I really just stare at that goddamn heater like he's pulled a rabbit out of a hat, unblinking, uncomprehending. Luis leans forward, cocks it at me, though he was the first person to teach me that you never aim at something you don't want dead. He's way too drunk for me to trust him with a finger hovering around the trigger, even with the safety switched on. "Happy late birthday," he says, gives me half a smile. "Think you're old enough to know what to do with one of these, yeah?"

Sure, I was thinking about it. But there's a difference between thinking about something, and having the actual tool pressed into your palms. Like a dream morphing into reality, all of a sudden. "You want me to, uh—"

"Take care of it," he repeats, with an impatient jerk of his head. "Permanently. Yes, that's the general idea."

Nacho is busy pretending to polish a glass, but his ears prick up like a German shepherd's, he's hanging on to every word.

Look, after some of the shit I've pulled, I'm well-aware there's no way I'm seeing heaven, no matter how many rosaries I say before the moment of truth. I'm a mean, cold-blooded downtown hood, and I won't try to deny it— for most of my life, I've been outright proud of the fact. But even being the roughest kind of teenage hood, the kind that tags buildings and gets locked up in the reformatory and keeps order in his crew with pool cues and dog chains—

Hell, that's different from being a murderer. Not even in self-defense, or in the heat of a fight. Pre-meditated. "You want me to kill him."

Luis's sigh does nothing to hide his exasperation, at this point. "You're usually a hell of a lot quicker on the uptake than this."

"In the first degree."

"That's only if you get caught." He smiles at me, in what must be the least friendly smile ever since the Cheshire cat shot one at Alice in Wonderland. "Look, trust me, it ain't so hard as you're imagining— first time's the worst 'cause you've built it up in your head, then it gets a lot easier." He sounds like he's handing out tips right before I lose my virginity. "Hell, we can finally put a teardrop on your face."

I'm not sure I want killing people to get easier for me. I could be more eager to get branded like a cow, too, come to think of it.

The veneer of friendliness vanishes as quickly as it appeared, like I imagined it to begin with, when I keep dissociating instead of replying to him. "He shot your girl, ese."

"In the thigh—"

"And next time he'll aim right, and it'll be her skull. You remember what that looks like, don't you?"

Even for him, that's playing dirty, and I take another gulp just to try to vanish the images that whirl through my mind whenever I have to remember. It doesn't work. I put my elbows down on the bar and start to massage my temples instead. "I need time to think," I say, and regret it the second I do— it's a child's protest, trying to put off for tomorrow what I should decide tonight. "Time to plan this out, hijo de puta, this ain't some liquor store stickup—"

And what am I gonna come up with as a plan, exactly? Asking him, real polite, for a heartfelt apology? Giving him one myself to see if that'll urge him to leave me and mine alone? Are we gonna shake on it like we're in a sports movie?

"Your heart's got to pump antifreeze through your veins just to keep you runnin', huh?"

"Excuse me?"

"It's always usin' your head with you, isn't it?" he asks with a short, mocking laugh that pierces right through the heart of me. "You know what I'm startin' to think that's a cover for? Bein' a coward. You're afraid you're gonna choke, is all."

I try to hit him, which is about the dumbest way I could've picked to prove I ain't no fucking coward— I'm no match for Luis, not in either size or experience, and he catches my fist in mid-air before it can connect with his jaw. "Let's address your favorite topic, if your girl just ain't stirrin' your blood enough— yourself. What exactly do you plan on doin' with him, then, waitin' until he finally gets the drop on you? Until he turns your boys against you and takes over your outfit? You sendin' the message that you let anyone get away with anything now?" He grasps my shoulder hard, gives me a shake that almost knocks my unsteady ass off the barstool and onto the floor. "He's a loose end. He needs tying up."

I pick up the gun, where he left it on the bar. Cradle the greasy metal in my palms, the weight and heft of it. I'm a good shot. I know, already, that I'd aim true.

"You a boy or a man, Timmy?"

I turn sixteen November 5th, 1962, and I'm cleaning out my locker at Will Rogers by nine that morning, once I've met with the principal to sign the right forms. Swear the old bastard's whistling as I close his office door. I've been bent over his desk more times this year than I've spent a full day here, rather than just skipping out after attendance gets taken.

"Tim!" I'm fumbling with half my books, some of which I don't think I ever cracked since I had to write my name on the cover in permanent marker, when Mr. Syme comes up to me. He digs okay. He knows the score better than half the teachers in this place, anyway, who act like they've been sentenced to teach at reform school every time they have to interact with a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. "You're ten minutes late for class, what are you still doing out here?"

