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that she’d let him touch her—sometimes she wondered if there wasn’t some sick part of her that actually wanted popular boys to like her. He had surprisingly gentle hands.
    “Nothing; he loves girls to fight over him.” Janet shook her head as if she were talking about an incorrigible child. “So she starts calling me psycho and dyke, not backing down at all, saying that she was just talking.”
    Kaye nodded. “Did you hit her?” The microwave beeped, and Kaye stirred instant-coffee “crystals” into both cups. A thin white foam formed on the surface.
    Janet nodded. “I totally went after her, but Dough stopped me and Kenny stopped her and Fatima came over and started saying how it was a big misunderstanding and all that, even though she didn’t see what happened. She just didn’t want her house to get fucked up.”
    Looking down into the cup, she saw the dark, still water of the stream. Her heart was suddenly beating triple-time even thoughnothing at all was happening. Roiben—the most cool, amazing, dangerous storybook guy ever—said he was going to see her again. Glee made Kaye’s chest hurt.
    “Are you listening to me?” Janet asked.
    “Here’s your coffee,” Kaye said, stirring sugar and powdered cream into Janet’s before handing it to her. “I’m listening.”
    “Well, have you ever seen an uncircumcised dick?”
    Kaye shook her head.
    “Me neither. So I say sure, we’ll give you a dollar apiece if you show us. And he says, ‘That’s only ten bucks.’”
    Kaye smiled and nodded as Janet spoke, but she still saw Roiben in her mind’s eye, drenched with rain and blood, shot nearly through the heart with a gnarled arrow.
    The hinges screamed their protest as Corny opened the door and stomped into the trailer. He glared at both of them, stalked to the refrigerator, opened it, and then swigged Mountain Dew out of the bottle.
    “What’s up your ass?” Janet said.
    A white cat, her belly swollen with kittens, had slunk in when Corny opened the door. Kaye dropped her hand to pet the little head.
    “Motherfucker didn’t show up this morning. I’ve been at work since midnight.” Kaye could see that the patch on the back of his jacket wasa devil’s head. In his back pocket, the outline of his wallet was connected to a chain that ran to his front belt loop.
    “Mom hates it when you drink out of the bottle,” Janet said.
    “So what?” Corny said. He took another deliberate swig. “You going to tell her about that? How about I tell her how you need your own Roman vomitorium, you fucking bulimic.”
    “Shut up, fuckfist.” Janet picked up the phone in the kitchen and started punching in numbers. She walked toward her bedroom as she dialed.
    Corny glanced at Kaye. She looked away from him and pulled the heavy, soft cat onto her lap. It purred like a hive of hornets.
    “You’re that girl that believes in faeries, right?” Corny said.
    Kaye shrugged. “I’m Kaye.”
    “Want some soda? I didn’t backwash into it.” He wiped the side of his sleeve against his mouth.
    Kaye shook her head. Something—like a small stone—bounced off her knee.
    The windows were closed. Kaye looked at the ceiling, but there were no small parts hanging off the overhead light. Maybe something from a shelf. When she looked down at the floor near her feet, the only object she saw was an acorn. They were abundant outside thistime of year, scattering from the nearby tree all over the lawn. She picked it up and looked toward the window again. Maybe it was open after all. The acorn was light in her hand, and she noticed a tiny strip of white sticking out from under the cap.
    Corny was dampening a towel and wiping off his face. She didn’t think he’d thrown the acorn—she’d been talking to him when she’d felt it hit.
    Kaye pulled lightly on the acorn cap, and it came loose. Inside the nutshell, all the meat was gone, leaving an empty space where a slip of paper was coiled. Kaye removed it carefully and