The insufferable August heat beating through the window swelled my cheek, as I sat in the passenger seat of my dad’s Ford pickup, snacking on a small bag of McDonald’s fries. Bad enough school that started in a week, but we’d been hit by some hellacious wave of misery that truly sucked for those of us whose air conditioning happened to be on the fritz. My dad’s had bugged out a month ago, and he just didn’t have time to fix it. Only a faint whisper of cool air teased the layer of sweat beaded across my skin, but I didn’t want to complain.

“Sorry I didn’t grab a better dinner, Champ. I’m sure Jo will have something good cooked.”

My dad’s ex-girlfriend, JoAnne, was probably the closest I’d ever get to a real mom. She cooked, cleaned, and was happy to do just about anything for my dad, which was the one fatal flaw of their relationship. She wasn’t the stubborn, selfish woman who’d birthed me, and therefore would never live up to the bullshit pedestal my dad had placed her on. Even if he’d never admit that he still loved the woman who’d abandoned us.

“S’okay. I’m not that hungry, anyway.”

At fourteen, I was old enough to stay home alone, but the occasional gunshots we’d sometimes hear in our neighborhood kept him from taking any chances on the nights he worked late.

“You’re full of it. But that’s what makes you a good kid.” He ran his knuckles over the growing mop of hair atop my head. “Hoping to be back by midnight, if Ray lets me off a bit earlier. Second shift sucks, but they want the job finished this week.” He huffed, glancing out the window beside him. “Do me a favor, huh? Don’t get into construction, like your ol’ man. Find something that keeps you young.”

“Like what?” I hated that he had to work so hard to keep things going. Made me feel helpless sometimes, watching him kill the hours of his life in a thankless job that would one day take its toll on his body.

I once told him I’d quit school and come to work with him, to which he’d promptly told me he’d see hell freeze over before then. I maintained all A’s at school, with perfect scores on all my math tests—a trait he always credited to my mom, for some reason. In my opinion, if she was so smart, she wouldn’t have gotten herself hooked on drugs. Of course, I’d never say that to him. He’d probably blame himself for her addiction, just like he blamed himself for her cheating.

“I dunno. Professional skateboarder. Highly-paid tree climber. Famous daredevil. Whatever you want. As long as you’re happy.” He slanted a smile back at me. “Just make sure you got good insurance. Having to fix your broken bones ain’t been cheap.”

With a snort, I unwrapped the flimsy cheeseburger from its greasy wrapper and shoved a bite into my mouth. “What’d you want to be?” I asked around a mouthful of food.

“Soldier. From the time I was about six years old.”

“Like Uncle Hank?”

Lips pressed to a hard line, he nodded. “Like Uncle Hank. But, actually, it was your grandpop that I looked up to. He was in Vietnam.”

A pause lingered between us, and I picked at the bun of my burger, carefully choosing the next words. “Why don’t you two talk anymore? I mean, you and Uncle Hank.”

He shook his head and hiked an elbow along the back of the torn leather gap that separated us. “Long story.”

“I couldn’t imagine not talking to Eli for years. It’d be weird.” Eli was JoAnne’s son and had been a brother to me since my dad met his mom when I was just eight years old. Having just turned fifteen, he was officially a year older than me, both of us abandoned by one of our parents. In his case, it was his father who’d walked out on their family, only to be thrown in prison shortly after.

Apparently, he’d visited his dad a few times, though I couldn’t begin to imagine why he’d bother. Fourteen years on, and I had no interest in looking for the mom who’d up and packed her shit, before walking out on my dad and me.

Maybe because I still had my dad, and he pretty much made up for two parents. I glanced out the window at the homeless lining the streets along Mount Elliot. We didn’t come from the best place, and I didn’t grow up with much. But for a teenage kid from Detroit, I was happy. I didn’t need much more than my dad.

I think Eli took it harder, since he was a little older when his dad left. Sometimes, he could be a jerk because of it, particularly on the days when his dad should’ve been there, like all the ball games he’d missed, and of course, Eli’s birthdays, when the guy didn’t so much as send him a letter. All that time doing nothing in prison, one’d think a happy birthday was some great effort on his part.

