too pleased having teenage strange around.

“Chill,” I say. “We’ll just talk to her.”

“I’ve seen how you talk.”

We stop at Waffle City, and I lean in with my plan over pancakes and eggs. We visit Rose’s apartment. Betty G and Lloyd sit and talk about dead Mr. Rose or whatever. I excuse myself to take a leak and toss the bedroom.

Easy money, in and out. I wouldn’t even have the idea if Betty G—Miss Conscience all of a sudden—hadn’t done the same herself.

Lloyd’s lifts his head from his plate like it’s too heavy for his neck. “How about we pay her back when camp’s over?”

Betty G glances around. Her mood has improved considerably, seeings how she’s still in just her swimsuit and a T-shirt, and every man in the place—the waiter, the cook, old marrieds peeking over their menus so their wives don’t see—can’t get enough of her.

“Can we do that, Mitch? Pay her back, I mean?”

“Sure.”

 

The sun’s an orange ball behind the trees when we turn into The Point, and right away people are staring from the sidewalks at Lloyd’s car, with its bad muffler and spangly shit hanging off the antenna.

Betty G kicks my seat again. “No lake stuff, okay?”

“Right. Like I’m going to punch an old lady.”

“Relax, kid,” Lloyd says. “I’ll mind your boy.” He waves at some guy pushing a walker, and after gaping a second the guy waves back.

Rose lives in a building like a dormitory, and as we walk down the hall I get a whiff that takes me back to when my grandpa lived with us, peeing himself in front of the TV. People’s names—Myrtle, Wilbur—are on the doors, game shows blare, and I know, without knowing how, that I’ll die before I get old.

Betty G knocks at Rose’s door, and after about an hour it cracks open and an old lady is peering at us like her last company was when the Mayflower landed. She’s wearing glasses, and her head is lit from the inside so her scalp glows through her hair.

“It’s me, Mama,” Betty G says. “Elizabeth Grace.”

Rose stares another beat, and then her face blooms like a flower. “Elizabeth Grace. My darling girl.”

Betty G kind of shudders. “It’s me, Mama,” she says again. She and Rose fall into each other’s arms, rocking back and forth and crying. Lloyd grins at me over their heads.

“And who are these handsome fellows?” Rose says when they untangle. She’s no bigger than an eight-year-old.

“Mitch and Lloyd,” Betty G says, throwing me a look. “My best friends.”

“And you all came to see me.” A door opens across the hall, and Rose yells, “Not now, Margaret.” I catch blue hair and a robe. “She’s just awful,” Rose says.

So, everybody and his dog saw us drive into The Point, Rose knows our names, and awful old Margaret got an eyeful. Real criminal masterminds, us.

“Can we come in for a bit?” Betty G says.

“Mercy, now I’m the awful one,” Rose says. She herds us down the hall into a room with a couch and a kitchenette. A bunch of pictures hang on the wall: a painting of a swan on a naked chick’s lap, Jesus and the multitudes, a photo of a man seated stiff and angry on a stool, and (maybe?) a young Rose behind him in a dress to her ankles.

Tucked in the photo’s frame is a Polaroid of Betty G from junior high. She’s all leggy and cute, and I remember how her tongue tasted like Pop Rocks, how we’d smoke a joint before history, how nobody believed a girl like her could go for a punk like me.

She and I and Rose sit on the couch and right away Betty G takes off on how she’s going to open a place called Betty’s Sweets, how local celebrities—news people and whatnot—will sign photos on the wall, how the scones Rose taught her to make will be the house specialty.

“I’ve thought hard about it, Mama,” she says. “It’s where I’m meant to be.”

Rose nods, though I can tell she’s catching only pieces of what’s going on. Her shoulders join her neck in a little hump. Her hands are veins and chicken bones. Her glasses make her eyes huge, grays and blues swimming together like Aggie marbles.

All of a sudden she says to Betty G, “He’s like a doll, isn’t he?”

“Who is, Mama?”

She puts a hand on my knee. “This one.”

I don’t know what she means, except maybe because I’m runty and don’t shave yet I look nicer than I am.

Lloyd snorts from his chair. “Oh, he’s a real Howdy Doody.”

“But goodness,” Rose says. “What happened there?” She touches my ear where Jesus hit me. It’s pulpy and swollen like a boxer’s and throbs like a bitch.

“I bumped myself,” I say.

“Kenneth does the same. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.” I glance at Betty G, and she gives me a You-got-me look. “But Kenneth,” Rose adds, “never considers the consequences. It’s hurry-hurry until somebody”—she goes for my ear again—”bumps himself.”

I hate people touching me, and I lean away. “Easy on the merchandise.”

She sways and laughs. “You were always so particular.” She turns to Betty G. “Did you know, Elizabeth, that Kenneth visits most every night?”

“He does?” Betty G says, her face both smiley and desperate, like when the carnival ride you’re on goes from fun to scary in a split second.

“Oh, yes. He sits where that one”—Rose points at Lloyd—“is sitting right now.”

Lloyd nods helpfully. “The seat’s still warm.”

A crackly voice comes from across the hall. “I won’t!” it yells. Another voice rolls in, real patient and firm, and I figure old Margaret’s getting a shot or an enema.

