“Oh, yeah,” I said, dribbling my pretend basketball.
“Falcons all the way, baby!” Dwyer yelled from behind Guzzo. “Whose house? OUR house!” His cheeks were already so red his freckles seemed to gather all together.
Guzzo, squatting, his arms spread out, and keeping Dwyer behind him, nodded. “Hell, yeah,” he said. Then he stopped and stood up and let Dwyer rush past him. Dwyer came at me so quickly, I thought he was going to knock me over. He dipped, pivoted, and swung around me like he was going up for an easy layup behind me. Classic Dwyer. He loved banging in the paint like a giant pinball and fighting for the rim. Guzzo wasn’t as much of a fighter. He was just massive; people bounced off him more than he tried to send them flying.
Still, we laughed, but it was because it was all we thought about. It was all everybody was thinking about. It was mid-November. State rankings came out in two weeks. If we were number one, it was only going to get harder.
“Listen,” I said. “If this is our last big night, let’s make it worth it.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Guzzo said, slapping my hand in the air. He pulled a short key on a ring from his pocket and held it in the air like a cartoon superhero. “Shotgun, baby!” he yelled.
He was so loud, Dwyer looked around to see if anybody was watching us from the top of the alley.
“Seriously,” Guzzo continued. “How much are we going to get? I’m shotgunning like ten beers tonight.”
By “we,” Guzzo meant me, because I usually had more cash than either of them, so I almost always bought the beer, which pissed me off, but I knew they felt bad I paid for their fun more than they paid for mine. And fuck it, we were tight, and that was most important. I’d been friends with Guzzo forever, and when Dwyer had joined us in middle school, everything had only gotten better.
“I have this,” I said, patting my back pocket, knowing they could smell it on my breath. “And I don’t want to be wasted when I get to Jill’s, and you can’t be either. You promised me. Seriously.”
And that was the other reason I didn’t mind buying Guzzo beer. Jill was Guzzo’s cousin, and he kept promising he was going to put in a good word for me with her. I’d always liked her. Gearing up for the basketball season, I would go on these epic runs all around town, and I—okay, I admit it—I’d run by her house more than once. You know how it is. Sometimes you just want to cross paths with that one person, on the bus, on the street, wherever, just so you can nod, and say “Wassup,” and hope to hell that something more comes of it. Anyway, the last time I’d seen her, she was dragging her younger brother across the street. She’d been wearing these stupid gray sweatpants rolled at the waist, rolled at the ankles, too. She walked barefoot along the walkway. I waved to her, she waved back, and all I could think was, How does she make even a stupid pair of sweatpants look so good?
Everybody knew she threw mad parties, so I was psyched for the night. Everybody’d be hands-up dancing on the first floor, and I’d see if Jill was down with some alone time. And if not, that was cool too, because then I’d be ripping shots with Guz and Dwyer in the kitchen, like we did at most parties anyway.
“Well, let’s do this,” Guzzo said. “Jerry’s, beer, a couple slices at Mother’s, and we’re good. The party’s gonna be a shitshow—Frankie brought over a frigging trunkful.” Frankie was another one of Guzzo’s cousins, and this was another reason being friends with Guzzo was a good thing. He had an army of cousins around the city, and if you were in the shit and you were tight with Guzzo, you didn’t have to look far for help.
Basically, we always got started at Jerry’s, because it was the dirtiest little corner store I knew, and the easiest place for us to get beer. Guzzo had lifted a bottle once. I had too. But we didn’t try that anymore. And we never bought it ourselves. The clerks behind the counter would never risk selling to underage dudes. But one night I asked a guy on the sidewalk outside if he’d buy us a twelve-pack of tall boys, he agreed, and that had become our weekly routine. It was the safest plan anyway, and we always seemed to find someone who’d buy the beer for us.
The only problem was always this: Whoever we found to buy us the beer would only do it if we paid him extra. There weren’t any Good Samaritan beer angels floating around waiting to gift us our weekly Friday buzz. So beer cost double for us, but whatever, we were seventeen. And I made mint at my summer job and it gave me play money for the year. Plus, Ma was a frigging workhorse, always doing the night shift at Uline so she could get paid more. It meant the money I made was just for me, and whatever I wanted to spend on Willy. But mostly, it went for beer and Friday night dinners at the back window of Mother’s Pizza.
We had to hang around for a while, but soon after it was actually dark out, I left Guzzo and Dwyer in the alley and leaned up against the brick wall down the block from Jerry’s until I saw a guy making his way up Fourth Street toward us. I recognized him; he’d helped us out before. He was a skinny white dude, who was a little strung out. I told myself that the guy looked like he could use my money to buy himself some food, but he’s going to buy more beer anyway. And while I’m fucking judging the guy like that, I’m also digging in my pocket for the money I’m about to give him to buy me and the guys our beer at five thirty in the goddamn afternoon. See what I mean? Who’s the sane one now? I’m thinking all this, but on the outside, I was all smiles and handshakes—All-American.
And I was about to hand him my money when the front door to Jerry’s whacked open and a cop pushed a younger guy out in front of him. It was only a matter of seconds before the cop had thrown the guy to the sidewalk and pressed him face-first into the concrete. I was barely twenty feet away. The guy on the ground was black and he looked like he was around my age, and I wasn’t sure, but I thought he was looking at me. He was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Did he go to our school? All I could really see was the cop over him, shouting. The cop was white and it took me a second to recognize him, because his face was angled down the whole time, but then, when he raised his head for a second, I realized right away it was Guzzo’s older brother, Paul.
Holy shit! Paul! Paul was hitting the other guy, again, and again, smashing his face into the sidewalk. The blood kept coming. I wanted to move; my gut wanted me to rush to help Paul. But I knew enough to know that you stayed out of police business, plus Paul didn’t need my help because he was pummeling the guy. So I just stood there, sorta frozen, just watching, transfixed. With one knee and a forearm pinning the guy beneath him, Paul bent low and said something into the guy’s ear. I couldn’t look away; I didn’t even want to. I didn’t know what the hell was going on and my own pulse jackhammered through me. I heard sirens coming up the street, and I swear I would have stayed staring if it hadn’t been for the cop car that pulled up onto the sidewalk between us. When car doors swung open, I turned and ducked back down the alley to find Guzzo and Dwyer.
They were waiting near the back and I ran toward them.
“Oh shit,” Guzzo said.
Another cop car raced past the entrance to the alley behind me.
“Oh shit,” Guzzo said again.