I'm in A-level English, 'cause in freshman year, I made the mistake of showing up to a couple classes and taking the tests, though even back then I wasn't enough of a brown-noser to do homework. Turns out the teachers are a hell of a lot more involved, at the higher levels, Mr. Syme keeps trying to suss out what's behind my 'lack of motivation' and what could get me to 'start really working harder'. Sometimes he can make me feel halfway ashamed of myself, but if I cop to that, we're getting yet another visit from social services.

I was also hoping to slip out of the building before I'd have to explain myself. Guess the old luck of the Irish isn't working out so hot for me today. "I'm gettin' all my stuff off the premises," I say, deciding to just bite the bullet. "I dropped out."

"You did what?" He actually looks shocked, like half the greasers in this place don't clear out before junior prom. "Doesn't your family have anything to say about that?"

"Uh." I try to hide the bag of pot I had stashed between the pages of my Oklahoma history book. "My stepdaddy will, but he won't push it, I reckon. My mama won't care, she started workin' after eighth grade." For the first and last time in her life. "And it was my uncle's idea to begin with. So I s'ppose that's the whole clan accounted for."

Not that I really needed Luis's convincing, it was always kind of an unspoken expectation, once I ran out my legal obligations to the system and wouldn't bring the truant officer sniffing around his front door. I'm not fixing to do anything with my life that requires a high school diploma, now that I can do figures okay and read a contract.

He looks at me more kindly than I deserve. "Before you even get to submit your essay on The Catcher in the Rye to the statewide contest? You're going to deprive me of watchin' you sweep the floor with the competition?"

Nobody gets Holden, including the rest of the dumbasses in A-level English, but it's the only book they ever assigned me that I liked enough to read— I read the whole thing the night I got it, in fact. He watched his brother die, then his roommate jumped out the window in front of him, his whole life's a fucking graveyard. His parents just ignore him because they don't want to deal with his shit. Not to mention the amount of creeps willing to stick their hands down his pants, including his former teacher, which flew right over everyone else's heads.

He's flying real close to the sun teaching it to begin with, I'm surprised the PTA hasn't blown up the principal's phone by now, demanding his resignation. Maybe the rumors that he used to be a beatnik before this lousy job are true.

Mr. Syme's still been talking, while I was zoning out, remembering. "Your uncle doesn't realize that you could get a college scholarship, if you applied yourself for once, used all of that potential?"

Boy, I just can't wait to tell him all about it. Maybe I can even get my MBA and give him some tips on running the family business. I settle for giving Mr. Syme a thin smile. "Most scholarship committees don't want no half-Mexican hoods deliverin' the thank you speeches for those, I'm pretty sure."

"Don't want any. I'm supposed to believe a boy I caught reading sixteenth-century political philosophy can't use proper English to express himself?"

That really hacks me off to hear, to be honest, more than anything else he's thrown at me— no matter how you phrase it, I still ain't standing on no stage in front of the rotary club. Reminds me of Curly's language arts teacher, when he was in fifth grade, who thought he couldn't figure out English because he had too much Spanish mixed up in his head. "I was readin' that book to figure out how to manage my gang. Full of low-down, dirty hoods who are either going to end up dead in Nam, or in the state pen, or overdosed or stabbed to death." I make sure to smile and really twist the knife into his optimistic, caring, do-gooder heart. "Just like me. You wanna place a bet on which one it'll be?"

He opens his mouth, probably to start laying into me for my disrespect, or hell, maybe to guess, when Mr. Rhodes, with a fresh coffee stain on his lapel and an even meaner look than usual playing around his mouth, walks by and witnesses our whole sorry scene. There's teachers who get into it because they love the kids and want to make a difference, there's teachers who get into it because they get summers off, and there's teachers who get into it because it's a little lower-risk than being a prison guard, but still gives you a similar power trip. He's solidly in the third category. "Get to second period or it's in-school suspension, Shepard, we'll start from there," he snaps as he heads towards his own classroom. "I'm tired of seein' you hold up the halls every day, causin' mayhem—"

That's a real exaggeration, last time I caused any genuine 'mayhem' was when I squirted pig blood into Gabriela Lopez's hair on a dare, and she started smacking me in the arm with her biology textbook until the teacher pulled her off. She might be kind of cute once her braces come off, and she grows a sense of humor, sheesh. "I dropped out, you can't tell me nothin' no more—"

"Then get your things off school property before Officer Scott needs to personally escort you. And not a day too soon, in my book."

