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direction and Curt shuffles in place, waiting for my response.
    I open my mouth….
    If you think I walk away, you need serious help.
No, no, no, Cherie
. I say nothing rational, logical, or ethical. I make no grand pronouncements about personal integrity. What do I do? I turn
everso slightly
so that my back is toward the hall and answer very carefully, dragging out my response for full effect.
    “Second period,” I say, nodding gravely. I make a hand motion worthy of the Godfather, and the deal is struck.

14.
    CURT TOLD ME TO WAIT by the hoops, so I’m waiting by the hoops. Only he’s not showing up. Second period is almost over and there’s no sign of him.
    Suffice it to say, I no longer feel like the Godfather. I’m a lonely fat kid waiting beside a graffiti-gouged wall and a barbed-wire fence—the Norman Rockwell painting for the twenty-first century. The way it looks now, humiliation is right around the corner, and I’m starting to get nauseated. I’m just about to go back inside when Curt finally arrives. He’s in a rush and for a moment I think someone is chasing him. I watch, flustered, as he bangs into the fence.
    “Come on,” he says, rubbing his nose. “Let’s go. Let’s go. We’ve got to catch the subway. Let’s go, man.” He hops on one foot like a cartoon character whose legs keep moving when they’re about to go really fast. Then he takes off again, weaving through cars, pedestrians, and an entire construction crew. By the time he notices I’m not behind him he’s halfway across Second Avenue. He stops in the middle of the road and nearly gets creamed by the crosstown bus.
    Curt stands there, scanning for me, while people honk, swerve, and yell obscenities out their windows. When I finally reach him he grins and says, “That was a close one. Didn’t realize you weren’t behind me.”
    I follow him to the subway and we ride downtown to East Broadway.As soon as we get off again, Curt leads the way, winding through a half dozen side streets with no street signs. He barely manages to walk slow and I barely manage to keep up. It’s a miracle we make it there, and as soon as we arrive I realize it will be a miracle if we make it out again.
    My neighborhood isn’t exactly the posh area most people envision when they think of Manhattan, but Curt’s street takes grime to a whole new level. It features metal security grates, stray cats in heat, loitering men, and empty vodka bottles, and there’re at least three bars within sight at all times. There’s not a single tree that isn’t strangled by plastic bags or fried chicken bones. It’s distorted and grotesque and I nod approvingly.
Maybe this is where I fit
….
    Curt blends in, skulking along as if he’s guilty of some crime. When we reach his mom’s place—the profanity-covered wall to the left of the Chinese restaurant—he looks over each shoulder, then picks the outside locks in a single swift motion. He has to pick three locks in order to get in, two to get inside the building and one to the first-floor apartment once we’ve stepped inside the foyer. I’ve never witnessed a crime before and this strikes me as a key moment in my adolescence. I stand two feet behind him the whole time trying to act nonchalant. Nonchalant three-hundred-pound Fat Kid—not easy to pull off.
    Then Curt’s on his way in, shoving open the peeling green door marked APT . #1 and kicking aside a stack of dusty books that fall when the door opens. There’s a red neon AN IQUES sign in the window and it bathes the apartment in an eerie glow. Curt flicks on the light and the room is revealed to be overflowing with miscellaneous, ornately tacky objects. It’s so full we can barely fit inside. There’s a busted piano on one side of the room and no less than three velvet couches on the other.
    “This is where you live?” I ask, but Curt doesn’t answer.
    “You live here?” I say again. There’s something about the placethat doesn’t seem right. It’s