– Don’t know. My sister says he got in a fight with his mom and hit her in the stomach and his dad threw him out. Like, dragged him out the front door and threw him and a bunch of his shit on the lawn. So now he’s at Fernando’s.

The others are quiet as they each take a smoke from the pack.

George takes out a Bic sheathed in the stainless steel and turquoise case he bought at the Devil’s Workshop head shop last summer. They all bum a light.

Hector takes the pack back and looks at Paul.

– And that’s all. He’s over there with his brothers. You ride over there and fuck him up, they’re gonna kill you.

Paul bites the filter of his cigarette and gets back on his bike.

– Fuck ’em. I’ll fucking kill those faggots if they let me take ’em one on one. Only way they can take me is if they gang up.

– Well, shit, man, that’s what they fucking do.

George gives the wheel a final spin and packs the last of his tools away.

– Doesn’t matter what they do. We got to go over there. They got Andy’s bike.

And that’s when they look around and realize that Andy’s gone.

Such a Dildo

Andy was cool till Hector mentioned Alexandra and they all stopped talking.

Andy stopped talking because the thought of Alexandra always shuts him up. Shuts him up and makes his face hot so that he has to turn away. What sucks is that George and Paul stopped talking, too. Like they didn’t want to accidentally say something in front of Hector about the sudden curves that have broken out over Alexandra’s body. It’d be bad enough if Hector knew Andy was thinking about her that way. If he knew George and Paul had started checking her out, he’d have flipped. Pulled out the length of bicycle chain he keeps stuffed in his pocket, wrapped it around his fist and started swinging at his best friends.