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feel this thing going south, yet he pressed on, as always. “I don’t think I could eat a baby anything. Except baby corn. Those things are so weird. It’s like, are you real corn, or were you shrunk by a shrinking ray, or what’s going on here?”
    Krissy’s eyes darted to the security camera. “Am I on a reality show right now?”
    â€œNo,” Max said. “Why?”
    â€œOkay. Um, here,” she said, tossing him a twenty-dollar bill and grabbing the plastic bag.
    â€œBut it’s only twelve—”
    â€œKeep the change!” She grabbed the elbows of the other two girls and plowed out the door, barely able to keep her giggles in as she relayed the tale of her encounter with the troglodyte cashier. Brown Ponytail threw a languid glance back at him as they left.
    Audie emerged from her hiding place behind the motor oil, holding her stomach. “You should be studied by scientists,” she said between laughs. “Veal?
Veal?
”
    Max shrugged. This was nothing new. Humiliation in the face of the opposite gender was an unfortunate plague he’d simply had to get used to, like high milk prices or the continued existence of the Kardashians.
    â€œSo what are you doing after you get back from the airport?” he asked Audie just as the door opened. He nodded hello at the new customer, a guy sporting heavy black eyeliner, several piercings, and a visible hangover. The man nodded back, making a beeline for the coffee machine.
    â€œI don’t know,” Audie replied with a shrug. “Maybe go see the new Michael Bay explodathon.”
    â€œSpoiler alert: Everyone dies.”
    Audie rolled her eyes, having grown sick of Max’s standard spoiler-alert joke long ago. “We’ll see. I was gonna devote the day to
Madden
”—here she cracked her knuckles as she always did at the mention of the game, like a Pavlovian response—“but my Xbox is busted.”
    Max gasped.
    His voice dropped to a horrified whisper. “The red ring of death?”
    â€œâ€™Fraid so.”
    Max’s main fear in life was,
of course,
that his mother could drop dead at any given second . . . but if he was being completely honest, the prospect of the same thing happening to his Xbox struck him with an almost equal amount of terror. “Well, you can go play on mine if you want.”
    â€œReally?” She did her Audie-is-super-excited-about-something hop, bouncing from one foot to the other. “Key still under the mat?”
    â€œYep. I’ll call my mom and tell her not to bash the intruder’s head in.”
    â€œThanks, man!” She lunged across the counter and gathered Max into a headlock. “All is forgiven. As long as you come to my game next week.”
    â€œI’ll . . . see what I can do.”
    â€œJust once before the season is over! That’s all I ask!”
    â€œOkay, okay.”
    â€œOr at the very least, come to the pep rally this Wednesday. You don’t have any secret dates with fictional people on Wednesdays, do you?”
    â€œI do not.”
    â€œThen come.” She tossed the empty Slim Jim wrapper at him. “And thanks for the meats.”
    â€œAny time.”
    Audie laughed as she exited the store.
    Guyliner brought his coffee up to the counter, his eyes bleared and tired. “And a pack of smokes. Whatever’s cheapest.”
    â€œSure.” Max rang up the purchase and placed the cigarettes on the counter.
    The guy let out a small laugh. “You were there too?”
    â€œHuh?”
    He showed Max the back of his hand, which featured the faded slash of a black Sharpie. “At the concert,” he said, nodding at the similar mark smeared across the back of Max’s hand.
    From the ash that floated up out of the hole.
Max hadn’t noticed until just then that it was still there.
But I took a shower . . . ?
    â€œKiller show, right?” the