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“Cool, thanks, Genie,” she said, flicking through the channels with the remote.

It was working. I tilted my head to the side, made my eyes all puppy dog, and said, “It’s just, I guess I got upset because I had a few words with Razor at the arcade yesterday, not too long after I’d been at grandma’s and saw what’d happened to the sign, so I wasn’t in the greatest mood when I bumped into him. Then I had a pretty rough time at tryouts and they sent me home early and, bam, he was here when I got back.” Saying it out loud made me realize that Thrash had been right on the money—the timing of it was perfect. “It’s not like I don’t trust you, Neecey,” I went on, “I do. But you see how that could piss me off, right?”

“What do you mean, ‘a few words’?”

“Nothing, the same punk bullshit he tries to lay down on everyone under fourteen. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“But he was alone, right? I mean, Tommy wasn’t with him or anything?”

“Not that I saw,” I said. “But it wasn’t like I was gonna wait around to ask them for their autographs either.”

Neecey snickered. It was funny all right, but not ha-ha funny. She’d completely skipped my mention of the sign, as if she hadn’t heard me, or as if it wasn’t her grandmother, too. Something seemed off, and I was suddenly glad I hadn’t told her more.

“There’s no need to get your panties in a bunch, though,” I said. “I’m not afraid of those chumps.”

“Well, they’re gonna be freshmen in September, and they’re definitely not afraid of you. So just stay away from them.”

“No worries … as long as they stay away from me.” “No joke, Genie, don’t even talk to them, you know how they are.” Neecey took another mouthful of beer, flipped her hair back, and folded her legs beneath her. “Okay,” she sighed. “I mean, since you told me what was bothering you, and because it’s like no big deal anyway, I might as well tell you. Can you keep a secret?” Bingo. We were back on track. I nodded. “You know Razor’s thinking about quitting football?” “Bullshit.” I wasn’t expecting her to say that, and I wasn’t sure I believed it. The kid was too stupid to qualify for wood shop, sure. But why the hell would he quit the
only thing
he was good at? “Seriously,” she insisted, “because of Chuck and Easy.” Chuck Freel was the high-school team’s starting quarterback; he was first-team All-County last year as a junior and looked primed to be All-Universe this year as a senior. Ezekiel “Easy” Hightower was Chuck’s go-to receiver and second-team All-County last year as a sophomore, but everybody knew Easy was the best athlete in town by a mile, which accounted for his nickname—it was how he made everything look on the field, easy—and the fact that he was the second-string quarterback. With Chuck and Easy ahead of him, Razor was looking at holding the clipboard at least this year and maybe next. “So he’s thinking about quitting instead of riding the pine?” Neecey nodded. “He said he doesn’t want to be a jock anymore now that he’s gonna be in high school, but all his friends are jocks and it isn’t gonna be easy on him if he quits.”

What a fucking baby. I didn’t give a shit if Razor led a happy and well-adjusted life, but if I wanted her to keep talking, I had to play along. “Is that why he came over, then?”

“Kind of, yeah. I mean, I don’t know. It’s complicated, Genie. It’s like all fucked up.”

That’s
exactly
what Darren had said yesterday, not about Razor, though, but about the sign. “C’mon, Neecey. How complicated can it be? Why doesn’t he just get some new friends?”

“It’s not that simple, Genie,” Neecey replied. “You of all people should know that.”

“It’s different with me,” I said. “People don’t like me because I scare them, and I don’t like them back because of it. Don’t ask me why, but people seem to like Razor, so it’s different.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she said, “but not everybody in high school likes Razor. He’s kind of a dick and he’s picked on way too many of their little brothers and sisters. Besides, at least a couple people like you. You just need to make more of an effort.”

“Oh, yeah?” The same old crap to boost my self-esteem. “Who likes me?”

“Well, Cynthia likes you, and Darren likes you. He’s always saying what a little wild man you are and that you’d be really cool if you could just chill out some. And he’s like old enough and popular enough that he could make your life total cake, but you don’t ever give him a chance.”

