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The captain sits there grinning. “Come here, Ceejay,” he says. “I’ll teach you how to fly.”

“That’s all right,” I tell him. “Maybe later.”

He cocks his head to the side. “Okay, but you have to learn sometime.”

Of course, Ian is more than ready to take flying lessons, so the captain gathers him up and runs around the room making his engine-sputter sound.

“Goddamn,” Tillman says to Dani. “You’re gonna let Captain Crazoid play with your kid?”

“He’s harmless,” she says, but from the look in her eyes, I’m not sure she one hundred percent believes it.

“You know what?” says Bobby. “When the captain gets the Yimmies, there isn’t anyone better to have around a kid. He’s like a whole bookful of fairy tales come to life.”

Tillman ignores that. “What happened with Jace?” he asks Dani. “I thought you guys were doing pretty good together.”

Most people wouldn’t ask a question like that right in front of a girl’s new boyfriend, but Tillman never was too great with manners.

Dani scrunches up her nose as if he just let off a stink bomb. “Jace wasn’t going anywhere,” she says. “He had a bunch of talk, but it wasn’t anything but noise.”

“Yeah,” Tillman says, “well, how about you, Bobby? You got a job lined up?”

“I’m not in any hurry,” Bobby says. “I have some money saved. Besides, what am I going to do, skulk around Wal-Mart wearing an apron? Give me a break.”

I mention that Uncle Jimmy has a lot of work lined up this summer and could probably use another hand, but Bobby just takes a pull on his beer and says, “Yeah? I’ll think about it.”

The captain stops in the middle of the room, little Ian still tucked under his arm. “Me and Bobby already have some work to do this summer, don’t we, Bobby?”

“That’s right,” Bobby agrees. “We have the aero-velocipede to finish.”

“And miles to fly when it’s done,” says the captain, the light in his eyes dancing.

This is scary to me. I’d hate to see Bobby pouring his savings into the captain’s stupid aero-velocipede, but worse, I’d hate to see him try to fly it.

Tillman isn’t exactly impressed with that project either.
He looks at his sister and shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, Dani. Jace was doing pretty good selling weed, and then he had the part-time tow-truck deal on top of that.”

“Yeah,” she says, “like selling weed is a real great occupation.”

“Well,” Tillman says, “you sure don’t mind smoking it.”

Bobby’s not even paying attention to any of this. Instead, he makes funny faces at Ian while the captain holds the boy up by the armpits.

Tillman goes on, “And Jace never brought any escapees from the nuthouse over either. He had fun parties with cool people.”

“Right,” Dani says. “Cool jailbirds and meth freaks.”

“Wait a minute,” says Brianna. “If, by jailbirds, you’re talking about Randy Pilcher, he’s a good guy. You can’t condemn someone because they went to jail once.”

Randy Pilcher is the smoosh-faced knucklehead that Brianna’s been fooling herself into thinking she has a crush on. He’s been calling her, but they only went out once since she met him at the party. He took her to the sprint-car races and then back to his place, which is a garage apartment behind his mother’s house.

“Randy’s a fun guy,” says Tillman. “He’s got some good stories.”

But Dani’s like, “You hang around with him then. I don’t want anything to do with that crowd. They don’t respect me anyway.”

“Maybe that’s not their fault,” Tillman says.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Think about it,” Tillman says, glancing at his watch. It’s weird—I’ve noticed him checking his watch several times now.

“You got somewhere to go?” I ask him. “You keep looking at your watch.”

“I’m just bored,” he says, but a couple minutes later, he checks it again, and just after that, I hear the sound of a car pulling up the gravel drive. Tillman smiles, but it’s not a happy kind of smile.

Car doors slam and then a drunken voice hollers, “Hey, soldier boy, I want to have a word with you out here.”

It’s Jace.

“Oh gawd,” says Dani.

I’m like, “What’s going on?” and Tillman says, “Who knows?” but from his expression, you can tell he does know something.

“Soldier boy,” Jace yells again. “Come on out!”

A weary look crosses Bobby’s face. “I guess that’s your ex, huh?” he asks Dani.

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” she says. “He’s too scared to actually come in here.”

Jace is persistent, though. “Unless you want your motorcycle busted up and scattered around the yard, you better get your ass out here.”

