Joey knew he looked young. He couldn’t help that. He got his slim, dark looks from his dad, who’d looked like a kid well into his twenties. Dressed in torn stonewashed jeans that his mom would have so totally freaked over and a red muscle tank top under an unbuttoned chambray shirt, he figured he looked a lot older. If his mustache or beard would ever come in heavier, that would help.
Until then, he had the fake ID that David Wilson, one of the other base teens, had made for him. Living on base wasn’t all bad, David would say, because some of the best computer equipment going was there and easy to access. Fake IDs were only part of the services the clever fourteen-year-old provided—for a fee. Joey’s ID had cost some cash and some baseball cards that he had collected with Goose. That had been back before Chris was born, back when Goose still had time for him.
“He comes from over at the base,” Leonard said. “You know how the Army guys make their kids dress.”
“Not all of them go for the conservative look,” Ace argued.
Leonard gestured with his beer. “Your dad a career guy?”
“Yeah.” Joey didn’t bother to mention that Goose was his stepdad. And he was surprised that Leonard had pegged him as a military brat so quickly. Joey had thought he was disguised. “Almost twenty years.” Or more. Joey couldn’t quite remember. He just knew that with Goose the time seemed like forever. He couldn’t imagine Goose being anything but a soldier, although Grandpa Gander told stories from time to time about Goose as a kid.
According to those stories, Goose had always been a Goody Two- shoes, which gave Joey and him less to talk about now that Joey was deep into his teen years and wanted more out of life than Goose evidently had. Goose had worked with his father as a carpenter in Waycross, hunted and fished the swamp, and signed with the army almost right out of high school.
“Officer?” Leonard asked.
“Non-com,” Joey answered. “First Sergeant.” He was surprised at how he said it and at the pride he felt. He hoped Leonard didn’t notice because that was pure geek.
The bartender pulled a beer up, opened the bottle, and slid it across the bar while taking the folded money Joey had placed on the counter.
“Tough guy?” Leonard turned and placed his back to the bar, hooking his elbows over the edge.
“Goose? He’s one of the toughest.” Joey sipped his beer. The taste was awful and he worked hard not to grimace because Ace was still watching him suspiciously. He’d only tasted beer a handful of times. None of those times had been pleasant and he really didn’t see why people bothered to acquire the taste. But they did, and if he wanted to be cool and fit in with the crowd Jenny hung with, he knew he’d have to acquire that taste, too.
“So where did you meet Jenny?” Leonard took out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. He blew blue smoke into the air and a purple laser light shot through the cloud for just a moment.
Joey glanced over his shoulder and felt another wave of anger. There was so much of it in him that it worried him sometimes. It worried his family, too. That was one of the reasons his mom had first started making him go to church. She was a counselor, and yet she was too close to this problem to completely solve it. So she’d dumped the problem into God’s lap. Terrific solution. Maybe church had helped her as a kid, but it wasn’t working for him. He felt picked on by life, by his real dad, by the fact that he and his mom had to survive on so little, not get to do so many things, and by Goose going away so much. He just felt abandoned.
His mom had hoped that church would help him get over those feelings. She talked to him about faith, but so much of what she said had come across like counseling stuff. He didn’t have faith, and he knew it. Everyone had abandoned him, and God had never showed up in his life.
When things had finally started to get better, after Goose married his mom, Chris—“one of God’s most precious gifts”—showed up and took everything away from him again. Even Bill’s kind words and well-meaning approach to the situation didn’t put a different spin on things. And Bill was one of the most insightful adults Joey had ever met.
The harsh thing about having a little brother dropped into his life was that Joey couldn’t hate Chris. He’d wanted to, but his little brother was so cool and loving and looked up to him so much while Goose wasn’t around that Joey knew he could never really hate his little brother. Still, there were moments that resentment crept in between them. But the love was real, maybe the realest thing Joey had ever felt, because Chris didn’t seem to expect anything back.
In fact, thinking about Chris now, Joey felt guilty that he wasn’t home to make sure his little brother was tucked in. That was one of the things that Goose had asked him to do.
But there’d been this date tonight with Jenny.
He watched her up on the stage. Some date. He didn’t know how he was going to handle the present situation.
“I met Jenny at work,” Joey replied, answering Leonard’s question.
“Wick Dreams?”
Joey shook his head. “Kettle O’ Fish. It’s a restaurant. We’re both servers.”
Leonard drained a third of his beer. “Last I heard, Jenny was working at the candle place in the mall.”
Joey shrugged. He didn’t know about that. In fact, it seemed like there were a lot of things he didn’t know about Jenny. “I met her at Kettle O’ Fish. We worked a few shifts together, then she told me about this place and asked me out.” He felt pretty good about that.
