The two boys looked equally depressed and then Balliol said. "We could hop the bus and go to the mall. Shopping always makes you feel better."
"Shopping always makes you feel better."
Balliol stuck his bottom lip out and shrugged. There was some truth to this.
"I think," Balliol said, "if we used my credit card to buy anything and everything that looked nice it would make you feel better."
Sully palmed Balliol’s head in a fake smack and said, "You think spending money makes everything better."
Balliol raised an eyebrow.
"Doesn’t it?"


"So that’s when Shelley says—"
"Hold on! Hold on!" Sidney said. "When are we gon’ meet this Shelley?"
"Don’t be silly," Joel said, shaking his head with what Sidney thought was a little too much denial as he put the bottle of wine on the kitchen table. "Shelley is just a friend. Just someone I see on the bus everyday."
"And is she nice to see?" Sid asked.
Mark drummed his fingers on the table and shook his head, "Sometimes, Sidney..."
"Ah," said Sidney. "But sometimes I’m right."
"Switching the subject," Mark prompted after a gaze at Joel’s reddening face.
"Thank you," said Joel, turning to Sid who was taking food out of the refrigerator.
"I have a new and exciting art show coming up. It’ll be in Columbus at the end of the month. And this one rich bitch up north, around Rhodes, just bought one of my pieces."
"I don’t know how you do that," Mark said.
"Sell art?"

"Well, that too," Mark said. "But it’s like a business for you. You sell your pieces, and you don’t see them. That’s like... if you were a writer, you’d always have your book, even if someone bought it. Then they would publish it and lots of people could have a copy. But you’re selling, essentially, your baby. The only copy. I mean, the value that art has is it’s the only one. Right?"
"Except with me it usually isn’t," Sidney confessed.
"What’s that?" said Joel.
"It’s like back when we were kids. I’d sketch things and then people would say, ‘I like that,’ and I’d make a copy and sell it for a nickel.
"Only now," he continued slouching down into a chair and pouring a jelly glassful of burgundy, "I do it for more than a nickel."
"Wait a minute," Joel said with a frown. "Do they know they get copies?"
"Well, they only get copies when it’s something I really like and can’t part with. Which, half the time is not the case. And then, no," Sidney admitted, "They don’t know."

The kitchen door opened and Savannah came in with buckets of chicken. Joel got up to help her and said, pointing to the television: "What the hell is that?"
"Uncle Hecky…" Sidney looked dubious.
A very black, very old, bald man in spectacles and a white apron, holding a chef’s hat in his hand was looking indignant in front of the busted window of Hecky’s Chicken and Rib Shack and he was telling the reporter:
"She came in. Called me a niggah. Hit me in my face..." He shook his head in wonder. "And I ain’t seen the bitch since."
The camera turned to another old man and the reporter said, "Close friend and grocery store magnate, William Darrow."
"Daddy’s on TV," Savannah murmured.
"And not in that good way," Sidney said.
"This is a seriously unfortunate event," William Darrow said. "I’m sure that shortly the details of this unfortunate family squabble will be taken care of."
"Family squabble?" Savannah said, a drumstick to her mouth.
"We need to go," Sidney.
"We’re in the middle of dinner," Joel protested.
"I certainly think," Mark told them, "that if we can help in anyway, Sidney’s right. We should go."

Then the camera’s switched over to a screaming Black woman in red hot pants and a green top, her curls and ear bobs swinging with rage.
"Hecky!" she shouted. "Hecky!"
"She’s pretty," Mark noted.
"She’s Hecky’s wife."
Joel frowned and said: "She’s a bit young."
"She’s a trophy wife," Savannah told them. "After Hecky made it big with the second rib shop, he had to get a second wife."
The cameras were on her and Rachel Meriwether was reporting in a hushed voice, "We have live breaking coverage at the African-American eatery Hecky’s Chicken and Rib Shack."
"Hecky!" she shouted again. "Look what I did to your car, motherfucker!"
The news was live so there was no chance to delete the expletive.
She walked off, the camera zoomed to a silver Lexus that, currently, had no windows.
"Shit!" they heard Hecky scream. "You bitch. You—"
The sound died down and Rachel Meriwether turned with only a mildly troubled smile and said, "And now back to you, Dave."
"Maybe they could use some of your counseling expertise," Sidney said to Mark.
Mark gave a slight smile and a shrug then said, "I don’t know about that, but there are a few divorce attorneys I could introduce them too."


