The devil appeared like Jesus through the steam in the street

Showing me a hand I knew even the cops couldn't beat

I felt his hot breath on my neck as I dove into the heat

It's so hard to be a saint, when you're just a boy out on the street

"Are you even fucking listening to me?"

I wasn't; the June heat made me feel like the living embodiment of TV static, and since this apartment complex had zero central air to speak of, we'd been reduced to crouching in front of a box fan whenever we had to be indoors, still drenched in sweat. Besides, I tried to listen to Tim as little as I could get away with. "Sort of," I said honestly, rifling through the pocket of my jeans for a loose cigarette. "Catch me up to speed, sorry—"

He reached across the table and snatched it before I could get so much as a drag in, then stuck it in his own mouth. "As I was sayin'—" he tossed his newspaper down, 10,000 gather to protest war in Vietnam— "I'd sooner light five bucks on fire than give it to you to take Ximena anywhere."

"You got plenty of cash now, c'mon." At least by our 'Christmas presents courtesy of the diocese' and 'dinner from the dumpsters outside the Safeway' standards, anyway. Tim and my tíos were real cagey about exactly what they'd been up to in Juárez, but judging by the new Cadillac Luis drove back up past the border, their trip had been a rousing success. "Two dollars, don't be so selfish—"

"You are not sleepin' with my sister-in-law, and that's final." Tim pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand, like the depths of my foolishness were already giving him a migraine. "I guess I can't technically call it incest, but it is damn well close enough. This ain't West Virginia, we don't need to turn the family tree into a wreath."

"Ximena and I ain't sleepin' together." I hadn't gotten further with her than a hand in her panties, before she decided not to sneak by on technicalities with God; she was waiting for marriage, which I respected, though it clearly wasn't a value I shared. "Besides, she ain't your nothin', yet—"

That was a mistake, I knew it even before his eyebrows started coming down his face. Bringing up his rejected proposal never failed to put Tim in a bad mood. "Let me make somethin' clear, since you seem to be confused all of a sudden— you ain't here out of the goodness of my fuckin' heart, you're here so I can prove to Gabi that I'm marriage material. And so far, you are provin' to be nothing but dead weight."

Stung, I rocked back on the legs of my chair. "That's sure a way to talk, to the guy who was runnin' your outfit for months—"

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, already tuning me out. He didn't give a shit, and hadn't since he'd gotten home. "You need to either be in school or gettin' a damn job. I'm done payin' for you to run around them streets all night, then come back here to crash once the sun's up."

"There's no school in summer, genius, it let out end of May—"

I'd actually managed to flunk last year flat, which I wasn't chomping at the bit to tell him about. Since I'd had to repeat the seventh grade, I'd been able to scrape by with a D- average through a winning combination of charm and last-minute tutoring from a Curtis, but I hadn't gone a single day since Tim left in March, and my GPA was now rapidly approaching the 0.0 mark. Not that I gave two shits. I just knew he would.

"I know you failed junior year— your sophomore year, excuse me, you ain't made it that far yet— so you can quit playin' coy already."

"How would you—"

"Your vice principal called the other day, tyin' up last year's loose ends. We had a real enlightening conversation about your study habits and how likely you are to spend life in prison if they don't improve." He laced his fingers together, the way my old social worker, Miz Allen, used to do before she started flaying strips off Ma. "There's credit recovery over at Rogers during the summer. I told him you're going."

Detonation was instant. "Come mierda, who do you think you are, my probation officer—"

"I know." He shot me his trademark thin, condescending smile, as he stubbed out the cigarette; my jaw locked tight enough to pop. It was what Ponyboy, if we were still on speaking terms, would've called 'a fitting metaphor', as my summer plans went up in smoke. "There's just no end to the trials and tribulations I put you through, is there. Tryna give you an option in life besides sellin' drugs, sellin' car parts, or sellin' black market weapons. I dunno how I sleep at night."

"Them's sure wise words, from a guy who dropped out of high school the first day he legally could."

