Ceese was angry and ashamed and he hurt all over and he was going to catch hell for all these grass stains. But he couldn't afford to answer the way he wanted to, because then Raymo would beat the hell out of him and, worse, stop being his friend.

So Ceese stood there and looked at the only thing sticking up out of the grass that wasn't Raymo: the rusted-up drainpipe.

There was something moving at the base of the pipe.

His first thought was that it was some kind of animal. There were squirrels everywhere, but this looked taller, and a different color. And shiny. What kind of animal was shiny? An armadillo? A really huge wet toad?

"Where you going?"

Ceese ignored him. What kind of dumbass couldn't see he was heading for the drainpipe?

As he got closer, though, he could say that the thing he spotted from the slope was just a handle of a plastic grocery-store sack.

Then it moved, and since there wasn't any wind and none of the grass was moving, it meant there might be an animal inside it. Maybe a mouse or something. Trapped in the bag.

Well if it was, he'd set it free before Raymo even knew it was in there. Because Raymo was bad with animals.

It wasn't a mouse. It was a baby. The smallest baby Ceese had ever seen. Stark naked, with the stump of the umbilical cord still attached. It wasn't crying, but it didn't look happy either. Its eyes were closed and it only moved its arms and legs a little.

"What you got?" asked Raymo.

"A baby, looks like," said Ceese. "But it's too small to be real."

"Ain't even human," said Raymo, looking down at it. "You going to smoke or not?"

"Got to do something about this baby."

"Smoke first."

Ceese knew that was wrong. "My brother told me that weed makes you forget stuff and not care. We got to do something about this baby while we still remember it's here."

Raymo stuffed the Ziploc bag into his pocket. "You want to take it somewhere, you do it without old Raymo. I don't want nobody thinking I the daddy."