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both also on the bus today. Frankie was a giant, too; he played football, his face was mostly forehead with brown hair parted in the middle, and he was popular but pretty quiet. Beardsley was his and Lester’s overexcited pet. It really wasn’t an accident that Lester ended up sitting next to me.
    There were other seats he could have taken, but I’d crossed his path in gym class, stealing the ball in our basketball game just as he was taking it to the basket. I could have just let him pass, and I don’t even like sports, so that would by all means have been the smarter decision, but he was right in front of me and wide open, too. Now I existed in his world. I just hoped I hadn’t pissed him off.
    â€œWhat’s your name?” Lester asked with a nice smile. He was like Nate, one of the first people you met at the school. Good or bad, most people had had some interaction with Lester Dooley. Except me. “I must be forgetting or something.”
    â€œWalter,” I said quietly.
    â€œWally? All right, Wally,” Lester said. He pointed at my new iPad. I’d found a use for my birthday money from Mom. “You listen to rap? What do you have on there?” he asked. I didn’t have a lot on my iPad, since it was still pretty new.
    â€œUh, the Pharcyde,” I said, trying to keep my answers as brief as I could. I closed my iPad and put it in my bag. I didn’t want to be on Lester’s radar, and I didn’t want to say anything that was going to rub him the wrong way.
    I didn’t actually grow up with Lester, but we were in the same grade and I’d heard all the stories by the time high school started. How he’d missed an entire winter from school to go to some mental hospital. Broke some kid’s arm for calling him a racist name. How he dated a college professor, how he talked his way out of an overnight jail stay. Some rumors outlandish, others entirely believable, especially once you’d gotten a look at him. There were enough rumors to not believe any of them and still have your guard up when you passed him in the hall.
    â€œYou listen to Pusha T?” Lester asked. “I’ve been into trap music, that real hard stuff, myself.”
    I nodded. I actually liked Pusha and Clipse, but I wasn’t up for that conversation. Jason, I could make an ass of myself in front of, but I didn’t want to come across as some poser to Lester. Not today, anyway.
    â€œHey,” Lester said, turning to face me. “How come I don’t know you? I know everyone in this school. They don’t even let you in here without going through me first. So how come I don’t know you?”
    I shrugged. I guess I wasn’t the star I thought I was in gym class. “Not sure.”
    â€œThat’s what I thought.” Lester laughed. “You live this far down and you got an iPad? You must have noticed we’re on the poor side of town. I can’t even sit next to you with that thing out. You’ll get us mugged, man. They’ll take your iPad and your socks and shoes. They don’t even sell those here.”
    I laughed.
    â€œI hope you don’t expect me to stick up for you,” Lester said. “I’m running.” He laughed. “My car got busted into a couple weeks ago. I had my iPod in there overnight; someone smashed a window and took it. My mom won’t help me fix it. She says the window’s gonna cost more than the iPod did. I gotta get it fixed before it’s cold out.”
    We passed a liquor store that had been robbed enough times I’d cross the street to walk past it. Dad had a story for every spot in the city. One of the package-store tales had a fifty-year-old woman robbing a clerk at gunpoint. Dad said they found the gun, and it’d belonged to an actual police officer. No one knew how she’d gotten it.
    I zipped my bag up and stuffed it between my feet. I looked back out the window. We were