I’m like, God, this is just the kind of thing I was afraid of.

“Looks like I better go on out,” Bobby says, rising slowly from the couch. “He’s just gonna keep annoying us if I don’t.”

“He’ll go away,” says Dani, but Bobby’s like, “No, he won’t. The only way to keep a guy like that away is to give him one good ass-kicking.”

There’s nothing to do but follow him outside. Dani even brings Ian with her. We stand in a line in front of the trailer. On the far side of the big front yard, Jace stands with three of his buddies, including smoosh-face Randy Pilcher. Jace holds a baseball bat in his right hand.

“You got a problem?” Bobby says. His fists are balled at his sides, ready to go.

“Yeah,” says Jace. “I got a problem with a military reject snaking my girl out from under me.”

Bobby’s like, “You can’t keep your girlfriend, that’s your fault. But if you got the idea you want to use that bat on somebody, here I am.”

“I don’t know,” Jace says. “That’s quite an army you got there with you. You even got a spaz and a two-year-old on your side. We’re quaking and shaking.”

“Yeah, well, we outnumber you,” I holler at him. Then, looking down our lineup, I’m like, “Isn’t that right?”

Tillman’s the first to take a step back. “Hey, this isn’t my fight,” he says.

I look Gillis in the eyes, but he’s like, “I don’t know, Ceejay.”

The captain scratches his beard, then breaks ranks and trots to his truck. I can’t say I’m shocked at that.

“Whoa,” calls Jace. “Looks like your army’s deserting you.”

“Come on, Brianna,” yells smoosh-face Randy. “You know you’re on my side, girl.”

Brianna stares at the ground.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “Me and Bobby’ll handle this ourselves,” but Bobby goes, “No, we won’t, Ceejay. This is my fight. You stay out of it.”

“You know me better than that,” I tell him.

Jace smacks the barrel of the bat against his palm. “Well now, let’s get it on.”

Brianna’s still staring at the ground. Tillman leans back against the wall of the trailer, his arms crossed. Gillis stares at me, a confused leprechaun. The captain fires up the engine of his pickup, and Dani stands on the porch with Ian clutched
against her. The thought hits me that this is how you know who people really are.

“Why don’t you put down that bat,” Bobby says.

Jace snickers. “Because I don’t want to.”

“You’re gonna wish you did,” Bobby says, and as soon as the
did
drops out of his mouth, he takes off running across the yard. A few feet in front of Jace, he pulls up and slings back his right fist like he’s ready to throw a titanic punch. Jace takes a batter’s stance, but just as he swings, Bobby does what I’ve seen him do before. He ducks his head and flies shoulder first into Jace’s waist as the bat whooshes around clipping nothing but air.

As soon as they both hit the dirt—Bobby on top—Jace’s buddies run to help, and I make my own charge. I’m almost there when I realize Gillis is right at my shoulder. We pull smoosh-face Randy off the pile, but there’s still this guy Dean on Bobby’s back, and this fat tub of crap named Steve is trying to kick Bobby from the side.

Randy hops up, ready to dive back into the fray, but he has something else to deal with instead—the big, old lime-green crazymobile is heading straight at him, the captain inside screaming with pure Yimmy glee.

Randy tries to dodge behind Jace’s car, but it’s too late—the captain’s barreling down on him. At the last second, Randy has to jump as high as he can so he goes rolling off the hood instead of taking the grille up his butt.

From there, the whole thing is hilarious. Gillis and I gang up on Steve, and as soon as we toss him aside, the captain zooms in. Now he has Steve and Randy both on the run. All we have to do is rip Dean off Bobby’s back and keep him off, which isn’t too hard, because all of a sudden Brianna’s mixing it up with us. She must have gone inside to get a weapon, but all she found was a flyswatter, and she’s chasing Dean around,
swatting him like crazy on the back of the head as me and Gillis get our punches and kicks in.

That Brianna. She’s my girl. One hundred percent.

This is better than playing paintball in the woods. We could keep at it for a week, but finally, we chase all three of Jace’s buddies up on top of his car, the crazymobile growling like a junkyard dog beneath them.

“Keep that crazy asshole’s truck away from us,” smoosh-face Randy hollers desperately.

