The Leveller - Julia Durango Page 0,3

central Illinois. I look like a bike-riding Sherpa, but I don’t care. I got my driver’s license over the summer, but there’s no way I’m going to spend money on car insurance, gas, and some old beater in this podunk town. I can get anywhere in twenty minutes or less on my bike, and it’s free.

I leave the Cuparinos’ north-side subdivision of newer upscale homes, take the side streets to avoid downtown, and finally arrive in my west-side neighborhood of older downscale homes. The houses here are all in ongoing repair, disrepair, or beyond repair. It’s the kind of hood where people walk their dogs in their pajamas, nod at you, then flip their cigarette butts in your driveway while their dogs crap on your lawn. My west-side friends and I call it “the ghetto,” which makes my Chicago-born mom shake her head. Then again, lots of things make my mom shake her head; she’s like a human bobblehead.

I pull my bike into our driveway and lock it to the hitching post. Yes, our home is so old it still has a place to park your horse. Dad nicknamed the house “Baby Jane,” after that Bette Davis movie about an aging movie star who goes batty. Our house has had a similar life story. You can tell it was once elegant and grand, the nicest home on the block with its stately Italianate features. Only now the paint has peeled, the porch sags, and the landscaping looks like the victim of a chainsaw massacre.

I enter Baby Jane and stop to give our bulldog, Hodee, a belly rub. Hodee’s real name is Don Quixote, which was my mother’s bad idea; fortunately, no one calls him that, not even Mom. Hodee’s much too tubby and ridiculous-looking to pull off some highbrow literary name, and besides, Hodee likes to keep it real. He lets out a fart while I rub him, then rolls back over and continues to nap.

I follow my nose to a more pleasant aroma in the kitchen, where I smell freshly brewed coffee. Moose and Chang are already there, drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream and chatting up my mom.

“You spoil them, Jill,” I say to Mom as I pour myself a big mug of coffee.

“Hello to you, too, Phoenix,” my mom answers from the sink where she’s peeling fruit. I know what’s coming next: a huge tray of apples and oranges and kiwi, each little bite-size piece stuck through with a colorful toothpick. Every time the guys come over, she insists on serving them a fruit tray, as if they’re four-year-olds with scurvy.

Moose wrinkles his nose as I sit next to him with my mug. “Don’t be breathing your nasty coffee breath on me, Nix.”

I make a face at him and turn to Chang. “Sorry I’m late. I had a job.”

“Cuparino?” he asks.

I shrug in response. I like to keep my business confidential. As much as I would love spilling the beans about Coop’s Speedo, I never gossip about my marks.

Moose and Chang both smile at my mom as she sets down the preschool fruit tray. Moose pops an orange slice in his mouth, waits for my mom to go back to the sink, then leans in and lowers his voice. “No need to be all zippy-lipped, like you work for the flipping Witness Protection Program. We know it was Coop, we sold him the timer hack this morning.”

Chang nods, selecting an apple slice. “You ought to be giving us a kickback,” he says in between bites.

I glance at my mom, but she’s got her head in the fridge now, no doubt hoping that dinner will appear if she looks hard enough. “Jeez, you guys, some day you’re going to get busted by the wrong parents,” I whisper. “Coop’s dad is chief of police, you know.”

“Relax already, would you? It’s not like we’re dealing drugs. You think Papa Coop’s gonna bust our chops over some video game code?” Moose asks, reaching for another toothpicked orange. “Local PD’s got bigger fish to fry than us, Nix.”

“Whatever. I just don’t want people thinking we’re a racket. You do your business, I’ll do mine. No discussion, no kickbacks, no nothing. Got it?”

“Fy fæn, Nixy, hold the salt, we get it,” Chang says. Fy fæn is a really bad word in Norwegian that Chang’s cousin taught us one summer after his study-abroad program in Oslo. The three of us have used it for years now, since it tends to get us in much