“We could get in a lot of trouble if they found us out here,” Maggie said.
“Jesus, you sound like a nun, you know?” Richard said. “Everybody’s out here. The Kelly twins are out here with a couple of girls from Sacred Heart named Kathy or Kelly or something—”
“The two Kathys,” said Debbie. “Gross. They do everything together. They get back-to-back appointments to get their hair cut.”
“So do the Kellys,” said Richard.
“That’s true,” said Bruce, but no one seemed to hear him.
“Everybody comes out here now. Wait until they turn the water on,” Richard added. “I’m going to come out here and take a shower.”
“Gross,” said Debbie.
“My dad says they’ll have to hire a guard soon,” Maggie said.
“I like your dad,” said Richard. “He’s a good guy. You ever seen his jump shot? He has a mean jump shot.”
“I like your mother, Maggie,” Bruce said.
“Your mother is a babe and a half,” Richard said.
“Her mother?” said Debbie. “God! Her mother?”
“Monica, too,” said Richard. “She’s a babe and a half. My brother is friends with her boyfriend.”
“She has a boyfriend around here?” Maggie asked.
“What do you mean, around here?” Richard said. “Where else would she have one? I think his name’s Donald but everybody calls him Duck. He goes to college with my brother.”
Maggie slid down against the wall until she was sitting with her knees in front of her nose. Richard came over and sat down next to her. “Your parents were dancing in your living room just now.”
“You peeked in the windows?” Maggie asked, and without knowing why, it made her angry, afraid of what Richard might have seen or heard.
“I don’t peek, I look,” Richard said, slipping his arm around Maggie’s shoulders as though to reassure her. “I look in everybody’s windows.”
“That’s true,” said Bruce, staring ruefully at the arm in the half light of the half moon.
“Great perfume,” said Richard.
“I can’t believe you peeked in our windows,” said Maggie, pulling away from the arm, standing up and starting down the ladder, thinking that she was leaving because of the invasion of privacy but knowing she was going for some other, deeper reason that she could not explain.
“Hey,” said Richard.
“God, Maggie,” Debbie said. She leaned out the window and watched her friend come out of the door of the house. “Maggie,” she said again, but there was no answer.
“Maggie,” said Bruce, scrambling down the stairs.
“Hey, forget it,” said Richard. “I’m not going to go chasing after her.” But Bruce’s head had already disappeared down the ladder.
“Bridget Hearn was just saying the other day how strange Maggie acts sometimes,” Debbie said.
Maggie could hear Bruce calling her as she stumbled across the clumps of dirt and debris that made up the lawn. She walked with her head down, and twice she almost fell, swerving around a framed-in house. “Maggie,” she heard him call behind her. “Yo—Maggie. Stop.” When she came to a big stack of two-by-fours she sat down on it, her chin in her hands. She kept her head down because she knew there were tears in her eyes.
Bruce came up and sat down next to her, but not too close. For a minute he cracked his knuckles, and finally he said, the timbre of his voice shaky, “He didn’t really do it. Look in the windows, I mean. Not really. He always says stuff like that so that people will think he’s cool.”
Maggie looked up. She could tell immediately that Bruce was lying, trying to be nice.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t know why I did that. Everything’s sort of messed up. I can’t really explain.”
“That’s okay,” said Bruce. “I feel that way all the time.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“I never felt that way until a little while ago. Now I feel like everything’s crazy.”
“I know,” Bruce said. He began cracking his knuckles again. “Richard likes you,” he finally said. “He told me he really likes you. He said you’ll be a babe and a half someday.”
“Right,” said Maggie sarcastically.
“No, really. He told me.”
“I don’t see why he’s your friend,” Maggie said.
“Why is Debbie your friend?” Bruce asked, and Maggie remembered Helen again. Bruce made Richard feel normal and Richard made Bruce feel special. Maybe that was the key to every relationship.
“She just is,” Maggie said.
Bruce smiled. Maggie noticed in the dim illumination from the streetlights on the next block that he had hair on his legs. He was looking at the dirt, and, as she watched, he picked up an old nail and