We were rehashing the same tired argument we'd been having since I was a kid, and social services figured out Tim was the only borderline-responsible adult in our home; even I wanted to flip the record over to the B-side. But it was easy for Tim to say all this shit about the value of a good education, Tim, who'd taken the PSAT 'because there wasn't any decent football on TV' and scored a 1400, who Mr. Syme had begged to stay in school personally, who our stepdaddy had chased around the house with a belt because of all his 'wasted potential'. I couldn't explain it to him, the restlessness that constantly fizzled under my skin like a can of pop about to blow, that made it impossible to sit still or hold one thought in my head for too long. He'd never understand, and Christ knew he'd never spend a moment trying.

"And I regret it, which is why I'm haulin' your little ass to the finish line." He rubbed at a stray patch of stubble on his cheek, eyes unfocused, but he was firm when he spoke again. "It's six weeks, and summer classes are easy as shit, they pass you just for showing up. Git Ponyboy to help you, but you're going."

"I don't have time for six weeks of nothin', I got shit to do—"

"I got shit to do." He'd already gone to get himself a beer from the icebox, signaling the conversation over. "I promise, my outfit'll find a way to survive without you."

He popped the cap off against the edge of the table and continued to take swigs from the sweating bottle, flipping to an article about some city alderman launching an anti-crime campaign in his dead son's name, while I sat there and seethed. "And if I don't, what are you fixin' to do, sit next to me all day in class?" I was sixteen, turning seventeen in a few weeks, legally old enough to drop out and off probation. He couldn't make me do shit no more.

I figured he'd resort to his usual threats— beating my ass, or tying me to the desk, the way my second grade teacher did with a jump rope she borrowed from the school gym. "Then you can go home to Ma." He pointed his index finger at me like it was the barrel of a gun. "But you live in my house, you follow my rules, claro? Christ knows I ain't settin' the bar high."

My muscles tensed like I'd been thrown into the Arkansas in the middle of December, remembering her verbal crucifixion. Ma had begged me to stay— literally, on her knees after five whiskey sours, clutching at my ankles with hands like manacles while I tried to keep myself from kicking her off. Asked me how I wasn't ashamed of leaving her like everybody else had. Threatened to hang herself from the ceiling fan. I'd always been the good son, the one who had to bend over backwards to comfort her and soothe her worst moods, while Angela and Tim frayed every last one of her nerve endings on purpose. I never realized her love for me could be withdrawn as easily as she'd offered it.

Of course Tim didn't appreciate any of this, though, how I ended up choosing him over her. Any obedience I gave him, he just figured was his due, for being the eldest and for looking after me as a kid. Trying to pay him back was like shoveling dirt into a bottomless hole.

"Here, manito." He smiled at me again, as he slid a crumpled dollar bill across the table. He knew there wouldn't be any more arguments. "Go get yourself some new notebooks."

"What happened to you?" My plans to smoke a joint I'd stolen from Tim's jacket were foiled when I got to the abandoned lot, and found somebody already slumped in the busted Trans-Am. "Your daddy? Stepdad?"

Pedro's face was caved in like a cake that'd been left in the oven too long, thick streams of blood soaking his dirty t-shirt collar. He hunched over, clutching at his chest, a question mark with no immediate answer. "Billy fuckin' Reynolds," he wheezed, before coughing a shard of tooth onto the concrete, part of his gum clinging to its root. "He was runnin' a dial-a-dope operation on one of our streets, past the stop sign, up on Market."

Billy 'fucking' Reynolds, as pretty much everyone referred to him when they had to at all, was nineteen and the sole heir left to the River Kings dynasty, since he'd been getting a wisdom tooth yanked when the rest of them got scooped up. He was no real heavyweight, or even the next Dally Winston, but he was hoping to make up for that the same way a little yappy dog has to piss on the carpet to mark its territory. I slid into the driver's seat, a broken spring jabbing me in the ass as I sat down. "And he beat the shit out of you?"

Pedro still had enough presence of mind to shoot me a dirty look. "No kidding."

"So there's no was. He's still runnin' his dial-a-dope."

I sounded like a first-rate jackass; worse, I sounded like my brother. Our outfit had long since been hollowed out by (including, but not limited to) overdoses, upstate sentences, young, violent deaths, getting on the wrong side of the draft board, sleeping with Tim's sister, and trying to snipe Tim's girl with a hunting rifle, which meant we had more turnover than a family-owned restaurant and even worse employee morale. What remained made me understand, against my will, why Tim used to 'discipline' them with pool cues.

