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now.”
    Lo-Wider watched. Wasn’t getting it.
    Lafitte shouted over his shoulder. “You! Fat kid! Got a phone?”
    Lo-Wider too stunned to answer.
    “You fat fuck, do you have a fucking phone? Get an ambulance. Get a fucking ambulance now. Right the fuck now!”
    Lo-Wider looked at the phone in his hand. He’d forgotten how to use it. It was telling him he had a missed call. Shit. DeVaughn, finally. But too fucking late. He dialed 911 and was all “Something bad happened. Real bad. Just...hurry up.”
    They wanted to keep him on the phone. Wanted details. Wanted his name. Wanted something more than “Send a fucking ambulance.” But that was all Lo-Wider had for them. Said, “I need 911. I got two of my friends. One dead. One might be dead.” For real to him now.
    Lafitte was still pumping Steve’s chest. Still chanting “Shit.” And then, ear to the chest again, he went slack. He gave up. Whispered “shit shit shit.”
    He pushed himself onto one knee. Waited. Hard breaths.
    Even Isaiah had calmed down enough to say, “Why you stop? What you doing? What? Keep doing it, man. Keep doing what you was doing. Come on, man.”
    Lafitte ignored him, grimaced, held his left arm tight against his body like maybe Steve had hurt him some after all. Sirens on the air, closer and closer. And they weren’t just the EMT sirens. Lo-Wider could tell. Lafitte could tell, too. Isaiah turned his sights to Bossman Steve and was all, “Hey, wake up, white boy. C’mon, now, we having fun is all. Steve. Steve. Steve. Wake up, now. I said wake up. Listen to me, boy, I said to wake up!”
    Lafitte turned and walked over to Lo-Wider, who was about to piss his pants, and he started crying immediately and said, “I swear I didn’t. I never told them to.”
    Lafitte shook his head. “It’s DeVaughn, right? DeVaughn Rose still around, isn’t he?”
    The shitty cell phone in Lo-Wider’s hand rang and buzzed again. Two times. Three. Lafitte plucked it out of Lo-Wider’s grip. Easy. Looked at the name and number displayed. Then back up at Lo-Wider.
    “Listen, we was only supposed to watch. We weren’t supposed to mess with you none. I swear.”
    Lafitte slipped the phone into his back pocket. The sirens were louder. The number of looky-loos had grown. Many of them had their own phones up filming this. Lafitte turned to his truck, then started looking around at the other cars in the lot. Lo-Wider knew what he was thinking. Didn’t take him even half a minute to finally hold out his hand, palm up, and he didn’t even have to speak. Lo-Wider fished his key from his pocket and handed it over. “It’s the Monte Carlo over there, behind the gas station.”
    Lafitte took the key and said, “Thanks,” and jogged towards the car. Lo-Wider watched him go. What was that shit, saying “Thanks”? Like Lo-Wider was really helping because he wanted to. Like he had a choice. Motherfucker was breathless, too. If it had been a fair fight, Lafitte would’ve been done, man
    The motherfucker hopped into Lo-Wider’s grampa’s Monte Carlo and revved it up. He was gone in seconds, blending in with the traffic on 49, heading up to I-10, as the first cops were hauling ass into the parking lot. It killed Lo-Wider to do it, what was necessary. His two friends, pretty good friends, one dead, one real bad off, suffering. He hated to do it. The cops came to a stop. There was an ambulance coming, too, right behind them.
    One of the cops stomped over to Lo-Wider while the others swarmed the two on the ground, some stupid racist motherfuckers with their pistols out, aimed towards Isaiah. Not a one bothering to aim at Steve. They swarmed the Muscle Max truck, too.
    The cop, a lady cop, with a thick braid, was in Lo-Wider’s face saying, “You, did you see what happened? Did you call this in?”
    Lo-Wider shook his head. “I don’t even have a phone. I was using the bathroom in Waffle House.”
    After telling her a few more times, she moved on to find a