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game. He was rattled, and I knew it.
    “Fu-u-uck!” he yelled, his fist making a loud
plap
against the screen.
    A booming “HEY” sounded behind us, and we turned to see the manager’s milky forearm rising above the guitar magazine concealing his face, directing our eyes to the sign above his head: YOU HIT THE MACHINES YOU HIT THE ROAD .
    “Ah-ight, dude, chill,” Darren called to the magazine cover. “What’s up with that guy?” “D, you know the sign—”
    “I fully know the sign, little dude,” Darren cut me off, chuckling. “I’ve like seen it before.” He smiled down at me and rolled his slow brown eyes, after flipping his orange bangs out of the way. “But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna like obey it and shit.” “Nah, D,” I tried to redirect him, “not
that
sign.” “Dude,” he insisted, “that’s like the only one in here.” Christ. I should’ve known we’d have to two-step before we tangoed. It wasn’t that Darren was the space cadet he pretended to be, though. It was more like he’d been playing dumb so goddamn long that he’d just forgotten he was playing. I wouldn’t be surprised if his parents had to pull him aside, douse him with ice water, shake him by the shoulders, and remind him that he was in the top five of his class at the beginning of each school year. Just so he’d know.
    “Nah, dude,” I kept at it, “I’m talking about a different sign.” “Little dude, you’re like totally confounding me, and that’s way harshing on my buzz.” He stopped before feeding another quarter into the slot, and suddenly looked over his right shoulder, toward thewall. He stayed that way—frozen, staring, fingering his pukka bead choker, a black rubber bracelet rolling down his tanned forearm—for about ten or fifteen seconds before he snapped out of it and shook his head. “Whoa,” he declared.
    “So you don’t know anything about
other
kinds of signs”—I took my time saying the rest—“like the signs of old age?” It took him a second to make the connection, but when he did, I saw the panic spread across his face. It was beautiful.
    “Let’s talk outside,” he whispered. He tried to put his arm around my shoulder, but I pulled it back. I never let anybody put a hand on me without returning the favor, and that went double for wannabe punk surfers who were balling my sister on the sly.
    Darren was moving quickly and made a left out the door. I was following behind him, but something made me check out the couple whispering to each other to the right of the exit, leaning against the Grand Prix racing machine. I hadn’t seen them when I’d come in. The chick’s back was turned to me, but I saw that she had on black Converse high-tops with folded-down white socks, about thirty black rubber anklets dangling over each sock, and a cryptic trail of pen marks zigzagging up the length of her smooth, taut thighs. Her denim cutoffs were faded, frayed, and wedged so deeply into the crack of her ass that about a quarter of each cheek was showing.
    I’d seen that ass thousands of times. Ever since she’d moved to town two years ago, I’d been keeping vigil over it from a distance, and sitting behind her in every class last year had practically tattooed those cheeks onto my brain. Shit, I would’ve known them anywhere, in any light, from any angle, under any conditions, just like I knew they belonged to Stacy Sanders, who’d been an army brat at the military base until her parents broke up the summer before fifth grade and then moved with her mother to Sunnybrook apartments and transferred to our school that September. If Chris Singleton hadn’t movedto Arizona, I never would’ve gotten my ringside seat by all the action, because his last name came before mine in the alphabet. Good old Chris Singleton; I knew that kid about as well as I knew any of the other dweebs at school, which was hardly at all, but if I ever saw him again, I might just kiss him out of sheer