detention centre for beating and robbing an eighty-year-old woman. Put her in the hospital for a month with a fractured skull and a broken leg. Justin wore the hood in a way that concealed his acne-scarred and cratered cheeks. He couldnât hide the nose though, and the ripe boil bulging the end of it almost clownishly. She recognized the other guy now too. Danny Orr, a crack dealer and an asshole. He had tried to come on to Alicia one time at a party and when she told him to go fuck himself he slapped her across the face. She was drunk or she would have killed the bastard. She never told Joe about it or he would have done it for sure.
The skanky redhead with them didnât look familiar. Then she said, Hey, itâs me, in this raspy voice and right away Alicia knew it was Jessica Ferris, a girl from the group home. When Alicia was ten, her father beat up her mother and threatened to kill the lot of them. After the cops arrested him, Family and Child Services moved in and put the sisters into foster care until their mother recovered from her injuries and got her life back together. Her father went to Kingston Pen for aggravated assault and was still there, as far as she knew. Anyway, her sisters landed in good foster homes but she proved harder to place, rebelling at every instant and treating her foster families with contempt. They finally stuck her in this shit-hole group home near the old steel mill, run by a bunch of perverts, and she hated every minute of it. She never liked Jessica; she was sneaky and dirty and used to give the boys blowjobs in the washroom for quarters. Man, she looked rotten, her face red with pimples and little scabs, her eyes bloodshot and puffy, her lips blue. Only two years older than Alicia, she must have been sucking the pipe pretty hard to get her face like that. No telling what else these punks were doing with her. A pocketful of crack gives some people a sense of power. Danny felt pretty cool, standing there smiling with his faux-platinum gate and his neck weighted down with shiny chains. He crossed hisarms on his chest and checked out Alicia from head to toe. Then he sucked his teeth and nodded, as if in approval. Jessica said something. The words came out slurred, delayed. She was high as a kite, her eyes half-closed, her head lolling. Justin stuffed his hands in the pockets of his camouflage pants. He seemed bashful, evasive. Alicia didnât know him that well; she wondered what had driven him to beat the shit out of an eighty-year-old woman. Was it just the money?
Danny sparked up a joint and passed it around. When it came to Alicia she refused but Jessica insisted. For old timeâs sake, she cooed. Alicia took a few light tokes that tasted like sulphur. She wondered if theyâd laced the weed with something. She passed the joint to Justin. He took it with blunted fingers, nodding and mumbling under his breath. His eyes looked odd; one sat lower on his face than the other, and as he smoked the joint the higher eye closed while the lower one stared off into space.
Alicia stood up on her toes hoping to see the bus, but it was running late. Jessica asked her if she wanted to party with them. Alicia told her she was on her way to her boyfriendâs place. Whatâs his name? Jessica asked. Joe, Alicia answered, Joe Moffat. The Priest, Danny said under his breath. Alicia knew people called Joe the Priest but she didnât know why. She wanted to ask Danny why but his sneer discouraged her. He puffed on the joint and held it out to her but she refused. He spat on the sidewalk and hauled on the joint again before handing it to Justin whose face popped out from the hood like a snapping turtleâs. Alicia looked for the bus
again
.
Jessica started talking, rapidly, but more to herself than to anybody. She was fucked. Alicia almost told her to shut up, but not with those two snakes standing there. She didnât trust them. Then Danny said something. Alicia told him to