I was in my room, alone. I could hear cars off in the distance, I could see the glow from the streetlights, a yellow square of light falling through the window and illuminating the rug. I've never felt so alone as this. I'd never have this kid, this Johnny. He wouldn't let me in. Why would he? Why should he? I haven't done anything worthy of being let into his life. I helped Bob beat the shit out of him. I did that. I covered my head with the pillow and waited for the sleep that wouldn't come.

Saturday morning. I felt the dull pulse of a headache behind my eyes. I hadn't shut the shades last night and the sun was glaring full force through my window. Groaning, I got up.

My parents were having a light brunch on the back terrace. The maid was unobtrusively refilling their coffees and getting them more fresh baked rolls. A light breeze lifted a sheet of my mother's hair.

"Randy, come sit, have some brunch," my mother said, her voice soft and cultured. I wondered about Johnny's mother, what was she like?

I sat down and gazed at the bowl that was full of perfect balls of cantaloupe and green melon. The maid made them with an ice cream scoop. But I wasn't hungry. My stomach felt all twisted with my frustrated desire.

"No, I can't eat. I've got to go," I said, and my parents smirked at each other. Let them smirk, I didn't care. I headed for my car, and once inside I'd travel the familiar 20 miles to the east side and see if I couldn't find him today.

I didn't see the roads as I drove, I saw Johnny in my mind's eye. That long black hair so heavily greased that it would shine. His big dark eyes, always suspicious and anxious and almost haunted. The scar on his cheek from Bob's rings. His full lips, parted ever so slightly. I saw the way his jeans slid down his hips. I saw the way his sneakers would scuffle against the ground as he walked. I saw the tense set he had to his shoulders.

The neighborhoods had taken that turn when I wasn't even looking, that turn where the yards were weeds and empty beer cans and the plastic rings of six packs littered the side of the road and grubby kids stood in yards and driveways with broken plastic toys. I saw the greasers and hoods standing together in little packs on street corners in their leather jackets and worn out jeans and ratty sneakers or boots. I didn't see him.

I drove by the vacant lot and saw a game of football, and he was there. Johnny. There were six others, some athletic looking and almost clean-cut, some as greasy hoodlum looking as Johnny. I watched from my car, unable to approach him when he was protected by a group. I saw that young kid I had seen at the pool hall, the one who had given me that look. I noticed the camaraderie that was evident between all of them. That wasn't present with me and my friends. We were all too cool for that, too aloof, nothing meant anything and that included friendships. What did Bob mean to me? He was a crazy violent drunk.

I drove away before I was seen. There was nothing I could do. I couldn't penetrate his circle of friends. So I drove away, drove around, flipping through the dials on the radio. The day slipped away as I stopped at this drugstore for a coke and that diner for an order of fries. I drove as the light faded from the sky. I was aimless. I headed back to the rich side, the west side, gazed up at the houses that were all as decadent as my own. My parents', I meant. Nothing was mine, not yet. Just this car, just the promise of the trust fund when I was 25. 25 was a lifetime away.

Darkness had descended. The world was dark. I thought of Johnny's voice, how deep it was, surprisingly so, scratchy and quiet. How it had pulled me toward him that day when I had him pinned to the ground, his switchblade safely in my pocket.

I thought of making a last ditch effort run back there, back to the east side, the poor side that pulsed and yearned with this energy I could sense but couldn't quite feel. Things were real there, Johnny was real, and I wanted that in my life. I was tired of all the wealthy things that surrounded me but had no substance, that didn't seem quite real. That were frozen under glass. That's how I was, too, to a certain extent. I felt frozen, I felt only half alive. But when I was around Johnny, with all his nervous energy and the hurt that was so clearly in his eyes, I felt fully alive, I felt whole for the first time in my pampered little life.

It was late. It was nearing 11, it was nearing midnight. I couldn't sleep anyway. I headed back there, past the railroad tracks that really split the city. I entered the other world. My car was stealthy and quiet, the engine humming along. I was cradled in my soft leather seat. At the vacant lot I first saw the fire flickering in the distance, and then I could smell the smoke. It reminded me of barbeques, of beer blasts on the river bottoms. It smelled like a memory.

I knew he was there before I saw anybody, I just knew it with the certainty of knowing, the same way I knew I wouldn't find him last night. I pulled up to the curb under the shade of the tree by the fence that hid my car, that cloaked it in the shadows. I could feel my heart start to pound with the excitement and the uncertainty of it all. Could I chip away at the wall he had erected between us, the wall between greasers and socs?

