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Finally I open the blinds as wide as they’ll go and tilt the lamp on my desk. The oldest tats bleed and fade. There’s a callus on her other foot. A bruise on her left shoulder, right beside the Grim Reaper tattoo — a skull smoking a cigar, a banner under that with the name Johnny Too Bad.

Then I sit at the desk, and play it all back on my Mac. Maybe my next movie is about her. She’s what’s on my mind. So I go over and wake up the most unlikely muse ever.

“Time to go home. Grandma will be back pretty soon.”

She looks at me, tries to focus. “You’re cute.”

“You’re half asleep.” I tug at her. “C’mon.”

She holds on tight. “I know I’m a pain in the ass sometimes, but don’t give up on me. I’ll be a better girlfriend. I promise.”

Colleen picks me up for school every morning. We do homework together. I make sure she eats things that are at least slightly good for her. Grandma tolerates her.

Then one Friday, Oliver Atkins meets us in the parking lot. When I get out of her VW, he screams, “Well, if it isn’t my Judy.”

Colleen warns him, “Take it easy, Oliver. Ben is mine. All one hundred and twenty handicapped pounds of him.”

“Fifty thousand hits so far,” Oliver says, “and the beginning of I don’t know how many meaningful dialogues.”

I tell him, “You’re welcome.”

“You should thank me, Benjamin. I am going to put you on the map.”

Colleen watches him prance away. “Did Oliver put the moves on you?”

I just look at her. “Get serious.”

“Did you ask him why he wears that ridiculous hat with the feather on it? He looks like one of Robin Hood’s extremely merry men from RumpRanger Forest.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re wearing panty hose that you’ve ripped up on purpose, shorts with holes in them, and a tank top with green zombie hands on your boobs. The phrase ‘You should talk’ occurs to me.”

She drapes one arm around my shoulders. “Yeah, but I look hot; Oliver just looks gay.”

“You don’t know him like I do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“For
High School Confidential
I talked to Oliver for a long time. I told you what it’s like making a documentary: you shoot an hour of film and use a minute and a half. So I know him.”

“Are you saying he’s not gay?”

“I’m saying he’s not just gay.”

We’re on our way to class when she tells me, “I got a postcard from Ed. Boot camp is killing him.”

“At least he’s clean and sober.”

“Get serious. He says he could get high every night if he wanted to.”

I want to ask if she still likes him, but I don’t want to hear the answer. I’m afraid he’ll come back on leave bigger and stronger and better-looking than ever.

Instead I say, “I’ll see you at lunch.”

She grabs my T-shirt and pulls me in to her. “He’s history, okay? He’s poison. I can’t be around him or guys like him ever.”

I let one hand slip into the back pocket of her thrashed shorts. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I can read you like a book, Benjamin.”

“Since I’ve seen you read, that doesn’t exactly scare me.”

Colleen pretends to beat on me and I pretend to cringe. I’ve seen kids do this a hundred times. Couples horsing around. Just regular kids. I like it that that’s what Colleen and I are.

At noon, I beat her to the cafeteria, and I’ve barely settled down behind a chef’s salad when my phone rings. It’s A.J. She’s in a hurry but wants to invite me and “anybody else” I want to bring to her house Saturday night. Just a few people. No big deal. Kind of a movie party.

Debra, one of the girls with babies who was in
High School Confidential,
sits down across from me and scowls till I hang up. When I do, she barks, “I don’t want to be on YouTube.”

“Fine. Don’t be.”

“It’s all Oliver can talk about, but I don’t want no part of it. I’m sorry I said what I said about Molly being lighter-skinned and all. I mean, she is, but we talked about that and her little boy and my little girl, and now we help each other out sometimes with babysitting and shit, and I don’t want hard feelings.”

“Debra, I did the Oliver piece as a favor to him, okay? And kind of to just see if I could do it. I’m not going to use your part. Relax.”

She stands up and tugs at her Los Angeles Lakers T-shirt. “You promise?”

“Absolutely.”

Colleen steps right up beside her and gives her a little hip check. “Is everybody hitting on my boyfriend today?”

“He don’t keep his promise,” says Debra, “he’ll see some real-life hitting.” Then she flounces away.

Colleen sits down and takes a big bite out of a giant slice of pizza before she says, “What’s the name of that movie where some kid journalist goes on tour with a rock band? It was on last night.”

