Ten Thousand Saints Page 0,88

had smelled like that same breed, and Jude remembered the night they’d bonded over that smell, Hippie lighting the bowl while Jude hit his bong, Hippie telling Jude what a bummer it was about Teddy. I heard he choked on his own vomit, like Hendrix. That true?

“That Hippie?” Rooster nodded his head at him.

“That’s him,” said Jude. “Johnny says to leave him alone.”

Rooster shook his head. “Johnny’s gettin’ posi on me. He’s just jealous you got a new guitar instead of payin’ off some fuckin’ dealer.”

Jude looked from Rooster to Hippie and back again. He felt dangerously unhinged without Johnny at his side to hold him back. “You seen Delph and Kram?” he asked Rooster.

Rooster pulled at his bottom lip. It was what Johnny did when he was thinking. “I know some guys. Came up from D.C. You see the guy up front in the Champion sweatshirt?”

“How many?” Jude asked.

“They’re good guys,” said Rooster.

When he returned a minute later, nine guys were panting at his side. Their T-shirts were soaked, their hair spiky with sweat. Delph and Kram, plus the three other guys from Army of One. Two more, with Xs shaved in the back of their heads, Jude recognized from laser tag in New York. The other two were the guys from D.C.: the guy in the Champion sweatshirt and another, who was missing both front teeth. Alone, they were not formidable—most of them looked too young to drive—but together, they resembled a band photo: hostile and bored. “You guys know Jude?”

Jude whipped off his mask.

“Where is this pussy?” they wanted to know.

Then Jude was leading them across the empty street, their sneakers scuffing the pavement, toward the dark lawn of the high school. They were in the middle of the street when Hippie looked up and saw them. He seemed to be counting. Eleven. Eleven against one. Two if you counted the girl.

Then he recognized Jude. “Whoa,” Hippie said, holding up his hands. A joint was still burning in one of them. “Look who it is. What are you, some kind of skinhead now?”

Jude stepped onto the sidewalk, smiling hugely. He couldn’t help himself—his heart felt like a coil ready to spring. “Hi, Hippie,” he said. Behind the chain-link fence, in front of the grand, stone edifice of the school, two flags—the Stars and Stripes, and the state of Vermont—flapped at the top of the flagpole. Behind Jude, the guys were spilling off the sidewalk and into the street, bouncing from sneaker to sneaker, waiting for his cue.

“You got some balls,” said Rooster, “smokin’ that shit out here.”

“You selling that shit?” someone else wanted to know.

For them, it was all about jumping some small-fry drug dealer. They were just looking for confirmation—then the fun could start. But Jude wanted confirmation of something else. “Who helped you break into my mom’s greenhouse, Hippie?”

Hippie stroked his beard. It was the kind of full, unkempt beard you see on old men, but twisted into two dreads, like a forked tongue. A look of surprise crossed his face, then recognition, then uncertainty. “Nobody helped Hippie do anything,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Hippie didn’t help anyone.”

“Where’s your friend Tory, then?” Delph asked.

“Hippie doesn’t know what you’re talking about, man.” He nodded sternly at the girl, who scurried away. His narrow, greenish eyes were cloudy and cold. “Tory’s not even in town. He’s visiting colleges with his parents.”

The idea of Tory involved in this well-behaved, adult-chaperoned venture—visiting colleges—let some of the air out of Jude’s sails. “Look,” he said, slamming his fist into his palm, “someone smashed up my mom’s greenhouse, and if it wasn’t you, you got your bodyguard to do it.”

Hippie didn’t deny that Tory was his bodyguard. But he seemed troubled by the association, his eyebrows knit under the frames of his glasses. He took an anxious toke. “Why would you think it was Hippie?” he asked. He released a series of smoke rings, like the tail of a thought bubble, and Jude could guess what was coming next. “Is it because you stole half a pound of super fruit from him?”

Jude didn’t answer. They were standing on the sidewalk in the unlit space between two streetlights, and it was difficult to see in the dark. He stood with his arms crossed, returning Hippie’s stare.

“I think you must have your facts wrong,” said Rooster, stepping forward. “This kid’s straight edge. Believes drugs of any kind are for the weak-willed. Doesn’t touch the stuff.” Rooster draped his arm