"I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT THE fuck this school wants from me," Tina Reardon was saying. "I pay the bills. On time no less, and they aren’t getting any cheaper. And then they turn around and say, "We need you to come to this and to that and the other, and they are never done. Not to mention the fact that now I get letters and phone calls telling me I’m not nearly as involved as I could be. Has it ever occurred to these people that the reason I’m so busy is because I’m trying to make money, to pay that goddamn school?"
Tina Reardon ran a red light and wheeled the car into the parking lot of Saint Vitus.
Sullivan said nothing.
The whole way into the school she marched through the halls, her heels clicking, her purse falling from her shoulder, lifting it up over and over again.
"I’m not blaming you," Tina told her son. "It’s not your fault. And the truth is that maybe I should have been there for you. I wish I could be more. But where this man gets off, calling a council. And the family thing too! My God."
Tina Sullivan took a deep breath and pushed her hair back, and then she ran her hands through Sullivan’s hair. He was as tall as her. When the hell had that happened?
"You’re making it spikier," Sullivan complained.
"But it looks nice spikier," she said. "I don’t want you to be all tidy and white bread."
No, tidy and white bread was what she fell for. That’s what Dad was. Wherever he was.

His mother pulled her purse up onto her shoulder again and rapped on the door.
Rick Howard opened it with a smile and said, "Hello! Everyone else is here. It’s good to see you, Sullivan." Dean Howard smiled down on him. But Sullivan felt as if he’d just been chastised. Everyone else is already here.
And then Sullivan came into the room after his mother and his voice literally came out of his throat, fell from his open mouth and hit the floor at who he saw.
"Hi, Sully," Chris Powers said with a smile, sitting next to the white bread tidy man his mother would have gone for, who must have been Chris Powers’ father.

"So if your test days are usually Fridays," Chris was saying, "I was thinking that Thursday after football practice I could come over and that would be the really big day we’d work on your calculus.
Sullivan nodded his head and said, weakly, "Okay."
"And then I’m thinking, from your grades—"
"You’ve seen his grades?" Tina said to Chris.
"Well, I had to know where Sully was at," Chris told her. "There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. We all have weak places."
"Yeah, where’re yours?"
"Ma!"
"You were saying," Rick Howard prompted Chris.
"I was thinking Mondays and Wednesdays and Thursdays would be really key study days."

Tina Reardon stopped herself from muttering the phrase "Really key?"
"Okay," Sullivan said.
"Is there anything you would like to contribute, Sullivan?" said Rick Howard.
"Ah, no." Sully said. "That was good. That should work."
Chris gave Sully a large smile like, "This’ll be great." But how could it be great? How could this be anything but really, really awkward?

After Sullivan and his mother left, Mark Powers said with a shake of his head, "I feel sorry for the boy. I think it’s his mother who’s bringing him down."
Rick Howard nodded sagely: "Parents don’t understand how much they contribute to their children’s education."
Well, I understand," Mark rose up from his chair.
"I know you do," said Rick Howard, and then he and Mark smiled at each other.
"Chris is one of our star pupils."
And then Mark wanted to tell Rick Howard, "After his mother died we had some really tough things to get through. But we decided together to be winners. And I think Chris has proved himself."
"Chris has," Rick told Mark. "I admire the both of you for what you’ve been able to do," he said, looking at Mark’s tie, and then back up at Mark. "You must be a very devoted parent."
"I try to be," Mark told Rick Howard.
"And now we’re going to get Sullivan all the help we can," Chris’s voice cut in.
Mark turned and looked at his son with something like a frown, like he’d forgotten where he was for just a second and Chris’s voice was an intrusion. Rick Howard was giving the boy the same look, and Chris had his winning smile on. The smile that said, "Right on, guys?" But his face was just as confused.



