Serious note: it's unlikely to take anyone by surprise at this point, but discussion of CSA in the middle section here, as well as victim-blaming.

Less serious note: Darry's spiel about civil suits over shoddy roofing was inspired by my eight-grade class trip to our local district court. There is absolutely nothing more mind-numbing.

"This new foreman's got shit for brains." Darry bites into his ham sandwich so hard, he squirts mayonnaise down the front of his work shirt, wipes it off with a muffled cuss. He cooks for himself the same way his white mama did. "I'm tellin' you, he's building this whole goddamned roof crooked."

Darry and I ain't exactly back on friendly terms, after that showdown we had over Curly and Pony's little drunken adventure, but things between us have defrosted enough that they couldn't go back to the way they were, neither. Besides, he's managed to burn his way through every other guy on the crew with this shit, his complaints are getting so repetitive. "Don't you think you're bein' a little hard on him?" I ask unwisely, on the tail end of a swig of instant coffee from my thermos.

I'm stirring the pot because I'm hungry, which turns my usual bad mood into an even denser tangle of irritation and poor concentration. While Luis wasn't too willing to chase me down the stairs, half-naked in the February cold, he wasn't about to let my backtalk slide neither, or defiance more blatant than any I've ever dared him show before— his chosen punishment was to tighten his purse strings, a perennial favorite of his, because it pisses Ma off too in the bargain. Ed blowing forty dollars of earmarked grocery money on a mix of strippers, beer specials, and the blackjack table in Owasso led us to where we are now, an empty fridge and cupboards I'm scraping the last remnants of rice and beans out of. I'll starve to death before I apologize, but trying to track down Alex and bring his head back to Luis as proof of the deed, that's starting to seem more and more tempting. Forget about buying Gabi a half-decent Valentine's Day gift, neither.

Darry makes a noise in the back of his throat like a cat hacking up a hairball. "I sat behind O'Leary in trig, when I was a junior and he was a senior— he used to get all his tests back face-down. Trust me, he has no idea what he's doin'. This new material he's using to cut costs ain't gonna keep out the rain in a couple months—"

"You ever gonna spit your real problem out, or am I gonna have to keep listening to the same spiel until your voice gives out?"

For a moment, when he looks at me, I think we're about to have our second brawl on this work site. "He just ain't Dad," Darry finally says, "okay, you wanted to hear me admit it?" But before he can get too sentimental— "literally anyone on this crew would be an improvement, though, I ain't kiddin'. You ever had to sit through a civil case 'bout improper roofing material, complete with exhibits? I sure hope you haven't."

I've really been on a roll lately, developing my social skills, gaining some interest in things beyond the tip of my own nose. "Y'all been gettin' on okay, at home? I mean, ever since…"

Now he snorts, hard enough that his chest heaves forward. "Social worker's had it out for us ever since she first came around and saw beadwork and handwoven baskets on the walls, that we didn't buy at no fair in Anadarko. We live in a neighborhood where we have some 'domestic disturbance' or warning shot being fired every week, yet somehow she's always got enough time in her schedule to be droppin' by our place. Really makes you wonder."

It doesn't take Hercule Poirot to put the pieces of this mystery together. Our own Miz Allen's kind of a pain in the ass, but at the very least, I don't think she's a racist one. "Ain't like she has much material, at least, compared to what the rest of the hood's got goin' on—"

"She still ain't thrilled about a lot of stuff, okay? Startin' with the fact that I just turned twenty and endin' with Dad's, uh, checkered past." He shoves some dirt around with the toe of his boot. "She's real put-out that Jasmine's the only girl, and I'm a guy, and we don't have no female relatives handy— she was givin' me this big speech yesterday 'bout how she doesn't know how poor Jasmine's going to become a good wife and mother, like that's makin' Jas cry into her cornflakes every morning. Not to mention what Soda's been wheedling for lately."

"Which is…?"

"He wants to drop out, since he's sixteen— Dad told him he could if he was still failin' by now, and if he starts bringin' in a full-time paycheck, Miz Edwards might quit fussin' about how we're gonna keep up with the bills. Yeah, well, it's happening over my dead body— Mom always wanted him to get a diploma, end of story. Some of his grade school teachers said he'd never learn how to read, neither, but he managed it eventually, didn't he?"

I can't believe what's coming out of my mouth, when I say, "maybe I could talk to him, I dunno, 'bout stayin' in school and everything. Reckon I shouldn't have quit, sometimes."

It feels like a dumb thing to say, right after I do, because it is. My fate was already written for me the moment I was born, my family crest a gang sign. But maybe having a diploma could've at least given me the illusion of choice.