"I really don't think all this is necessary," Mr. Syme says, looking like he just bit into a lemon and managed to squirt the juice into his eyes, too. "Any kid dropping out, that's a crying shame, but Tim—"

"Don't waste your time trying to convince him otherwise, Alvin," he says, almost kindly. "I've been teachin' here five years, and trust me, I can tell when a kid's headed for college and when he's headed for the state penitentiary. This one's gonna be lucky if he grows up to mop the floors at OSU."

I swear I'd prefer if he just called me a spic to my face. I feel all hot and cold at once, like I have a fever I can't sweat out, and my sharp tongue, which usually works so quick arguing back to my ma or stepdad, twists up inside my mouth. I'll have a million nasty retorts ready by the time I'm in the shower that night, but before I can come up with one now, he's already walked down the hall, out of sight.

"Tim—" Mr. Syme looks at me with blatant pity— if there's anything I hate, and don't need, it's someone's fucking pity. "I'm so sorry you had to hear that."

"You think that's the first time in my life?" I try to shake it off with a laugh that just comes out bitter. He picked up on the implication, good for him. Told you he knew the score better than your average teacher. "Figure that's my cue to head out, 'cause I've clearly overstayed my welcome."

I can't quite manage to look him in the eye. I want to spit on the floor. "You were an exceptional student, Tim," he says as he pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. "An exceptional mind. I regret that I'm thinking of what you might have become, in another family."

I figure I'll have to grovel in front of Gabi's old man in order to be allowed a glimpse of her again, as much as that'll pain me, but it's just her sister who answers the door when I pull up to the house. "Papi and Diego ain't here, they're seein' the lawyer again," she says once she lays eyes on me, green around the gills from last night with a shade of stubble covering my jaw. "You better make it quick, though, I think they're comin' home for lunch."

"Do not let him in here," Gabi insists before Ximena can get their bedroom door more than halfway open, though, which means this might be a much quicker visit than she anticipated.

Ximena just rolls her eyes. "Sheesh, what did you plan on in the future, wakin' up every morning before dawn to fix yourself up?"

"Well, if that ain't been perfectly easy for you to say, our whole lives, when you're the one with the 'good hair'—"

I have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, and I still have no idea once I step inside their room. It looks a little like Angela's, the walls painted a pale pink, twin beds up on each side, Beatles posters bolted above the bookshelves. Gabi's tucked into hers, a Get Well Soon balloon tied to one of the posts, like she's come down with mononucleosis or something. "I'll leave y'all to it," Ximena says with another eyeroll, and shuts the door behind her as she flounces out.

"Well, that's… what my hair looks like," Gabi says, like she was expecting me to dive out the window in horror. "I haven't really had the time to flat-iron… or the inclination, you know. Your uncle was right, he had me pegged."

"You think the state of your hair's what's on my mind right now?" Lord, I didn't even notice— she's got a tighter curl pattern than Angela, all intricate coils and twists, spread out like a cloud on the pillow beneath her. "You're… bedridden. From a bullet wound."

She won't meet my gaze, though, settles her eyes somewhere around the tip of my chin. "It's real pretty," I say, hesitantly get my fingers into it; I shouldn't, I know from Angela's hair that it'll be hell to brush back into place, but she doesn't protest or move away from me. "Yeah?"

"I wish that was my biggest problem," she says, her voice hitting a high-pitched whistle with the -lem, and then her chin starts wobbling as she blinks rapidly, holding back tears. "What, you think I don't realize what could've happened, that I could've died? I'm not that naive."

Traces of our old fight still linger in the air between us, it's not like we ever got a chance to work that one out. Christ, was that what she was mulling over in her head when he pulled the trigger, what I said to her? Sick with remorse, I want to apologize, but she cuts in before I can say the words.

"Listen, Tim," she says, and she's got a death grip on my wrist now, "I know you. Don't do anything stupid over this."

A hysterical laugh bubbles to the surface of my throat, if I open my mouth, it'll come out. "Between you and Diego— he's got his arraignment comin' up soon, you're still on probation. Me visitin' the two of you in adjacent cells isn't exactly going to dig the bullet out of me."

"You expect me to just take this lyin' down?"

"I want you to talk to me, for once, give it to me straight." She shuffles upwards, sitting up against the pillows. "Because all of this was, you know, more than a little bit of a shock when he came up to me and pulled out a gun."

"He's an old friend of mine," I start, like that explains jackshit. "We go real far back." Some stupid part of my brain still isn't grasping this too well, that we used to be friends, is stuck sometime around freshman year when we flipped through stolen Playboys together. We used to be friends. Now he wants me dead. He figured that all out in his head while I was still stalling.

