Archive of Our Own

Bill and Jeff skidded to a halt behind a red Mustang, the dirt and gravel of the unfinished parking lot kicking up a cloud of dust in the night wind. The bar door slammed and sent the little bell jingling as five angry sets of stomping footsteps approached.

“I told you you shouldn’t fucking stiff those guys,” Jeff hissed.

“Shut up, Izzy,” Bill whisper-hissed right back. “They’re gonna—”

“Hey!” A face popped over the hood of the Mustang and spotted them with furious green eyes. “Sons of bitches are over here!”

Before another curse could be uttered, Bill had leapt to his feet and was hauling ass at track-star speed through the parking lot, weaving crazily between cars as fast as he possibly could to keep the guys off of them. One of the meatheads tried cutting them off, but Bill took a running leap and yanked Jeff over the hood of a little Chevrolet Stingray, nearly catching his foot on the side mirror.

“Run run run run run,” Jeff chanted, as if both of them weren’t already breathing like horses.

“I’m fucking running!” Bill yelled back at him, and the men chasing them howled with laughter. Finally, the two boys made it to the edge of the parking lot and dove into the brush, crashing through it with wild leaps and bounds, like teenage gazelles running from the hunt.

“Hey, we’ll lose ‘em in there,” hollered one of the men. From his voice, Bill could’ve guessed it was Mallow. His speech was slurred to high hell and back, and he was breathing harder than any of the others.

“No we won’t. The little rats have gotta come out on the street side sometime.” They could practically hear the grin in Green Eyes’ voice. “Can’t spend the whole night in there. Come on, boys, let’s split up.”

“Great!” Jeff exclaimed as Bill finally ran out of breath and slowed to a jog, then to a walk, then to a halt. The brown-haired boy wrenched his hand from his friend’s grasp and glared at him. “Just great. Great, great, great. I’m gonna get killed because you couldn’t turn down a poker game you didn’t want to lose.”

Bill rolled his eyes and stuck his hand in his jeans pocket, fishing around for the source of their misery. He pulled out their winnings in one big fistful—seven hundred and twenty-five dollars. “You’re gonna tell me it wasn’t worth this? A potential guitar? You think I don’t know how long you’ve been staring all googly-eyed at that Les Paul?”

“Well, I can’t play a guitar if I’m dead, now can I!” shouted Jeff, a little too loudly, and suddenly an ear-shattering crack echoed about the woods.

“Holy shit, get down!” Before he could even stand a chance of hearing his message, Bill shoved his friend into the dirt of the thick brush so hard his chin bounced off the ground. “They’re shooting! The maniacs are shooting!”

“Oh my God, we are so dead,” Jeff mourned, face pressed against the forest floor, looking at the green paper crumpled in Bill’s sweaty palms and hating it, hating that they’d even come here so late in the night, hating every moment he wasn’t at home where he belonged in his sweet, warm bed… footsteps approached from at least two directions, and another shot rang out, making him jump and squeeze his eyes shut, praying to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in, but thought might be helpful at least once in a man’s short, short life.

-

Seventeen hours ago, they’d been watching Bill’s neighbor get dressed.

“Whoa,” Jeff said.

“Yeah.” Bill grinned.

The feminine figure in the room bent over to retrieve a skirt that had fallen off of its resting place on the bedspread, and both Bill and Jeff gave a low whistle at the same time, staring with eyes as big as moons at, well, her moon. Her (h/c) hair fell back over her shoulders as she stood upright once more, stepping into her skirt, pulling the satin pink fabric up and over her thighs and hips and fixing it at her waistline. Once finished, she turned to face the mirror on the right side of the room and buttoned up her ivory-colored blouse, leaving enough room at the top for a modest peep of collarbone, though both boys at the window had already seen what lay beneath. And God, was she ever something. Even fully dressed, she was as beautiful as a porcelain doll in a dainty little toy shop.

“Whoa,” Jeff said again, feeling his face burn red with a mixture of shame, guilt, and a little bit of that old sentiment ‘more, please’.

“I’m saying.” Bill murmured appreciatively. “It’s like she doesn’t even know who she lives next to. She’s freaky, I’m telling you. Got some pretty wild stuff in that closet.”

“How freaky?” A porcelain doll in an adult toy shop, Jeff thought, and then blushed more.

“Dude. Look at her headboard.”

Jeff craned his neck just past where she was sitting at her dressing table, putting the final touches on her 9-to-5 makeup for the day; a wisp of mascara and a pat of foundation—and attached to the dark walnut frame of her bed was a pair of gleaming silver handcuffs. The breath wheezed out of his lungs and he gasped it right back in when he caught sight of them. As he was busy entertaining the thoughts flying wildly around his head, she stood from her dressing table, slipped on a pair of (f/c) high heels, and then left the room, ever unaware of her audience.

“No way.” The strawberry-faced teen whispered, afraid he’d choke on his own words. “No way. No fucking way.”

Bill just nodded, slowly, satisfied with his friend’s amazement. “And they’re not for her, either.”

At this, Jeff turned and punched Bill’s shoulder one, two, three times. “What is the matter with you? How many times have you freakin’ spied on this chick? Do you ever close the shades?”

Bill laughed. “Would you? C’mon, let’s go see her before she goes off to work.”

“See her? What more could we possibly see?” Jeff blustered, watching as Bill got up from his cozy little chair-perch at the window and reached the staircase in two long bounds.

“Just c’mon. She doesn’t bite. Unless you ask for it.” Bill wiggled his eyebrows, and though Jeff certainly could have hidden under the windowsill and waited for the pink flush on his goddam cheeks to go away, he groaned and followed his friend down the stairs anyway. Bill was already out the door, on the front porch, leaning over the splintering railing to talk to her as she put her things in her car and got ready to go to wherever it was she worked.

“Hey, Miss (L/N),” Jeff caught Bill saying as he followed his friend outside, the screen door clattering shut behind him much louder than he would have liked on this particular September afternoon.

She glanced up and squinted at them against the sun. Then she smiled, recognition on her pretty face. “Hey, Mister Rose. And hey, Izzy.” She waved to Jeff and though he felt really and truly like he wanted to do nothing more than hide behind the outdoor furniture out of sheer embarrassment, he sidled up to the porch railing beside his best friend and instead watched the ground next to her car with mild intrigue. “What are you two up to today?”

Bill grinned kinda stupidly, and Jeff Isbell knew at that moment that the idiot standing beside him was completely and utterly enamored with his neighbor the Wild One. He didn’t even have to look at him to know it. It just was. “Oh, probably nothing. School’s out today, so maybe we’ll just walk around town. Go look at some guitars, or something.” He punched Jeff’s arm a little too hard, and Jeff gave him a look, which Bill promptly ignored. “Izzy here’s been making eyes at a Les Paul in one of the shops on Main.”

“Is that so?” Miss (L/N) asked with a twinkle in her eye. Jeff told himself not to blush any more, because if he did—well, too late for that. He turned red as she opened the door of her LeSabre and swung a slender, stockinged leg in.

“What kind of Les Paul are we talking?” She asked, resting her chin on the top of the door, half-in, half-out of the conversation and the car.

There was a moment of silence in which she blinked at them and Bill elbowed Jeff in the side.

“Uh, um, it’s a 1983 standard,” Jeff sputtered. “Cherry Sunburst.”

Bill elbowed him again as if to say nice one, dork, and Jeff started to seriously despise the way his friend communicated with shoves and punches. So he elbowed him back.