“
Almost Famous.
Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson, and Anna Paquin as Polexia Aphrodisia. It was about a real guy, a journalist named Cameron Crowe.”

Colleen just shakes her head. “How do you remember all that? I can’t remember what I read twenty minutes ago.”

“I don’t know. I just do.”

“You don’t even try?”

“I try to remember when I study for history or something. But with movies, they just kind of seep into me.”

“Well, I wish math would seep into me.”

We concentrate on the trays in front of us for a minute. Somebody drops a plate, and the whole cafeteria applauds. Colleen’s a little twitchy all of a sudden. I reach for her hand, and she lets me hold it.

“Do you want to go to a party Saturday night at A.J.’s house?”

“Who’s A.J.?”

“Just this girl I met. She’s into movies, too.”

“Since when are you meeting girls?”

“Since that night in Hollywood. At the gallery. You were busy with Nick, remember?”

“Oh, yeah. That loser.”

“A.J. says it’s Vampire Night. So we’ll eat and watch a Bela Lugosi movie, probably.”

Colleen pretends to ponder. “Let me see: would I rather go to a club and get high or watch a DVD about bloodsuckers with a bunch of eleventh-graders? What a dilemma!”

“Eight o’clock, all right? Or come at seven and eat with Grandma and me.”

She shakes her head. “Granny makes me want to jump out a window. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

I WAIT BY THE DOOR LIKE FIDO, and when Colleen tools up, I make my way to the curb. It takes a little while, and I can see her drumming with both hands on the steering wheel.

She opens the door for me, and I fall into the seat, a move I’ve perfected.

“What’s the address?” she asks.

“Linden Lane.”

“I hate this girl already. Fucking Linden Lane. I live on Fourth Street. Why am I on dead-assed Fourth Street and she’s on glamorous Linden Lane?”

I point across the street. A yellow SUV is parked in the driveway. “Marcie’s back.”

Colleen roars away from the curb without even looking. “Where’s she been?”

“Some kind of retreat. She does that sometimes.”

“Why can’t I go on a retreat? I want to go on a retreat to Linden Lane and meditate with my butt in a tub of butter.”

Colleen rants a lot, and there’s no point in ranting back, much less being reasonable. I put my sick little left hand on her leg, and she reaches down and pats it.

“I’m all right,” she says.

“I didn’t say you weren’t.”

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything.”

“Bullshit. You’re always thinking, Benjamin. If you really loved me, you’d stop that nasty habit.”

We go north on Fair Oaks, then cut across Glenarm. The houses get nicer and nicer. Bigger and bigger lawns. When we’re just a few blocks away from 6799, there’s a little park: big, sandy area with swings and a slide. Benches made out of wrought iron and wood under cool, old-fashioned lights. Sitting on the one closest to us is a mom with her little girl. They’re holding a book with big pages. Mom’s got her arm around the kid who points, then looks up to see if she got it right.

“I don’t get that,” Colleen says. “I don’t have the gene. Last thing in the world I want to do is sit in the middle of nowhere and say, ‘No, that’s not a kitty. It’s a camel. But that’s all right. Your daddy and I just love you to pieces!’ I’d rather shoot myself.”

“If these were the first few frames of a Sam Raimi film, pretty soon something unspeakably evil would come out of that gardener’s shed.”

“If that’s going to happen, I can skip A.J.’s party and stay here and cheer.”

Instead Mom lifts her daughter up and cuddles her, so Colleen steps on the gas.

A.J.’s house turns out to be pretty impressive. Not a mansion, thank God, or Colleen would never shut up. There’s a wide, curving driveway, a mega-green lawn, a couple of urns beside the steps leading up to the porch. Not Keats urns, with maidens and fauns and gods. These are artier, covered with little tiles and littler fragments of mirror. But not cheesy. Somebody took a lot of time with those. And then put a fat price tag on the side.

We walk past three cars lined up behind each other: a Subaru Outback that needs to go through a car wash, a Volvo a couple of years old, and a ’65 Mustang convertible. White and in perfect condition. I could see A.J. in that car, either behind the wheel or sitting beside the cooler-than-me driver.

When we get to the door, I take a look at us. Thanks to Grandma, most of my clothes are preppy — khakis and oxford-cloth shirts. Normal clothes. Part of my disguise. Tonight, Colleen’s in a supershort dress and really high heels. A lot of skin showing and a lot of tattoos on that skin.