"Sorry, compa." Pedro bent over even further, elbows bracketing his torso. I wondered if we might have to haul his ass into the free clinic, but in my expert medical opinion, he was breathing okay— and even if he wasn't, he'd be dead long before he ever reached the front of the line, anyway. "I didn't have nothin' on me, and he had a knife and a busted bottle, I was a goner from the start."

You was out sellin' without so much as a switchblade on you? Now I really sounded like Tim, his version of a mother bugging her kid to wear his bike helmet. "Never mind. I'm gonna take care of this."

Pedro managed to lift an eyebrow. "By your lonesome?"

"I'll take Nate—"

"No dice, Nate's gettin' ready for boot camp, he's shippin' out to Nam."

"You're kidding. Thought Tío Luis managed to pay the draft board off for good."

"Oh, nah, he didn't get drafted," he said with a snort. "Recruiter was waitin' for him outside the Kroger, said the army's good money, and that if he brought a friend, he'd make sure they was assigned to the same platoon. He signed on the dotted line right then and there."

Man, and people said I was dumb. "What about Joel?"

"Who do you think he's takin' with him?"

Jesus fuck, when did everybody start getting so patriotic? I'd never been that fussed over the war, it'd be done long before I was eighteen anyway, but it sure as shit was putting a damper on the business. Nate and Joel were the best out of what was left of the old guard, and I didn't want to drag along anyone younger than me— not to be a prick, but Pedro's face was a case in point. "So we're back to square one: I'm goin' this solo." That was when I pulled the gun out from the waistband of my pants. "Well, almost solo."

The heater was a secret, an idiot-proof revolver with no safety— I'd gotten it off a friend of a friend of Buck's, who'd driven it up from Texas and took payment in the form of half-decent horse. Tim would've beaten me into worse shape than Pedro if he found out there was a gun in the house he couldn't account for; even Tío Luis, who normally hated to tell me the word no, said I couldn't have my own until I was seventeen. But with them gone, I wanted one for protection, and maybe a little for the thrill of it. The same way Soc kids got brand new Mustangs for their sixteenth birthdays, having my own piece made me feel like I'd finally become a man, and I figured it might be easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

"You fixin' to shoot him?" Pedro asked as casually as if we were playing an arcade game.

"All depends on him." I was bluffing my head off, and I already had an embarrassing reputation for not backing my tough talk up with any action; I'd never even threatened somebody with it, much less pulled the trigger. Pedro was my buddy, though, and he still nodded along like I pumped people full of lead twice a week. "But maybe he needs a lil' more incentive to get out of our territory than he's had before."

I had to settle this soon, one way or another. Come Monday, my hours of operation were about to get cut real short.

Angel's hair was going through an awkward stage where it stuck out at weird angles, and even enough hairspray to make a Krispy Kreme jealous couldn't fix it— I'd laugh at her, but I'd been a month out of reform school and trying to slick the same kind of mess down before, not to mention how much I wanted to stab a knife through Bryon Douglas's hand like stigmata whenever I saw her. She was shoving stray curls back into a headband as she took gulps from an overpriced cup of beer, seated in the dusty bleachers. "You better lay off that stuff, sis, heard it ain't good for the baby."

She elbowed me so hard in the ribs, I almost bit my tongue off; I sounded like a first-rate psychopath, but Shepards were raised on the devil's backbone, and she would've hated me ten times more if I'd started treating her like blown glass. Then she drained the rest of the half-full cup in one go, just to prove she could. "Shut the fuck up, Curly, what are you even doin' here? You ain't got enough spare brain cells for no rodeo."

She was right, though the jab about my brain cells, after my showdown with Tim, stung a lot more than she'd intended. I got my thrills anywhere I could, but I'd had a bone sticking out of my arm before and was in no hurry to experience that again— and thinking about the million ways you could kill yourself getting shook off a bull made me remember Soda Curtis's blowout, which made me think of Jasmine, which was where all my thoughts inevitably wound up. It was like a fly trying to bust loose from the sticky paper once it got its legs trapped, a lost cause. "Wanted to watch some of the calf roping," I lied. I was aiming to corner Billy, who strolled around town with a massive rodeo belt buckle around his waist, but he was nowhere in sight. "What are you doin' here, huh?"