She seemed to find the two of them as amusing as a circus show, which Jeff sure imagined they were. “Cherry Sunburst, huh? That’s a pretty name. I’ll have to go take a look myself.”

They watched, then, utterly transfixed, as she slammed the car door shut and turned the ignition. The LeSabre’s engine turned over and growled, shuddering to life, and cranking out a healthy amount of exhaust for a car that was only… well, somewhere along the lines of seventeen years old. She rolled down the driver’s side window and leaned out slightly, flashing them a winning smile and lifting her hand to wiggle her fingers in a wave. “See you boys later.”

“Bye, Miss (L/N),” Bill and Jeff chorused, and watched like teenage hawks as the car peeled out of the drive, grumbling and crackling down the street, exhaust roaring from the tailpipe in a conspicuously blue-grey plume. Even after a block, Jeff could still see her elbow resting on the window ledge of the driver’s side, her ivory blouse quivering slightly in the wind.

“She’s something, alright.” Bill sighed wistfully, and then clapped Jeff’s shoulder. “Let’s go get you that Les Paul, shall we?”

-

“And… and how much?” Jeff asked again, in a small voice, very small, because he couldn’t believe there was only one Cherry Sunburst in the whole town, and he really couldn’t believe that they’d nearly sold out, and he still couldn’t believe the price they were asking for this one—the last one, the last Cherry Sunburst he might ever see in his life.

The old guy behind the counter didn’t waver, and in fact, just scowled harder at him. “What are you, kid, you deaf? I said nine hundred ninety nine. Plus tax.” He bit down harder on the cigar in his mouth and puckered his lips, squinting down at the poor boy, who was admiring the beautiful red body of the guitar with a twinge of meek sadness now. “If you’re not buying, then git.”

With a miserable sigh, Jeff turned toward the front window of the shop, where Bill was waiting outside. He fingered the three hundred-dollar bills inside his coat pocket, wishing they were enough, but at the same time, thinking himself stupid for wishing. Bill, silenced by the barrier of the window, tapped a cigarette out of its place in the crushed box he always kept on him, and he mouthed a few cuss words as he flicked his cruddy blue lighter and wouldn’t you know it, the dang thing was out of juice for the fifth time since he’d bought it last weekend. Jeff sighed again and gave one last longing look at the Cherry Sunburst before he let the old man scowl him right out of the crowded shop. Guitars hung on the walls stared down at him like blue and white and black and wood-paneled sentinels, all unworthy of his gaze. Downcast and miserable, Jeff left the shop without his Cherry Sunburst, knowing he would probably never see it again.

When the little bell on the door rang, signaling Jeff’s exit, Bill looked up with green eyes narrowed against the bright autumn sun. He pursed his lips at the notable absence of a guitar in his friend’s hand. “How much?”

“Too much.” Jeff muttered and kicked a pebble near his shoe. It dinged off the hubcap of a motorcycle and bounced into the gutter, where promptly, it fell through the grate and into the depths of the sewer.

“Me too, buddy,” the brown-haired boy murmured with a sniff and a wrinkle of the nose.

“Aw, hey. I’m sure you’ll rack up the money somehow.” Bill sucked on the cigarette like it was a cherry-flavored lollipop. To him, it might as well have been. “If I’d have been in there I would have bartered for you. But ever since last time...”

“Yeah, no shit, that’s why you’re banned.” Jeff rolled his eyes, reminded ever unpleasantly of the various ways in which Bill could get himself arrested on civil assault charges. “That’s the thing, though. It’s the last one. They only got a shipment of five and they’re out four already.”

“So they’ll get another shipment in. Big deal.” Bill shrugged.

“It is a big deal. What if it’s one of the rare ones?” The pair began to wander down the street, moseying about the town as they saw fit. Jeff watched a lady cross the street, pushing a stroller in front of her with a little kid strapped in. He looked happy, sitting there in his stroller, playing with a stuffed giraffe; when all of a sudden the stroller hit a bump in the sidewalk and he dropped his toy. Before the tyke could bust out in a fit of tears, Jeff strode forward and returned the toy to him.

“Thank you,” the mother smiled a tired smile that suggested her son had been dropping his giraffe everywhere all day. “Such a gentleman.”

“Don’t mention it.” Jeff ducked his head and kicked another rock along the sidewalk as Bill laughed beside him.

“Man, you’re goofy. I would have just let the kid lose it. Maybe the crows would like a giraffe for a friend.” Bill gestured to the big black birds hemming and hawing at the crosswalk in front of them, on Seventh.

“You might not have,” Jeff countered.

“Yeah, I would. Just like I would have gone into the shop and got you your stupid guitar so you’d stop bothering me about it. But I guess I haven’t done that yet, huh?” Bill munched down on his cigarette and Jeff wondered for a minute whether the ginger-blond boy actually enjoyed smoking or if he really just wanted the taste of tobacco in his mouth.

“That’s ‘cause you’re dead broke.” Jeff scoffed.

“True. Which leads me to my next point of action.” Bill grabbed ahold of a streetlamp they were passing and swung himself down onto Seventh Avenue with a little flair and a cheeky smile at a blonde high school senior passing by, who merely rolled her eyes at him. Jeff followed Bill’s lengthy strides, blinking his dark brown bangs out of his eyes and shrugging his jacket up a little higher on his neck as a chilly autumn breeze passed through the town. Bill continued. “Why don’t we hit up Sal’s joint?”

“Why? So we can make a buck cleaning the bathrooms? Man, I am not doing that again.” Jeff said, shuddering at the memory.

“No, you dork, I’m talking about rolling drunks.” Coming to a short stop at the doorway of a restaurant, Bill leaned for a moment on the brick building and ashed his cigarette, waiting for Jeff to catch up. His cats-eye green irises glinted in the bright sun reflecting off the chrome of cars parked in the street and the breeze picked up a little, sending his long hair fluttering like the leaves off the oaks in the neighbor’s backyard. Jeff thought that sometimes, Bill looked a little too impish for his own good, and this was definitely one of those times.

“I thought you got into trouble with your old lady for doing that.” Jeff said with a flat voice. He didn’t like where the conversation was going, though he was almost helpless to keep it from going there.

“Yeah, well, that’s because I was stupid and went too far too late. But if I do the rolling, and you keep the money, and go get that guitar of yours before some jerk like Thurne Pavitt picks it up, then we’ll get off scot free. For the most part, anyway. As long as the shop geezer doesn’t look too hard at those hundreds.” Bill laughed.

Up until now, Jeff had been blissfully unaware in his own misery of the fact that not only could he miss out on the chance to own the guitar of a lifetime, but the last model of said guitar could in fact be bought by one of the town’s richest and fuckin’ soddiest dumbasses around. And man, would that just kill him. He thought about what it would be like; showing up to school to see Thurne Pavitt holding the last Cherry Sunburst in Lafayette County, guffawing and boasting about it to all his boneheaded friends. The thought set his mouth in a grim line and he told Bill,

“I’ll do it.”

“Really?” Bill suddenly seemed very doubtful. “Geez, Jeff, if you love the thing so much, why don’t you just marry it?”

“Tell me a joke I haven’t heard before,” Jeff muttered, and his friend chuckled and took another pull on the stub of a cigarette still caught between his fingers before he dropped it to the leaf-littered sidewalk and scrubbed it out with the sole of his shoe.

