Wilson picks up his rope bone and walks over to me, dropping the toy at my feet. He sits, his tail wagging. I kick the rope bone so it slides across the floor, and Wilson bounds happily after it.
I do not want to call my uncle.
I pick my phone back up and scroll through my contacts until I see the number I need. I hesitate, then touch the screen to call.
The phone rings three times, four, and then it’s answered. “Ethan?” my uncle says.
“You have caller ID now?” I say.
“I have a smartphone,” he says.
“Welcome to the twenty-first century.”
There is a pause, and then, not unkindly, Uncle Gavin says, “What do you need, Ethan?”
I take a deep breath and release it in a shuddery exhalation. “I need help,” I say.
“Are you hurt?” he says. “Or under arrest?”
“No,” I say. “It’s Susannah. And I’m in trouble at work.”
He pauses, presumably to take this all in. “Can you come to the bar tomorrow morning?”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
“Nine o’clock,” he says, and hangs up.
THE NEXT MORNING I take a MARTA train down to the Midtown Station, walk over to West Peachtree, and head north. It’s sunny and clear, a typical spring morning in Atlanta. Traffic inches its way along the interstate two blocks to my left. A row of posters on a wall advertises a concert by Balm of Woe at the Tabernacle. It’s a short walk, but part of me illogically wishes it were much longer, that I didn’t need to make this walk at all.
My uncle’s bar appears ahead, on the right, the same paint color and the same signs out front. I turn into the tiny parking lot next to the bar, where there is a side door. The door is ugly and scarred.
It is waiting for me to open it.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In the spring of our senior year in high school, Frankie and I felt invincible. The future stretched before us, an orchard of possibilities—we only had to stretch out our hands and pluck whichever ripe fruit we wanted.
Except Susannah, then in ninth grade, wanted to burn everything down and leave nothing but ash.
One sunny April afternoon, Susannah vanished from PE class. I knew because a couple of ninth graders, awkward with acne and braces, told me in the hallway that Coach Barnes had been pissed. Frankie and I skipped English class to go look for her, because my sister was not the kind of person to go sit alone on the roof of the gym and write bad poetry when she cut class. True to form, we found her behind the baseball field, crouching in a runoff ditch with three punks who were watching my sister suck on a pipe.
I grabbed Susannah’s arm and hauled her to her feet. She squawked, smoke erupting from between her lips, and dropped the pipe.
“Hey!” One of the three punks stood up, his legs unfolding until he stood a head taller than me. Luco was a senior, too, when he bothered to come to school. “Watch out for my shit.” He stooped to pick up the pipe.
I said to Susannah, “Stop acting surprised. You knew I was coming when I was twenty yards away.”
Susannah grinned, hanging from the end of my arm like dead weight. “Why’re you here?” she said, slurring slightly.
“You smoking during school now?” I said to Susannah.
Luco sneered. “You wasn’t too good for it yo’self once.”
Frankie snorted. “Caricatura,” he muttered.
Luco put a hand behind his ear, feigning deafness. “What’s that, Latrino? Can’t hear you, man.” One of the other two snickered.
Frankie raised his voice. “I said you’re a fucking cartoon. Talking like you’re some kind of gangbanger when you just skip school and smoke weed.”
“Get up,” I hissed at Susannah, who was still hanging from my grip. She glared at me as best she could through slitted eyes.
Luco took a step forward, all laughter vanished from his face. Behind him, his two followers got to their feet. One of them held a wooden baseball bat, a heavy crack splitting it down the middle of the barrel.
“Susannah, Goddamn it,” I said.
Luco flexed his fingers like he was trying to remember how to make a fist.
“Ethan,” Frankie said warningly. His voice was mostly steady.
Susannah chose that moment to drop to the ground, boneless, tearing herself out of my grasp. I dropped into a crouch alongside her, my hands scrabbling in the dirt. Luco looked down at me. “The fuck you doin’?” he demanded.
My hand found a rock.
“Improvising,” I said.
I stood, tossing a handful of dust into Luco’s face. Spluttering, he took half a step back, and I used the opening to swing at Luco with the rock in my hand. I hit him in the jaw. Luco howled and clutched his face. I turned just in time to see his friend with the broken baseball bat swing overhead at me like a cheap samurai. I sidestepped, and he stumbled from the follow-through as the bat chopped into the ground and fell from his hands. I was able to kick the bat away before Luco’s second minion jumped me. Frankie and I put up a good fight, but it was three on two, and at the end of it Frankie lay on the ground curled up like he was taking a nap and each of Luco’s pals had me by an arm, my feet dragging on the ground.
Luco stood in front of me, a murderous look on his face. I could see the dark, swelling bruise on Luco’s jaw where I had hit him with the rock. “Hold him up,” he said to his friends. He pointed