“He only
pretends
to like me because of you, Neecey, and by the way, I don’t need him looking out for me.”

“God,” she sighed, “he just can’t keep that mouth of his shut when he’s high, can he?”

“No, I guess he can’t,” I said, deciding to cast one out there to see if I caught anything. “And if Razor’s anything like Darren, you could find yourself in a fat, hairy mess.”

Neecey slowly raised an eyebrow and said, “What the
hell
are you talking about? They don’t even hang out.”

Actually, I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. It was as if there were two different conversations going on at the same time and I wasn’t up to speed on either one.

“Nothing,” I said, “I was just saying.”

“Well, don’t worry, it doesn’t have anything to do with Darren either.”

It didn’t have anything to do with Darren, it didn’t have anything to do with me, and it didn’t have anything to do with what she either
did or didn’t do with Razor. In fact, it didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything at all, except Neecey wasn’t leveling with me, and that sure as hell didn’t add up. I was at a loss, and if I so much as hinted that Razor had set me up for a clock-cleaning at tryouts, Neecey would flip out and I’d never find out all the things this didn’t have a damn thing to do with.

“I wasn’t saying that, Neecey.” I hit the soft-talk again, hamming it up. “Shit, I don’t know what I was saying. What happened at the home is still sort of weighing on my mind. You know about that, right?”

“Huh? No. What happened?”

Her answer didn’t make sense. “Darren didn’t tell you that the cops came by his house on Sunday morning to ask about the sign at the retirement home getting tagged?”

“No, he must’ve like forgotten or something.” Neecey pinched her fingers to her lips and rolled her eyes. “But it was tagged? For real? Ohmigod, that’s like so lame!”

It wasn’t lame, it was
retarted
, and I was almost positive she already knew it.

“Yeah, grandma was upset and shit, so I had to hear all about it, you know how she is.” I was conning Neecey so well that I was actually getting into it. “Then, like later on, I stopped by the arcade and ran into Darren. I’m surprised he didn’t say anything to you—that’s weird.”

“Why’s it weird?”

“No reason, just you guys see each other practically every day and he has a big mouth and all. Whatever.” I shrugged. It was all so easy; there was nothing I could do to blow it. “And like when I saw Razor with Stacy …” Aw, shit. Except for that.

Neecey cut me off instantly. “Oh, you saw Stacy there, too?” She paused. “She’s the one you have the hots for, right?”

Now,
that
definitely didn’t make any goddamn sense. I’d never told anyone about Stacy—not Thrash, not mom, not
her
, not anybody. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but all of a sudden everything seemed more confused and tangled up than I’d expected. I’d missed
something, I must have, and whatever advantage I’d thought I was playing was gone.

Neecey smiled, a big aha kind of smile. “Oh,
now
I get it.
That’s
what this is about, right? You totally have the hots for Stacy, and because you saw her with Razor, it made you feel all jealous and inadequate and everything, so you’re like taking it out on me because he was here.”

I didn’t dignify that with a response.

“Jesus, Genie. Why didn’t you just say so?” She perked up now, like she knew she had me and couldn’t wait to finish me off. “This one book calls it affirmation, and says that guys need it because they’re totally insecure about how their little squirts stack up. But don’t worry, except for those massive gunions of yours, you’re like normal for your age.”

Just who the fuck was she supposed to be, anyway? My sister? My sex-ed teacher? My goddamn social worker? I honestly couldn’t tell anymore.

“Sure, Razor’s older and bigger and all, but that doesn’t mean his pecker is. You can
so
trust me on that.”

I was prone on the ground, bleeding, and she was twisting the knife. I had one move left. “You never answered my question,” I said.

“What?”

“What did Razor come over for?”

Neecey hesitated, as if considering whether or not it was safe to tell me. Then she said, “Razor came over to like ask me to do something for him, but I wouldn’t, so he left. Got that? Good, because that’s all you’re getting. End of story.”