"Hey, Sully!" Chris said, and Sully, as usual, was so taken back by being noticed that he just stuttered and something like "hey," croaked out of his throat.
"Don’t forget," Chris told him cheerfully, "your place. About five- thirty."
Addison, Tommy and Mason, who had arrived for the end of it looked at each other and Addison suggested, "A romantic hook up?"
"Who knows?" Mason said with a shrug, entering the stall and locking the door behind him—urinals were so gauche—while Matt Mercurio and Chris Powers, who were athletes and fully invested in urinal culture, walked into the lavatory, unzipped their pants and started to piss loudly, chatting away. Matt’s pretty, perfect face frowned as he finished, stuffed his business into his pants and jerked up his zipper. He frowned in the direction of the burning cigarette and said to Balliol who was sitting in the window, ashing out onto the blacktop roof of the gymnasium:
"If I die of second hand smoke you’re getting the bill."
"Number one," Balliol told him, exhaling a gush of smoke from his nostrils: "If you die, you can’t send a bill. And Number Two, which has a great deal to do with Number One: if I die of second hand idiocy, then you can expect a bill in your mailbox."
"You know something—?" started Matt as Sully came closer to Balliol, getting up his nerve to protect him. The toilet flushed and Mason came out of the stall.

"The question is," Balliol said, after taking a final drag on his cigarette, "do you know something? The answer:" Balliol shrugged. "Probably not."
Matt Mercurio balled up a fist, but Chris grabbed his shirtsleeve and said, "Matt, Let it go."
"Yeah, Matt," Balliol smirked. "You really ought to let it go."
"Bailey…" Sully hissed.
Balliol let out a long disappointed sound and Matt, after dealing him a vicious glance, turned around and headed for the door with Chris.
"Yup," Balliol muttered taking out a new cigarette, "keep on walking, bitchface."
Matt wheeled around and knocked into Mason, and then his rage dissipated and he said, "Sorry, Mase. Look what you made me do," he snapped at Balliol."
"You crash over Mason Darrow, and it’s my fault?" Balliol said. "I feel myself coming down with that second hand idiocy already."
"Faggot," Matt snapped and walked out.
"That’s not what your mom said last night," Balliol shouted. "Actually, what she said was—"
"Stop it," Sully told him. He had seen that Chris was standing there, getting ready to say something, looking at Balliol like he might hit him, and he couldn’t have a fight between his best friend and.… Chris.
Balliol shrugged.

Chris said, "I’ll see you tonight, Sully," and turning a nasty look on a very indifferent Balliol, he walked out of the lavatory.
"Wow," Addison said.
"Wow, indeed," said Mason. "That was almost..."
"That was almost nothing," Balliol told him. "Everyone lets those morons walk around like the sun shines out of their asses. And you, Sully, ‘uh huh huh, hi Chris! Bailey, leave big strong Matt Mercurio alone. He’s only almost six feet tall, rich and a linebacker with a four point O GPA. He can’t stand up for himself."
Sully just frowned at Balliol.
"I didn’t even know you knew my name," Mason said pushing up his glasses.
Balliol turned him a look that Mason could only say was conspiratorial and then said, "You’re the only other Black kid in Eastforth, Mason. Of course I know your name."

"It was just really weird," Mark was repeating. "Really, really weird. The whole meeting thing."
"Well, from what I remember of Dickhead—"
"His name is Rick, Sidney."
"Oh, don’t chide me. I don’t feel like it today." Sidney said. "But from what I remember of him, it would have to be weird."
"He just kept looking at me. And I was looking at him. It was like we were looking into each other or something."
"Like the Love Connection."

Mark turned Sidney a very vicious frown.
"And people say you don’t have a sense of humor..."
"I don’t know how you expect me to tell you things," Mark said, "if you’re just going to make little jokes. I mean, the whole meeting was sort of odd."
"Odd in a bad way."
"No," Mark paused for a second. "Odd like... I was thinking you and Joel…. You guys are my friends."
Sidney was about to say something sarcastic, but supposed he’d reached his limit for the day.
"And I haven’t really made any new friends. So... Maybe that’s what it was when I met him. I felt like... We should meet. Is that odd?"
Sidney debated what to say, and then he said, "Well, the only thing odd is you and Rick Howard being friends. But, I never knew the guy. And now that I think of it... he was a lot like Chris is now."
"You think Chris is odd?"
"I refuse to discuss anyone else’s children... in front of their parents."
"But you think something is odd."
"Actually, Dr. Powers," Sidney said. "The only one who said anything about odd was you."