Bad Haircut. Tom Perrotta

excellent! It's the twins!”

      The twins got out of the car and looked around, using their hands for visors. They were both wearing overalls with no shirts underneath, and their muscles were all pumped up from lifting.

      “Which one's Danny?” I asked.

      “The one with the tire iron,” Caravello said.

      My chest tightened up. Until that moment, the fight had seemed like a game to me, a new way to kill a night. But the twins were serious brawlers. They hurt people for fun. Caravello called them over so he could introduce me.

      “This is Joey T.'s cousin, Buddy,” he said. “He's gonna be frosh QB next year.”

      The twins nodded. They had shoulder-length hair and identical blank faces, like a genetic tag team. I couldn't imagine playing football with people their size.

      Danny scratched his head with the tip of the tire iron.

      “Joey comin' tonight?”

      “He can't,” I explained. “He's eighteen now.

      If he gets busted, they won't let him be a cop.”

      Danny's brother, Paul, asked to see my weeding implement. Its three prongs were bent and sharpened, forming a sort of metal claw.

      “Wow,” he said. “You could tear somebody's eyes out with this.”

      The twins made fourteen of us. Our ranks, I noticed, were pretty much split: half normal guys, half psychos. The normal guys—I considered myself one—were just trying to defend our hangout. The psychos were looking for a good time.

      The Rat Man, Sean Fallon, was busy picking his teeth with the rusty tip of his switchblade. I couldn't even look at him without getting the creeps. He got his nickname from his habit of biting people in fights. A few months before, for no good reason, he had bitten off Ray Malone's nipple in the middle of what was supposed to be a friendly wrestling match. A cop had to drive the nipple to the hospital so the doctors could surgically reattach it to Ray's chest. I heard that he carried it into the emergency room in a small white envelope. Norman LaVerne sat next to the Rat Man, frowning and shaking his head. Years ago, when he'd lived in another town, people said that Norman had buried a cat from the neck down and run over its head with a lawn mower. Normally I crossed the street when I saw him coming. But tonight we were on the same side.

      “TWO, FOUR, SIX, EIGHT, WHO DO WE APPRECIATE?”

      Baseball hats, purple and red, flew into the sky and fluttered down. The players and spectators slowly drifted out of the park. I could feel the tension gather. We stopped talking and fixed our eyes on the paths that led through the woods to the Washington Avenue section of Cranwood, where the blacks lived.

      At five to eight, two cop cars drove into the park from separate entrances and converged on the pavilion. Jim Bruno got out of the lead car. He was the greatest running back our town had ever produced; people still called him the Bulldozer. I remembered going to games with my father and watching him plow through the defense, play after play, dragging tacklers for yards before going down. He had a mustache now, and the beginnings of a donut gut.

      “Fight won't happen,” he announced.

      Nobody moved.

      “You want me to put it in sign language?”

      He looked at the ground and spat neatly between his polished shoes.

      The Camaro was brand-new, gleaming white, with a plush red interior and a wicked eight-track system. Caravello's parents had given it to him as a graduation present even though he hadn't graduated. In September he would begin his fifth year of high school. Technically, he was still a sophomore.

      We cruised down North Avenue, Deep Purple blasting from our open windows. I liked Caravello when he let me ride in his car. The rest of the time I had my doubts about him. He didn't have any friends his own age, and I resented his success with the girls who hung out with us at the park. I especially hated the way he turned on you when a girl showed up. He had this trick of turning his class ring so the jewel faced out from his palm, and then clapping you on the head with it.

      Caravello turned down the music as we passed the lumber yard.

      “Fuckin’ quarterback,” he said. “Every cheerleader in the world will want to suck your cock.”

      “Not quite,” I said.

      He waved me off. “You don't know shit. Those football parties are wild.”

      I thought about the stories I'd heard.

      “Is it true about Margie Waldman?”

      Caravello grinned. I could see the rubber bands inside his mouth, white with spittle. “What'd you hear about Margie Waldman?”

      “You know. That she did it with the whole starting team after the Thanksgiving game.”

      “Not the whole team,” he said. “Just the defense.”

      We stopped at a red light in front of the perforating company. Two huge fans blew factory exhaust straight into the car. Outside, swing shifters in rumpled green clothes sat against the red brick building and ate their lunches. They chewed slowly and gazed at us without interest.

      “Stupid assholes,” Caravello said. When the light turned green, he laid a patch.

      Just before we reached downtown Elizabeth, Caravello pulled a U-turn and headed home. Beyond the smokestacks and water towers, the last streaks of color were dissolving in the sky. Instead of continuing straight into town, we turned left at Jim's Tavern and made the quick right onto Washington Avenue.

      “What are we doing here?” I asked.

      “If the niggers won't come to us, we'll have to go to them.”

      We drove slowly down the street. The houses we passed were no different from those on my own block, but the idea of black people living in them made them seem unfamiliar. Five minutes from home, and I felt like I'd crossed the border into another country. Caravello cut the headlights and pulled over behind the Cherry Street school. He left the engine running.

      “There they are,” he said.

      A bunch of black guys—you could tell from the speed and grace of their game that they were in high school—were running full court on the lot behind the school. It was a weird spectacle at that time of night. Only the two baskets were lit up, one by a spotlight attached to the school, the other, more dimly, by a nearby streetlight. Center court was a patch of darkness.