"As police continue to investigate the sudden disappearance of Officer Charles Bradley, who was last seen Thursday night outside—"

"I'm startin' to think this guy is a bit of an idiot, or worse, a loose cannon," Luis says as he jams a handful of peanuts into his mouth, eyes boring into the staticky TV we've tried to fasten to the wall of the bar. "I mean, Jesus fuckin' Christ, holdin' a cop hostage— that ain't even goin' from zero to a hundred, that's rippin' the brakes out your car altogether. I like to stay on friendlier terms with them, keeps them from raisin' their rates on me. And all over you gettin' shaken down? You was defusing scarier than the undercover department before your voice broke."

I'm not sure whether to take this as a compliment or an insult, but I've never been well-known for giving people the benefit of the doubt. Especially not with everything that's gone down between us lately. "Glad to hear you're just oozin' concern for me." The beer in this joint is still awful, and it's doing shit-all to help my jangled nerves. "I made it out in one piece, don't worry, even if your pot didn't."

"You still mad at me?" The worst part about how he says it is that there's the tiniest sliver of actual concern in his words, and it's like a splinter caught under my nail. It would be a lot easier to dismiss him, just treat him like a shitty boss I have to put up with, if that remnant wasn't there, of the uncle who used to take me and Curly out for drives when Ma and Ed were busy throwing plates at each other's heads. "Figured you'd be over it by now," he adds, which is when most of my good feelings end up getting flushed down the metaphorical toilet. "You always hold onto shit longer than you should, like some PMS'ing broad, it gets on my nerves watchin' you sulk and make your lil' passive-aggressive comments. You wanna take this out back or what?"

"No shit, I'm still mad," and the look on his face is almost enough to make me add a señor to the end of the sentence, before he accepts that offer for me and beats the living daylights out of me. "I bring my girl around you fools, Temo and Beto nearly knock her into the punch bowl tryna scalp each other, and then we get to the real highlight of the evening, you deciding the annual Christmas party is the best time to announce how much you hate colored people. You really think I'm fixin' to let that go in a hurry?"

"You're hacked off that I said the truth, and I ain't about to apologize for it," he says as he licks a drop of beer off the rim of his glass. For someone who thinks I could stand to learn about a million lessons in humility, he's sure no more willing to admit when he's wrong. "I'm lookin' out for your best interests, like I always have since your daddy died." That is, to put it mildly, a fucking stretch. "And you got terrible taste in women, just like he did, so I'm lookin' out for them better. You actually falling for this chick? Give it to me straight."

"She's my girlfriend." Another sip doesn't make me feel any better, as predicted, but it's the only weapon I have in my arsenal right now. "Yeah, you could say that."

"She's tryna piss her old man off, same as her wannabe-malandro brother." The calm, matter-of-fact way he says it, again, is worse than if he was actively trying to hurt me. "You know what, Timmy, for your sake, I'm gonna even put the colored issue aside, though ain't no one convincing me that she don't want to mejorar la raza with you. We're gonna talk about the lifestyle issue. Y'all's marriage is gonna last all of twenty minutes, if what Cisco's tellin' me about her cute little pearl headbands is true."

"Who in the hell is talkin' about getting married—" I'm gonna kill that loudmouthed fucker. They are real cute.

"You fall a lil' hard and fast," he says, and then thumps me on the back with his fist after I almost choke to death on a peanut that went the wrong way. "Because you never fucking listen to me, you always gotta ram your thick skull into a brick wall, then admit I'm right. Bonnie at least kept up with us, but this broad, she's not cut out for any part of this life— you think Temo and Beto are too much for her delicate sensibilities? How's she gonna handle a stray bullet comin' in through the windowpane, huh, or diggin' one out of you? She'll resent you, and then she's gonna run off or nag until you wish you were dead, so you're better off stickin' to your own kind and lettin' her find some nice accountant. What was your problem with Maria Teresa, huh? I always liked Maria Teresa. She's a good girl, loyal, knows how to keep her mouth shut—"

"I wouldn't let her see no bullets coming through no windowpanes," I say, which is the absolute worst thing to say right now, and why do you always realize that the second after you can't walk it back? "I'd look after her."

