“I think I mighta broken your nose for you,” he said apologetically. “Why don’t you let me fix you up?”

Jake eased me down onto the futon sofa in the living room and then went and got the materials he needed to tape up my nose.

He came back with surgical tape, cotton balls, a pair of scissors, and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

“This happened to me once when we played Abilene Cooper. They had a linebacker, must have weighed three hundred pounds. Guy hit me like a bull on a rodeo clown.”

He looked around.

“Aw, shoot, I forgot to get some kind of cloth.”

He grabbed a chenille throw blanket.

“Josie’ll be pissed, but who cares,” he said. He doused a corner with hydrogen peroxide and then started swabbing my face.

I tried not to pull away, but it hurt like hell.

“Oh, wait,” Jake said. “I forgot the best part.”

From his back pocket he drew two foil packs of pills.

“Got you some pain meds. They’re strong. Real fun.” He popped one out and gave it to me. It melted in my mouth. Minty.

“Nice, huh? Works pretty fast.” And he handed me the other one. “And these are demi-roids. Gonna help your body heal and you know what, dude, you should just keep taking them for a while. Help fill out your physique a bit, if you know what I mean…”

I pocketed the steroids to take later when I had water handy.

I was already starting to feel better. More warm and relaxed. I lay back on the futon.

“That’s the way,” Jake said. “Now close your eyes and mouth for me.”

He poured the hydrogen peroxide into my nose.

I sat up, sputtering and frothing.

Jake pressed the throw blanket into my face.

“Good, good.”

Next he felt my nose. And then he stuck cotton up into each nostril.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “Nice clean break. It’ll make you look manly.”

He put two pieces of tape across the bridge of my nose.

“You oughta thank me for breaking it. Girls love a broken nose.”

I could barely talk, between the hangover, the pain pills, and the two cotton balls jammed up my nose.

“Franth, Janke,” I managed to say.

He laughed.

“You’re all right, booker.”

He held out his hand.

“I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions.”

I shook his hand—slowly. He was smiling at me, really asking for my forgiveness.

I felt like an a-hole. I had deserved a beating for what I had done. And now I had tricked a guy who, for all his faults, was pretty decent.

I shook his hand and said, “Itd wath my fault.”

“Oh my God, what happened to you?” came Chloe’s noisy, nosy voice.

The little kids were coming back from breakfast, preparing themselves for their school.

They saw me and gasped, gathering around.

“He got beat up,” Max said, confident.

“Did you get beat up, Dean?” little Caroline asked, scratching her head.

“I fewl,” I lied. “Off a shelf.”

“No, he didn’t,” Max said. “He got beat up.”

“Naw, Dean fell off a shelf, kids,” Jake said. “I saw him fall myself.”

“Maybe,” Max conceded. He looked at me and then at Jake and then back at me. Each time he moved his head his blond cowlick bobbed like a feather on an old lady’s hat.

“But all I can say is that my mom’s sister, Raylene, who is my aunt but don’t like to be called aunt because she says it makes her feel old so I call her Sissy Raylene. Anyways, she used to come over for poker and she’d look all busted up and my mom’d say, ‘What happened?’ and Sissy Raylene’d look over at her husband, Mack, and say, ‘I fell off a ladder.’ And my mom would say, ‘Looks to me like you got beat up.’ And Sissy Raylene’s husband, Mack, would say, ‘No. She fell off a ladder.’ And then Mack would go in to play poker and Sissy Raylene would cry to my mom and say, ‘Actually, Mack beat me up.’”

Max looked at me and Jake pointedly.

“That’s all I’m saying.”

Just then Josie came up.

“Hm. Nice to see you two up and about,” she said.

She picked up the grisly, bloody throw blanket.

“Nice. Thanks for this,” she said, regarding the blanket. “And I have good news. Have you noticed that everyone is scratching their head a lot?”

I had sort of noticed, and actually, at that very moment, several of the little kids were doing it.

“We have lice.” She turned to the kids. “Kids, go put your bathing suits on.”

The little kids cheered and jumped for joy. Sahalia slumped off behind them, looking put out, as usual.

Josie turned to us.

“You, too.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

LICE AND OTHER VERMIN

Josie told us to suit up and head to the Dump.

She wanted us all to wash our hair immediately. Actually, to be specific, she wanted to wash our hair for us.

Jake and I found suits, changed, and went over.

