"Nobody okay, they call the cops on me."

"Let's just ride down Cloverdale before the cops come and do the weed another time."

"You got it in your pocket, Ceese. You decide," said Raymo. But his smirk was saying, You chicken out this time, you ain't with me next time.

"I heard that," said Raymo.

"You spose to," said Ceese.

"You telling me I can't tell weed from... weeds?"

That's what I'm telling you all right. "No," said Ceese. "How would I know?"

"So you don't get high, you going to start telling everybody I couldn't tell weed from daffodils?"

"You can't help it, you buy fake weed."

"Just give me the bag and fly on home to Mama," said Raymo. "Dumb little—"

"No, I'm okay with it, I'll smoke it with you."

"I don't want you to," said Raymo. "You a virgin, I don't want to be your first time."

Ceese hated it when he twisted everything to be about sex. "Let's just smoke it," said Ceese, and he started walking through the wildflowers growing profusely between the road and the lawn.

"Not here," said Raymo. "Somebody pack your head with stupid?"

"You said we going to smoke the weed up by the pipe."

"On the way back down the hill."

"We got to walk all the way up to the top?"

"When your daddy call somebody to see if you really go to the top, they say yes, they saw us go up there, we rode back down."

"My daddy don't know anybody higher up Cloverdale than his own house."

Just then an old homeless man came out of one of the houses on the downslope side of Cloverdale, carrying a bunch of grocery bags, some full, some empty. The old man winked at them and Ceese couldn't help it, he waved and smiled.

"You know that guy?" asked Raymo.

"He told me he your long-lost daddy, come to see how you turn out, decide if your mama be worth—"

"Shut up about my mama," said Raymo.

admitted that—Ceese only knew because his own mama told Miz Smitcher once.