Darry's face tells me everything I need to know about his opinion on my 'scared straight' program, before I remember that Soda can't stand me to begin with. "Much as I appreciate you offering yourself up as an example of goin' down the wrong path in life—" if his sense of humor got any drier, he'd be in serious danger of dehydration— "I think you should probably stay away from the house, for the time being."

"Yeah, you reckon?"

"It's not personal," he says, having the good grace to look apologetic about it, "Miz Edwards, she just ain't even a huge fan of Dally hangin' around, much less—"

"And I'm a worse hood than Dally Winston, huh? Helluva compliment you're givin' me right there, but I'm not sure my rap sheet's any longer than his."

"And I'm on a knife's edge here, okay?" he concludes. Bites down on a hangnail on his thumb. "More Soda keeps talkin', the more he starts to sound like he's talkin' sense, though I know I can't think that way. I ain't makin' anywhere close to what Dad did."

An uncharitable part of me wonders if he's just searching for an excuse to end our burgeoning friendship, if both Curly and I have proven ourselves more trouble than we're worth, what with the influence we have on his impressionable brothers. "Here," he mutters, shoving the abandoned half of the sandwich in my direction, "I ain't really hungry."

Before I can weigh whether I value my pride above getting to eat scraps from the Curtis table again, O'Leary himself comes out of his new trailer, yanking the cord of the phone behind him. Fortunately for Darry's continued employment, he doesn't seem to have overheard any of the nonstop shit Darry's been talking about him. "Shepard, git over here," he says, gesturing at me with his free hand. "Some chick's on the line for you, says she's your sister and needs you to go pick her up. And don't think this ain't comin' out of your paycheck."

"You better start talkin', kid, and make it good." I escort Angela into my passenger seat by the small of her back, though I'm no gentleman and she's sure not any kind of lady. "I had to leave work for this shit, you know that? I don't just go there for my health, or hell, even the paycheck— it's a condition of my probation. I can't be takin' off on a moment's notice because you can't act right."

She doesn't, in fact, start talking, so I take that as my cue to continue, because I've still got more to say to her. "Not that a girl with two older brothers should be fightin' at all, but if you're gonna do it in the first place, you don't pick that fight with some rich little white chick in the middle of the school hallway, Jesus Christ. I know you know better, hell, Curly's got more sense than that. You're lucky the principal just sent you home for the day, didn't slap you with a longer suspension."

She picks at the uneven cuticle on her thumb and still says nothing. "And for fuck's sake, you can't just keep milkin' Dad's death to get out of trouble every school year," I make sure to add as the coda to my speech, though part of me is grudgingly impressed by how well she's pulled off the manipulation. "You was seven when he died, you don't even remember him none. Someone's bound to catch on eventually."

When even that doesn't get a rise out of her, I'm tempted to slap her upside the head the way I would've Curly, at least two sentences ago— I'm not such a big fan of being blatantly ignored. I'm already pissed that I had to take care of this— I told him, if he wants to talk to Ma or Dad, I can give him the numbers of some local bars to try. "You got anything at all to say for yourself?"

"That Debbie was bein' a real cunt to me, so—"

"She was bein' a real what now?" I might have a mouth on me, as she so politely pointed out, like a busted sewer, but that doesn't mean I want her using the same vocabulary words before she even darkens a high school's doorstep.

"What other word am I supposed to use, huh, when she…" Angela's voice, which struck with a brief punch of anger at first, fizzles out as quickly as it came.

"When she what?" I feel like I'm part of the Spanish Inquisition or something, pulling every word out of her like I'm yanking out her teeth with red-hot pliers, and can barely manage to mask my irritation— you can't get her to shut up, most of the time.

"When she's runnin' her mouth to all her bitchy little Soc friends that I'm easy enough to do it with my stepdaddy, okay?" She swipes her hand through the air like she wants to bring it down on my face, a wine-red flush starting to form at the base of her neck. "You expect me to just take that lyin' down, wait to tell Curly about it? Fat fuckin' chance. I can take care of myself, not that you two will ever admit it."

Her language is the last thing on my mind when I speak again, and try to keep my voice gentle, the way you'd talk to a wounded animal you're coaxing closer. "Did you tell her—"

"I didn't tell her. I never told anyone." She pulls out a thread from the bottom of her skirt, unravels part of the hem in the process. "I used to invite her over, back in seventh grade. She saw somethin' she wasn't supposed to, obviously, guess she was waitin' on the right moment to share the news."

