Kids These Days by Drew Perry

hats with the logo of your choice stitched in while you waited. The mall went on forever, like a mall of a mall. I had a vague sense of being frightened by it. I had a definite sense of being frightened by everything else.
    â€œBut which one would be the boy?” she said.
    â€œSalad Shooter, of course,” I said.
    â€œWhy of course?”
    â€œYou can’t call a girl Shooter.”
    â€œDon’t be a jackass,” she said. “Go get us smoothies, OK? Bring me a strawberry.”
    I stood in line at New World Smoothie. All the flavors were named for explorers—the Ponce de Lemon, the Vasco de Gamagranate. They didn’t have plain strawberry. They didn’t have plain anything. I ordered Melon Magellan for myself, got an Eric the Red for Alice. EXCITING BERRY BLEND, it said on the menu board. She was on the phone when I got back to the table. I tried to explain about the flavors, but she waved me off. “Carolyn,” she said. “Slow down.”
    I could hear Carolyn on the other end, but couldn’t make out what she was saying. A group of kids came through wearing those shoes with wheels. One of them hit a chair a couple of tables over, went down. It looked like he was thinking about crying, but he held it together, got himself up, rubbed his knee, rolled back over to his friends. Alice said, “How is he in jail?”
    I snapped right back in. “Who?” I said. “Mid?”
    She put a finger in her other ear. “Is he alright?”
    â€œWhat’s going on?” I whispered.
    â€œDid he know?” she said. While Carolyn answered, Alice took a sip of her smoothie, winced. “What is this?” she asked me.
    â€œIt’s an Eric the Red. What the hell’s happening right now?”
    â€œCarolyn, hold on a second.” She covered the phone. “Mid’s in jail,” she said. “The police raided Island Pizza this morning, and somebody was selling pot out of the kitchen. I think. Or out of the stockroom. Carolyn’s freaking, so it’s a little hard to understand.”
    â€œWho was selling the pot?”
    â€œI’ve been on the phone three minutes.”
    â€œWas he there? Why is he in jail?”
    She said, “What is it you think I’m doing right now?” She took her hand back off the mouthpiece. “What?” she said. “He’s right here. I just told him. Is that OK?” She tried her smoothie again. “Of course we can come. We’ll leave right now.” Carolyn said something on her end. “That’s crazy talk,” Alice told her. “It’s got to be a mistake. We’ll meet you there. We’ll be right there. Just tell me how to find it.” She made a gesture for a pen. I didn’t have one. She looked around, then went to a counter-height table in the center of the food court where there were customer comment cards and ballpoint pens on chains. She wrote a few things down, hung up, came back to the table. “Let’s go,” she said.
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œShe’s half-hysterical, and she probably should be. We’re supposed to meet her at the—” She looked down at her comment card. “The St. John’s County Jail.” She looked at me. “The
jail.
How could he be in jail?”
    â€œWas he selling?” I asked. “Was Mid the one selling it?”
    â€œAll I could get out of her is that he was there, for some reason, when the police got there.”
    â€œBut do they arrest you for just standing around?”
    â€œHow would I know? I don’t know anything about this kind of thing. Where did we park?”
    â€œBlue level,” I said.
    â€œI thought it was green.”
    â€œLevel G,” I said. “But it was blue.”
    We found our way out of the mall. Everything felt heavy and bent. On the drive back south, Alice kept talking about how she knew something was wrong, how she could