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Brianna’s eyes go wide, and I grab her arm. “Come on,” I tell her. “Let’s get out of here.”

“It was just getting good,” she says, but I’m like, “Jesus, don’t be such a psycho perv,” and I drag her across the yard toward the house.

“What are we doing?” she says. “If they’re not going to fire up the aero-ma-dealy-whopper, why don’t we just head home?”

“We’ll ride it later. Bobby and Mona can’t go at it all night. At least, I don’t think they can.”

“You know, Ceejay, Bobby better be careful. He’s really playing with razor blades this time. I mean, you know Dani. She’s ten times meaner than Jace. I’d hate to see what she’d do if she found out about this.”

“Well, she’s not going to. You understand me.”

“Hey,” Brianna says as we step onto the front porch of the captain’s house. “I’m not going to tell anybody. You know that. But this town’s too small to keep something like this a secret for long. Someone will blab it all over the place.”

“Well, maybe by then Bobby and Dani will be broken up. I can only hope.”

I knock on the front door, and Chuck opens it. He smells like weed and beer, and the whites of his eyes have turned a bright stoner pink. “Hey,” he says. “Come on in. I’m glad to see you guys. The captain hasn’t been much company.”

Chuck’s blue ice chest sits by the easy chair, and empty beer cans litter the living room floor. Weird music plays on the captain’s ancient cheapie record player. “Have you ever heard this?” says Chuck. “It’s the captain’s album,
Crash Landing on Pluto
. It’s freaky.”

I ask where the captain is and Chuck says, “He’s in the kitchen hiding under the table. He’s on a bad frequency. He thinks all sorts of people are out to get him and shit. I’m standing guard against the Nogo Gatu while Bobby and Mona do their deal.”

“Oh God,” says Brianna. “This is too weird, Ceejay. Let’s get out of here.”

She’s right—it’s weird—but something tells me I need to stay.

“You go ahead,” I tell her. “Bobby can always give me a ride home on his motorcycle.”

“I’ve heard that before,” she says. “Besides, he looks a little busy to me.”

Chuck pats me on the back. “Don’t worry. I can give you a ride.”

Brianna studies him for a second. “You sure you’re all right to drive? You look a little wasted.”

He smiles. “Don’t you worry. The Chuck-in-ator is never too wasted to do a favor for a lady.”

From the other room, the captain calls out, “We need metal shutters on the windows. Did anyone hear me? We need metal shutters on the windows.”

Brianna shivers. “That’s it. I’m outa here. You sure you don’t want to come, Ceejay?”

I tell her I am, and she’s like, “Well, good luck. I hope Padgett shows up. Call me later and tell me how it went.”

I try to tell her that’s not why I’m staying, but she just laughs and heads out the door.

When she’s gone, Chuck offers me a beer and I take it. This night definitely calls for a little alcohol. We go into the kitchen to check on the captain, and sure enough, there he is under the table with his dog. The bill of his cap is pulled low and his eyes shift back and forth, but he doesn’t look at us. It is creepy, all right, but not in a scary way. Really, you can’t help but feel sorry for him. Apparently spells like this set down on him every once in a while.

“You all right under there?” says Chuck, knocking on the tabletop, but the captain just mumbles something I can’t understand.

“Poor dude,” I say. “How long’s he been like this?”

“Days.”

“He used to be so up,” I say as we head back to the living room. “He was so excited about working with Bobby on Angelica.”

“Yeah,” Chuck says. He wavers a little, like his balance could give way at any time. “But you know what? I guess we all have our trapdoor inside. You never can tell when it might just go
boom
, and all of a sudden you’re kicking at the end of your rope.”

He looks like he knows what he’s talking about from firsthand experience. I’ve never seen him like this before. “What’s up with you?” I ask. “You sound like you’re depressed yourself.”

“Nothing’s up,” he says. “I don’t want to talk about it. Here, have a seat. I want to play you this song.”

“ ‘Sliced Penguins’?”

“No, it’s another one. It’s just about what I feel like.”