My desire to stroll right back into the school— and really give this little bitch something to cry about— is quelled by giving Angela a closer look. The flush is staining the bridge of her nose and cheekbones now, too, her eyes glossy and bright with something that isn't anger or tears. "Are you high?" Then I lean in closer to her, and smell it. "I sure as shit shouldn't have to be askin' my thirteen-year-old baby sister this, but you been drinking?"

For the first time since I came to pick her up, she looks repentant, lowers her gaze to somewhere around my chin. "Sally brought vodka and coke in a thermos to first period... I don't think anyone noticed."

I smack the back of my skull against my headrest, for lack of anything better to do. Yeah, I sure bet they didn't notice a bunch of teenage girls bouncing around three sheets to the wind. "You keep this shit up, lady, you're fixin' to get expelled. From the eighth grade." I was getting up to a lot, after Santi died, but hell, at least I did all of my boozing and drugging off school property.

"Like I care?"

It's a childish comeback, one I don't even bother to take seriously. "You can't be actin' out like this at school, no matter what's goin' on at home. We already have social services sniffin' around all the damn time, you want to get taken away for good, same as Curly?"

I expect her to point out— rightly— that it's me and Curly's constant trouble with the law that's attracted all this attention. That's not the angle she strikes from, though. "Miz Allen already knows my dirty little secret, if that's what you're hintin' at," she says with a humorless smirk. "Not like she can do nothin' about it now, unless Ma decides to start entertaining Liam's company again."

"Are you completely retarded?" That is by far not the best or most sensitive way I could've approached this situation, and grabbing her by the shoulders to give her a little shake, that's even worse. I'm remembering the threat she threw out, back when she walked in on me and Curly fighting; I dismissed it at the time, but maybe I should've taken her more seriously, not just assumed she was blowing smoke. "Angel, I don't know what the hell you're playin' at, but you ain't gonna like livin' in a foster family any more than livin' with your own." Bonnie was in a couple, after her daddy ran out for a year and her mama got real into mixing pills and booze, and the state figured out her brother was the only adult in that trailer. The nice family was the one that used her as free childcare for their three under five.

Angela half-laughs, half-sneers. "I didn't tell her nothin', Ma did. Miz Allen showed up when she was already on her way to hammered, and she asked, if she had to take one of us kids, if it had to be Curly. Said she's tired of sleepin' with one eye open, tryna see if I'm fixin' to steal her man again." The string of cuss words I let out is unprintable. "Miz Allen was pissed, but honestly, that wasn't even as bad as the time Ed tried tellin' her all about how he beats on you an' Curly."

"Angel, I'm sorry—"

"What are you sorry for?"

"Timmy?"

If anyone else called me that (besides my uncles, who I can't really stop), I'd rip their tongue out, but Angela's my baby sister. "Be quiet, you're gonna wake Curly up," though Curly sleeps like the dead. I sit up in the dark, disoriented, my throat parched from sleep. "What is it? You sick or somethin'?"

"No," she says slowly, digging her toes into the carpet. "Can I stay here? Tonight?"

She's getting too old for that kind of thing, but dressed in rumpled pajamas, her face scrubbed free of makeup, she looks much too young and lost for me to turn her away. "Yeah, sure," I acquiesce, peel away the blanket and press myself up against the cold wall; she folds into me as easily as a paper crane. "Kick me an' I'm cuttin' your feet off, though."

She doesn't say anything, lying as still as a corpse, limbs prone. I prod her. "Did you have a nightmare?"

"No." She rolls over onto her side, facing away from me. "It was real."

"I don't need your fucking pity," she says, snapping me out of the memory altogether. "It's all anybody sees when they look at me, they either feel sorry for me or they can't wait to jump on me for it. Hell, it's all you see now, just 'cause I ain't your little girl no more."

"Angela, do not actually make me have to say, out loud, the sentence 'you're always gonna be my little girl.' That's just gonna embarrass us both. Next thing you know we'll have to hug like we're on an episode of Andy Griffith."

One side of her mouth curls up, though she stops herself just as quickly as it happens, remembers she's supposed to be mad at me. A keen sense of black humor keeps both of us from drowning in the depths of our own despair. "You don't want nothin' to do with me ever since you got out the cooler, unless it's tellin' me to put on a longer skirt or wash my face off," she still insists, "it's all Curly, all the time with you. Or you're out with that chick—"

"Who you owe an apology to, don't think I've forgotten." My heart's not really in it, though, even when she makes a face at me. I remember her first day of eighth grade, how she put on Cleopatra-like wings of eyeliner and our mama's bright red lipstick against my protests; I stood on the porch hollering after her, while she ignored me and sashayed down the street. I'm not sure how much I want those memories of me to be front-and-center in her head. "I know you ain't the same no more," and I know it more than I'm willing to admit either to her or to myself. "But I don't see you different, nena, not the way you're thinking. I promise."

