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I hiss at her, “You were smoking dope.”

She shakes her head. “When they lit us up, I flicked that roach so far, it’s probably in Santa Monica. What are you thinking — that they’d find my DNA on it? No fucking way. They smelled a little ganja, and now they’re trying to scare us straight. All they’re really doing is calling your grandma.”

“And your mom.”

“That could take a while. She hasn’t exactly got her cell phone in her thong.”

One of the cops comes over. He’s big, and the gear on his utility belt must weigh thirty pounds. There’s a pistol and a radio, pepper spray, a cell phone and a nightstick. He lets his left hand rest on the butt of his gun.

“Officer,” Colleen says, “we want to confess. We’re guilty of desire. But we want to pay our debt to society, then lead upright lives from now on. Maybe buy a little mom-and-pop store, live upstairs and give the beat cops free coffee.”

Officer Armstrong — he’s wearing a name tag — says to me, “Your girlfriend here’s got quite a mouth on her.”

“That’s why he likes me, isn’t it, Ben?”

The cop behind the desk says, “Ms. Minou. Step up here, please. We’re having trouble getting hold of your mother.”

Officer Armstrong sits down beside me. “I guess I know what you’re doin’ with her, and I can’t say that I blame you. That dress of hers is something else — what there is of it. But she looks like trouble to me, son. You’re a pretty clean-cut kid. She’s the pothead.”

I like the way he’s talking to me, too. Man-to-man. Not man-to-spaz. He doesn’t ask me how I manage to have a girlfriend like Colleen with only half of me in good working order.

Just then Grandma comes through the front door. She’s in cashmere, as usual. Something dark to set off the pallor, because I’ve never seen her look so washed out.

Officer Armstrong goes right to her with his hand out. Grandma takes it and holds on. I hear him say, “He’s fine.”

“I knew I could count on you.”

Oh, crap. So it wasn’t man-to-man. They’re in this together. She’s got him in her pocket. He’ll say whatever she wants him to say.

Grandma turns to the desk sergeant. “Is there anything you need me to sign?”

He shakes his head. “He’s learned his lesson, Mrs. Bancroft. We won’t be seeing him in here again.”

She motions for me. “Benjamin, let’s go home.”

“C’mon, Colleen.”

Grandma’s voice could quick-freeze vegetables. “That girl is not going anywhere with us, Benjamin. She’s got a mother.”

“We’re just going to drop her off. Her mother’s working.”

Grandma takes hold of my wrist. “Come along, Benjamin. My patience is wearing thin.”

I look at Colleen helplessly.

“Don’t worry about me,” she says icily. “I can take care of myself.”

On Monday, I wait outside her English class, but she doesn’t show. At noon, she’s not in the cafeteria. I’m too nervous to eat, so I look in the Pit and by the candy machines. I ask a couple of stoners and then this skate punk who used to hang around with Ed. Nobody’s seen her.

And then, right after French, there she is. Different clothes from Saturday night, so I know she’s been home. She’s carrying this ugly purse that’s black-and-white and covered with some kind of coarse hair. It’s made out of somebody’s pony, I swear to God.

“Well,” she says, getting right in my face, “if it isn’t Mr. Chickenshit.”

She swings that purse at me. I block with my good arm, lose my balance, and go down onto the polished linoleum.

“What’d I do?”

The hall goes dead quiet. Everybody watches.

“It’s what you didn’t do, Benjamin. It’s three o’clock in the morning before the cops figure out my mom’s never coming. I thought I was your girlfriend. Why didn’t you stay with me?” Colleen hits me again, and I curl up. “Jesus Christ, Ben. I finally meet one guy I think I can trust just a little, and look what happens.” She wields that hideous purse like an ax. One blow for every word. “Nobody plays me, Ben. Nobody.” Then she starts to swing wildly. “Why don’t you take a picture of this, you cold-hearted bastard?”

And she doesn’t stop whaling away at me until some teacher comes storming out of his classroom, gets both arms around her waist, and literally carries her away, kicking and screaming.

Colleen gets suspended and sent to Alternative School. Dumbbell High. Bad Girl Academy. Vice-principals almost never punish the handicapped, but Grandma puts me in solitary. The Hole. Carpeted and air-conditioned, but I’m totally alone. She and I don’t even eat together. I’ve never seen her so mad.