"Yeah?" Luis doesn't immediately pounce on me, lets me stew in my own fumble for a few moments. Sweat's beginning to pool in my armpits, and not just because they keep the heat cranked up in here to encourage broads to show more skin. "You thinkin' maybe you're gonna be that accountant, Timmy? Gettin' a little embarrassed by your own family, don't want to bring girls around us no more? And then you make this sad little face at me when I tell you that you ain't one of us— tonto, you don't want to be. You do everything you can to act like you're somethin' better."

I made fun of Darry, for that. Called him a traitor to his own kind, when I slammed him up against a bathroom sink, so many years ago. And now I'm in the same place as him, and I can't even bring myself to deny it. Yeah, I don't think I'm going anywhere further in life than the weed-dealing equivalent of middle manager. But I'm sure as fuck embarrassed.

I don't have a chance to so much as catch my breath before he starts to speak again. "You might be half-white," he says, and he pauses with all the drama of an actor. And considering the quality of our community theater, even the beer in his hand is adding to the ambiance. "But you're half-white, Irish Catholic trailer trash, that's your mama's people," and for the first time at an insult to her I see red. "Don't start gettin' cocky." He reaches out to me; I clench my teeth and brace my muscles for a hit, but instead he brushes a curl behind my ear. "Besides, I ain't lettin' you go that easy."

"Curly, do you feel like the words are swimmin' in front of you, or are you just struggling to put them all together into something that makes sense?"

Miz Allen's in the living room, having shoved a pile of burger wrappers and cigarette butts off the couch to sit down, holding a newspaper in front of Curly's face. "What's goin' on?" I ask warily. "What's the test about?"

Miz Allen pushes her headband higher up. "Curly's English teacher is a little concerned about his progress in her class," she says, which is a level of bullshitting they must instruct you in at social worker school, because I'm pretty sure most of Curly's teachers want to use profanity when referring to his 'progress'. "And Curly's telling me that he's been having difficulties with reading as long as he can remember. That he's struggling to even get through a paragraph, much less Animal Farm—"

I give her a hard look and forget that I'm supposed to be acting polite to her, when she has the power to turn our family inside out. "Curly ain't retarded, he can read— he's just screwin' around with you. Curly, read her the paragraph and quit messin' around when the state's here." Is he high or something? He's staring at it, glassy-eyed and still, like a deer in the headlights right before it gets run over.

"I don't like that term retarded, Tim," she says, all maternal scolding that's about ten years too old for her, and yet it actually works at making me feel guilty. "I don't think Curly is anything of the sort, I think that he's severely dyslexic. My cousin is in the field—" a whole family of do-gooders, guess the apple didn't fall far from the tree— "and I suspect he has what's called a learning disability, they've just started coining the term. They're not an uncommon result of poor teaching, especially poor teaching he might've received when he was younger."

This time, I could cut through sheet metal with my tone. "He ain't any kind of disabled, neither. Exactly what are you gettin' at here, that you want to send him to some special school for droolers?" Okay, I'm not some beaming mother, saying he's a genius despite all the evidence to the contrary— I know Curly ain't, to put it mildly, the sharpest knife in the drawer. Let's be honest, he's more of a spoon. But I don't need no outsiders coming in here and making him feel worse. "Curly, c'mon, pull yourself together now—"

"I can't read it," Curly bursts out, his fists tightly clenched like a spring about to go off. "Okay? I can't read nothin' that ain't the back of a cereal box, 's obvious to everyone but you."

"I didn't mean to upset anybody," she says, twirling her more-carats-than-I'd-expect wedding ring around her finger as she bites down on her lower lip. Worst of all, is I bet she didn't. She looks like a schoolgirl who just recited a lesson perfectly, expected praise, and got this instead. "Curly, I can talk to your teacher on Monday, all right? And I'll see what I can do about your theme comin' up, about gettin' you an extension on it, some extra help."

In order to finish anything resembling a theme, Curly's going to need her to hire someone else to do it— and Curly gives me a hard shove once she closes the front door, which derails that train of thought. He ain't so big, even coming on fifteen, that he can knock me off my feet, but I'm surprised enough by it that I stumble backwards. And I'm not so fucking thrilled, when I do manage to regain my balance. "What the hell was that for?" I bark, and clip him around the ear hard enough for his eyes to water— though I'm not sure it's from the force of my blow. "What the hell's gotten into you, huh, cat got your tongue?"

