If Jack's in Love by Stephen Wetta

roach into the Marlboro box.
    â€œYou save them?” I said.
    He just grinned.
    â€œAre you hooked yet?” I asked.
    He burst out laughing and stared at me with his silly eyes. Which pretty much answered my question.
    What would be the next calamity to befall the House of Witcher?
    â€œLet’s go home,” I told him.
    â€œAre you crazy? I can’t face Pop in this condition.”
    â€œYou better watch it, you’ll be addicted in no time.”
    This well-meant warning brought forth another peel of drug-addled mirth. He wavered his hands like a spook and taunted me: “Look out, I’m stoooooned.”
    How quickly was I learning the futility of reasoning with a hophead. I turned away, depressed.
    â€œHey, come on, I wanna show you something,” he said.
    He put his sunglasses on and leapt across the creek, and I followed. We climbed a slope, shooing away briars until we came to a narrow ridge. After that the ground sloped downwards. We shoved through some branches and leaves and wound up at the other end of the woods; and then we got in a hunkering position and surveyed the newly cleared plot of land upon which Thurston and Lovey had built their palatial homestead. We were staring directly into their back yard.
    â€œHer name is Anya,” my brother said.
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œI was here yesterday. I heard the old lady calling her from inside the house.”
    â€œThe girl was in the yard?”
    â€œYeah, she was sunbathing, wearing a bikini.”
    â€œWere you high?”
    Stan laughed and pushed me over.
    We sat cross-legged. It was a hot day, but there was a lovely breeze and everything was peaceful. We watched the large, inclined yard. Close to the house the ground leveled out, and that is where Thurston and Lovey had placed their swimming pool, surrounding it with a green slatted fence. Stan told me the pool hadn’t been filled with water yet. At the far end of the yard, near the garbage cans, stood piles of empty boxes and discarded padding material from the move.
    â€œWhat kind of name is Anya?” I asked.
    â€œPretty, huh?”
    We heard a door whoosh open. She stepped out to the yard, laden with empty boxes she intended to haul up to the garbage area. The moment she stepped outside, Stan’s nose jutted like a pointer’s. He watched as she marched through the yard in her sandals and white shorts. His nose was quivering.
    He whistled between his teeth.
    â€œQuit it, we’ll get in trouble.”
    â€œThis ain’t their property, we can sit here all we want.”
    The hippie girl dropped off the boxes and headed back to the house. Stan whistled again and she stopped. We were behind sparse brush, partially obscured.
    She smiled and came over.
    â€œWho’s there?”
    â€œPeace,” Stan said. He gave her the peace sign.
    She kept craning her neck. This time her hair hung in ringlets. She came to within three feet of us.
    â€œWho are you?” she said.
    â€œPeace,” my brother said.
    Anya laughed and gave the peace sign back. “What are you supposed to be, a hippie?”
    â€œWe’re the Welcome Wagon.”
    â€œYou are not,” she protested blithely, in an accent more southern than ours.
    â€œWhere you from?”
    â€œDallas. We just moved in.”
    â€œDallas, Texas.” Stan nodded familiarly, as though Dallas were a place he’d been to a hundred times. “You must need someone to show you the town,” he said.
    â€œDoesn’t strike me there’s a lot to see.” She nudged her chin at me. “Who’s this with you?”
    â€œHe’s my bodyguard.”
    Anya found that funny. She gave me a flirtatious wink.
    â€œHi, Cutiepie, how old are you?”
    I scowled.
    â€œDo you smoke grass?” my brother asked.
    She tossed him a look. “Now I think you’re being impertinent.”
    Her use of the word “impertinent” made me nervous.