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Would we have to call your uncle?"
    "Yeah, I guess so. Somebody'd have to open the safe."
    "Damn!" Hawg pointed at Ironman. "If that happens, we head up to Crescent and watch football. I need a day of rest."
    Ironman said, "They won't let us into Crescent."
    "I know. That damn A-rab'll kick us out. He hates my guts. No lie. But we don't need to go in. We can watch through the window." He suddenly turned to me. "Roberta, did you see the Hawgs last night? On ESPN? They whomped up on Ole Miss real good."
    "No. I never watch sports. Or weather."
    "You missed it last night. They ran that power-I right down their throats. Them Mississippi boys was roadkill." Hawg turned back to Ironman, assuming I wasn't interested. He told him, "That's what I love to play, the power-I. They don't do that down here. They run that damn pro-set all the time. But in the power-I, the center is the main man."
    I asked, "What does all that mean? What's a power-eye? Is it like a telescope?"
    Hawg stopped still. He looked at me like I had just asked what planet we were on. But then he seemed pleased to be able
to explain, "A power-I, my darlin', is a football formation. The center—which is me—the quarterback, the fullback, and the tailback all line up in a straight line, like a letter
I
. It's smash-mouth Southern football at its finest."
    We reached the intersection of Everglades Boulevard and Route 27. Route 27 is a four-lane highway with a thin grass median. It was once the western end of Atlantic County, and of civilization, until the Lyons Group built the West End Mall and Century Towers.
    I stopped and checked the traffic to the south. Suddenly, Hawg spun around and yelled, "Here's how she works, Roberta!" He looked around him at some imaginary teammates. "The center hears the play and the count. Then he breaks the huddle." Hawg clapped his hands together once and spun around, like he was doing a comical dance step. "He leads 'em all up to the line." He strode forward three paces, to the edge of the highway, and crouched down with his rear end facing us. "He snaps the ball, and he fires out!" With this, Hawg exploded out of his crouch like he had been shot from a cannon. He sprinted blindly, faster than I ever thought he could, running recklessly across all four lanes, and into the mall parking lot, where he slowed and stopped.
    A white station wagon in the northbound lane, and a U-Haul truck in the southbound lane, whizzed by right after Hawg's sprint. The truck leaned on its horn. I waited with Ironman while a stream of other vehicles raced by. I asked, "Does he do that a lot?"
    Ironman grinned nervously. "I've seen him do it before. When he's showing off for somebody."
    "Why would he show off for me?"
    "I don't know. People don't usually ask him to explain football stuff like you did."
    We waited until the light changed, and crossed to the parking lot. Hawg yelled out to Ironman, "Hey! What took you girls so long?"
    We walked together across the nearly empty parking lot, toward the tall glass doors of the mall entrance. It was already hot, Florida-asphalt hot, and the parking lot was a shimmering mirage. I noticed Dad's Chevy Malibu parked next to Suzie's Miata. Hawg noticed it, too. He looked at me and pumped his fist. "All right! Won't need to watch Mr. A-rab's damn TV today!"
    We parted company at the mall office. Suzie was already seated behind her desk. She had Dad's copy of the newsletter in front of her, and she didn't look happy. She snapped at me right away, "Roberta, what is this turtle thing that you wrote?"
    I sat in one of the two seats in front of her desk and looked at her, confused. I finally said, "You know. It's the feature you asked me to write. About the mall's mascot."
    Her mascara'd eyes narrowed. "Roberta, this is not the feature I asked you to write. I asked you to write up something about how Toby the Turtle came to be our mascot." She held out both hands toward me, as if they contained a crystal ball. She spoke