A week goes by. Not a word from Colleen. Grandma thaws out a milliliter at a time. We don’t talk about what happened, but we do talk. A little, anyway.

On Friday, A.J. e-mails and wants to go to the Rialto, but I tell her there’s no way. So she calls Grandma, says how her mom knows Grandma from some board or other. Says she needs to talk to me about this documentary she’s thinking of making. Couldn’t I get a pass for just one afternoon?

The next day I’m dressed and in the living room, waiting for A.J. like I used to wait for Colleen. Grandma glides up beside me. It’s weird to see her mad like a regular parent. I was always such a good boy. And then I met You-Know-Who.

“Home by six o’clock, Benjamin, and not a minute after.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“If anything happens, I want you to call me.”

“Nothing will happen. We’re just going to the movies, and then maybe Buster’s. That’s it. Thanks for letting me do this. Really.”

She picks an invisible piece of lint off my shirt. This is her way of saying she’s not totally steamed anymore. Grandma was never much of a toucher. When I was little, she would read to me, then tuck me in and almost kiss me good night. Half an inch away. A quarter. Three millimeters. Never all the way.

Colleen was a toucher. Colleen went all the way and a little past that.

Grandma says, “I just want you to know that I am still this far from taking your camera away.” Her thumb and forefinger are half an inch apart.

“I understand. And I don’t blame you. It won’t happen again. Nothing like that will ever happen again.”

I see Marcie across the street, down on her knees in front of a palm tree.

“Can I go over and say hi?” I ask. “A.J. can just pull into her driveway.”

“I still want to meet this young woman.”

“Sure. Absolutely.”

Waiting at the curb, I look both ways like a good boy. Marcie sees me coming, stands up, and brushes at her pants.

“Did you have to dig your way out?” she asks.

“So you know what happened.”

“Mrs. B. came over.”

“I really screwed up.”

She taps the trowel against the palm, then rubs at it. “Rite of passage. The road to adulthood goes directly through a police station, followed by a dark and dangerous forest.”

“I just left Colleen sitting there in that stupid police station. She’s never going to talk to me again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, too. She would’ve said so, but she was busy hitting me with her purse.”

“I threw a Calphalon saucepan at my first husband and talked to him an hour later.”

I take a step closer. “I had a girlfriend, Marcie. A real girlfriend. She trusted me, and I let her down.”

“You’ll know better next time.”

“She hates me. I’m never going to see her again.”

“I meant with somebody else.”

“Oh, yeah. Girls are lined up around the block. They just can’t wait to take long limps on the beach with me.”

Marcie glances up the street. “Mrs. B. said you were going out with some friends. Maybe you’ll just do that for a while. Not everybody has a partner.”

“You don’t understand. I wouldn’t have these friends without Colleen. She made me feel like I was just another guy, maybe with a few problems, but basically okay. If it wasn’t for her, I couldn’t even have talked to them. I’d have thought,
What do they want with me? I’m nobody.
”

“Colleen didn’t help you make a movie, Ben. You did that on your own. And it was terrific. People loved it. They loved you.”

“You helped me with
High School Confidential.
You told me I was special and talented and all that. But you’re a grown-up. Grown-ups say stuff like that to kids.” I pointed to my heart. “But Colleen made me feel it.”

Marcie walks right up and puts her arms around me. Holds on for a couple of seconds. Pats me hard. Lets me go. Says softly, “Talk to me about your next movie.”

I have to swallow hard before I can say, “It’s called
The Adventures of Colleen the Cat.”

“Because she always lands on her feet, right? Nice title. How far along are you?”

“I don’t know. Three or four scenes, maybe. But that’s all there’ll ever be.”

“Want to show me?”

“My friends are supposed to be here.”

“I don’t see any friends. What are we waiting for?”

I get across the street and back in four minutes. Not bad for a spaz. We don’t even go inside. Marcie just finds a shady spot in her yard. She holds my little camera and I watch over her shoulder.

She starts with Colleen in bed. My bed. Then that scene at the Norton Simon Museum when she melted down, the night at A.J.’s with Conrad and the other kids, and after that when we were parked.

Marcie sits back. “How did you get that part where you were making out? I mean, you’ve got one hand in her shirt, but you’re still holding the camera.”

“I’ve got two hands, or a hand and a half. Basically I wanted the shot.”

