“You wanted to meet me?” I asked. I sat in the booth across from him. The jazz music that played from the diner’s tinny speakers and the hustle and bustle of waitresses and hungry patrons made this a good place to have this kind of a conversation.
Toby sniffed loudly and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He was wearing the same green long-sleeve from yesterday. “Sorry I vanished yesterday, dude. Family stuff. But listen, we need to do more deals. Business is booming.” He was talking fast, slurping coffee after every other sentence.
I nodded and signaled for a waitress, ordered him a plate of eggs and bacon. Now was as good a time as any. “Listen, Tobe, about that—”
“My cousins are putting mad pressure on me, man. I have to sell my share by the end of the month or I’m out of the business. I cannot be out of the business.” He tapped the table with his finger so I hard I thought he might bruise it. “So I need your help. No more Max at the drop-off spots. He’s a liability. Connor could probably handle the look-out position better, anyway. D’Angelo likes him, said that he’d fit in well with—”
“No,” I said.
He frowned at me, slowing down for the first time in that whole conversation to take a full breath. “No, what?”
“No, Connor,” I said. “And I’m out too. I can’t do these deals anymore, Tobe. I just can’t.”
Toby started nodding and flexing his fingers, staring out the window. When his eggs and bacon arrived, he didn’t touch them.
“More coffee,” he told the waitress, not even bothering to look at her.
I put on my hand on his wrist. “You’ve had enough, dude.”
“Don’t tell me when I’ve had enough, Jack!” he snapped. He said it loudly enough for the whole restaurant to turn around and stare at us.
I lowered my voice. “You’re tweaking, bro. How much blow did you do last night, anyway? That shit’s not good for you. Look, we’ve had this conversation before. I know it’s your family and your business and all, but I can’t risk doing this anymore. I’m out, okay?”
Toby stared at his eggs. “Give me a reason.”
“I don’t need a reason, Toby. I said no.”
“Give me a good reason. You’re not going to college. Your parents are deadbeats. You have no other job prospects when school’s over. You get free weed and discounted blow. So give me one good reason why you’re ditching me here.”
If anyone else said this to me, I’d deck them, knock them out cold. But Toby was different. I knew where he was coming from, why he was the way he was. And he knew me pretty well, better than any friend besides Jess ever had. So I didn’t even think of getting mad.
Until he said what he said.
“I know why. It’s because you’re a pussy.”
The word snapped a rubber band inside of me. “What did you say?”
He leaned in closer across the table, sniffling loudly. “You’re a little pussy, Jack, and that’s why you’re shit scared of—”
But before he could finish, I reached across the table and yanked him by the shirt collar, pulling him close to me. Plates and dishes clanked and rattled. I could feel the entire restaurant’s attention pinned to us. Toby’s sour coffee breath was in my face. The jazz music had stopped.
“Don’t. Ever. Call. Me. That. Again,” I said. “I’m out. You understand, Toby?”
He just nodded, staring at me like he was seeing me for the first time. I’d never spoken to him like that before.
I let him go, and he fell back against the headboard. I dashed out of the restaurant, the sun hitting me full in the face, my hands shaking so badly I could barely hold the handlebars as I biked home. The anger pumped through my blood as I pedaled, harder and harder until my legs felt like they might give out.
Something inside of me was stirring, awakening. I needed to smoke so bad. I needed to crawl into a hole and scream.
It hadn’t always been like this between us. There was a time when we were younger and dumber and the world wasn’t as scary and his parents were still alive, back when his house was warm and bright and sounded like their laughter and smelled like their cooking. Real cooking, no diesel fumes and cocaine. Toby and I would stay up late into the night playing video games, making forts out of sheets in his room and going on exploratory missions in his basement, sieving through boxes and cartons and layers of Miller family secrets coated in dust.
We were thirteen when Toby’s parents were hit by a drunk driver, slamming into them at nearly 100 mph while they were merging off the freeway. They were only a mile away from their house, and just a few more from where they both worked. They died almost instantly in the crash. The driver suffered severe head trauma, went into a coma or something.
Toby stopped speaking for a month. Just went completely mute. Then a few of his cousins moved in, D’Angelo and Toby’s other uncle, the one who never told us his name, and they were around all the time.
Toby only started speaking again because of me. I’d tried for weeks to get him to say something. I’d tried to lure him in by writing him funny poems or drawing cartoons of the two of us committing mild acts of mayhem. I’d tried biking to his house every morning to take the bus with him to school. He kept his face stoic and wore sunglasses a lot, even indoors. The teachers let him get away with it because he was a poor orphan boy.
Then one evening, when the crickets were out and playing a dusk-time lullaby, Toby wrote me a note and put it in my mailbox—writing notes was the