Yeah, I got it, but it wasn’t all I was getting. And it wasn’t the end of the story; it was only some of it. I dashed out of the living room, into the kitchen, grabbed my backpack, and slammed the back door as hard as I could on the way out. Then I jumped on the Cruiser and set off, so Thrash and I could go somewhere to piece together the rest.

NINE

I rode around for a while, going nowhere in particular
, trying to figure out why Neecey was giving me the runaround and if her doing so had something to do with the case. I guess driving in circles was the best I could do about it. I wasn’t quite sure where to go or what to do, but that pretty much told me what the next move was, because if you didn’t know what to do around here, then there was really only one place to go. I took the back road by the trailer park to the Circle, hopped off the Cruiser when I got there, and went through the chore of walking it halfway around. Then I jumped back on, off-roaded through about twenty-five yards of landscaping, and pedaled the whole of the mall’s perimeter, casing the sidewalks slowly as I went, keeping my eyes peeled for the signs of a red Puch. If another ambush was heading my way, I wouldn’t mind knowing in advance. I didn’t see anything, though, so I locked the Cruiser to the bike rack by Abraham and Straus, which had an overhang in case of rain. Then Thrash and I went in.

I snaked through ladies’ fashions, conquered the urge to examine the skimpy lingerie in the underwear department, and then held my
breath like a magician in a water-torture chamber as I raced by the perfume counter and out into the mall. All together I had two floors and a mezzanine to cover, “more than seventy stores,” if you believed the directory in the main hall—all of it faux-marble floors, sparkling display windows, and a continuous loop of Muzak that wouldn’t have annoyed you at all if you were either deaf or dead.

I took the escalator to the bottom floor and passed by Osh Kosh, Kay-Bee’s, and a pottery store on my way to Giorgio’s, an Italian restaurant with full-service dining in the back and a pizza counter in front. I avoided eating there whenever I could, because their dough tasted like it was special-ordered from a Styrofoam factory in China. But lots of other kids couldn’t get enough of the stuff and were always clustered around. And that’s what I was after—a few stoolies to lean on, a couple leads to work over. At any rate, it wouldn’t hurt to try. I wasn’t quite sure who I was looking for or how I’d approach them, but on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon in the summer, chances were I’d have my pick of opportunities.

I rolled up to Giorgio’s and saw the waiters inside crowded around a table in the back, stuffing their faces in the lull between the lunch and dinner rushes. All it did was remind me that I hadn’t eaten lunch. There were a few skinny kids dressed in oversized shorts and T-shirts loafing around the front, but they were only fourth-grade video-game addicts, jonesing for a quick pizza fix before their next half-day session of Dragon’s Lair. I already knew they couldn’t tell me squat, except how to save the maiden or how many quarters they’d swiped from their parents today, so I didn’t waste my time.

I kept going, past the Gap, Spencer’s, and Chess King, until I reached the fountain near the escalator bank at the center. The fountain—a two-foot-deep concrete pool with a statue of a fat, naked baby spitting water into it—was situated between the escalators, had a clear view of who was coming and going in all directions, and served as the mall’s unofficial meet-up point. In other words, it
drew kids like flies and sucked up loose change. It wasn’t doing much of either right now, though, because there were two teenaged couples sitting on the fountain’s edge, grabbing and pulling and purring at each other and mashing their mouths together and grossing everyone else out so they all stayed away.

Thrash and I took a seat on the opposite edge of the fountain, our backs turned to the French-kissing four. With all their slurping and the fountain’s gurgling in the background, I started to realize how difficult the case actually was. It was only graffiti, sure, but with no eyewitnesses, no hard forensic trail, I’d either have to catch the perpetrators in the act (too late for that), get someone to rat, force the culprits to confess, or I might never smoke them out. And even if I somehow got lucky enough to discover who they were, a single rubber bracelet didn’t seem like enough evidence to make the charges stick. Worse still, the sources I’d questioned so far were obviously hostile, so the information I’d gotten from them wasn’t totally certain. I had no leads, a few vague hunches, and no one to grill. It was enough to stump anyone.