"I'm not lazy." He spits the word right out at me, like he wishes he was spitting in my face, and Lord, he better not work up the nerve to do that. "I'm not fucking around, or everything else you love sayin' I do in school. I'm so dumb it's a disease. I can't fucking read, even nothing simple, Ponyboy's got to sound out every worksheet to get me through class. Did you really need some broad from the state to tell you as much before you'd believe me? For someone who thinks he's so fucking smart, you sure never see what's right in front of you."

I'm not sure if he's more mad at me, or embarrassed by himself. Worst of all, I'm starting to realize I might've been wrong, and that I might have to admit it. Out loud. Which is why I fixate on the least important part of this. "You go ahead and cuss me one more goddamned time, Curly, you're gonna regret the day you was born—"

"Yeah, like I already don't," he says, "means I have to live with you." And he grabs his leather jacket from the arm of the couch and slams the door behind him, before I can get in another word.

"Tim, hold still." I grip the edge of the washing machine as she aims at my brow ridge with a pair of tweezers, try to keep myself from flinching away from her like a pussy. I guess she must've gotten some practice in at-home surgery, with a brother who's a King and all, but I've only got one good side of my face left and I'd like to keep it that way. "I can't believe he broke a bottle on you, I was so scared he'd bust your head right open."

"I can't believe he didn't go down in one move. I'm ashamed of myself. Better start puttin' in more hours with the weights."

She clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth at me, pulls out the last microscopic shard— I can't help but hiss between clenched teeth, more from the anticipation than the actual pain. "You shouldn't have been fightin', at Lainey's engagement party," she says, but it sounds more rote than something she actually believes. "I've been talkin' up a storm about how you ain't just some hood, that you're real sweet and well-mannered, and now there's blood stains in the white carpet. What am I gonna do with you, huh? And where does her mom keep the band-aids again?"

I'd be a little offended by the whole 'ain't just some hood' comment, maybe, but there's a soft fondness in the scolding that stops me in my tracks. "If you want me to apologize to him, it's gonna be a cold day in hell first," I say, that much I'm sure of. "And I sure ain't walkin' around with no band-aid on my forehead, so you can sit down, darlin', and don't even bother looking."

"You want tetanus, you think that's gonna make you look more tuff?" she says as she pulls a box of band-aids off the shelf above my head and sticks it across the newly-cleaned cut, like I didn't say shit. Plants a kiss on the patch of skin next to it, and any protest I had dies when I feel the warmth of her lips. Maybe I'll wait to peel it off until I get home, and God, has this girl got me pussy-whipped. She flutters her eyelashes in a butterfly kiss against the sticky fabric, too, and some of the Antarctic ice around my heart melts just an inch more. "You didn't need to do all that. Tenoch isn't worth it, he can't even figure out that I can't possibly be a slut and frigid at the same time. What if someone called the police?"

"He put his hands on you, and now he's callin' you a slut," I say, my voice hard and closed to debate, "that's more'n reason enough for me to lay him out. He's lucky he gets to walk out of here with a full dental set. Or hell, walk at all." Gabi's tall for a girl, maybe 5'6 or even 5'7, but she's skinny, there's no way she could ever fight back against even this scrawny little punkass. Or should have to, even if she topped six feet. That's not the point.

"I don't want to visit you behind bars, Tim," she says with a hint of dryness, but I can detect the vulnerability beneath. "It ain't... it wasn't such a big deal, I promise, I don't even know what kind of telenovela plot you're imagining. He didn't really hit me that much— and he didn't just do it out of nowhere, we fought a lot—"

She's babbling at this point, and I hold up my hand to stop her. "It's a big fucking deal," I say, with enough finality I hope it convinces her, "you don't have to make no excuses." Then I squint one of my eyes up, because something just occurred to me. "What was he even doin' here in the first place, Christ hell? Your friends must really hate you or somethin', don't they know—"

"No!" She hits such a high note, it hurts my ears a little, and flaps one of her hands. "I just... I could never tell someone, it's so embarrassing. They'd... I don't even know, they'd ask what I did wrong, what I possibly could've done to make him so mad, or they just wouldn't understand, they'd treat me like I was radioactive. I never knew any girl who got hit like that, not in my family, not at school neither."

"For him, yeah, it sure is fucking embarrassing—"

"You saw him in there, he's everybody's best friend," she says miserably. "Or they'd never believe I was stupid enough to stay with him, keep comin' back for more, I guess. It's not like he's going to get another girl, if he's serious about this becoming a priest thing... I just want to let it lie."