"I'm startin' to think you don't need much help finding enemies, Tim." She inhales, her whole body shuddering with the motion. "You reckon he wants to take over your outfit, or what?"

I give her a thin smile, like Saran wrap being spread over a casserole. "Nah, he ain't got that kind of ambition, he wouldn't know what to do with it even if he had it. He's mad 'cause I broke his nose, when he left his corner, shit escalated a lot faster than I expected." I conveniently leave out the part where his sister was in a hit and run and my only concern was my own profit margin. "I think he just wants to blow my brains out, at this point, you were collateral damage."

Colleteral damage. Christ. I love you. I really almost say it, the words spilling out like a mouthful of a drink I didn't take in the right way. I want to do something stupid. For you, baby.

Figures it'd take her lying in bed, shot, for me to be able to admit it to myself. If only that were enough to get me to say the words out loud. They feel too much like a bad omen.

"Shepard, you want to explain to me why your shit's completely busted? And for the love of God, do not start tellin' me you fell off a roof, face-first."

I'm not nearly as focused on my PO as I should be, as he's hollering at me from behind his desk, because I'm once again roiling with a hangover in his office. That's my mistake. I make another one by stifling a yawn. Lord, I can't even pretend that out of all the things I have to pay attention to right now, Officer Jackson is anywhere near the top of my priorities list.

Quite honestly, I have to admit it's a fucking miracle that it's taken me this long to rouse his suspicion. Even without any paper trail of an arrest record, it's been months since I've tried to keep up the faintest veneer that I'm cooperating with the rules of my probation, much less followed half of them. I got cocky, overconfident about my ability to worm my way out of trouble. Yet another mistake, and one I wouldn't hesitate to ream Curly over, if he were in my place—

Man, I don't even have the capacity to think about Curly right now. I'm still pissed at that little fucker, for stealing from me— even if I guess it's on a technicality— but mostly for the fact that half-brother is sticking around the front of my mind like a fly on paper. We've got a tentative truce going, muttered some half-hearted apologies in each other's direction, but we're both well-aware it's a ceasefire, not a peace treaty.

"I really thought you were turnin' over a new leaf, because I'm an idiot, always want to hope for the best from every new criminal I got on my caseload," he continues. I'm starting to think he might be a little hungover himself, judging by the burst blood vessel in his left eye, or maybe I'm just really, really pissing him off. "Keepin' down a steady job. Becomin' a productive member of society— now you roll in here, ten minutes late, looking like you just got trounced in the ring by Cassius Clay. I'm waitin' on your explanation, and it better be a damn good one."

I part my lips slightly, but he waits all of five seconds for that explanation before he can't resist the sound of his own voice again. "I'm not even gettin' into the rumors I've been hearing about you, Shepard, no matter how slick you seem to think you are. One of them involves a gun. Another one involves money changing hands to get you out of a police station. You know what I see, when I look at you? A walking, talking parole violation." He stands up and slaps his hands on the desk. "Do you have anything to say for yourself? Any interest in clearin' this up for me?"

"Hell, you seem to have plenty to say on my behalf, don't let me interrupt."

I really do not have the sense God gave a fucking goose, sometimes. "Shepard, how about you open your goddamned mouth, but keep the pissy attitude to yourself, or I can introduce you to your new home— McAlester. You think you're fixin' to be the toughest guy in your Big Mac cell block?"

I can't come up with a decent lie— hell, I was actually about to claim I fell off a roof— so I go with the truth. Half of the truth, anyway, somehow I figure he already knows too much about what happened with Estrada. "My girl's old man went in on me the other day," I say, turning my hands up in what I hope looks like supplication. "I was battin' way out of my league, when I scored with her, he fuckin' hates me. Thinks I'm nothin' but trouble."

Jackson gives me an encouraging little nod, like he finds that impulse completely understandable, and would also, if I showed up at his front door looking for a date with his daughter, resort to physical violence. "What'd you do this time?"

Both Curly and Angela would be better at this, were born with the kind of acting skills and charisma that makes them natural storytellers. I damn well can't say got his baby girl shot. "Brought her back past curfew," I manage to come up with, "kind of drunk." Both of those things are violations of my own probation, but hell, am I supposed to pretend going out for a milkshake would set him off like a firecracker? I might need to give a little to get a little, here.