He lumbers to the record player and sets it to play the song. It starts off with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a harmonica. Then the lyrics kick in. The captain’s ragged voice, only younger, all about some girl with sea-green eyes whose tulip lips tell scented lies. Her house is as dark as a vampire’s cave and her backyard’s scarred with shallow graves. And then the chorus:

While the song plays, Chuck stares at the floor, soaking up the music and words. When it’s over, I’m like, “Pretty bizarre,” and without looking up, Chuck goes, “Yeah, but I get it. Sea-green eyes, man, I know those sea-green eyes.”

He sits there quiet for a moment like he’s observing a moment of silence for something that died. Then he pops out of the chair and goes, “Hey, let’s take this ice chest outside and get some air. I’m starting to fester.”

We step onto the front porch just in time to see Mona’s Escalade pulling away, Bobby in the passenger seat. Looks like Mona finally got her way and they’re heading somewhere more private. Chuck takes a swig of beer and goes, “I guess it was getting too busy around here for the business they have in mind.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Me and Brianna almost walked in on them a while ago.”

“I’m sure Bobby didn’t care. It’s always the girl that gives a shit about things like that.”

We walk over to Chuck’s pickup and sit in the bed with our backs against the cab. Even though it’s not completely dark yet, the moon hangs over the treetops, a wisp of a cloud slowly drifting across it. We drink beer and talk, with me holding up most of the conversation. I even tell about the time I spied on Chuck and Bobby while they were skinny-dipping with their girlfriends. Chuck smiles. “I wish those days were back,” he says.

“Those were fun times,” I say. “I never told you this before, but when I was a little kid I thought you were pretty hot.” This is something I wouldn’t have said if I hadn’t drunk about three beers by now.

Chuck’s like, “You did?”

“Oh sure.” I go on talking about another time I spied on him and Bobby, but he interrupts me.

“You know what, Ceejay? You have a sexy mouth.”

“Very funny,” I say, but he’s like, “No, really,” and touches a finger to my bottom lip. “I never could resist a girl with a wide mouth,” he says.

“You don’t think I look like a frog?”

He shakes his head and leans toward me. Maybe the beers are responsible for slowing down my reactions, but the next thing I know we’re kissing. Tongue and everything. And it feels good. It feels great. My muscles turn to hot liquid. My eyes close and everything else in the world vanishes.

His hands are in my hair and along the side of my face, and mine move along his shoulder blades. I can’t believe it. I mean, this isn’t stone-face Gillis here. This is the legendary Chuck Dunmire. Even Tillman Grant would kill to be as cool as he
was. I say
was
because of Chuck’s current loser ways, but still, he’s had some of the prettiest girlfriends you’d ever want to see. He’s dating Amber Galen, for God’s sake. And now here he is kissing me. Like I’m someone special.

One hand moves down my throat, between my breasts, and along my stomach. My skin feels electrified. This isn’t exactly the first make-out session I’ve had, but it might as well be. Chuck really knows what he’s doing. He’s a master. I don’t know if he’ll move his hand down farther, but I want him to. I want him to so bad. I don’t care about anything else. I just want that moment. I want to discover it, to wash up on it like it’s a deserted island and live there, careless and warm.

But my stupid brain won’t let me. It takes a big step back. I don’t want it to, but it does. If Chuck would just move his hand down now, maybe everything else would shut off, but it’s too late. My brain blasts a familiar voice at me. It’s Uncle Jimmy talking about how strong my dad had to be to resist Ms. Simmons. “You don’t know,” he said. “Maybe someday you will.”

I guess this is the day, because it suddenly makes sense. When you have something right in front of you like this, and your whole body is telling you to go for it, how can you back away? I mean, Bobby couldn’t resist Mona, so it must have practically taken superhero strength for my fat, fifty-one-year-old dad to turn down a chance to roll around with those giant, freckled boobs.

Because it’s not just about the sex. It’s also about wanting so bad to be someone who matters. Someone who isn’t taken for granted or ignored or thought of as less than what you want to be. This wild, powerful tornado is sucking me in and I don’t care. I want to lose myself to it. I want it to strip away everything I’ve thought was wrong with me.

Chuck’s fingers slip beneath the waistband of my jeans, and
I try to focus on that, just the roughness of his fingertips against me, but I can’t. At the last second, I grab his wrist, thinking, Goddamn you, Uncle Jimmy. Goddamn you, Dad. Why did you have to bust into my head right now? But it can’t be helped. Here they are. And not just them but my mom, Lacy, and Grandma Brinker all come crowding in. They’re the badasses, not me. I’m a weakling compared to them. Unless I can stop what I’m doing right now, I’ll be a cheater just like Bobby turned into, and I don’t want to be that.