I look away when she swipes at her eyes with the back of her hand, then flips down the sun visor to fix the damage in the mirror. Curly would want a hug, but I'd just embarrass her, by drawing attention to it. "Am I in trouble?" she asks matter-of-factly, her voice a little choked before she clears her throat. "I mean, I know I made you have to leave work and all, but she deserved it, and I did win…."

"Yeah, damn straight you're in trouble," I say firmly as I fumble around the cupholder for my keys. Force myself not to ask if she made sure to keep her thumb over her fingers, the way I taught her. "You're comin' downtown to help me find something nice to swipe for Gabi. Valentine's Day is comin' up."

With a glance at me from out the corner of her eye, she pulls a cigarette from the pack in my console and lights herself one. I have to press my tongue between my teeth and bite down a little to keep from saying anything, but she was right— I was smoking younger, and of all my battles to pick with her, this doesn't even make the top ten. "God knows you can use all the help you can get… let's make tracks."

"You got anything you want to tell me?"

Gabi's voice is reedy, her body language pulled taut and uninviting, and because sometimes I haven't got a clue in the world, I swear it's because I brought her down to Buck's for what's supposed to be a romantic evening. I regret it once a Tiger steals my attention for ten minutes to talk over some liquor store holdup they're plotting on the border of my territory, but in my defense, it's either I spend my paycheck on a half-decent restaurant or refilling the pantry, and I had to think of practicality at some point. Besides, Buck's scared of my uncles, same way he's scared of his own shadow, so I can usually score free drinks off of him. "Happy Valentine's Day?" She could sure try to look a little more grateful for the gold bracelet I swiped, while Angela kept the guy at the register distracted. "What, you don't like your present?"

"I had a real interesting conversation with Maite, after Mass today," she says, then pours half of the fanciest drink Buck's mixology extends to— a rum and coke— down her throat. I'm not sure if she's supposed to be drinking on her painkillers, come to think of it. I'm also still not picking up what she's putting down, clearly, as she takes a pause and swallows the other half. "Turns out, while I've been on my sickbed, the whole town's just been buzzing with gossip about you. Apparently you kidnapped her brother at gunpoint and threatened to shoot up an entire room if he didn't cooperate."

Maite— Maria Teresa— oh, hell no. Are my ex-girlfriends forming a coalition against me or something? "How do you even know her?" I ask, like this is what I should be focusing on— not my deception crashing down around me like a house of cards, or clarifying that I really, really was not counting on calling his bluff there. "You know it's her brother who shot you, right? Did she happen to mention that?"

"We're in the same Bible study group," she snaps, "and she's real sorry he did it, she doesn't understand why you boys can't stop trying to kill each other every blessed day. I think the more important question here is why you didn't mention any of this to me."

"I'm sorry," I say as I fortify myself with the godawful beer in front of me, the bitter taste coating my tongue— slapped full on in the face with the force of my own cowardice, as she confronts me, and I have no real defense to mount. My whole attitude about what I did's been schizophrenic, cleaved in half, and maybe I've been waiting for her reaction the whole time. "I should've, I meant to, but I guess I just couldn't do it, in the end." I squeeze my fingers together, hard enough to break. "You're gonna still be safe, though. I made him promise to get out of town and not come back."

That sounds even dumber and less effective out loud than it did in my head, and that's saying something. She blinks a couple of times, her long eyelashes casting spiky shadows on her cheeks, like it's taking all of her brain capacity to process my foolishness right now. "You think I'm upset you didn't kill him?"

"Why the hell else would you be upset?"

"Oh, I don't know, rack your brains, Tim." The absolute worst thing to say right now is that she's pretty when she's angry, but she is, her eyes gleaming bright and her cheeks tinged with warm heat. It's like admiring the beauty of a black mamba right before it strikes. "Visitin' you on death row? How I'm the one who got shot, and I told you I didn't want you to do anything stupid over this? The fact that you apparently started all this in the first place?"

"According to Maria Teresa, oh, I just bet I did—"

She slams her forehead into her open palm like a baseball hitting a catcher's mitt. "Why didn't you just let it go when he left his corner, for Pete's sake, why'd you decide you had to make an example out of him?"

