has always said this is the time. “You want to come out of high school at full speed,” Logs says. “Too many people pass it off as time spent waiting for your real life to start. But it doesn’t have to be. The more you know about what lies out there the further ahead you are when you step out.”
Much as he respects Logs, “stepping out ahead” isn’t the main objective. Paulie wants to understand the life he’s living now. He wants to know his possibilities, his edges. Now.
Paulie wishes sometimes he had Arney’s ability to detach, to see things in his mind instead of in his heart, and to just take what he wants. He looks at his title page. Why does it seem like I have a choice between so many good decisions while Bobby and Taylor—and a whole bunch of other kids—have to choose between the shitty ones?
He steps behind the counter to put a sixteen-ounce coffee and a scone on his tab, then returns to the small table where he’s plugged in his laptop, cracking his knuckles, ready to get some words down. He opens a manila folder containing notes from Brain Rules and How We Decide, some Internet printouts of teenagers doing heroic things and mind-numbingly stupid things. He could keep all that information in his laptop, but he wants it where he can pull it out of his backpack at any time.
He types, absently finishing the scone, hoping for the wisdom that sometimes comes with a caffeine rush.
“Hey, man.”
He looks up. “Justin. ’Sup?”
“All lonely and shit,” Justin says. “Saw the lime-green Beetle and thought I’d come in and see if I can keep you from graduating.”
Paulie closes the laptop. “Who needs a diploma anyway,” he says. “Studies say the job I want won’t even exist by the time I get my education and it will only require a GED anyway. I can go straight to welfare.”
“That’s the man I backed for prez,” Justin says. “A little more of that kind of rhetoric and your campaign might’a got off the ground.”
“We gave it our best shot. Pretty glad I didn’t win.”
Justin’s fingers tap nonstop on the table to some driving beat playing in his head. “You know, bro, your opponent was low-down. He’s still low-down.”
“Arney? I guess. He was just being Arney.”
“Yeah, and I let that go. Politics and all, and you seemed okay with it. But that personal shit trash-talking your pops and all that DNA stuff was out of line.”
“I straightened him out on that,” Paulie says. “He still claims he didn’t know beforehand. And he stopped it.”
“Tell you what, my man, there is damn little happens around Mr. Stack he doesn’t know about.”
“Did you come here just to cheer me up?”
Justin looks behind him at the entrance, then back at Paulie. “I came here to smarten you up,” he says. “This shit with Stack and Hannah ain’t right.”
“I know. I gave him the go-ahead, though,” Paulie says. “Can you imagine what Hannah Murphy would say if she thought somebody needed permission to go out with her? Especially mine?”
“He asked because he knew what you’d say. Man, you act all tough and shit but I know what’s going on inside. Stack can see it too, man, and he uses it. That’s what pisses me off, it’s fucked up.”
“I’ll get through it. Shit, kids are starvin’ in Somalia.”
“Which at this particular moment in our lives we can do zero about,” Justin says. “Arney, however, is more immediate.”
Paulie smiles and leans back. “Well, I can’t go busting up Arney because I don’t like him going out with my ex-girlfriend. She’s got a part in it, too.”
“She’s getting even, like any chick would. I’ll give her that room, but if Stack was ever my friend, it’s history now.”
“Well, if it elevates your opinion of my sanity,” Paulie says, “I’m cooling off on him, too.”
“Just know if you’re laying around some night feelin’ like destroying some property, give me a call.”
A quick fist bump and Justin turns to leave. Paulie watches him disappear through the door. Justin whirls and points and Paulie hears a muffled, “Got your back, man,” through the window. Justin walks a couple more steps, whirls and points again, and mouths, “But whose got your front?”
Paulie opens the laptop again, sighs, and tries to focus, only to look up and see Hannah standing at the counter. His adrenaline floodgates open: quick heartbeats and an ache in his lower back, and he moves to the