But then another voice in my head is like, A cheater? Who am I cheating on? I don’t have a boyfriend. I can do what I want. All of a sudden it hits me, though. Crap, I say to myself, that damn Brianna was right.

“I can’t,” I whisper, the heat of my own breath bouncing back to me off Chuck’s face.

“It’ll be good,” he says.

“I know.” My voice is shaky and small. “But I just can’t.”

He presses his forehead against mine. “Sure you can.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s just because there’s, like, somebody else.”

“There isn’t anybody else. It’s just you and me.”

“No, I mean I think maybe I kind of like have feelings for somebody else.”

He pulls back and looks into my eyes. “What are you talking about? You mean you’re in love with someone?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m not sure I know what love is, but it’s something.”

“Shit, Ceejay, I’ll tell you what love is.” He turns his face away. “It’s the fucking enemy. Love’s a mean-ass cage fighter that’ll kick your teeth in.” His voice cracks.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, realizing he’s not really talking about me anymore.

He stares at the sky without answering.

“Chuck?”

“It’s Amber. She’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“She broke up with me.”

This is hard to believe. Chuck Dunmire, devastated over a girl? And a cupcake twin, no less. I’m like, “I didn’t know she meant that much to you.”

“She did,” he says. “She’s the only one. She meant everything.”

“What happened? Why’d she break up?”

He lays his head against my shoulder. He’s not the hot, legendary Chuck Dunmire that I had a crush on anymore. I guess I should be mad at him for wanting to use me to get over Amber, but I’m not. Instead, a huge wave of warmth for him swells up in me. Not a romantic, kissy-kissy warmth, but more like how you might feel about a favorite stuffed bear when you’re a little girl.

“She got pregnant,” he says.

“Pregnant? Jesus.”

“It wasn’t like last time with Layla Evans. I was happy this time. I could see us moving in together and having a kid, and I’d come home and there they’d be waiting on me, you know, happy to see me. I’d even stay on the job this time instead of walking off when I get fed up with the boss. Hey, I’d shovel shit ten hours a day if I had to. Anything, I’d do it.”

“Have you told her this?”

“Yeah, I told her.”

“What’d she say?”

He closes his eyes. “She said it was too late. She already got the abortion.”

“She got an abortion?”

“She didn’t even tell me she was going to do it. Didn’t ask me one thing about it. You know? I said, ‘How could you do that without talking to me first?’ And she goes, ‘What? Like I’d really have a baby with you? Don’t be stupid.’ ”

“She said that?”

“And so I tried to tell her how much I wanted to be a family with her, and she just goes, ‘Are you crazy? I’m not going to have a family with a guy like you.’ She said all along we were just a summer thing. She said I was okay to have a little fun with, but she’s going to college in the fall and she’s not letting anything mess that up.”

I pet his hair and tell him I’m sorry, and he goes, “What am I going to do, Ceejay?”

Two months ago, I would have probably told him he deserved what he got. It’s payback for the way he’s treated girls, and that would’ve been pretty satisfying to hit him with, but now it’s like the mother instinct in me has blossomed all of a sudden, and I know he needs a real answer.

“If you really want to know what to do, Chuck, I’ll tell you, but you might not like it. It won’t be easy.”

“That’s okay. I’m through with easy.”

I take a moment to gather my thoughts. Sure, I throw advice around all the time, but this time is serious. “All right, then,” I say when I feel like I know where I’m headed. “Here’s what you do—you take all these hard feelings you have about losing Amber and the baby, and you turn them in a different direction. Because I’ve got news for you, Chuck—you already have a baby. You have a three-year-old girl over in Sparks with
Layla Evans, and that girl needs her dad. That girl needs to walk into a house and know you’re happy to see
her.
”

“I don’t know about that,” says Chuck. “Layla doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. I’m sure she has another dude by now.”

“I’m not saying you’ll get Layla back. This isn’t about you, Chuck. Forget about you. Focus on that little girl and what she needs. Everything will change from there.”