Dad pulled the Ford alongside the curb of Palmer Street, coming to a stop in front of JoAnne’s home. If our neighborhood was bad, hers was downright shitty. Her two-story bungalow sat smack in the middle of a boarded-up crack-house, as Eli referred to it, on one side, and a fire-gutted hellhole on the other. In spite of the weeds growing around her, JoAnne kept her yard trimmed and brimming with flowers, like it existed in some kind of bubble that didn’t belong. Her way of normalizing the dysfunction around her—something I always thought made her a decent mom.

I popped the last of the burger into my mouth and tossed the crumpled paper into the bag. The door of the pickup creaked as I pushed it open, nabbing my duffle and skateboard from the seat beside me.

“Hey, don’t get into any trouble with Eli,” Dad said, gripping my shoulder. “Stick around the house. No wandering off.”

“Okay. I’ll see ya.”

“Jamie … I’m serious.

My full name was Jameson, named after my dad’s favorite brand of Irish whiskey, so I eventually learned. Most called me James for short. My mom had always called me Jamie, and when she left, I guess he felt it was a comfort to pick up the nickname. In truth, though, it never brought me any comfort.

“I love you, kid. Be good,” he added.

“Love you, too.”

On rare occasions, my dad told me he loved me. For the most part, he didn’t do a whole lot of mushy crap, but as an ironworker, he had a thing about making sure he always left for work each day on a good note with me. Probably hanging out on those high beams all day. Two weeks back, one of the guys on the jobsite, a laborer, was down in the trenches, when it caved in on him. His buddy tried digging him out with an excavator and ultimately popped his head clean off. Young guy with a baby at home. The story messed my dad up for a while, making him tear up when he talked about the kid growing up without his dad.

“See you tonight!”

“Yep!” I slammed the door shut behind me and waved him off, waiting until he turned the corner before turning away.

The truth was, I had no intentions of sticking around the house. Just up Palmer, at the corner of Concord, sat the largest abandoned factory in the world—the Packard Plant—a playground of shit to get into for Eli and me. Last time my dad got called in for second shift, the two of us had cut along the railroad tracks and broken in through the back alley that’d long been closed off. We’d spent all afternoon climbing, jumping, and had built a makeshift skate ramp and grind rail out of wood, concrete slabs, and metal scraps we’d found.

We’d been itching to go back ever since.

The unkempt lawn and graffiti sprayed over the particleboard on the house next door caught my attention, as I made my way toward JoAnne’s. It wasn’t unusual to see abandoned homes in my neighborhood, either, but most had a ‘For Sale’ sign out front, and didn’t have friendly phrases, like fuck off, painted across the front of them.

The screen door creaked on his rusted hinges as I threw it back and knocked on the wooden panel.

In seconds, the door flew open to show JoAnne, wearing a pair of jeans, a black tank, and large hoop earrings. Frizzy, auburn hair framed her pale, freckled face and crooked teeth. Not the most attractive woman, definitely not as beautiful as my mom was, but her personality certainly made up for what she lacked in looks.

“C’mon in, babe. Your dad leave already?” Setting her hand on my shoulder, she guided me inside, and I caught a glimpse over my shoulder of her scanning the street.

I hated that he ignored her, but Jo could be overwhelming sometimes.

“D’you eat, sweetheart?” Her house always smelled like old, worn down wood and whatever she happened to be cooking. Spaghetti, just by the tomato-y wafts.

“Yeah,” I lifted the empty bag of fast food, which she swiped out of my hands with a frown and tossed into the trash.

“You and your daddy need a home-cooked meal. A good one. Tell him to come over this Friday, and I’ll make both of you some fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn.”

Damn that sounded good.

Beneath the notes of food and decay was the light clean scent of soap. Jo always kept her place clean, which made sense, because what little income she did manage to scrape together came from working as a maid for the rich assholes in the suburbs. A few times a week, she’d take the bus to Bloomfield, and spend the day cleaning a mansion for some lazy fuck with too much money. In the summer, Eli would go with her, just so he could ogle the rich guy’s hot daughter. I’d never personally seen her, but she seemed to consume Eli’s thoughts lately.

“Eli’s upstairs,” Jo said, and as I turned to head up, she grabbed my arm. “Before you go up there … has he …” Her brows pinched together in a troubling way. “He seem different to you lately?”