I lift the huge brass horseshoe and tap a couple of times. She says, “My doorbell doesn’t work. People just shout through the flimsy plywood.”

“What if I buy you a big knocker for your birthday?”

“Then I’d have three. Two little ones and a big one. Whatever happened to symmetry?”

Just then, A.J. opens the door and flashes that arc-light smile.

“Good evening,” says Colleen, “my crippled friend and I have come a long way to talk to you about Jesus.”

A.J. puts out one hand. “Amy Jane Moore. Agnostic.”

That makes Colleen smile. She tells A.J. her name, then adds, “I like your house. I want to live here.”

“I don’t blame you. Come on in.”

Inside it’s mostly red and yellow. Huge windows looking out on a garden with green-and-white patio furniture. Blue vases with real sunflowers. Four kids sit by a coffee table as big as a Conestoga wagon wheel.

The guys turn out to be Rane (with an
a
) and Conrad. The girls — twins, no less — are Danielle and Denise.

Rane’s in REI pants and heavy shoes with lug soles. Definitely the Subaru. The twins are slouchy — loose flannel shirts over floppy Ts, baggy jeans, Vans with no socks. Not the same but very similar. Ash-colored hair cut to look like lazy mullets, if there is such a thing. They drive the Volvo.

That leaves Conrad: lean and mean, spiky-looking hair, blond at the tips. Shorts that fit. A cut on his cheek. From lacrosse, probably. The Mustang for sure.

He and I are introduced and I get, “Yeah, hi.”

He’s already written me off. We’re not going to shoot hoops or ski together. I’m not tight with the people he hangs with. I’m a nobody with a limp.

But none of them can take their eyes off Colleen. The twins breathe through their mouths. They have an at-the-zoo look:
So that’s the rare snow leopard!
Rane probably imagines wrestling a bear while she cringes in the moss and her skirt rides up higher on her long, white legs.

One corner of Conrad’s mouth twitches. His eyes close deliberately, then open slowly. He’s the one Colleen’s mother would pick out of the crowd: the apex predator.

“Want to show me where you hide the silver?” Colleen says to A.J.

A.J. asks, “Ben?”

“You guys go ahead. I’m okay.” I really don’t want to hobble around while A.J. points out the paintings of her ancestors.

“Get something to eat. We’ll be right back.”

I take a little plate and make my clumsy way around the table. Rane stands up to make things easier for me. Conrad is busy texting, so I slide past.

I take some black olives, a couple of stuffed grape leaves, some hummus, some pita chips. Then manage to sit down without anything bouncing off my plate.

“How do you and —” Danielle begins, and then Denise finishes, “— A.J. know each other?”

“Um, from a gallery show. She brought
Roach Coach,
and I brought something I called
High School Confidential.
”

Rane says, “That’s right. A.J. said you got, like, a minute of that on YouTube. Something about a gay guy from your school. Conrad got a ton of YouTube hits about six months ago.”

I look his way. He’s everything I want to be. Or wanted to be once. That wishing crap never got me anywhere. I ask politely, “What was it about?”

“I was on my way home from a party and saw these cops whaling away on this Hispanic guy they’d pulled over, so I shot it with my cell and sent it the next day.”

“It was —” says Danielle.

Her sister finishes for her. “— very cool.”

Danielle begins, “Very —” and Denise asserts, “— Rodney King.”

Conrad asks me, “How many hits did you get?”

I take a bite of pita bread before I answer. “I’m not sure. Oliver kept track, though. Thousands, I guess.”

Rane nods. “Sweet.”

“And it’s okay with you to promote that agenda?” Conrad asks.

“What agenda?”

Denise starts, “The gay —”

“— one,” adds Danielle.

Just then A.J. and Colleen come back.

“You should make a documentary about this place,” Colleen says. “Call it
Bucks Out the Butt.
” She walks toward the satchel I’d hung on a hat rack in the foyer. “Did you show these guys your new camera?” She brandishes it. That’s the right word, too. Pretty much everything Colleen does is a challenge. Meet her on the dueling grounds at dawn, in the street outside the dry-goods store at high noon. Just try and outshoot or outwit her.

Conrad reaches for it. And, wouldn’t you know it, he treats it like it was his, like he’s had one just like it but now has the newer model. Pushes the right button, then points it at Colleen, who says, “You’re never going to get in my pants, pretty boy. You’re way too predictable.”