The Six Rules of Maybe

too, as soon as she got the chance. Not that she wanted to do those things, but only because it might convince people finally that she didn’t need crayons and a picture of a smiling hamburger to color whenever she ate. Jasmine’s parents were so overprotective, they were practically running an in-home prison system and a fine one at that. But they didn’t have to worry, not really. Badness needed the right landscape, a landscape Jasmine would never have. Jasmine with a beer in her hand seemed as silly as a baby with a driver’s license.
    “I said, ‘Can you pass those papers down?’ and Shy said, ‘Sure.’” Nicole grinned at us.
    “You always knew he was an intellectual,” I said.
    “And he’s obviously got a sense of humor, too, huh?”
    “The comic timing … ,” I said.
    “We really connected,” Nicole said. “The conversation just flowed.”
    “You’re obviously soul mates,” I said. I didn’t tell Nicole about seeing Shy in my neighborhood. I don’t know why, or maybe I didknow why. It was one of those times I believed in the subconscious, that it existed, at least, like the books said it did. I just wasn’t so sure it was always doing those things without us knowing. Probably, you and your subconscious only pretended to keep secrets from each other. I pictured the subconscious as this thing the general population had to get us off the hook for the stupid things we did, the same as Catholics had confession.
    Another image came up then, a wrong one. Hayden, with his man wrists and capable shoulders. How he held Zeus’s collar in a way that told Zeus he meant what he said. I found a strange comfort in that firm hand. It was something Juliet had better appreciate if she knew what was good for her.
    “Don’t look now, but Reilly Ogden is heading our way,” Nicole said.
    It was true. Reilly, in his stiff new jeans and Bazooka Joe T-shirt, which was trying its hardest to display a playfulness that Reilly Ogden probably had never felt in his life. He tucked that shirt into his pants with one hand as if he were some old guy who meant business.
    We crumpled our lunch bags, got up in a hurry.
    “See you around, bitches,” Jasmine said.
    Jasmine’s brother, Derek, always gave us a ride home from school even though Jasmine had track. In the parking lot I headed over to his Camaro, with its low back and its two wide white stripes along the hood. I was the first one there and so I waited, careful not to lean against the paint. Derek would have gotten pissed off at that. Derek never said much, but you could tell when he was mad. He was always quiet, but he got more quiet when he was angry. Quiet wasn’t one thing. It had levels.
    I watched Mr. Wykowski get into his beater car and wondered what his private life was like other than what we knew, which was that he was a pot-head. This occupied me for about two seconds until I saw Shy cross the parking lot, his backpack over one shoulder, his jeans low and sloopy, and his hair a little over his eyes. He looked over at me and I smiled at him. He waved his hand without raising his arm, just a little lift of his fingers at his side, and then I could see his face change color, from a nice easy tan to a sudden red the shade of a pomegranate.
    You sure got that guy all shook up , I heard Hayden’s voice say in my head. But I didn’t have time to think about it, because I saw something else then. Something I knew was important, only I didn’t know why. It was Buddy Wilkes’s El Camino, pulling into the school parking lot. It was an old car, with a cream-colored convertible top that was down in the sun. I didn’t know what Buddy Wilkes was doing in the high school parking lot. He’d graduated three years before and had no business being there—his car gave off some sense of wrongness, of boundaries broken, same as when Wiley Rogers’s older brother came around the school selling drugs, hanging around just off campus by the cemetery across the street.
    And then I saw why Buddy Wilkes was there. He pulled right up to the curb by the school’s front doors, where it was painted No Parking red, where only the buses were allowed. The radio was loud enough for me to hear, though he did lean forward and turn it down, his long arm reaching to flick off the sound. Not out of politeness, I realized, but to be heard better. He cupped one hand around his mouth and shouted, “Alicia!”
    Alicia Worthen, of course. It made sense why Buddy was there. Alicia