You

pleasure meeting you, Mr. Kyle Chase. Let’s do this again sometime.”

The security guard is at your table before you can say anything worth saying. An F-bomb with her walking up would get you a quick six days’ detention. You say nothing and close the magazine, wondering what you’re in trouble for now.

“There you are,” she says in that I’m-so-tough voice she uses, but she’s not talking to you. “Who told you you could leave like that?”

Zack keeps his smile. “Let him that would move the world first move himself.”

You both look at him.

“Socrates? Father of philosophy?” Zack pauses encouragingly, but neither you nor the security guard says a word. He sighs. “This is going to be a long year.”

“Let’s go,” the security guard says, snapping her fingers and reaching for her walkie-talkie as they start back across the library. “This is Unit Two-found our new kid.”

Over the static squawk and hiss of the main office’s reply, you hear Zack ask if she hates her parents for naming her Unit.

“So she goes, ‘Do you have a resume?’ and I hand her the folder and she opens it up and reads for like a minute and says something like ‘You don’t have a lot of job experience, do you?’ and I’m thinking, duh, I’m fifteen years old…”

Ashley stayed after school for math help again. You stayed after because Ashley was staying after, but you didn’t go for math help like you were supposed to, you just hung out, waiting for her. Not that she knew, but you did. It’s cold outside, so you’re standing in the alcove by the side door. There’s no wind here and what little sun there is slants in and warms the red bricks of the walls. She’s got on a winter coat and she looks like a little snow bunny. Cute and sexy at the same time, if that’s even possible. You, of course, are freezing your ass off, your black hoodie no match for the mid-November weather.

“The first thing she asks me is if I know Cici DiGenarro, and I want to say ‘Cici? Yeah, I know Cici, she’s a little lying brat who tries to steal her friends’ jobs,’ but I just smile and I say that I know her from school…”

You recall something about a job interview at the mall-a shoe store?-and you think you recall something about Ashley’s best friend, Cici, going for the same job, but you’re not a hundred percent sure, so you keep your mouth shut and nod along. Part of you wants to steer the conversation around to this Eric guy, find out who he is, how she knows him. Part of you never wants to hear his name again. And another part of you, a part you hope isn’t so obvious when she leans into you to stay warm, doesn’t listen to you anyway.

“So she gets to the education part and she’s like, ‘Oooh, honor roll. Impressive,’ and I can’t tell if she’s serious or just screwing with me, ya know?”

Screwing with me.

Damn.

You can picture it. Easy. Hell, you picture it all the time. And even right now, your nuts frozen solid, thinking about it makes you sweat.

“Then she sees I played softball last year and she starts telling me about this team she’s on, all women in their twenties like her, as if I care, but I keep nodding and smile and I ask her what position she plays…”

Did she say honor roll?

“For the references I put down this lady I used to babysit for, and Reverend Keyes from my church. Think I should have asked them first if it was okay?”

You shrug and say no. Softball?

“So she tells me about the job, like how I’d have to learn to do piercings and if I got sick when I saw blood…”

How much do you know about her? You think about her all the time and you can imagine what it’d be like to be with her, what it would feel like, what her hair would smell like, the things she’d say, the things she’d do. But you just found out she’s on the honor roll. True, it’s only Midlands, but still. And she plays sports. Nobody you hang with plays sports.

“And they only do ear piercings, which is cool cuz I don’t want to be touching some guy’s slimy tongue…”

You want to know more about her. You want to know what she thinks, what she dreams about, what she wants to do when she gets out of school, what her favorite bands are, which Saw movie she thought was best, which classes she hates, the kind of things she likes to do, you know, sexwise.

“…a second interview Wednesday after school, so I’m like, sure, but come on, it’s just poking holes in earlobes…”

You think about getting to know her, the hours you’ll spend on the phone, texting all night, hanging out on the weekends or after school like now. You don’t mind just talking. That’ll lead to other stuff, sure, but talking, yeah, that’s okay. With her it’d be different. You could tell her what you really felt and not be afraid she’d laugh, even if you weren’t sure what you felt. But she’d help you figure it out, and you’d help her, too, it would be-

“Well,” she says as she punches your chest, “I said, do you think I should?”

You don’t have a clue what she’s talking about. You take a deep breath. “It depends,” you say after a long, thoughtful-looking pause. “Is that what you really want?”

It’s the kind of question your mother throws at you all the time, the kind that’s supposed to keep you talking but that you always answer with the same shrug.

She looks up at you and smiles. “You’re right. I don’t know. I really don’t know, you know?”

You still don’t know, but you smile and you give her a quick hug, and she starts talking again, but you’re busy thinking about how cool it would be to really get to know her.

“I’m done yelling at you, Kyle. I’m done hounding you about things you should do. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m done.”

It’s your mom, and you understand what she’s saying. You understood her the first time she said it, two years ago, and you understood her every time she said it since. And, like all the other times, you really wish she meant it.

Life would be so much easier if they just left you alone, let you do what you wanted. You wouldn’t cause them any grief, you’d take care of yourself and make your own food and get yourself where you needed to go. But no, she doesn’t mean it and even as she’s telling you that she’s done lecturing at you about how you need to grow up and learn to be responsible, she’s circling around and lecturing at you about how you need to grow up and learn to be responsible.

“You’re going to be sixteen soon, Kyle. Sixteen. Do you know what that means?”

What does it mean? You can get a job, but you could’ve done that at fifteen with a waiver on your working permit. You could get your driver’s license, but your father has made it clear that you can’t even get your permit until you get a job and have five hundred bucks in the bank to cover the jump in his insurance premium. You can’t vote until you’re eighteen, not that you care, and you can’t buy beer until you’re twenty-one, something you’re beginning to care more and more about. And you have to be seventeen to legally drop out of school. You’re not going to, but it’s nice to know you have options. You remember reading somewhere that in some state in the South you can get married at sixteen without your parents’ permission, so there’s always that.

“I never see you hanging around with Rick or Dan anymore. You were friends for years. You should give them a call.”

So they can tell you all about how wonderful it is at Odyssey? So they can ask you questions about Midlands and then glance at each other with that look while you’re answering, like you’re confirming all the things they heard about the dump? So they can tell you how they’re going into AP classes next year? So you can sit around and talk about the good old days, back before you were a loser? So you can feel even worse about yourself?

“Or that pretty black girl. You know. What was her name?”

Denica. You met her in sixth grade. Back then she used to catch a special bus to the high school every day just to take eleventh-grade math. She was smart and had this funny laugh and she always smelled like cocoa butter. She was the first girl you ever kissed and you remember that she wore bubblegum-flavored lip gloss. Your mom always calls her That Pretty Black Girl, as if that’s all that mattered about her.