“I’m going out. Make sure you get your ass to school in the morning. I’d better not get another call telling me you skipped again. You hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
I finally looked over at Kyle. She was smiling at me.
The last time I’d skipped school, we ditched together. We smoked a joint in my room and took a cab to Mario’s house, so we could go swimming in his indoor pool. That was after I’d taken her bathing suit shopping. The only suit she owned was a bikini with a giant hole in the bottom that showed her ass crack. She wasn’t comfortable wearing it, but God, I’d wanted her to, even if that meant holding my breath and going underwater and opening my eyes until they burned from the chlorine. I’d do that if it meant I could see more of her body. I didn’t tell Kyle that. Instead, I offered to buy her a new one. She couldn’t afford one, which meant she wouldn’t have gone swimming at all. And that meant she wouldn’t have gone to the beach that summer. I couldn’t let that happen. The beach was the best part about this hellhole town.
“How much did you make tonight?” I asked her.
Her hair had fallen into her face. As much as I wanted to tuck it behind her ear, I didn’t. Not now and especially not in front of Billy.
She held out her closed fist and slowly unfolded her fingers. There were a few crumpled up dollars in the middle of her palm. “It’s winter. There’s no beachgoers that I can sell bottles of water to and no tourists walking the boardwalk. And, when I try to panhandle outside the casinos, everyone has lost so much money in there, they won’t even give me their change. I’m not as good as you guys.”
“Then make ’em look at you, Kyle,” Billy said. “Stick out your tits, hike up your skirt, and make ’em want to open up their wallets.”
“Shut it, Billy!” The look I gave him told him I wasn’t messing around. Another word, and I’d rip his fucking face off. I didn’t care if he was my best friend. He would never give that kind of order to Kyle. “You want some dude to grab her off the street and rape her? Because that’s what’ll happen if she does that.”
“Damn, Garin, you’re right. I wasn’t even thinking. Course I don’t want nothing like that to happen to Kyle.”
Kyle dropped the cash onto her lap and buried her hands inside her jacket. “It’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it, Billy.”
“You’ve been trying real hard to earn money, and I know that,” Billy said to her.
She nodded. “I just don’t know what else to do until summer.” Her voice was so soft, and I knew she was trying not to cry. “Garin, you’re so good at dealing, and you make a ton doing it. And, Billy, you’re the best hustler in our whole school. You could steal a diamond ring off a woman’s finger, and she wouldn’t even know it. I can’t do that. I can’t do anything.”
“Bullshit,” Billy barked. “You’re smarter than me and Garin, and you got more talent than the both of us combined. Those things you make on the computer ain’t like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“You mean my designs?”
“Yeah, those.”
“But they need so much detail, and I need so much more practice. The only time I get to work on them is during Mr. Gunther’s second period class…unless Mom plans on getting me a computer, but we all know that isn’t going to happen.”
“Well, whatever. They’re good,” he said. “Real fucking good.”
I waited until Billy was done redeeming himself. “He’s right,” I said. “You’re too good to be out there, hustling, and definitely too good to be dealing. You just figure out how to sell those designs and leave the street stuff up to us.”
She finally tucked her hair behind her ear. I was glad it was out of her face, but I wished my fingers had done it.
“You guys pay for everything, and that’s not fair,” she said. “I’ve got to help out somehow, and I’ve got to come up with a way to pay you back.”
We didn’t give her much—food, mostly, some clothes, taxi rides around the city since none of our mas had a car. I was happy to do it. I’d buy her food every day if she’d let me. But there was no way she was paying us back.
“You do help,” I said.
“How?”
“Yeah, how?” Billy asked.
I gave him another nasty look to shut him up. “Just trust me, Kyle. You do.”
Kyle was the reason I hadn’t dropped out of school to go live in one of Mario’s apartments and deal all the time. That would have been better than living in The Heart with Ma and my sister. But Kyle lived just a few apartments over, and she was in most of my classes, so I stayed.
I just wanted to be close to her.
“You can pay us back when you’re making the big bucks from selling those designs while me and Garin are still here, hustling,” Billy said.
“I won’t be here,” I said. “I’ve got four years left, and then I’m getting the hell out of Atlantic City.”
“Where you going?” Billy asked.
“Vegas. Mario’s been getting me ready to work at their hotel out there. Once I turn eighteen and get my diploma, I’m out.”
Kyle didn’t know it yet, but she was coming with me. So was Billy. There was no way I was leaving them here. Going to Vegas meant more money for all of us, and I could probably get them jobs at the casino.
“Well, I’m going to college,” Kyle said.
Our heads jerked toward her. The kids around here didn’t go to college. Most didn’t make it to their junior year of high school.
“That’s…”
“A big goal to have,” I said, finishing Billy’s sentence.
“I have to try to get a full academic scholarship. Going to college is all I’ve ever wanted. Somehow, I’m going to make it happen.”
I had to talk to Mario and see if he or any of his boys had connections at the colleges around Vegas. Maybe he could get her in. I’d pay for her schooling, and I could make it look like she’d gotten a scholarship. That was the only way she’d take my money and probably the only way I could make sure she came to Vegas.
“If that’s what you want,” I told her, “it’ll happen.”
“It won’t be happening for a while,” she said. “And since summer is still a ways away, maybe I could help you deal down at the boardwalk.” She looked over at Billy. “Or I could help you hustle—”
“Not gonna happen, Kyle,” I said. “I told you, leave the street stuff to us.” I grabbed my money off the floor and shoved it into my pocket. I usually took twenty bucks from whatever I earned each night and bought food with it, and then I saved the rest. But tonight, I was going to spend a little more. “Come on, guys.”
“Where we going?” Billy asked. “I’ve been running all night, and my feet hurt. You’d better not be taking us too far.”
Kyle handed me my jacket, and I slipped it on as I walked to the door.
“It’s not far,” I said.
“Should I grab a sweater or something?”
The worry in Kyle’s voice made me stop in the doorway and turn to face her. The shirt she was wearing underneath, I’d bought for her, and it wasn’t thick enough to keep her warm.