“Oh, Mama,” Betty G says, “you’re seeing ghosts.”

“I am not.” Rose looks at me. “Do you know, Kenneth, how I can tell you’re real when you visit? Because when nurse Ivy barges in with my pills, you jump.” She smiles, all pleased with herself. “He jumps like he’s startled, dear,” she says to Betty G. “What sort of ghost does that?”

Everything’s quiet, and I get this hum—not a sound, but a vibe—that I know is Betty G pleading we leave an old lady to her spooks.

But like I said, once the itch comes on, it’s like a truck rolling downhill.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I say.

“Didn’t you go earlier?” Betty G says real quick.

“I have to go again.”

“But—”

“Gracious, Elizabeth,” Rose says. “Kenneth’s a grownup.” She smiles at me. “You know where it is, dear. Through the bedroom.”

I stand and head that way, and as I pass Lloyd he says, “Don’t be long, Kenneth.” He says it funny-like, though I can tell he wants to bail too.

“Don’t be a pussy,” I say.

Rose’s bedroom buts up to the toilet, where I switch on a bulb and turn to scope things out. There’s a bed and a dresser with a mirror and not much else. I rummage in a side table drawer but turn up nothing but Kleenex and a tobacco tin full of hairpins and buttons and stuff. On the tabletop is a photo of the man from Rose’s wall. He looks angry here too, maybe because he’s wearing a collar so tight it’s a wonder he didn’t choke.

I check the bed to be sure—you always hear how old people hide money under the mattress or bury it out back in a Mason jar—but I figure the dresser is my target.

And I’m right. Within minutes of pawing through old lady undies, I find a roll as big as my fist. It’s wrapped in a rubber band and looks to be mostly tens and twenties. I heft it, feeling that familiar buzz, when Rose says from the other room. “Do you remember, Elizabeth, how we used to make scones?”

“I do, Mama,” Betty G says, like she wants to cry.

“Kenneth loves scones.”

You may think I’m bullshitting, but if you were to open my brain and poke around, you’d find soft places here and there. I cried when my dog Rags died. And sometimes when Mom makes me cocoa and toast, I get a tightness in my chest that might be love. And at night, when the wind’s rattling the windows and I’ve gone days without seeing Betty G or Lloyd, I get so lonely I can’t breathe, like I’m tangled in the weeds at the bottom of the lake, like there’s twelve feet of black water between me and the air.

Betty G’s teary voice hits me like that, and I think for a second of peeling off the bills I need and leaving the rest.

But just as quick I think how jizzed she gets lately over other guys’ attention, how she played me and Churubusco Jesus against each other, how she and Lloyd are both headed down a road without me—her to her glorious bakery, him into the arms of church and family—and I’m a trashy rest stop along the way.

Who’s the pussy? I think. I twist the rubber band, and it breaks and stings me a good one. I say Fuck! and put my finger to my lip, and there in front of me is the glowing outline of someone watching everything I’m up to.

I say Fuck! again, this time so loud the talk in living room stops.

My fear melts in a second, once I realize the witness is me—a smalltown thief rimmed in bathroom light, in a dresser mirror he’d forgotten was there.

“Is that you, Kenneth?” Rose calls.

I stuff the wad in my pocket and walk back to where everybody’s waiting.

“It is you.” Rose turns to Betty G. “What did I tell you? He comes most every night.” She frowns at Lloyd. “You, mister. That’s Kenneth’s chair.”

Lloyd pops up like a Jack-in-the-Box, but I say, “We have to go.”

“Oh, but…” Rose pushes to her feet. “You only just arrived.” She totters over and hugs my waist. “Until tomorrow then,” she murmurs into my face. “We’ll make scones.”

Like I said, I don’t go for touching, but I put my arms around her and squeeze for what feels like forever. Her rib cage swells. Her heart thumps like a bat in a wet paper bag. I let go only when Lloyd says, “Dude,” real careful and quiet, like he doesn’t want to startle me, like you’d talk to someone playing with a loaded gun.

 

Nobody says anything on the way to the lake. Betty G sits in back with her knees to her chest, and Lloyd holds the wheel at a perfect ten and two like they teach you in Driver’s Ed. He glances at me once or twice, but that’s all.

At the Hilltop I step from the car and wait, though when neither of them gets out, I crunch across the gravel to do the deal alone. It’s barely nine, but the door’s locked and the lights are off, and I figure Zoom closed early and is passed out on his backroom cot.

I go around and try that door, but it’s locked too. Peering in, I see the room is empty—even Zoom’s cot is gone—and I figure Wilkey has shut him down at last.

I walk to the front and look down toward the lake, its surface dark except for moonlight on the ripples. I imagine how black the bottom must be, like the beginning or the end of the world.

I want to tell you about when Rose hugged me. It might have been the scare I got from my reflection, or because my ear still hurt where Jesus hit me, or because I had a glimpse of how alone I am and was always meant to be, but I got an itch to crush the breath out of that old lady, to feel her ribs break like so many dry sticks, to stop her heart in her chest.

It took everything I had to fight it.

But fight it I did, and for all the ways I’m a bad guy, for all the ways I let my parents down, for all the ways I’ll fuck up my future, I deserve credit for that at least.