I shrugged, but in truth, he had. I’d been blowing it off as him just missing his dad, since he talked about him a lot more than usual. “Maybe. Why?”

Lips downturned, her brows flickered the way they did sometimes when she’d talk about my dad and try not to cry. “He just …” The double-blinking and shaking of her head was a poor attempt to stave off the tears welling in her eyes. “Earlier today, he was up playing a video game. I asked him three times to pick up his room because you were coming over. You know Eli’s a good boy. He always does as he’s told, but … it just seems lately, he’s ignoring me.” She rubbed her forehead and reached for the pack of smokes on the table beside her. With a slight tremble, she lit the cigarette, her cheeks caving with a deep inhale, and she blew the smoke off to the side. “So I told him a fourth time to clean up, and he just … blew up.” Her bunched shoulders emphasized the bafflement in her eyes. “Told me to get the fuck out of his room.” The trembling of her lips set me on edge—I hated watching her cry. “He never talked to me like that before,” she croaked, on the verge of sobbing.

Eli had a temper, for sure, but never toward his own ma. He damn near worshipped the woman, commiserating with my sense of helplessness when it came to our parents and their financial problems.

“You …. You would tell me if something was bothering him, right, James? I mean, if it’s a kid at school, or something?”

That would make sense, if we didn’t happen to be on summer break. “Yeah, sure.” I nodded. Eli didn’t tell me shit, though. “If he says anything, I’ll let you know.”

She palmed my cheek, letting the tear streak down her face. In the next breath, her features morphed into something more stern. “And if it’s one of the bastards in this neighborhood, I will kill them,” she gritted. “So you let me know.”

“I will.”

After another stroke of her thumb across my skin, she lowered her hand and gave a slight nod, sucking in another lungful of smoke.

I slid my duffle higher onto my shoulder and hiked up the staircase toward Eli’s room. I couldn’t imagine anyone from the neighborhood messing with him—they all seemed to do their own thing. Even the gang members didn’t really pay attention to the gangly little white boy.

I pushed through Eli’s bedroom door without bothering to knock, and found him just as Jo had described—sprawled out in his dirty ass room, playing the Wii his mom had won in a church raffle two years back. Letting the duffle fall to the floor, I slumped onto the folding chair beside him. “You ready?”

“Yeah. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” He tossed his game aside, and pushed off the bed. Maybe it’d just been so long since we last hung out, or that I was more in tune to something being wrong because of his mom’s comments, but Eli looked older, for some reason. Tired. An itchy-looking redness flared over his eyelids, with deep circles beneath that confessed he hadn’t slept much. He reminded me of my dad on his third shift nights. “My mom’s been busting my ass all day long.”

“No offense.” I lifted my arm to cover my nose. “But something smells dead in here. You better find it, or I’m sleeping on the couch tonight.”

Tugging on his ratted out Nikes, Eli chuckled. “Shit my pants before you walked in, didn’t I?”

Slamming my fist into his shoulder, I lifted my shirt to my face. “Asshole.”

* * *

The sun had begun to set off to the west, giving some relief from the sweat drenching heat of midday, as I sat on the rusted fender of an old car and stole a cigarette from the pack of smokes that Eli had swiped from his mom.

“Saw her in a bikini last week.” Eli balanced on a charred stump of wood, arms outstretched as he walked across with his cigarette dangling from his lips, while he went on about the rich guy’s daughter again. “She’s got a tight little body.”

“Better than Mrs. Dawson’s?”

Mrs. Dawson taught Algebra and was every high school kid’s wet dream, with her tight pencil skirts and button-down tops.

“Don’t be stupid, she’s only eleven.” He jumped off the stump and hopped onto the hood of the car beside me. “But she’s so damn beautiful. And someday, she’s gonna be mine.”

“Doubt that. Unless your mom plans to move in and make cleaning their mansion a permanent thing.”

“Man, fuck that. If not for his hot daughter, I’d put a bullet between that motherfucker’s eyes.” He held his thumb and index finger in the shape of a gun and pretended to do just that.

I frowned and looked back at Eli. “Your mom’s boss?”

“He ain’t her boss. He’s a little bitch who needs to be slapped for the way he talks to my mom.”

Yeah, well, I heard you haven’t been Mister Charming yourself. “Like what?”

