That afternoon, Matty left Frankie’s garage, closed the side door behind him—and stopped. Malice sat on the back stoop of the house. She’d looked up from her book and frowned at him.
“Do I even want to know what you and Frank are up to?” she asked.
“It’s nothing, we’re just…you know…” He felt his face heat. “Garage stuff.” She looked impossibly cool in a black tank top and black jeans—maybe a different pair than last night. He was suddenly aware that he didn’t own a single pair of black jeans, and might never.
God, now she was staring at him like he was a dork. Get ahold of yourself, Matty. You have no idea what you can do yet.
“So what were you up to?” he said, summoning testosterone. “In the middle of the night.”
“Did you tell Frank?” she asked.
“Of course not!”
She thought this over.
“You’re welcome,” he said finally.
“You’re mad at me.”
“You could have waited, like, two seconds.”
“You weren’t invited.”
“So invite me.” This was, by far, the bravest thing he’d ever said to a girl. And then he immediately chastised himself: She’s not a girl, she’s your cousin.
Not a blood relative, he replied.
Shut up.
“Maybe next time,” Malice said.
“I’m staying over again tonight,” he said, putting half a question mark at the end.
“What? Why?”
He opened his mouth, shut it.
She laughed and raised a hand. “Oh, right. Garage stuff.”
“So tonight?” he asked, thinking: Second bravest girl/cousin statement ever. A new list.
She glanced behind him at the garage. “You won’t tell Frank?”
“I’m insulted you would ask,” he said.
Matty hadn’t counted on the difficulty of escaping the bedroom a second time. It had been so easy last night, but tonight it seemed as if no one would go to sleep. The twins got into a squawking slap fight, which forced Loretta to get up and separate them, and then fifteen minutes later Uncle Frankie clomped to the bathroom and back. Matty listened to all this from the lower bunk, with the covers pulled up to hide the fact that he was fully dressed—just in case someone decided to burst in and check on him.
Malice had told him to be ready by eleven. But at ten till, the twins were awake again in the living room, laughing instead of arguing, but still obstacles. The house was so small that they’d hear him even if he tried to go out through the kitchen. The window, then, was his only option.
He got out of bed and stepped up on the toy box. He pushed the sash as high as he could—which was still not all the way up. He’d need something like Uncle Buddy’s sledgehammer to manage that. Then he removed the screen and set it on the floor.
Are you doing this, Matty?
Yes, I am. And the name is Matt.
He put his head and shoulders through the window. Outside, the street was deserted, and Malice was nowhere in sight. Above the rooftops, the moon was wrapped in a blanket of clouds. He supposed he should be thankful for the extra dark.
His immediate problem was the six-foot drop to the ground, and the jagged artificial lava rocks that Uncle Frankie used as landscaping. The window was too small for him to get his knees through, so he’d have to Spider-Man it, headfirst.
He leaned out through the window, then reached down and pressed his hands to the brick. He dragged his crotch over the sill, bracing himself with his palms, and slowly brought one thigh through, and wedged his knee against the side of the frame. Then he shifted his weight, brought the other leg forward—
“Come on, already,” Malice said.
He pitched forward and crashed into the rocks. In an instant he scrambled upright. Malice had appeared, hands on hips. “I’m good!” he said. “I’m good!”
“Keep your voice down,” she said.
She strode away from him and he hurried to catch up. “So where are we going?” he asked. She didn’t answer. Up ahead, a car idled at the stop sign. A rear door opened and a girl jumped out, waving her hands at them. “Chica chica chica!” the girl said. “Ooh, and her little dog, Matty, too!” Bass throbbed from the open windows.
It was Janelle, the white girl who’d slept over with Malice at Grandpa Teddy’s house the night of his first OBE. He considered correcting her about his name, but then Malice was pushing him into the backseat and the girls were climbing in after him and they were off in a blast of static and piano and a rapper yelling, “Watch your step, kid.”
He decided to not take this as a warning from the stereo gods.
Two black boys sat in the front, bearing the brunt of the noise. The one driving was tall, his hair smashed against the roof. The one in the passenger seat turned to look over the seatback at them.
“Hey there, little dude!” the one in the passenger seat said, half shouting over the music.
Malice introduced them as the Tarantula Brothers, which made both the guys crack up. Matty laughed, too, because he was nervous, and then got angry at himself for being nervous. He then realized that his failure to say hello—or anything at all—had been transformed into an Awkward Silence.
“He just fell out a window,” Malice explained.
They drove across Norridge, or maybe out of it; in the Chicagoland sprawl it was impossible to tell. Malice was looser and happier than he’d ever seen her; she kept falling into Janelle, and the four of them—everyone except Matty—seemed to talk in a language composed entirely of in-jokes, sex slang, and the word “fuck.” He gradually caught on to a few things. The driver’s real name was Robbie and the passenger’s was Lucas; Malice had a crush on Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth; and Robbie was recently grounded by his father (a minister, or maybe a deacon) for listening to the Wu-Tang Clan.
“RZA’s from Pittsburgh,” Matty said, relieved to have something to add to the conversation.
“You listen to Wu-Tang?” Malice asked. He liked the amazement in her voice.
“They’re cool,” Matty said, not answering her question. “RZA lives in Pittsburgh” was a Key Fact at his junior high, and it was the sum total of his knowledge about both the rapper and the group.
Eventually they ended up at a Burger King. Malice and Janelle shared an order of fries and, at one point, a single fry.
“Fuck, ladies,” Lucas said. “Why don’t you just make out for the crowd?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Malice said. “Mike’s here.”
A pickup truck had pulled into the parking lot.
“Why don’t you go see your boyfriend, then?” Lucas said.
Malice held up a fry like a cigarette and said, “I think I shall.” She sashayed across the cement picnic area to the truck. No one had gotten out of the cab.
“Is that really her boyfriend?” Matty asked Robbie, on the theory that a preacher’s son was less threatening.
“Let’s just say they see each other on the regular,” Robbie said.
“Chronically!” Lucas said, and fell out laughing.
Malice stood at the driver’s side of the pickup, leaning into the window, her arms inside it. Then she pulled back and tucked something into the pocket of her shirt. A few more words with the driver, and then she was walking back to them, smiling. “All set,” she said.
The five of them got back into Robbie’s car and pulled out. “Kmart?” Lucas asked.
“No!” Janelle said. “Priscilla’s!”
“Not the fucking swing sets again,” Lucas said. “We’re going to get busted.” But minutes later they were hopping a fence and running across a wide yard to reach a playground in the shadow of a prison-like building: St. Priscilla’s Academy. Janelle and Malice ran for the swings, while the boys sat on the rusty merry-go-round.