“Alright then, let’s get you some cash, Mister Man.” Bill’s cheeky grin never left him as the pair headed across the avenue to see what they could scratch up at Sal’s place.

The north side of town was the closest to the suburbs, and yet, in some major planning flaw that the founders of Lafayette had not foreseen, it was the sleaziest part of the whole district. Bill just thought it was hilarious that the white picket fence suburbs and strip poker night owl joints were only separated by a thin stand of poplars and oaks, which the mayor candidly referred to as the “Little Woods”. It was like night and day, the difference between the two—and it only made his escapades out to the rough side easier. If he played his cards right, he could roll a few people up at Sal’s, slip out the back door and be home in five minutes flat, if he was ready to run. And besides, it wasn’t like he hung out a lot on his own front porch, anyway. If anybody knew where he lived, they were a busybody—and that was ultimately their problem, because eventually he’d get ‘em. Always did. In fact, Bill thought as he crashed through the leaves in the gutter of the parking lot, there were quite a few houses this year just begging for a good old-fashioned Halloween egging. Hmm.

The sun canted ever westward as the two teenage crooks-in-waiting sidled up to Sal’s joint, a cruddy little bar on the edge of the Little Woods. Not many cars or bikes were out front, Bill noted, but it was almost four o’clock on a Saturday, so they’d just have to give it a little time. A few more hours, and the gamblers would start rolling in. Heavy drinkers, usually, were the best hitters. Bill could only hope as he opened the door that Galley would be on shift, because although she wasn’t exactly friendly to the cause, she didn’t give a rat’s ass who did what as long as they weren’t slinging drinks this way and that or whistling at her.

Both boys ducked into the dimly lit bar, which, though its windows sparkled, was so completely devoid of sunlight and filled with dark wood decor and cigar smoke that one could have immediately thought it was midnight just from walking in the place. It was a little like being in a movie theatre, where you lose all sense of time in a dark room—but even better, because Galley was at the front counter, popping gin-soaked maraschinos in her mouth when she thought no one was looking; and because somebody in the kitchen was making those heavenly sweet n’ spicy fried sausages.

“Hey,” Galley mumbled around a mouthful of cherry, bored brown eyes flicking up to meet them for a moment, and dropping back to the jar beneath the counter. “Wut’d’y’want?”

“Hey, Galley.” Bill grinned. Jeff shuffled up next to him and put his nose in the air, dreamily inhaling the scent of dinner cooking. “You know what I want.”

“Like the last hundred n’ fifty times I told you, I’m not givin’ you my phone number,” Galley said without even looking at them, popping another cherry in her mouth and reaching back to tighten her jet-black ponytail.

“Sure, sure. I’ll drag it out of you someday. I will.” Bill chided. She just rolled her eyes. “Anyways, we’re here to play a little poker and grab some dinner. Nothing too much. Sal in the back?”

“Naw, it’s Kip who’s making them sausages. And potatoes. And greens. You always know when we got a good menu, don’t you.” Galley turned her flat gaze onto them again, though her eyes were not without the slightest of sparks. “Oh, hey, Jeff, how are you?”

“Fine,” Jeff answered, having been conspicuously silent for a while. Bill thought maybe he was just in a mood. Jeff often was in a mood, and said moods were hard to figure out; difficult to deal with. Not in a sense that he was combative, because really, when was Jeff ever combative?—but like he always tried to get away from things. Bill remembered one year where Jeff had the entire town mumbling and whispering about the ‘missing kid’, when in fact Jeff merely wanted to sleep under the railroad bridge on the outskirts of town, all nestled up under the steel beams. Easily could have been killed either scrambling under or over the rails, or by any debris falling through the tracks, but he liked it down there. Problem was, he didn’t tell anybody he liked it down there, and just left for a few days to stick to his own. Bill wouldn’t admit it, but he’d almost gone crazy trying to figure out where Jeff had gone. It was just like his friend to do that, though, to wander off whenever life got to be too much. Usually, that was any time they had a cumulative test at the end of the year for school. Jeff could reliably disappear then for days at a time.

But anyway, he was here, wasn’t he? Bill could at least comfort himself with that. Despite being a drag sometimes and maybe a goody-two-shoes on occasion and maybe even a bit of a dork (he knew Jeff had a crush on their neighbor—who wouldn’t?), Bill would stick with him and get him that guitar, no matter what it took. It was probably for the best that he was doing this, anyway. It would save his ears some complaining, at least. And anyways, Jeff had hardly gotten anything for his birthday or Christmas the last few years, and Bill thought it would be a nice way to make sure a guy knew he was respected enough. Loved enough, even.

“Well, I’ll tell ya what, your usual card table in the corner’s open. Wally, old despot that he is, has been at it all afternoon.” Galley’s voice suddenly interrupted Bill’s inner monologue, and he zoned back in to the real world. “But he left after I cut him off from his ‘special coffee’, so. It’s all yours. Don’t be messing around too much, okay?”

“Aw, Galley, you know I won’t. Thanks.” Bill chided, and nudged Jeff toward their usual spot in the corner, where the ashtray was littered with Wally’s signature cigar rings and heaps of greying tobacco. The light was even dimmer back here, and Jeff had to squint at the menu to see what it was he was looking at.

“Why’d they make the print so small?” He muttered, flipping the old laminated scrap back and forth. Bill just snickered to himself.

“Told you you needed glasses, man.”

“No I don’t.” Jeff huffed indignantly. “I just need some damn light in here, is what I need.”

“Oh, whatever. Galley said Kip’s already making sausage and potatoes, so what do you care what you have for dinner? Besides, it’s not like you’ll be focusing on the food anyway. I need you to keep an eye peeled on some of the guys here so they don’t notice the ace in my shoe.” Bill grinned and Jeff shoved his friend’s shoulder, rolling his eyes.

“Speak of the devil and she shall appear,” said a pinched, distinctly feminine voice from behind them. Both boys jumped but quickly realized it was Kip, the cook, who’d stepped out of the kitchen to torment two of her favorite customers.

“Hey, Kip.” Jeff said, and Bill just nodded to her, a little miffed that she was still able to sneak up on them after having done it so many times already.

“Hey yourself, Miss Izzy-sissy-Mississippi.” Kip’s smile shone brighter than the lights in the diner and Jeff wondered if maybe she used bleach on her teeth instead of toothpaste. Word was that it was possible to do such a thing. She turned towards Bill, fixing him with a hard stare. “Bill.”

“Yes, hi,” the ginger-headed boy said tiredly, knowing he was in for a lecture whether he liked it or not.

“You gonna tell Miss Dizzy Izzy here about how you damn near wrecked my kitchen the last time you were here?” Kip’s sass permeated the atmosphere almost too uncomfortably. Jeff sighed at her persistent use of his nickname. While he didn’t mind it so much, he wished Kip didn’t have such an affinity for consonance, because every time she addressed him it sounded like she was calling a pole-dancer to the stage. But Kip liked consonance, and assonance, and everything in the language she could possibly toy with, so he had to put up with it. His gaze flickered between the finger-tapping dark-skinned girl and Bill’s bored, shameless expression.

“What happened?” Jeff asked.

“None of your business,” Bill said, at exactly the same time as Kip grumbled, “Used my damn kitchen as an escape hatch from the Barlow twins is what happened.”

At the mental image of Bill running full-speed away from the Barlow girls, Jeff burst into laughter. “Seriously?” He hooted. “That’s it?”

