I’ll need you to leave before I call plaza security.”
One of them laughed in her face. I recognized him as an underclassman from my school. “We’re just having breakfast,” he said, rumpling his hair.
“Oooh, and nicotine counts as a breakfast food now, huh?” Tammy asked shrilly.
“All part of a balanced diet, ma’am,” one of the girls said with a smirk.
“There are benches down that way,” Tammy said, pointing with a stubby finger. “Why don’t you take a little walk and have a nice sit-down breakfast.”
It was clear she thought that was a real mic-drop kind of line. The kids snorted at her, kicking their feet off the wall. Their eyes skirted over me as they slouched away, and I averted my gaze, trying to be invisible.
“Damn yahoos,” Tammy repeated once we were back inside the store. “I tell you what, I don’t miss that stage of life at all. Not for a second. I used to wake up hungover as all hell, sprawled on the floor of my friend’s room, thinking I was such a badass. You see this little beast?”
She rolled up her sleeve and showed me a discolored tattoo on her forearm.
“It’s a Mexican tequila worm,” she said. “That’s what happens when you mess around at that age.”
“I kinda like it,” I told her, my cheeks still flushed.
“Ah, well,” she said, with a faraway look in her eyes. “We’re all young once, I guess.”
I couldn’t believe it. Even Tammy, with her animal stickers and goat sweaters, had once been more fun and outgoing than me.
I felt on edge for the rest of my shift. When I finished at one o’clock, I drove back to my neighborhood and made a full stop at the clubhouse stop sign. I sat there for a minute, my car idling, until another car pulled up behind me and honked.
My house was toward the right. On impulse, I turned left instead.
* * *
Ricky’s house was different in the daylight. No line of cars, no pulsing music. It even looked smaller, maybe because there weren’t dozens of teenagers inside.
I wasn’t sure what I was doing there. Ricky probably wasn’t even home; he was probably out with his friends, or maybe with that guy. And if he was home, he had probably only said we should hang out to be polite.
Still, there was something inside me that wanted to be there. I remembered that brave, wild buzz of dashing into his house last night, and I wanted that feeling back.
I stepped hesitantly up to the front door. Last night I’d pushed it open in a rush, anxious to break through the throng of people. Today I’d have to ring the doorbell and wait for Ricky to find me standing there with my armpits sweating and my khaki work shorts sticking to my thighs.
I pressed the doorbell. A muffled musical note sounded inside the house, and a few seconds later, Ricky opened the door.
“Codi,” he said, his tone surprised. He looked tired and hazy, like he hadn’t gotten much sleep.
“Hey,” I said casually. “How’s your hand?”
He seemed caught off guard by the question, or maybe by my being there altogether. “Oh. It’s all right,” he said, showing me the fresh bandages. “Probably good that I put antibiotic on it right away. Thanks for that.”
“No problem.”
He nodded, and I nodded, and I had no idea what to say next.
“So, uh…”
“Did you and your friends get home okay?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah. They were pretty drunk, but it was a quick drive, just two minutes to the back of the neighborhood.”
He was watching me curiously, just as he had last night, like he still wasn’t sure what to make of me.
“So … did you come over to hang out?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah, um … I just thought maybe you’d want some help cleaning up. There were a lot of people here, and it’s probably annoying to have to clean up by yourself…”
He watched me again. There was something guarded in his expression. But after a beat, he swung the door back and said, “You know how to clean a place without making it look suspiciously perfect, right?”
He stood aside and let me into the house.
* * *
Cleaning up that party was like showing up to an archaeological dig. Every spill, stain, and half-drunk beer told a story of the people who’d been there last night. Ricky had an answer for everything I found. The half-eaten pizza with Sour Patch Kids on top was the work of Julie Nguyen, whose culinary