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he retreated to his bedroom to do his homework.
    He was just getting into why the Battle of Vicksburg divided the Confederacy when the doorbell rang. Cursing, Billy tore out of his room and raced down the hall. His grandfather was actually having a decent night, but any disruption in the routine could ruin everything. Last week, some religious nut had come by, trying to simultaneously save them and drain their bank account. Gramps had capital-F Freaked. He’d thrown a glass at the visitor and howled like the devil. The nut took off screaming and Gramps crapped his pants. Right now, Billy’s goal was to get to the door and shoo away whoever was hovering on the stoop before Gramps noticed.
    He threw open the door, and there stood Marianne Bixby, her backpack hanging by her side. She smiled at him, a tentative thing that flicked at the corners of her mouth. “Hey.”
    “Hey.” His own smile was surprised and pleased. Whenever he was with Marianne, the tension bled out of his shoulders and he remembered how to laugh—even when she showed up unannounced. Billy glanced over his shoulder to see if Gramps had noticed they had a visitor. So far, so good: His grandfather was hypnotized by the television. Turning back to Marianne, he grinned. “What’s up?”
    “The war zone’s getting loud,” she said, shrugging. “Can I finish my homework here?”
    “Sure,” he said, stepping aside to let her in. The Bixby War had been ongoing since Billy and Marianne were in middle school. Once, he’d asked her if her parents were going to get divorced since they fought so much. She’d said no, they were just the type of people who were only happy when they were angry. He thought that was messed up, but then again, he had a mom who smiled instead of shouted, so who was he to judge?
    As Billy shut the door behind her, Marianne glanced at the family room. Televised sounds of some lucky winner filled the air with joyous screeches. She asked Billy, “Should I say hi?”
    On good days, Gramps smiled at Marianne and called her “Debbie,” whoever that was. Billy shook his head. “Don’t want to push my luck. It was a bad afternoon.”
    The two of them slunk down the hallway and into Billy’s room. He kept the door open so that he could hear if Gramps needed him. “Take the desk,” he said, grabbing his laptop.
    “Chivalry!” She unpacked her things and got settled. “Shouldn’t be too long. Just have to finish up that history paper.”
    “Ditto.” He sat on his bed, using his pillow to cushion his back. “Figure thirty minutes, then I’m done.”
    “Shame you weren’t at Dawson’s,” she said as she opened up her report. “You missed all the fun. Amy and Michael hooked up, then Amy and Gary broke up.”
    He grinned. “You’d think Gary would’ve seen that coming.”
    “Shocker, right? He called Michael some interesting names. I’d tell you what they were, but you’d blush.”
    “My virgin ears,” he said piously.
    “So Gary stormed out, looking ready to grab a baseball bat and smash things. There’s some colorful language on Michael’s Facebook page tonight.”
    Billy took her word for it; he avoided social networking sites as a rule. The last time he’d done a search on his own name, he’d found an upsetting number of pages and comments calling him gay, and retarded, and stupid—and those were the nicer names. He’d been ten years old. Billy had learned his lesson: ego-surfing was bad, and social media sites were worse.
    After they finished their homework and had a conversation discussing the merits of superhero comic books (better stories, according to Billy) versus superhero movies (better eye candy, according to Marianne), she asked what had happened that afternoon that had been so bad. So Billy launched into an abbreviated version of events, completely skipping over how he’d been jumped by Eddie and the Bruisers. Instead, he started with his mother telling him that Gramps had wandered off, so he’d