"Your daddy don't care if you smoke a little weed."

"He care a lot my mama gets upset. Whole house jumpy when mama get mad."

"So go on home to mama."

"Knows what? That you and me walking up the street with skateboards? Anybody want to look out they window, they know that. Ain't against no law."

"Miz Smitcher, she know."

"You tell her? That how she know?"

"You know Miz Smitcher! She just look at you, she know what you been doing for the last three days."

"Everybody know what you been doing, you been hiding under your bed, slapping the monkey."

"That's just dumb."

"You haven't figured out how to do it yet?"

"Too much stuff under my bed, nobody can get under there."

They laughed about that for a moment.

"I think Miz Smitcher, she call the cops," said Ceese.

"She call the cops on us, I just have to pay her a visit later."

Raymo always talked that way. Like he was dangerous. And grownups took him at his word—treated him like he was a rattler ready to strike. But in the past few months since Raymo's mom moved into one of the rental houses owned by Ceese's brother Antwon, they'd been together enough that Ceese knew better. Truth was, it surprised him that after all his brag, Raymo actually did score a bag of weed.

That was Ceese's problem now. It was easy to tell Raymo that if he scored some weed, Ceese would smoke it with him, because he thought it was like the girls Raymo was always bragging about how they liked him to slip it to them in the girls' bathroom at school or behind the 7-Eleven. All talk, but nothing real. Then he shows up with a Ziploc bag full of dry green leaves and stems, along with some roll-your-own papers, and what was Ceese supposed to do? Admit it was all fronting?

So now he had to think, was Raymo putting on when he threatened to do something bad to Miz Smitcher?

"Look, Raymo, Miz Smitcher, she okay."