The Six Rules of Maybe

steadied herself with one hand against a tombstone, some poor dead somebody who was probably a nice person who didn’t deserve this on their place of eternal rest.
    Juliet had one hand against Buddy’s ribbed shirt which was worn oh so tight against his chest. He reached one hand down between them, rested it right where our baby was. Rested it there like he had every right to.
    I was practically running. I was running. “Hey!” I called. “ Hey! ” I was too far away for them to hear. I watched him lean in to her as if to kiss her, and she gave him a little shove away. A yes-no game, as if a halfhearted protest was some excuse.
    Just as I made it across the street, they disappeared, winding their way around gravestones and elm trees and the leafy shadows that swallowed them up and made me think that maybe I hadn’t seen what I knew I’d seen.
    I was out of breath. I clutched the chain link of the cemetery fence and called. “Juliet!”
    But there was no answer. Goddamnit! How could she do this? I heard an engine start up, probably the engine of Buddy’s El Camino. And then a moment later, Derek’s car pulled up beside me, and Nicole stuck her head out the window.
    “What are you doing over here, you crazy girl? Get in.”
    I unfurled my fingers from the fence. Opened the door to Derek’s car.
    He leaned across the seat. “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” he said to me.
    When I got back home, Kevin Frink’s red Volkswagen was parked by the curb next to the Saint George house. I could hear the tick tick tick of its engine cooling off. Kevin Frink didn’t waste any time. Mom-and-Dad-We-Went-to-Yale, I’d like you to meet Bomb Boy.
    I headed inside our house, but before I got to the door, I heard the smoker’s cough rumble of a motorcycle. A Harley, actually, with a thick, large man with long dark hair riding it, black leather jacket with the orange Harley emblem on his back, metal-studded saddlebags. He looked familiar to me; I knew I’d seen him somewhere before, but I didn’t have time to think about that. Jeffrey and Jacob sat on their lawn, holding that string which was connected to the purse in the middle of the street.
    The man stopped just short of the bag, cut his engine, put both feet to the ground, and swung one meaty leg over his bike. Okay, Jeffrey and Jacob were brats and would no doubt be unleashed into society to be lousy husbands and fathers who would have affairs as they got their sports cars detailed, stealing office supplies from work and complaining the house wasn’t clean enough, but I didn’t want to see them get killed. Their eyes were huge as they sat on the lawn. They even gripped hands in some oh-man-we’re-in-for-it-now solidarity.
    A few birds cheeped in bird innocence, but that was the only sound as the man sauntered toward that purse like some tough sheriff in a Western, though then again, maybe it was just the leather chaps, well, chapping , that made him walk that way.
    “Wait!” I called. I didn’t know what to follow this up with. But I knew those kids were in for it. You get in over your head, sometimes. It’s stupid, but you’re thinking Clive Weaver and that purse, not some prison felon escapee on a motorcycle and that purse. You have this stupid idea. But you’re not thinking something’s going to destroy you.
    The man didn’t hear me. He took off his black shiny helmet and shook his hair free. He had one of those mustache beards, the kind that go all the way down your mouth and around your chin, the name of which escaped me then. This would be the time for Jeffrey and Jacob to pull on the string, right as the man reached down to pick up the purse with his hunk of a hairy arm. I knew they wouldn’t do it, though. I didn’t think they would do something that bad, because we all have self-preservation at least, right? They were probably about to wet their pants in fear.
    But then, it did happen. I was wrong about the boys’ not doing something that bad, because right then the purse leaped as if by magic from the motorcyclist’s hand. It jerked for a second, rose up off the ground, and then it landed with a splat on the asphalt. The motorcyclist looked up. He scanned the horizon. Stupid, idiot kids! I was wrong about their future of stealing of office supplies, too; they were destined for worse offenses—white collar crime, tax fraud. Lewd acts in public theaters. I wanted to stop what was going to happen next, but no sound came out. One foot