"My girlfriend Patty's barrel racin', and she's about the only person who still speaks to Hester Prynne these days, so. I'm here for her." She cupped her hands around her mouth, like she needed any help amplifying her voice. "KICK THAT LITTLE SOC BITCH'S ASS! Cherry Valance," she clarified, as she sat back down.

"Ain't you and Jasmine talkin' again?"

"Girl friendships are a little bit more complicated than boy friendships." I thought I'd made a real subtle segue, but the look she gave me out the corner of her eye proved I wasn't fooling anybody. "Curly, she don't want you."

Her naked pity was a hell of a lot harder to swallow than her disdain would've been. The tattoo on my bicep, JASMINE in messy block letters, burned like the surrounding skin had gotten infected— Tim and Ed had both laughed themselves sick when I got it, and in hindsight, their mockery had been dead-on accurate. I might've felt like we were destiny, kismet, whatever you called it, but if there was one thing Jasmine loved more than she'd ever loved me, it was thumbing her nose at being told there was anything she had to do.

But no matter what I'd done wrong— and you could fill a set of encyclopedias there— you'd never fucking convince me it was Bryon Douglas she wanted.

"I'm not tryna get back together with her, Jesus, I can't ask no simple question now?" My second lie in a two minute span, and a completely unbelievable one; my voice shot up like I'd just inhaled helium, or turned thirteen. I couldn't even tell it to myself long enough to pay attention on a date with Ximena. "She was buggin' me the other day 'bout how you're doing, sayin' we're bad brothers 'cause we don't check in on you enough."

Angela got knocked up last year by Tim's pervertido friend, which was how I ended up learning a lot more than I ever wanted to about Oklahoma age of consent laws; after she lost the kid, Tim waited for her to come home with an I told you so ready on his lips, but she stayed married and now the only time I saw her was at school, which meant I saw her next to never and nowhere. I wasn't Tim and didn't really give two shits how long her skirts were or how much mascara she gooped onto her eyelashes— which was probably why she continued to speak to me at all— but she was still my kid sister and it was my down-to-the-wire responsibility to protect her. And if Jasmine of all people had noticed she was miserable…

"I'm fine." She didn't have enough hair left to toss, but she tried to do it anyway, which was eerie as shit, like she was trying to pick something up with a phantom limb. "Rafa got fired again, but if I pick up another shift at the boutique, I can probably clear rent for next month— like hell I'm movin' back in with my bitch suegra. I'd sleep under a bridge before shacking up with her."

I shoved my fists into the pockets of my third-cleanest pair of cargo shorts and brushed against the piece. My ears rang, and not from the roar of the crowd as Patty finished the cloverleaf pattern and threw her hands up; it wasn't lost on me that I lived with Tim, who still treated me like a middle schooler, while my younger sister had her own apartment she paid the bills on. "He good to you?"

"No."

I might as well have been doing prison dentistry, the way I was pulling it out of her. Ol' Tim could be more emotionally open and vulnerable, with the better part of a joint soaked into his bloodstream. "You can always come home—"

Angela pulled a face. "Ma kicked me out, you forget she won't let me through the front door no more?" Signed the waiver for her underage marriage so fast her signature looked like a doctor's, if I let myself remember it honest, mama's boy or not. "Think Dad misses havin' me around to mix his drinks, but not enough to argue with her about it."

"I meant Tim's place." It had two bedrooms, but we slept in one of them and pretty much used the other one as a glorified storage closet; it was babyish enough I'd chew ground glass before admitting it, but I hated sleeping alone worse than anything, it reminded me of being in reform school. So she wouldn't have been putting anybody out, besides my week-old briefs.

"Are you fucking kidding me." She fanned her hand out in front of her face, looking for invisible chips in her manicure. "I don't even want to visit, y'all are gonna give me bedbugs, the way you just haul furniture in off the street. Though Tim's the worst pest of 'em all."

I gave it up for a lost cause, but pulled her into my side with one arm anyway; she stiffened at first, the way she did whenever anybody touched her, but rested her head on my shoulder after a few seconds. She must've felt the imprint of the gun against her hip, but she didn't say shit. Angel was notoriously tough to shock.