They walked farther up the hill.

Word Williams was standing at the curb, looking down the street.

"Look at that kid, wishing he was us," said Raymo.

"He ain't even looking at us," said Ceese.

"Is so."

But he wasn't. As they got closer, he moved back onto his yard so he could look around them, down the hill.

"Whazzup, Word?" said Ceese.

Word looked at him like he'd seen him for the first time that moment.

The door to Word's house opened and his older sister Andrea leaned out and called to him.

"Get in here, Word, it's time to eat."

Word looked back down the road, then glanced at Ceese as if he wanted to ask a question.

"Word!" said Andrea. "Don't act like you don't hear me."

Word turned and walked back toward the house.

Raymo was a half-dozen steps ahead. Ceese ran to catch up.

"What you talk to that boy for?"

"Look like he was having some kind of problem," said Ceese.

"Just a little kid."

"My mama used to tend him and his little sister in the summer," said Ceese.

"She ever tend that older sister?" asked Raymo. "She hot."

"She wasn't then," said Ceese. It was weird to think of Andrea being "hot." Or maybe it was just that Raymo never thought that any girl was too rich or too smart or too pretty for him. Nothing out of reach for Raymo.

"Keep up," said Raymo.

They got to the top of the hill but Raymo insisted they walk right to the end of Cloverdale, where a fence blocked the road off from the upper part of Hahn Park. You could see the place where the golf course bottomed out, like a big green bowl. Or more like a green funnel, because at the lowest point you could see where a big culvert split the grass to capture all the runoff from the rain. Ceese didn't know if that water was piped down to the little valley by the hairpin turn where the drainpipe stood up like a totem pole. So he asked Raymo.