For a second, I want to tell her about Ed. How I grew up, how I'm still growing up, I guess. Maybe it would make her feel better— maybe it'd make me feel better. But I dismiss the idea as soon as it comes into my head. Yeah, I bet she wants to hear all about it, how her sorry-ass excuse for a man still gets slapped around by his stepdaddy when he has about a bottle of whiskey in him. Too pussy to even fight back half the time, though I'm closing in on his size, still choked by conditioned childhood fear. That's just guaranteed to keep her motor running.

I don't tell anyone about that shit, not since Darry, years ago, and look how quick he was to throw it back in my face. Maybe I accepted his apology, doesn't mean I've forgotten the valuable lesson he taught me.

"Sorry I stole your virginity," I say instead, tilt my head back and pinch it shut as my bloody nose starts running again, trickles down my mouth and chin. "Or didn't try hard enough to keep you from givin' it up to the first no-account hood you saw, guess it's the same result."

She wrinkles her nose. "You didn't steal anything, I'm not some doll Tenoch can keep on the shelf, take me off when he's done pretending to be a priest. I wanted to do it. And stop talkin' about yourself like that."

"Like what?" I ask, more than a little amused. "Don't boss me now, I'll talk about myself how I please—"

"No, it made me so mad, hearin' the way your mama talked about you when she caught us... you know." The apples of her cheeks darken. "And Bonnie, too, the other night. Sayin' that you're some kind of bad seed, that you ain't good enough for me. I just don't get it. You listen when I talk, you don't push me around, and you look out for your kid brother and sister real well. You could sure have turned out a lot worse, all things considered."

Oh, honey. If only she knew. If only she had the slightest clue. "And I love you," she says resolutely. "You don't have to say it back, but I do."

Curly's getting home long after me, which is already doing him no favors. When he tries to climb back into the house through the kitchen window and clatters right onto the tile floor, that ain't doing much else to brighten my mood. Like he doesn't know the back door stays unlocked.

"Are you drunk?" I grab him by the shoulders and shake, hard enough to knock some sense into those filmy eyes of his. He just giggles at me; he smells like a street where homeless guys sit and throw beer bottles all day, Jesus Christ, he's even got a damp stain all over the front of his shirt. I start hauling him into our room, clean up this crime scene. I say hauling because he can't walk in a straight line, bumping into the walls if I don't keep a firm grip on him. "How much did you even have— who were you with?"

Tíos took child endangerment to all new heights when I was getting raised by them, and they sure let us drink, but there's no way they'd booze him up this bad— for all their not-so-benign neglect, they love him, or at least wouldn't want the responsibility of wiping up his puke. Probably some of his little friends, and don't I just know Curly was the instigator, the one always a shade wilder and more impulsive than the rest. Carlos is a natural leader amongst his peers is about the only good thing that ever got written on his report cards.

"Lot," is his brilliant response, before he topples face-first into his pillow and bursts into even more peals of laughter. "Lots and lots and— everything's so spinny when I close my eyes—"

"Shut the fuck up before you wake Ma and Ed up," I hiss, though they're both probably in a deep alcoholic slumber of their own, dead to the world. "You want them comin' in here now?"

I'm blowing my fuse over something I should laugh off like a normal brother. How old was I the first time I drank myself sick, eleven, twelve? It'll teach him a lesson he won't soon forget, his hangover tomorrow, and maybe it's best learned young— but I still feel sick myself, watching him. He was only fourteen in June. When'd we get so fucked up? How'd I fuck him up this bad?

"We are gonna talk in the morning," I say to his prone, twitching form, "you are in deep fucking shit, Curly, and you're definitely grounded. You are so goddamn lucky it's me who caught you and not your PO, it might just be the Irish comin' through in your blood—"

His stomach gurgles when I say the word 'shit', and then he sits up and heaves right into his hands, letting it leak through his fingers and onto his jeans. "Tim, I don't feel good," he says, blinking up at me. "Really don't—" The next round splatters all over the front of my t-shirt. The nice one.

It's gonna be a long night.

Hopefully an obvious disclaimer, but this isn't how I think about people with learning disabilities, Tim is being an asshole (though again, sadly, a period-typical asshole). And dyslexia isn't caused by bad teaching, it's neurological, but thanks to the two hours I spent googling the history of its diagnosis, that'd be a pretty popular theory into the eighties!