I'm close to shitting my pants from anticipation, not even too much booze twisting my bowels, when Jackson laughs. Not even a mocking, 'I'm about to put you in handcuffs' laugh, a genuine one. What the hell? "Man, Shepard—" he sits back down, hard. "You think I came out of the womb this strait-laced cop? I used to run the streets just like you, believe it or not… me an' Dorothy, we had some real good times." Christ, is that his old lady? I've never thought about a cop being married before, or having any kind of life outside the four walls of the police station. "I hope whoever that gal is, she gets you to start cleanin' up your act, more than you bring her down to your level. Never would've made it onto the force without Dot right behind me."

I don't think Gabi's ever gonna motivate me to become the next Estrada. Lord, I gotta draw the line somewhere. He keeps some rambling anecdote going for the next ten minutes, about his mother-in-law and the casserole recipe Dot bungled over Christmas, even starts showing me pictures of his kids in ugly, synthetic reindeer sweaters at one point. I guess he's delighted I've shown an angle of human weakness he can tap into. By the time he's waving me out of his office for the next lousy hood to check in with him, I'm inwardly grinning. Guess I haven't lost my touch after all.

"Shepard." His voice is like a fishhook as my fingers brush against the doorknob, cold and sharp, pulling me back to his attention. "Listen to me. Against my better judgement, that's your one free pass— you show up looking like this again, I swear I'm gonna measure you for your jumpsuit, no matter what bullshit you try to feed me. Let that chick keep you good."

Swallowing hard, I nod as I head out the door.

Some women hold book clubs, others have Tupperware parties— my mama keeps the neighborhood together by letting various broads come in and bitch at her kitchen table. Lois Cade is all angles like a clotheshanger, her dark eyes cheap and hard, as she determinedly chugs from the can of Pabst Blue Ribbon Ma must've put in front of her. There's two empties already. "I'm fixin' to just put him out, he don't get his act together. I don't even know what to do with him anymore, I've given him a million chances—"

"Your man?" I make the mistake of asking as I dip into the icebox myself, like I care about the answer.

"My son." She spits the word out like the shell of a sunflower seed. "Though he's goin' the same way as his bum-ass daddy, I'll tell you that much. It's gonna be a miracle if he ever sees the inside of a high school, his marks are lousy as all git-out, and you know what, I wish that was my biggest problem with him. Runnin' around all night with those hoodlums he calls his friends, with that Dallas Winston… I don't even know how you do it, Mary, I think I'm just gonna chug a bottle of bleach if he ends up gettin' jailed. If the embarrassment don't kill me first."

I have no idea what lil' Johnny Cade could've possibly pulled to deserve this amount of vitriol— I find it hard to even remember his name, off the top of my head, Dally's best friend or not. He always looks like he's one loud noise away from hiding under the nearest table.

Ma sighs. "Look, Lois, count your blessings— at least you ain't got no daughters. Angela, I swear, she's fixin' to become more trouble than both those boys put together, and I've already got the worst boys in Tulsa." I think that's a little harsh of a judgement— on Angie, that is. "That girl was stealin' my man at twelve years old, by the time she's sixteen, mark my words, she's gonna bring home another baby for me to raise. If it takes that long."

"Shut the fuck up, Ma." I've crushed the can in my fist without noticing, a few drops spilling onto the back of my hand. "You think it was her Tweety Bird nightgown that did it? Or the twigs in her hair?" Angel was the scrappiest girl in the neighborhood. Used to climb every tree like she was half-lemur.

"Is that how you talk to your mother?" Lois stands up and raises herself to her full height, which would be a hell of a lot more intimidating if it wasn't about 4'11. Real shrill voice, though, I don't envy the Cade kid having to listen to her holler at him. "Do you have any idea what you've put this poor woman through, with your fighting, the stealing, the jail time—"

"I got some, she sure never quits runnin' her mouth about it." My eyes are pinned on my ma, anyway. "You talk like that around Angel, you ever let her hear a word of that, you're really gonna wish you'd gotten something done in the back alley before you had me." I let the threat linger in the air, the implication. I hold her unsteady, glazed-over gaze until she's the one who looks away first.

I don't really enjoy remembering what I saw in this kitchen, the speculation that tormented me all five months I spent in the reformatory, a pain more flaying than the cut splitting my face open from temple to jaw. That was the day I figured out two things about myself: that if pushed far enough, I could kill, and that if I wanted anything done right, I couldn't rely on anyone but myself. My useless fucking mama— did she know, and turn a blind eye the whole time? If I hadn't put in a knife in her latest boyfriend and scared him the away from me and mine forever, would she have just let him sneak back into the house, while I was locked up and couldn't do anything about it?

I love Gabi, too. And sometimes, love's got to be violence.