The answer to that is three gunshots. It’s Dani. She’s holding a pistol in the air with one hand while clutching Ian against her chest with the other. She has this conceited expression on her face like she’s the queen of everything she sees. I’ll bet a million dollars she got the idea to fire off the gun from some TV show and has been waiting years for just the right moment to use it.

“Now everybody who came with Jace, get the hell out of here,” she shouts, her voice hard and triumphant. “And you might as well go with them, Tillman.”

He shrugs. “I was just staying neutral,” he says. “It’s not my fault everyone went wild.”

“Yeah, right,” she says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t set the whole thing up.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” I say. “That’s why you were checking your watch. You told those guys Bobby was going to be here.”

Before he can answer, Randy cries out from behind me, “Good God, look what that bastard did!”

I turn around and see Bobby, the baseball bat in his hand, walking away from where Jace lies splayed out like so much trash dumped in the yard. In all the excitement, nobody bothered to keep tabs on what was going on in their pile.

Randy jumps down from the car roof to get a better look. “You practically killed him, you son of a bitch. I mean, look at his face, what’s left of it.”

Jace lies still on the ground. His face looks like it got caught under a lawnmower.

“He wanted to know what war’s like,” Bobby says without bothering to turn around. “Well, there you go.”

Randy stares at Dani as if he’s begging her to do something, but she just goes, “You better scrape him up and take him to the emergency room.” Then she kisses Ian on the forehead and walks into the trailer with Bobby.

As Jace’s buddies gather him up, Tillman comes over and stops right in front of me. “I hope you’re real proud of your brother now,” he says. He doesn’t wait for me to answer. He just turns and walks over to the enemy side.

I want to yell something at him, but what would I yell? I loved you, you traitor? I’ve spent my life daydreaming about you? I wanted you like I never wanted anything else?

No. There’s nothing to say.

Turns out Jace wasn’t killed. His buddies didn’t even take him to the emergency room, though they probably should have. He had so many different kinds of drugs in him he was afraid the hospital would call the cops, and they’d arrest him right there in his little backless hospital gown. It didn’t take much convincing. The other guys were pretty wasted themselves, and they didn’t want to get busted either. A couple days later Jace did go in to have his broken nose ratcheted back into place.

All this I hear about from Gillis. Tillman told him about it. Gillis still talks to Tillman, but you better believe I don’t. Who needs him? I found out who my true friends are. When it came right down to it, Gillis was clutch. He didn’t leave me hanging. And I can’t say enough about Brianna and her flyswatter. She’s my girl right down to the ground. Not only because she defied
smoosh-face Randy, but because I know how scared that girl gets. And she took my back anyway.

Then there’s the captain. I never in a million years would have expected it, but he really came through in that lime-green truck. Who knows how the battle might have turned out if he hadn’t come chugging along. He and Bobby don’t think the fight was as funny as I do, though. Bobby says fighting isn’t a laughing matter, and the captain says something about how the Nogo Gatu come cloaked in violence. That’s all right. I have to give the captain a break for that nonsense after the battle at Dani’s trailer.

I’m still not convinced his aero-velocipede is a good idea, though. Actually, it worries the crap out of me, but Bobby’s got it in his mind he wants to help fix the thing up and fly it. He won’t listen to anything I have to say about how dangerous it is, so the next best thing I can do is to make sure I’m there anytime he goes to the captain’s to work on it. Besides, I figure it won’t take too long for him to get sick of Dani’s drama, and I’ll be around when he does.

Of course, the parents aren’t exactly happy about me hanging out at the captain’s, but as far as I’m concerned that’s pretty hypocritical. After all, they’ve always stuck up for the captain, told me and Lacy and Drew we shouldn’t make fun of him. I’ve even caught Dad standing around on the street corner outside the drugstore gabbing with the captain like they’re old high school buddies. But somehow it’s supposed to be different for me to hang around Casa Crazy in the evenings. Dad doesn’t order me to stay away, though. He knows I’m with Bobby, and right now, I’m the only connection the family has to him.

They do come up with another way to keep me from going there, though, at least for a little while. Actually, I knew it had to happen sooner or later—the family trip to Davenport to visit
Grandma Brinker. Mom has been going over there every weekend, and Lacy’s been there practically the whole summer, but this will be the first time the rest of us have visited since she got diagnosed. It’s going to be awkward, to say the least.