“Shut your mouth. You know one of them carries a knife on her.” Bill muttered, turning just the slightest shade of red as Jeff continued to laugh himself into better spirits.
Apparently, this was all the apology or acknowledgement Kip needed, and she whipped out her little notebook and pen. “What you boys want for dinner, now that you’re here to stir things up?”

“Whatever smells so good,” Jeff said with a good-natured smile. It was his turn to grin at Bill, who only sank lower in his seat, miring in his own misery at the memory of being chased by a certain Beth-Ann who definitely did not want to go to second base with him. Or first base. Or even to the baseball game.

“One blue-plate special comin’ up. You want a chocolate malt too? I can have Galley over there get off her ass and make you one before she gets drunk on brined cherries.” Kip’s dark eyes didn’t move from the notepad as she jotted a few letters down, but both boys could hear the distaste she had for the black-haired girl at the counter.

“Heard that,” Galley yelled without even turning around.

“Sure you did, Nosey,” Kip yelled back, and then turned to Bill. “You ain’t getting no chocolate malt, and you ain’t getting no special. You’re getting what I serve you, for comin’ through my kitchen like that.”

“Two dishes, Kip, I only broke two dishes,” Bill blurted, but the chef was having none of it. Kip turned and sauntered back to the kitchen with a haughty air about her, leaving her patrons-of-youth to their own devices.

“Why is it that you’re such a chick magnet, and yet you don’t ever get any?” The ginger-headed boy grumbled, crossing his arms and tucking his windbreaker closer.

It seemed to Jeff as if Bill was in one of his infamous griping moods; that which could end in a bitching match or a wickedly-tossed punch. As far as he was concerned, though, Jeff knew they were best friends, and no matter what circumstances arose, would most likely remain so until the end of time. It wasn’t like Bill hadn’t brought this up before, anyway. He thought of himself as a kind of tom-cat-on-the-prowl and only got his metaphorical feathers ruffled whenever a girl turned him down, or paid more attention to someone else. Jeff knew Bill had a fascination with women and “couldn’t wait to get himself one”, as was brought up in conversation many a time. “They’re just so different,” he’d say, amazed, as they watched gaggles of girls skitter past on the sidewalk, giggling and gossiping amongst themselves. “They’re so different.” And though Bill could have many a philosophical or introspective conversation with Jeff, both of them knew that sometimes, girls were just better at that sort of thing. Girls could romanticize anything pretty easily.

Including certain dark-haired shy best friends.

“Relax,” Jeff said to Bill, who was, quite moodily, shuffling a deck of cards he’d fished out of his jacket pocket. “You wouldn’t want to eat a slice of cherry pie if it was constantly screaming COME EAT ME at you.”

“You trying to say something, buddy?” Bill narrowed his eyes dangerously, and Jeff raised his hands in mock defeat.

“No, no, I’m just saying that girls aren’t so mysterious. They’re just… they’re like cats. Can’t call a cat to you unless it wants to come.”

Bill rolled his eyes, but grunted what sounded like some sort of vague acquiescence.

After a short while of silence and the sounds of glassware clinking and cards shuffling, Kip strode out of the kitchen with two hot plates and a tall malt glass on her silver platter. She set down a genuine blue china plate in front of Jeff, which held two sweet n’ spicy sausages, a helping of mashed potatoes and gravy, and enough collard greens to feed an entire county; and by contrast, threw a plastic plate down in front of Bill which had a questionable-looking meatloaf sandwich, a helping of microwaved corn-on-the-cob, and an enormous grapefruit wedge.

“Dinner,” she said, and gracefully set down the chocolate malt before slipping back into the kitchen with the platter tucked under her arm.

“I hate her.” Bill snarled. Jeff was already swapping their plates, snickering to himself, but kindly giving up his dinner since he knew how much Bill adored sweet n’ spicy sausages with Kip’s pan gravy. And besides, it wasn’t too out of the ordinary that he should have reconstituted meatloaf and corn at home, anyway—when his mom cooked, she cooked for days, and if you were hungry when she was tired, well, “go get some leftovers, Jeff.” He poked the grapefruit wedge with his fork. That was the one thing he couldn’t stomach—no way would either of them be caught dead with grapefruit in their gullets.

As was pretty usual for Bill, he was a changed man once he had some food in his stomach, and he even thought about really apologizing to Kip for the incident last time (which, he explained to Jeff, had merely been a date gone wrong, when Beth-Ann flipped out her switch on him and was going to carve him up like a Halloween jack o’lantern unless he got the hell out of Dodge—resulting in him crashing through the kitchen and knocking quite a few things off the counters while trying to fight off the wilder of the two Barlow girls). But they were there to score some money, not to appease the mother hen, and so Bill and Jeff got down to it with the first couple of players they saw.

In the hours that passed, Jeff found that he was sure of two things: one, that Bill was honestly the most dirty cheat at poker and possessed a remarkable ability to bluff when he literally had only twenty-five dollars in his pocket; and two, that Jeff himself knew next to nothing about poker, and so made a good playing partner—the differences between them were as stark as night and day. He could easily feign folding or losing cash to Bill, because honestly, he wasn’t feigning it. Of all the card games he had tried to learn in his years on earth, poker was the most elusive to his sense of sportsmanship and intuition. Good thing he had Bill—you couldn’t exactly win money off of guys playing games like Go Fish.

“Not to brag, but…” Bill smiled like a piranha with pearly whites and laid down the fifth winning hand in a row, after which the three ninth graders sitting at their table groaned and forked over their collective 30 dollars. Jeff, having bet no more than ten, handed his cash over too, knowing Bill would hand it back under the table when the next game started.

“Hey, better luck next time,” the emerald-eyed boy called out in a friendly tone, but only got a couple of “fuck you”s back. The three towheaded highschoolers in leather jackets and blue jeans headed out the front door without even leaving a tip for the waitress and chef, they were so flat broke.

“I think it’ll be a good night.” Bill said as Sal’s joint quieted down after the door slammed shut. Patrons resumed their normal chatter and the sizzle of sausages could still be heard from the back. Jeff ‘mhm’ed mildly and thought about what they’d raked in so far, which was pretty good for a Saturday night. It was almost eleven o’clock, and they’d already gotten two hundred and some-odd dollars off of some guys their age who were a little too loose with their purse strings. And though Jeff knew it was for a supposedly noble cause—getting that Cherry Sunburst before Thurne Pavitt’s daddy bought it for him so he could just wreck it—he also felt a little guilty at having rolled some of these guys out of their hard earned money. One of the ninth graders worked in a corner store he often frequented on his escapades to the outskirts of town—only Jeff wasn’t sure he’d be going there anymore. He didn’t know whether it was his conscience or some other voice of reason inside him, but something about this he really didn’t like.

Bill, on the other hand, was gleaming with joy and eating it up. He hadn’t even had a bad confrontation yet—lying hoodrat that he was, he’d actually gotten way better at bluffing than Jeff recalled from the last time he sat in on one of his best friend’s games. And honestly, it was a little scary, seeing him like that. Jeff just hoped it wouldn’t become a way of life for him. He didn’t figure it would, because Bill was too obsessed with music, too obsessed with writing song lyrics that made sense to nobody but him—but all the same, he hoped. Even the smartest boys had been known to take a chance on gambling.