"He tried to set up a sting to get me arrested, over a broken nose, not that he even managed to do that right—"

"Maite says you beat him half-dead. That you knocked one of his kidneys loose."

There are a lot of exceedingly dumb things I could say in this scenario. I pick just about the dumbest. "I think y'all girls are gettin' real involved in men's business, for my taste, if you want to start judgin' us on how we handle it. Especially when you're hearin' this story thirdhand to begin with."

Her mouth actually gapes open at my audacity, then shuts. Her voice is thick with irony, when she can bring herself to speak. "Because we're just collateral damage, right? Even when we're, you know, gettin' shot through the leg over 'men's business'. The real important thing here is y'all saving face."

That's not what I fucking meant, but what I say next isn't just going through the motions of defending myself— it comes from a place of much deeper hurt, so far buried it's sludge dredged up from the gutter of my subconscious. I can't protect anyone I love, when it's down to the wire. Not her, not Angela, not even Santi— I couldn't move, every muscle locked in place like I'd been given an injection, until he was sprayed all over me. "Why don't you say what you actually mean right now, which is that you blame me, huh? You think I'm too fragile to take it? Trust me, you ain't got nothin' in you that's worse than my tía Mercedes, after my cousin—"

"What happened to your cousin?"

The sentence hits my eardrums, and it's like all the suppressed panic from a week's worth of Valium withdrawal comes crashing into me at once, as I realize the implications of what I just said; my vision narrowing on all sides, my first instinct is to bolt for the door and run until my lungs and the back of my throat burn, though what I really want is to vacate my body altogether, leave behind an empty shell of myself. "That's none of your fucking business." I dig my nails into my biceps, but the ten crescent moons of pain that bloom don't do nearly as much to steady me as I'd hoped. "We been messin' around for three months, you think that's earned you the right to my whole life story?"

Jesus, it takes me a few moments to remember it's only been that long. Some months have more packed into them than some entire years.

"Don't say that," she insists, but her righteous anger— and I can't deny it's righteous, I have to give her that much— is getting weaker as the hurt sinks in. I'd say worse, to get her off the subject, though, can't bring myself to regret it. If she's pissed at me, that'll be her focus, not digging up more information. "Three months, like that's nothing at all— messin' around—"

"Ain't my fault I'm the first guy you've ever fucked, and you think that means you're in love with me." One last twist of the knife; I was always better at biology than her. "That's the reason all them nuns kept tellin' you not to do it before marriage. Floods your whole brain with oxytocin."

"Oh, don't pretend you never felt anything for me, either, you're a real shitty liar," she snaps right back at me. And I can't believe I've driven her to use the word 'shitty'— a few more months with me, and she might just be able to drop an f-bomb without blushing. "I'm well-aware every girl you sleep with doesn't exactly get jewelry for Christmas—"

"You ain't well-aware of half as much about me as you think you are."

She only seems to deflate after I say that, of all things. "You're right, I don't know anything about you," she says, sounding more exhausted than angry. "You know everything about me, but I can't even get a good read on what you do all day, or who any of your friends are, or why your gang's crumbling to the point where I'm dodging bullets from them. And it's startin' to seem like a power play, you can hurt me but I can't hurt you. You always claim that you're trying to protect me, but I think the only person you're really interested in protecting is yourself."

And it's nothing but my wounded pride speaking, my desire to get the last word at all costs, when I sneer, "what do you expect me to do right now, beg you to stay? You know the most important thing about me, you did from the start— that I'm a gangbanger, a hood. You want out, don't let the door hit you."

I don't even know if she was planning on dumping my sorry ass, before I put the idea in her head— I want to take it back right after I say it, but of course I'm not going to do that. Then she closes herself up like a folding chair once more, and I just threw away and pissed all over one of the best things that's happened in my short and ugly life, and I still can't bring myself to open my fucking mouth. "I really liked you, Tim," she says, and I note the past tense as she gets up from her chair and scrapes the legs in. I fight the reflex to get her coat for her. "But not as much as you like makin' yourself miserable. I don't think any girl is ever going to top that."

If I went after her like I did at Christmas, and folded her into my arms and kissed her and apologized, for everything— for lying to her, for what I said tonight, for being such an emotionally unavailable shithead to begin with— I know she'd take me back. The problem is that maybe not now, maybe not even tomorrow, but still eventually, she'll want the answer to the same question that pierced me like a harpoon going into Moby Dick— what happened to your cousin? And I guess I'd rather be alone for the rest of my life than answer it, and all that entails.

So I just knock back the rest of my glass, and watch her go. Happy fucking Valentine's Day, indeed.