“She might clean their fucking house, but he isn’t better than us. Piece of shit acts like he’s some god we all have to worship.” He sucked in another drag and flicked the cigarette off to the side. “Wish I could come into some money, so she’d never have to listen to that prick bark out orders again.”

“You wouldn’t see his daughter if she did. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, you know.”

“Nah, she ain’t like her old man.” His cheeks bubbled with a smile. “She’s smart. Funny. Talks to me like I’m a somebody, you know? Like I matter.”

“Probably feels sorry for you.”

Toying with the lighter, he pulled his knees in and shook his head. “No. She’s something special.”

“Hey, y-y-you g-g-guys wanna see s-s-s-something?”

At the disembodied voice, I swung my attention toward a kid in a stained white T-shirt and dirty jeans walking toward us. He looked to be sixteen, though it was hard to tell, with the dirt on his face.

Eli and I slid down off the car, backing ourselves away.

“Fuck off, man.” Eli reached toward the pocketknife I knew he always carried in his back pocket. His mom had given it to him for Christmas the year before, after realizing she couldn’t keep Eli from venturing off into the abandoned buildings.

“Th-th-there’s a d-d-dead d-d-dog ‘cross the way. All decayed an’ sh-sh-shit.” The kid stuffed his hands in his pockets and jerked his head toward the opposite entrance. “It’s s-s-s-sick.”

“No thanks.” Eli’s shoulders slouched in a more relaxed state, and he didn’t bother to take out his knife, just hopped back onto the car and lit up another cigarette. “Buzz off.”

I didn’t relax so easily, my muscles still poised in defense.

“C-c-can I have one of your s-s-s-smokes?”

“Man, I said buzz off.”

The shift of the kid’s eyes caught my attention, telling me something wasn’t right about him.

“I-I-I can t-t-take you to my h-h-house and sh-sh-show you something. If y-y-you want.”

“Are you fucking retarded? Get the hell out of here!” The irritation bled through Eli’s voice, and he lifted a stone, hurling it toward the kid’s feet. “Go!”

“Y-y-you ever t-t-try smokin’ w-w-w-weed?”

Reaching for another rock, Eli paused, tipping his head.

“Go on,” I said, attempting to stifle the intrigue on Eli’s face. “He said get out. We’re not interested.”

“Where is it?” Ignoring me, Eli got to his feet. “You got some on you?”

I kicked my head to the side a little. “Forget it. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

“Hell, no,” Eli muttered. “You know how much that shit’s worth on the streets?” He leaned in, lowering his voice even more. “We can take this kid. Easily.”

“M-m-my daddy, he has a b-b-b-box. A whole b-b-box of it at home. Better than s-s-s-s-smokes.”

“Your daddy?” Eli nudged my arm and snorted. “He home?”

The kid shook his head at the same time I shook mine.

“Fuck that. I’m not going back to this guy’s house. We don’t even know him.”

“D’you hear him?” Eli whispered, while I kept my eyes on the shady kid. “He’s got a whole box of it. I could sell that shit. My mom got a shut-off notice last week for the electricity. She’s been crying about it. An ounce could put an end to her stress.”

“What are you, a drug dealer now? And where do you tell your mom you got the money?”

“I’ll tell her I pawned some scrap metal, or something.”

I shook my head again. “No. I’m going back. It’ll be dark soon, anyway.”

“How far is your house?” Eli asked the kid.

It started to piss me off the way he kept ignoring me, entertaining the kid’s offer.

“N-n-n-not far. Just up C-C-C-Concord.”

Eli reached down, grabbing his skateboard from where we’d stashed them beside the car, and tapped my arm to huddle. “We’ll be back before dark,” he said low, and I stole a glimpse of the kid shifting on his feet, as though he couldn’t physically stay still. “I promise. Let’s just check it out. If it’s bullshit, we’ll jet. Not like this asshole can take both of us.” Eli glanced back at the kid and snorted. “Look at him. Doesn’t look like he eats much.” He huffed, tucking the board under his arm. “C’mon, man. I’m doing this for my mom. Don’t make me go myself.”

Everything in my gut told me to walk away. But that was the thing about gut feelings, they didn’t always win over the mind.

I hated that mine was intent to win. Teeth clenched, I wanted to slap Eli for laying a guilt trip on me. “Back before dark.”