The diner mulled for a moment, steeped in its own circle of time, before a rip-roaring noise came across the parking lot like the starting gunshot at the county fair footrace. Both Bill and Jeff were instantly drawn to the window where they watched a dusty green Ford pickup full to the gills with drunk boneheads lurch up to the curb, park, idle, and backfire before it finally settled down.

“Here comes trouble,” muttered Galley to herself, sneaking another maraschino cherry into her mouth.

“Come to papa,” Bill whispered excitedly. Jeff gave him a look, which Bill whined at. “What? These guys are practically made for my skill set. Trust me, trust me. It’s late, they’ve had a lot to drink, and you see the way they’re walking, right? Like they own everybody?”

“Uh, sure,” Jeff said, flinching slightly as the door banged open and the restaurant fell silent for a moment, taking in the visage of six young men, who looked ruddy and mean and a little bit like their blood alcohol content was about ten times over the legal limit.

“It’s payday,” Bill breathed excitedly, and then settled himself into the best poker stance he possibly could, nothing on his face and no confrontation in his stance.

“You’re just gonna ask them to play poker? Seriously?” Jeff whispered to him, trying not to let on how intimidated he was. “These guys? They’re like eight years older than us. This isn’t—we’re not in our league anymore, man. I’m pretty sure one of them works construction, and if I’m right, he definitely has a nail gun in the back of his truck he knows how to operate.”

“Oh, calm down.” Bill shushed his friend. “We’ll be fine. This’ll be my best game yet, just you watch.”

“Actually, I’d rather not,” Jeff retorted, standing up to clear the dishes from their table and go hide out in the kitchen with Kip. But Bill grabbed his wrist and yanked him back down.

“Jeff, it’s your goddamn guitar, and I need you here,” he hissed, and was going to say more before a sharp voice called out,

“Hey! What are you two pussies whispering about?”

Both boys’ heads snapped towards the large group at the bar. Galley was serving them, though not without a look of serious disdain, and was eyeballing the youngest kid, who definitely wasn’t a day over sixteen. But he also looked like the little brother of the leader of the group—who was the one who had spoken to them. Green eyes. He had green eyes. Jeff shuddered, looking into those cold irises of doom, feeling like he was looking less at a human and more like he was staring down the barrel of a gun that was about to be smoking. The other guys there were less intimidating than him, but not quite harmless on their own, each with wide shoulders and a good few rings on each hand for the pleasure of punching little poker rats silly. Jeff shuddered again and Bill kicked him under the table, so he suppressed it.

“Yeah, you,” Green Eyes said, calmer now, but with the same amount of venom. “What’re you looking at?”

“Nothin’, man, we don’t want any trouble. My buddy here just has bad eyes. Can’t see for shit.” Bill said, straight faced, and Jeff would have kicked him right back if he weren’t paralyzed to the spot with the gazes of all five men. The boy who was closer to their age was busy resting his head on the bar after Galley spoke in low tones to him about how badly he looked, and how if this was his first night out on the town, he shouldn’t overdo it. Poor sap, Jeff thought, and turned back to the piercing gazes of what he could only presume was some sort of hick-country gang.

“Sounds about right.” guffawed the big man to the left of the leader. Jeff thought he looked rather like a marshmallow. Maybe the Michelin man. “Looks just like that kid that missed first pitch that one game. You remember that, Gunnar?”

“Sure do,” Green Eyes laughed. Jeff tried to fight it, but his face turned bright red at the memory of his first (and only) foray into baseball, in which he’d gotten knocked out cold by the first pitch that was thrown to him. He’d woken up with a concussion and a sworn vengeance against baseball, and apparently, these idiots had been in the stands to witness it. Ugh.

“Can we please…?” Jeff started to mumble to Bill, but Bill shot him a look that said nothing but for his eyes—a sort of “can’t-talk-now-but-boy-if-you-don’t-shut-your-mouth” expression.

“You all want to play a round of poker?” Bill asked, finally, shuffling the cards in his hand with carefully veiled excitement. Jeff’s face, at first red with embarrassment, lost all its color to a ghostly paleness as Green Eyes squinted and said,

“Aw, hell, why not?”

Fuck, Jeff thought to himself. We’re in for it now.

And in for it they were. His sense of danger was only heightened when the gang advanced, slowly, like leather-clad wildcats on the prowl, to take seats around the little green card table where Bill and Jeff were cornered against the back wall. Jeff wasn’t even sure either of them would be able to make it to the kitchen doors before they were tackled—if, of course, such an escape ended up being necessary, which, if the look in Bill’s eyes now was anything to go by, would most certainly be the case. Bill shuffled his cards slowly, thoughtfully, gaze locked in a narrow battle with the leader of the hoods. If not for the looming shadow of death Jeff imagined hanging over their table, he would have thought it pretty funny that they looked so much alike. Well, almost, anyway. He didn’t really look like Bill so much as it just was that they both had green eyes.

“Get comfy,” the man to Jeff’s right laughed with a snide little grin, and Jeff only regarded him with a quick once over. Maroon jacket. Blue jeans. Stupid-looking blond mullet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he thought to himself, wrinkling his nose slightly and flicking his dark brown bangs out of his face so he could see somewhat better. I’m as comfortable as I’ll ever be again.

The first game started. Blinds were placed by Green Eyes and Mallow, two bucks and five bucks respectively. Bill handed the cards to Jeff, who dealt to the left, carefully, pristinely; as if he were a new player to the game. The guys snatched their cards up like they were reading lottery scratch tickets, but their faces would not betray a single emotion—as was all well and good for a tight game of poker. Jeff breathed shallowly and tried not to think about sneaking a glance at his friend, because these guys would definitely know something was up. Instead, he thought about the Cherry Sunburst, and how good it would look in his bedroom. How brightly it would shine in the morning sunlight. How well it would compliment the tar-black walls and eggshell blue bedsheets.

It got him through the first couple games. Everyone at the table seemed to be fine with letting him deal. “Poor bastard probably can’t even see the cards,” was muttered by one of the boneheads sitting across from Jeff, but he let it slide, because he had a feeling the guy in the maroon jacket next to him would have something to say if he dared make a move. On the other hand, this didn’t stop him from fantasizing deeply about how nice it would feel to break some teeth with his bare fists. Though he knew it would really hurt in practice, there wasn’t a problem in the world with daydreaming.

Well, that was true until Bill kicked him halfway through the third game and he had to suddenly pay very close attention to what was going on. Nothing particularly important was happening—aside from the fact that Bill had upped the ante and gotten Green Eyes to put a whopping four hundred in the pot. Jeff thought he was going to be sick, but couldn’t move, for fear of being analyzed too closely. Mallow leaned over and whispered to Green Eyes, asking him “was he sure he wanted to do that,” and Green Eyes grit his teeth and muttered a “yes” back. It was two in the morning, Bill had been scraping their wallets raw for the past three hours, and Jeff was halfway between falling asleep and staying awake and paranoid because he thought for sure the gang leader was going to kill them if he didn’t win a single game against the ginger-haired punk who had too much gall for his own good.

“Hm,” Bill mused. “I’ll put in another hundred, if you can match it.”

“Son of a bitch,” Green Eyes muttered.