All the little kids were wearing bathing suits. It was really cute. They were shivering in the cold air of the store, so Niko handed out towels from a big stack Josie had brought.

Josie had also set up two big plastic tubs, along with lots of bottles of Nit-Out shampoo and gallon jugs of distilled water.

Brayden came bounding over. He had a set of trunks on, too. His upper body was also cut and muscled, like Jake’s. But Jake had that pale skin and blond hair. Brayden’s skin tone was olive, so even though it was autumn and none of us had seen the sun in about a week, Brayden looked tan and beach worthy.

Sahalia showed up just in time to see Brayden give Josie a big kiss. I guess Josie had gotten over her qualms about PDA. Maybe she just couldn’t resist his bod.

Sahalia was not wearing a bathing suit, I noticed. I didn’t expect her to. I didn’t expect her to do anything anyone told her to do, actually.

Instead she was wearing a white T-shirt and short shorts, with long woolen leg warmers up over her knees.

In the moment I just supposed she had wanted to put together a cool delousing ensemble.

Josie told us that we would straddle a bin. Then she’d pour water over our head, wash our hair, rinse. Repeat and we’d be done.

So we were all gathered there. And there was a somewhat festive atmosphere going on, because it was a kind of a silly thing to be doing, having a group shampoo party in our bathing suits.

Josie was working on Ulysses and he was yelling and clowning around about how cold the water was.

“I’ms freesing!” he said, in his broken English. “Freesing col’!”

We were all laughing. And Josie had her hands full because he kept pulling away, but with a head full of frothy lather. It was getting everywhere.

Meanwhile, Sahalia, who I will remind you is thirteen, straddles the other bin, facing down the aisle away from us.

I’m standing with Niko and Jake and Brayden, all of us with towels over our shoulders, waiting our turn.

And Sahalia grabs a bottle of water and bends over the bin.

Now her behind is facing us, and they are short shorts she is wearing. So we can see … too much. We can see skin under the leg of her shorts. The creamy skin of her inner, inner thigh.

It was like a Sports Illustrated bikini-issue spread.

I looked away, as was only right.

But Jake and Brayden, not so much.

“Jesus, Sahalia,” Josie quipped. “You’re wasting water.”

It was true. Sahalia had dumped more than half the gallon over her head while we had all stared, transfixed by her outrageous stance.

But it got worse (or better, depending on your POV).

She stood up and turned to face us.

And her T-shirt was all wet.

Now we could see her breasts outright, through the material of her shirt.

We could see the nipples. Everything about them, we could see.

It was hot. It was crazy.

I don’t think she knew what she was doing. She was just a kid.

“Ha-ha,” Max sang. “I can see your boobies, Sahalia.”

Josie rushed over with a towel.

“Sahalia, your shirt is totally see-through,” Josie clucked. Josie darted a glance at us and saw what we all were now trying to hide—that we had noticed what Sahalia wanted us to notice.

As Josie busied herself wrapping Sahalia in a towel I saw Sahalia look at Jake and at Brayden. A little smile played on her lips.

It was possible that Sahalia hadn’t realized she was pretty much sticking her butt in our faces. And maybe she hadn’t known just how sheer that shirt would get.

But it seemed to me she wanted us to see her body.

She wanted to be wanted.

When my turn came, I was glad to have the cold water poured over my hair. I very much needed to clear my head.

When it came time to wash Brayden’s hair. I saw Josie be extra-loving, extra-sweet.

I watched her tenderly massage his thick, brown hair; saw her dab away of any soap that threatened to run into his eyes; heard her murmur, “That okay?” and “How’s that feel?”

Brayden had his eyes closed.

All her little kindnesses went unnoticed by him.

He was busy thinking his way up Sahalia’s shorts.

CHAPTER TWENTY

WE GET HIGH

When my alarm clock rang at seven, somehow I felt twice as bad as I had the day before. A glimpse in the pink princess mirror Caroline had hung in the hall told me I had two spectacular black eyes.

I brought the mirror really, really close to my face, so I could see if my pupils were overly dilated. Maybe I had a concussion.

Max came bopping over. It was his turn to help in the kitchen.

“Dude,” he said. “You look like a monster!”

I considered roaring or acting like a monster in some way, but my head hurt too much.

On our way to the kitchen, I popped four Advils.

* * *

I fell asleep during breakfast. What can I say?

It sort of ran without me, with Max dishing out bowls of cornflakes and boxed milk.