“And she was okay with that?”

“You know Colleen. She’s kind of an exhibitionist, anyway.”

Marcie frowns. “My guess is that men have used Colleen all her life. Now you’re using her, too.”

“I was making a movie about her. I can’t do that if she isn’t in it. It’s not like I’m forcing her to do anything.”

“And you think she knows what’s really in her best interest?”

I point at the camera. “There’s good stuff in there. That scene with her at A.J.’s party is terrific, and the part where she’s half asleep in my bedroom and the light is coming in. She’s sexy and gorgeous. It’s not like I’m making her look ugly.”

Marcie nods. “Those are well done. I agree.”

“But you think I shouldn’t be doing it.”

Marcie rubs her face with both hands. “I wonder sometimes what Colleen would be like if somebody just loved her and didn’t want anything from her.”

Just then, a red Honda CR-V pulls up in front of the house.

“Go on,” Marcie says. “Have a good time. We can talk about this later if you want.”

A.J. and Rane get out and wave. I can see Grandma peering through the blinds and maybe even nodding a little: this is not a date with a tattooed stoner but with sun-tanned young people who floss regularly.

Except that Colleen and I didn’t really date. She drove me places, and we did things that scared me and made me glad to be alive.

I lead the way down the sidewalk, open the door, and in we go. I do the honors. Rane shakes Grandma’s hand.

A.J. says, “I’m really happy to meet you, Mrs. Bancroft. My mom thinks so highly of you.”

I look for the teleprompter. Did she actually say that?

Rane throws one arm across my shoulders like we’re chums at camp. “And I promise we’ll keep our eyes on this bad boy.”

Grandma frowns. “This is not a laughing matter, young man.”

A.J. says, “When I got picked up, my mom was just as upset as you were. In a way it was a real learning experience, and what I learned was, I never want that to happen again as long as I live.”

“I can only hope,” Grandma says, “that Ben learned that same lesson.”

She shakes A.J.’s hand again, then Rane’s. She smooths the collar of my hand-pressed shirt. Not her hands, of course. Or mine. Rane, A.J., and I make our way to the car.

“Thanks, you guys,” I say when I’m sure the door is closed and Grandma can’t hear.

“Well,” A.J. says, “it was either bullshit your grandma or send over a cake with a file.”

I look at her. “You mean the cops never picked you up?”

“Are you kidding? My mom’d kill me.” She digs in her purse for keys. “I know it’s not very far, but let’s drive. These shoes are cute, but they’re not real practical.”

Her shoes are plenty practical. She’s just coddling the handicapped. Colleen hated to walk anywhere, but she was usually wearing totally impractical four-inch heels, so her already killer legs could stop traffic. And if we did walk from the car to some club, she’d outpace me, then taunt me: “C’mon. What are you, crippled?” Then she’d saunter back and kiss me so hard, my teeth hurt.

A.J. opens the back door for me. Holds it open. Hovers slightly. What does she think I’m going to do, fall down?

But her Honda is way different from Colleen’s beater. That, I fell into; this I have to climb toward. So I struggle a little. A.J. starts to reach for the seat belt and buckle me in like I’m a sack of flour or Stephen Hawking, but I give her a look and she backs off.

Rane asks, “So were you and Colleen really smoking a joint when the cops showed up?”

“How do you know about that?”

“It’s the electronic age,” he says, holding up his phone. “Everybody knows everything.”

“She was smoking. But she threw it away before they got to the car. I don’t know why they took us in. Basically we were just sitting there, talking about the party.” What I was also doing with my camera and my hands is none of their business.

A.J. says, “The twins are still talking about that night. How did you remember all that movie lore, anyway? That was very cool.”

“Conrad didn’t think so.”

“He doesn’t lose at anything very often. And, anyway, he was in a snit from arguing with his father.”

“All he does,” says Rane, “is argue with his father.”

I tell them, “Well, as far as remembering stuff goes, Conrad was right. All I used to do was sit in my room and watch Turner Classics or DVDs from the video store or go to the Rialto. That was pretty much my so-called life.”

We get lucky and park almost under the marquee. A.J. and Rane wave away my offer to buy the tickets, so we all pay for ourselves because this is a field trip.

A.J. shakes her head when I ask her if she wants any snacks. Rane pats one of his many pockets and whispers, “I’ve got gorp.”