“That’s your paycheck, dude, don’t—” Mallow said, but Green Eyes forked over five twenties anyway, just as Bill peeled off another hundred dollar bill and put it in the metaphorical pot in the middle of the table. Jeff hadn’t felt Bill stomp on his foot under the table in a while and knew with a sinking feeling in his gut that Bill had a terrible hand and was banking hard on a bluff to carry through. Well, banking hard on that, and the aces he’d wheedled off the table and stuck to his leg for safekeeping. Maroon Jacket, Mallow, and one other guy had already folded, so the game was down to Bill, Green Eyes, and the player on the window side, who looked as if he might be nodding off from the whiskey he’d been sipping at (a sure courtesy of Galley, they all supposed).

It took a minute, but Jeff realized they were all staring at him. Gingerly, he laid down the final card for the showdown, and watched Bill’s eyes glitter like fine green crystals. He spoke not a word as each player revealed their hands, and though it was painfully, terribly close, he won by a single card.

“Fucking hell!” Green Eyes slapped the table. Mallow just stayed silent, staring at the cards as if they might somehow come to life and rearrange themselves on the green felt. Bill stayed cool, but Jeff felt a sweat break out on his hairline as the three guys (the one who looked like he was asleep really had, as it turned out, fallen asleep) turned to him with a seething kind of hatred in their eyes. Jeff didn’t fancy becoming a bloody skid mark on the floor of the bar at nearly two in the morning, so he kicked Bill under the table and said, “Sorry, guys, but that’s that. We gotta get home now, the old lady’s gonna kill us.”

“Yeah, I’m sure she fuckin’ will,” muttered Maroon Jacket, who stood to let them pass. Bill and Jeff awkwardly shuffled past the guys, Bill still trying to organize the money he’d won in his coat pocket. They acted as natural as natural can be, sauntering past the few patrons that were still there, wishing a bored-looking Galley a goodnight, before opening the front door. A sharp breeze blew into the building and Bill shivered. A card slipped delicately out from his pant leg like the last autumn leaf on an oak tree.

That was when Green Eyes screamed, “ACE! MOTHERFUCKER! HE HAD AN ACE!”

Actually, he had two, Jeff thought to himself as he careened through the door and ran through the parking lot like his ass was on fire and he was trying to put it out. Bill wasn’t far behind, either, having shaken the cards out of his shoe and immediately followed Jeff, weaving in and out of filled parking spaces like their lives depended on it—which they probably did. The gang of leather-clad men came barreling out of the restaurant after them, all bark and all bite, and there was no doubt in either boy’s mind that there would be hell to pay for this.

Bill and Jeff skidded to a halt behind a red Mustang, the dirt and gravel of the unfinished parking lot kicking up a cloud of dust in the night wind. The bar door slammed and sent the little bell jingling as five angry sets of stomping footsteps approached.

“I told you you shouldn’t fucking stiff those guys,” Jeff hissed.

“Shut up, Izzy,” Bill whisper-hissed right back. “They’re gonna—”

“Hey!” A face popped over the hood of the Mustang and spotted them with furious green eyes. “Sons of bitches are over here!”

Before another curse could be uttered, Bill had leapt to his feet and was hauling ass at track-star speed through the parking lot, weaving crazily between cars as fast as he possibly could to keep the guys off of them. One of the meatheads tried cutting them off, but Bill took a running leap and yanked Jeff over the hood of a little Chevrolet Stingray, nearly catching his foot on the side mirror.

“Run run run run run,” Jeff chanted, as if both of them weren’t already breathing like horses.

“I’m fucking running!” Bill yelled back at him, and the men chasing them howled with laughter. Finally, the two boys made it to the edge of the parking lot and dove into the brush, crashing through it with wild leaps and bounds, like teenage gazelles running from the hunt.

“Hey, we’ll lose ‘em in there,” hollered one of the men. From his voice, Bill could’ve guessed it was Mallow. His speech was slurred to high hell and back, and he was breathing harder than any of the others.

“No we won’t. The little rats have gotta come out on the street side sometime.” They could practically hear the grin in Green Eyes’ voice. “Can’t spend the whole night in there. Come on, boys, let’s split up.”

“Great!” Jeff exclaimed as Bill finally ran out of breath and slowed to a jog, then to a walk, then to a halt. The brown-haired boy wrenched his hand from his friend’s grasp and glared at him. “Just great. Great, great, great. I’m gonna get killed because you couldn’t turn down a poker game you didn’t want to lose.”

Bill rolled his eyes and stuck his hand in his jeans pocket, fishing around for the source of their misery. He pulled out their winnings in one big fistful—seven hundred and twenty-five dollars. “You’re gonna tell me it wasn’t worth this? A potential guitar? You think I don’t know how long you’ve been staring all googly-eyed at that Les Paul?”

“Well, I can’t play a guitar if I’m dead, now can I!” shouted Jeff, a little too loudly, and suddenly an ear-shattering crack echoed about the woods.

“Holy shit, get down!” Before he could even stand a chance of hearing his message, Bill shoved his friend into the dirt of the thick brush so hard his chin bounced off the ground. “They’re shooting! The maniacs are shooting!”

“Oh my God, we are so dead,” Jeff mourned, face pressed against the forest floor, looking at the green paper crumpled in Bill’s sweaty palms and hating it, hating that they’d even come here so late in the night, hating every moment he wasn’t at home where he belonged in his sweet, warm bed… footsteps approached from at least two directions, and another shot rang out, making him jump and squeeze his eyes shut, praying to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in, but thought might be helpful at least once in a man’s short, short life.

Then, silence fell.

Jeff’s eyes adjusted to the night slowly, and saw Bill’s face close to his, green eyes fixated just over his shoulder at a point somewhere behind him. “Don’t move,” he mouthed.

Jeff felt his heartbeat in his teeth as he tried to mask his breathing. Leaves crunched too close to his back for comfort, and Maroon Jacket’s shadow fell over them. He was close. So incredibly close. Jeff could practically feel the leaves around him moving as the man walked past, lowering his gun to his side and cursing under his breath. Whatever being had seen fit to make it a new moon that night heard high praises sung to it as Jeff prayed and prayed and prayed, and after a long time—maybe twenty minutes, maybe an hour, maybe five seconds; it was all so surreal—after a long time, Maroon Jacket went away, and they heard the squealing of the Ford truck in the distance.

Both boys laid there for a moment, staring into each other’s eyes, coming to the same conclusion that the other had: they’d very narrowly escaped death, and now it was time to quit while they were ahead. If they didn’t have these murderous idiots looking for them for the rest of their lives, well, they’d definitely be a problem for the rest of the night. It was time to lay low. But first, it was time to get home.

Bill was the first to get up. He offered a cold, clammy hand to Jeff, who gratefully took it and stood up, still trembling like a leaf on a tree in the cold autumn wind that swept through the Little Woods. Without another word, and under the ink-black sky, the two boys began the walk home with an inordinate amount of cash in their pockets and the feeling of adrenaline’s fleeting grasp loosening. The sidewalks offered a kind of suburban comfort to them and their shuffling sneakers as they walked home, shivering from the drizzly weather and cold, damp encounter with the forest floor.

“Hey Bill?” Jeff asked.

“Hey what,” Bill said in a voice barely louder than a whisper. Neither boy wanted to admit to themselves that they’d had the wits scared out of them, but it was clear as day.

“Can I sneak in with you?” Jeff hoped the answer would be yes. He didn’t think he’d make it on the walk home, even though it was only a few blocks over and deeper into the country side of town. Green Eyes’ angry glare kept flashing in his memory and the sound of a car starting in someone’s driveway was enough to make him jump out of his skin.

“Yeah, sure,” Bill said.