I walked over and saw him standing by the fire. He was turned away from me, the collar of his jean jacket flipped up, and he was smoking. I saw him raise the cigarette to his lips, I saw the smoke twirl away and join the smoke from the fire. If he heard me he gave no indication of it. I got close, fairly close, within talking distance. I shoved my hands deep in the pockets of my coat, my expensive Italian cut coat. The pockets were lined with real silk.

"Johnny?" I said softly, and I could feel my heart beating. He didn't startle this time or jump back or turn to me with the quickness of a scared animal. He just turned toward me, and I saw the beginnings of a black eye and his split lip, blood dried black in the middle of it. He looked at me, the injured eye watering and he squinted it a little, and he took another drag on his cigarette.

My first thought was that it was Bob, but Bob would have gone much farther than just those injuries. It wasn't Bob. I stared at him, and I thought how his injuries seemed to heighten his attractiveness. Johnny didn't look at me long, seeming to lose interest, seeming to not care that there was another person there with him at all. He looked away, kept smoking, and when that cigarette was done he tossed it into the fire and almost immediately lit another one with the practiced hand of the long time smoker. Despite the wind that rustled the leaves of the trees and tugged at our clothing and hair, the flame in his cupped hand didn't flicker at all.

I was being completely ignored. I could feel it, but whether he was purposely shutting me out I wasn't quite sure. But he wasn't leaving. My presence was apparently not altering his behavior at all. So I stood in the warmth of the fire and listened to the sounds it made, the crackles and hisses, and I saw how the firelight played across Johnny's features.

Did I dare talk to him? I wanted more than anything to talk to him. But the silence seemed to become its own thing, something real and oppressive, something that couldn't be broken. I could think thoughts in the silence, but to drag thoughts out of my mouth with words seemed unthinkable. I could hear my heart beat in my ears, I could feel it pounding in my chest. Johnny seemed cool, impassive, as aloof as any soc had ever been.

"Hey, what happened to you?" I said, shattering the silence because I had to. I blinked in the cool air, the fire warming one whole side of my body. When I spoke he turned to look at me again, those large dark eyes even darker in this light. How could I think he was aloof like a soc? Everything was right there in his eyes, hurt and betrayal and misery. Desperation. You could smell it on him.

There was a beat of silence, two beats. I wondered if he'd answer me at all.

He looked down before he answered, he stared at the ground and at his sneakers. When he spoke his voice was husky, like he'd been crying at some point.

"My old man," he said, and I stared at his bruised eye that was swollen, that would be a deep black and purple tomorrow. I stared at his lip that was twice its size and split wide open, the blood dried there. It looked painful. His father did this? I thought of my own father, who had never raised a hand to me. He raised his voice when he needed to, he disciplined with love, with the desire to see me staying on the right path. It was his right path, but I knew my father's intentions were good. What had Johnny done to warrant that black eye and split lip and whatever other injuries he might have?

"What did you do?" I said, just to be saying something else, just to get him to talk to me, just to hear his voice that was scratchy and thick. Just to see the hurt that would play out in his eyes.

He closed his eyes and let his breath out in a shuddery sigh. I watched him, listened to his breathing, thought of the night he had at his house, the violence that erupted there.

"Nothing! I didn't do anything, but I don't have to. My old man, he's a drunk, so he just, he…" He stared away, off into the distance, maybe toward his house. I don't think I'd ever heard him say so much all at once.

"That's why you sleep out here so much?" I said, and that was pretty obvious, but I wanted to talk to him. I scrambled in my brain for something to say. His quietness made me feel quiet, or made me question the things I was going to say.

Looking down, pulling his cigarette smoke deep into his lungs, he answered me again.

"Yeah," he said, his voice quiet, sexy. I heard his voice like a blind man could hear a voice. Every inflection seemed to stab at me.

"So why don't you take off? Run away or something?" I said, peering at him, trying to get him to look at me. But he wouldn't. He still looked away. There was a pause but not so long this time before he answered.

"I thought about it," he said, and shrugged. Not much of an answer, but what did I expect? At least he was answering. I pulled a cigarette from my own pack and lit it up, feeling the nice nicotine buzz. I liked standing here with Johnny, I liked that he wasn't pulling that knife at me or swearing at me or kicking me in the shin. Maybe this was progress.

"So, are you gonna sleep here tonight?" I said, wanting to just bring him home with me. My parents would probably have heart attacks if they saw such a street rat hood in their house. They were the charitable types, my dad donated money to all the local charities and my mother volunteered once a month at a soup kitchen, but I knew they preferred the social problems to stay out of their living room and safely in the east side streets where they belonged.

"Yeah," he said, and threw his cigarette butt into the fire. I watched it arc up and land in a licking flame and vanish.