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lash out at her, to tell her to go home and that I never want to see her again. But I can’t. I need to play cool, appeal to her desperate side, use reverse psychology. I say, “That’s fine, Sadie. I completely understand. It’s not for everybody. I mean, just because all my other friends have done it, doesn’t mean that you have to, too. You’re just not ready to be my friend, that’s all.” I stand, head for the door, and open it a crack to let her out.
    “No,” she whines, pulling at her lashes. “I don’t want to leave.”
    “Will you do it then?”
    She shrugs.
    I check the clock. It’s almost noon. I still have another hour before Nicole is supposed to pick me up. “How about if I take you to Scoops for a double dip. Then will you do it?”
    She smiles patty-cake wide, like I just asked her to be my best friend or something.
    I peel my wallet open. A buck. One friggin’ dollar. That won’t even buy us the sprinkles. “Wait here,” I tell her.
    I peek in on Uncle Luke in the family room. The TV’s on, some science show—the mating habits of the mosquito—with crickets chirping in the background. Luke’s asleep, his head lolling against the back cushion of the armchair. There’s a purple Tupperware tumbler resting in his lap with a stalk of celery sticking out. Bloody Mary, no doubt.
    I tiptoe across the rug toward him, doing my best to avoid stepping on the Tupperware orders my mother has scattered across the floor. He keeps his wallet in the front pocket of his pants. I know it’s there. The brown wrinkly calf-leather edge is sticking out between his thumb and pointer. I’ll have to move his hand to get at it.
    Luke churns a bit in his sleep. I scooch down beside him, doing my best to clear away enough room on the floor and be quiet at the same time. His snoring has caused his T-shirt to draw up and expose about an inch and a half of hairy belly. The blub stares me in the face, as does one bright, cherry-red nipple peeping through a dryer-eaten hole. If only his kitchen appliance—buying customers knew what he wears under all that Sears polyester. I reach out for his wrist and he lets out a cartoon-like snore, flops his head to the other side. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
    I lift his wrist upward and hold it midair, use my other hand to reach into that pocket. And then he grabs me. Throws me across his lap and starts tickling me under the arms. And now it’s me who’s snorting, wriggling in his grip, trying my best not to piss myself.
    “What do you want, huh? What do you want?” he says, jabbing at my sides, snapping my bra. He’s such a pig. “Are you looking for some of this?” He pulls his T-shirt back down to cover the blub and takes out his wallet.
    “Yeah, I want some of that.”
    “Well, you know, all you need to do is ask.”
    Luke stops and I concentrate hard on him, wait to hear what he wants. I watch the way his squinty blue eyes spy at me from behind a pair of tiny, gold-rimmed glasses, the way his lips spout like he’s trying to think up what to say, and how his ears are as tiny as mine. I try to imagine what he looked like at my age, before his face got all saggy, and wonder if he might have been kind of cute.
    “What do you need the money for?” he asks.
    “It’s no big deal, Luke. Me and Sadie are just gonna buy ice cream.” I curl my tongue so that the barbell pokes out of my mouth. I want to stretch the hole to a size eight or nine, big enough to squirt water through it, right at him.
    “Hey, that’s Uncle Luke to you.” He slides his wallet back into his pocket.
    He’s not my real uncle. My mother’s an only child, but that’s still what she insists I call him. She also insists that Luke’s just staying with us for a while. Staying with us , not moving in and taking up valuable sofa space for the past eight years. My real father was some guy my mother met one night while tending bar at Majors downtown. Apparently, she