And that would have been fine for the poor saps, standing out in a light rain at two in the morning, had Bill’s mother not realized that he wasn’t home; and had Bill’s mother not taken rather extreme measures to lock the front door, back door, and every first-level window that could possibly be accessed from the ground on up.

“Dammit,” Bill muttered as they circled around to the front door again after trying every possible opening. He pulled a paperclip out of his jacket pocket and wrenched it open with his teeth, jamming it into the keyhole and wiggling it around. The rain drizzled on. Somewhere, an engine backfired. Jeff watched the dark neighborhood around them, still feeling antsy.

After a few minutes, a pair of headlights appeared at the top of the road. Jeff squinted against the glare, but couldn’t see the vehicle. “Bill, can you hurry up?”

“I’m trying, Jesus.” Bill muttered, twisting the paper clip this way and that, but the door handle refused to click open.

An engine revved. The beams on the vehicle grew steadily closer, lighting up the porches of the houses next door.

“Bill, you really gotta hurry up,” Jeff said, and the nervousness in his voice was enough to make Bill turn around and see what had his buddy all worked up.

“Oh, shit.”

It was the green pickup. The headlights bobbed closer all of a sudden as the driver floored it down the avenue, and whoops and hollers and angry yells could be heard from the open windows and the pickup bed. Jeff felt his heart stop and immediately turned to hammer his fist on the door, but Bill caught his wrist in one hand with a wild-eyed look on his face.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Don’t do that!” He hissed as the truck squealed to a stop one house down from them. Five angry men piled out from each side, like it was some sort of clown-truck made for violence to the tune of what Jeffery imagined was going to be some 21st century drawing and quartering. “My mom’ll kill me!”

“THEY are going to kill you!” Jeff shook Bill by the collar, and all of a sudden, both of them realized that another light in the vicinity was on. Orange light, from inside a house. From safety. Bill and Jeff turned simultaneously to the window which never had a shade on it, where a woman’s silhouette flickered for an instant.

“(Y/N)!” They both screamed as the guys came tearing up the sidewalk. Both Bill and Jeff went flying over the rickety porch railing and stumbling across the short space of lawn before reaching Miss (Y/N) (L/N)’s porch, where they hammered and clawed and scraped and scratched mercilessly at the door, screaming and hollering until Green Eyes was right on their tail with his buddies who were laughing, and Jeff choked out a high-pitched sob as he felt a hand grab his collar—

(Y/N), a picture-perfect angel in black lingerie and with a coiled whip at her waist, tore open her front door and leveled a two-barreled shotgun at the meatheads on her front lawn and porch. Her voice cut through the night, more furious than anyone had heard her. “What the hell is going on here?”

Immediately, the five guys let go of Bill and Jeff. (Y/N) grabbed both boys by their collars and hauled them inside the house behind her. Jeff fell on his ass in the entryway and scrambled backward as fast as he could, feeling sicker than a dog and watching with tremors echoing through the very marrow of his bones as his neighbor stood in the doorway, hair tumbling down her smooth, bare back, still pointing her shotgun at their attackers. Bill remained on his feet, but took a decisively protected stance behind her living room couch, and ducked down to watch what was happening from safety.

“This is between us,” Green Eyes snapped, though wary of the gun in the woman’s hands, fully aware of what it would be like to be known as the guy who was shot point blank by a nine-to-fiver in her underwear. Man, the boys downstairs would give him hell for that one. Literally.

“Not on my fuckin’ property, it isn’t. I don’t care what kind of crap these idiots pulled, you’re gonna have to go through me to get to ‘em.”

“But—”

CRACK! A single shot blew out one of the high beam headlights on the Ford with deadly precision, and the men who had seemed so old for 25-year-old construction workers now cowered into boyish forms, two running back to the truck for safety.

“No buts,” Miss (L/N)’s glare was like fire. “Get the fuck outta here and don’t let me see you again.”

Green Eyes set his jaw, tugged on the lapels of his leather jacket, and turned around, trying to act like he was in charge of the situation, and not the woman ordering them around with a goddamned shotgun. Quicker than mist disappears into the harbor, the five hoods were packed back in their little Ford of torment and had driven off, one headlight less.

(Y/N) watched them drive down the road, gritting her teeth as she watched the taillights disappear into the night. Then, she calmly shut the door, disengaged her beauty of a shotgun, ran a hand through her already-mussed hair, and said,

“Okay, you two, time to explain.”

“Um,” Bill said, the epitome of perfect articulation, as his eyes combed over her figure in amazement. Not only did she just save their lives, like a badass, but she did it while wearing the hottest… and least… amount of clothing possible. Boy, were her hips round. And her chest… God. Utterly and completely perfect, is what it was. She tapped her fingertips on the dining room table as she waited for an explanation from the two, one of whom was growing redder and redder by the minute at seeing his favorite daydream up close and personal, and the other who looked like perhaps he was about to throw up or pass out or both.

“Are we dead?” asked Jeff in a timid voice, blinking up at Miss (L/N) with eyes dark brown and full of terror. “Are we actually dead? I can’t feel my legs. I think I might be dead.”

“Yeah, are we?” Bill asked, though his voice sounded too giddy for the situation, and (Y/N) could see (with a heavy, interalized sigh) that it was going to take a pair of jeans, a pajama top, and a bitter cigarette before she could handle two whacked-out teenage boys, both of whom she had seen peeping into her bedroom window from across the way. God. In all the years she’d been on earth—which was not horribly many—it never ceased to amaze her that guys, everywhere, were essentially all the same.

“You’re not dead, honey,” she said to Jeff, who was still trembling from his close encounter, and still looked a little—blue? Green? Grey?—in the face. “You’re okay. You’re with me now.”

“Okay,” Jeff said, feeling a little bile creep up the back of his throat, and swallowing heavily before he reeled back and passed out.

-

When he came to, the dark-haired boy was seized by an instantaneous terror that took over almost every single bone in his body. He remembered Green Eyes, and Maroon Jacket, and being shot at, and remembered (Y/N), and how lacy her black bra was, and how comforting the sound of her voice, and how badly he’d felt just before passing out, and—and now he heard soft voices from across the hall. He wasn’t home, that much he knew. He laid, stiff as a board, in a bed where he had no idea what was going to happen to him, terrified as terrified could be.

“Hey,” Bill whispered from beside him, on the floor with a blanket and a pillow.

Jeff looked at his friend. “What are you doing down there?”

“There’s only one guest bed. Miss (L/N) wasn’t going to let me stay in hers.” Bill said with a wistful sigh, and all of a sudden, Jeff felt a surge of anger at the way he talked, so nonchalantly, as if they hadn’t just avoided getting their asses handed to them on a silver platter.

“I’m going to kill you,” Jeff whispered with hatred. “I mean it.”

“Yeah.” Bill said with a look of remorse, much to Jeff’s surprise. “I don’t blame you. Put in all that work, almost get murdered, and she wants to take the entire roll of cash off of me... I’m sorry, Izzy, I gave it away. I had to. She wouldn’t have called the cops on the guys otherwise. I… well. I told her everything. I’m really sorry.”

Jeff took a breath and steadied himself, blinking furiously in the pitch dark of the room. A slice of orange light from the hallway lit up perhaps a few square inches, enough for him to almost make out Bill’s expression in the dark, and indeed, his friend was being sincere. Slowly, he let a breath go. “It’s okay,” he said. “You know what? I’m just glad you’re alive. I don’t need a stupid guitar to know you’re one of the dumbest sons of bitches I’d ever want by my side.”

Bill grinned with relief in the yellow-orange tinge of the light from the hall, cat’s-eye green irises twinkling merrily. “You have no idea how good it is to hear you say that, Izzy.”

“Uh-huh.” Jeff felt himself slipping back into the realm of sleep. It was dark, he was safe, and the sound of Miss (L/N) speaking with somebody in quiet, apologetic tones really set the mood for him to finally get some shut-eye. There was one more thing Bill had to say before he slid off into the land of dreams, though.

“Man, you should’ve seen her boy-toy.”

Oh, for cripes’ sake, Jeff thought with a twitch of a smile, and fell asleep once more.

-

“Hey, kiddo.” a quiet, feminine voice whispered as the grey light of dawn began to seep into the guest bedroom. Still desperate to believe that the events of last night were just some farcical dream, Jeff snuggled deeper into a handmade quilt that wasn't his, but could have been his grandmother’s. Huh. When had he last visited his grandmother? How could he be there now…?

Oh, whatever, whatever. Sleepiness prevailed. “Five more minutes,” Jeff murmured, turning over and curling up to one of the pillows on the far side of the bed.

“It’s ten o’clock.” The woman’s voice continued, a little irate now. “Come on, Izzy, I have something here for you.”

Bill’s disembodied voice chimed in, wrecking the peace of the blackness behind Jeff’s eyelids. “Dude, wake up, you’re gonna love this.”

Slowly, Jeff rolled over, entangling himself in the quilt and blearily scrubbing his eyes open to meet the curious gazes of his best friend and neighbor. (Y/N) bent over him with a concerned look on her face, and Jeff could think of nothing but what she’d been wearing last night. Thankfully, though, she was now dressed resplendently in her Sunday-best tee shirt and worn blue jeans—this didn’t stop Jeff at all from admiring the way her (h/c) hair was pulled up into a careless ponytail, and how her (e/c) eyes shone in the timid light peeking through the lace curtain on the other side of the room, and how clearly worried about him she looked. He laid still for a moment, transfixed, blinking wildly, and trying his best not to blush with how close she was. “Um… hi?”

“Good morning. Who’s the president?” Immediately, she pulled a penlight from behind her back and flashed it in his eyes.

“Ow!” Jeff yelped. “Ow, ow, Jesus! Reagan, it’s Reagan, Christ…”

“He’s clear.” She said to Bill, who nodded from his position on the floor, ginger hair full of knots; sitting cross-legged and munching Lucky Charms straight from the box. He’d gotten much the same treatment when he’d woken up, but knew that neither he nor Jeff had hit anything hard enough to have a concussion.

“Easy does it, honey.” (Y/N) said, helping Jeff sit up as he pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “You remember what happened last night?”

“Unfortunately,” Jeff said rather sarcastically, and was a little surprised to hear Miss (L/N)’s laugh. It was deep and sparkling, like the tone of a church bell. Slowly but surely, he blinked his eyes open again, and aside from the purple spots floating in his vision, he was able to see her standing there with a rueful smile and some kind of large, thin box leaning on the bedside behind her.

“Well, you conked out first thing, so here’s what you ought to know. Bill here told me what you two were up to, and I was able to settle it with the police this morning without waking you up.” She gave them both a stern look, and they hung their heads as miserable boys should. “Gunnar’s got his money back, but this isn’t the first time the cops have had trouble with him and his lot, so I gave them a description of the car and filed a report on your behalf anyway. The officers I spoke to weren’t too keen on my having fired a warning shot, but hey.” She shrugged. “I’m licensed, they were on my property, and they looked about to kill you, so I’m officially in the clear. As for you two, though…”

Oh, please don’t say we’re going to juvy, Jeff prayed, knowing he would never hear the end of it from his mother if he got into that kind of trouble at his age.

(Y/N) sighed and sat down on the bedspread beside him, and for once, Jeff was able to look her in the eye as a person. That’s all that she was, he realized, in a kind of “well, duh” moment that left him feeling a little stupid and a little lonesome. But it was true. She was only a person, in the same way that he was only a person, and Bill was only a person. They all made mistakes and they all did dumb things and they all had their separate lives. And it was a miracle that she’d stopped to help them at all, when she could have just gone on with her night. But looking at her here, in the dim sunlight stretching over the horizon, Jeff found himself eternally grateful that she had done what she did. She fiddled with her hands a bit, twisting a silver ring on her thumb this way and that before taking a deep breath. “Look, you guys really fucked up last night. I know it was for somewhat of a noble cause…” (Y/N) rolled her eyes a little here, “...or as noble a cause as you guys can have. But seriously. You can’t pull that crap anymore. I’m not always going to be here to whip out a shotgun, okay? Hell, I had company last night. You think it was fun trying to explain to my friend why I left him alone to shoot somebody’s headlight out and scream so loud the entire neighborhood probably heard? Not to mention having to be seen by two peeping toms in my best black lace? Seriously.”

“We’re sorry,” Bill murmured through a mouthful of Lucky Charms cereal, having the decency to look ashamed of himself. It seemed an honest expression, though. And Jeff felt the same way. He nodded, ears still red from being called a peeping tom, and mumbled his apology to her as well.

“Well, then. That’s all I needed to hear.” (Y/N) smiled and patted Jeff’s knee, getting up to leave the room. She paused at the doorway, leaning against it slightly, halfway in the hall. “And one more thing, Jeffery.”

“Yes?” He asked, timidly, blinking at her from beneath his dark fringe.

“Happy early birthday.” She smiled wider and nodded toward the tall, ruddy cardboard box that leaned against the bed where Jeff sat before leaving the room. Bill scooted forward, cereal box still in his lap, long forgotten.

“Come on, come on, come on, open it!” He chanted as Jeff began to pick at the tape on the long side of the box.

“Alright, shut up, I’m getting there,” the brown-haired boy muttered, swatting his friend’s hands away as he peeled back the protective layer of packaging tape and popped open the front of the box. Immediately, they both went slack-jawed with awe and amazement.

“No way,” Bill whispered.

“No way,” Jeff repeated, absolutely stunned.

Inside the box lay a 1983 Cherry Sunburst Les Paul, its reddish-orange finish gleaming beautifully in the sunlight that finally crested the windowsill of the second-story room. Rays crossed the shabby carpet and poured over the soft blue-and-white quilt only to reflect back from the silver pegs and steel bridge, sending criss-crossing glimmers across both boys’ faces, as if they were viewing a real diamond-in-the-rough. In an instant, Jeff had the guitar out of the box and in his lap, holding it as gently as if it were his own child. He hardly dared to pluck a string, for fear of messing up somehow, but Bill poked and prodded until eventually he did—he played a little Spanish song, one of the first he’d ever learned on an acoustic guitar in the elementary school’s music classroom. It sounded like angelsong, the way the guitar picked it up. And it would sound even better with the amp Jeff had stashed under his bed for a time like this. But never in a million years could he have imagined that a time like this would come so soon.

“Thank you,” Jeff whispered to the guitar, and then shouted, “THANK YOU!” to the kind neighbor downstairs, who had already begun to make breakfast—as evidenced by the sharp sizzle of bacon and the warming smell of coffee.

“You’re welcome!” She shouted back.

“See? Told you she was something.” Bill chided with a grin, and Jeff knew it was true.

Yeah, she’s something, alright.