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meet at my house at seven sharp. I’m not picking all of their little butts up individually, because I’m in court all day—murder trial. But if they pull off the mission without screwing up too badly, we’re going to Friendly’s afterward.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” I say, like a moron.
    “Friendly’s. Reese’s Pieces Sundae. Yes,” Ricky says.
    “All right. I have to get to the courthouse. Kisses and then out.”
    Ricky kisses his mother as I hop out of the backseat and onto the sidewalk. Ricky gets out of the Mercedes, slams the door too hard, and then says, “Going to play Halo 3 with Mr. Jonathan Franks! Yes! Halo 3.”

CHAPTER 3
    Maybe you want to know how The Five came to exist? True?
    History of The Five.
    It all began when Jared and I failed fifth grade.
    Well, neither of us technically failed, but we were both held back, dropped into Chad’s, Ricky’s, and Ty’s class. Jared—because he used to have this awful stutter back in the day and could hardly complete a frickin’ sentence without repeating just about every syllable a bazillion times. Word. And me—I was held back because I missed too many days of school, even though I technically passed all of my tests when I eventually took them. If you miss so many days, you automatically get held back, or at least that’s what I was told. The reason I missed so many days of school was because we were living with Good Boyfriend Gerald at the time, who was Mom’s best pick by far, if you ask me.
    GBG was a truck driver and used to make these long hauls across the country, and Mom used to go nuts for road trips, so whenever she didn’t want to be left alone without GBG, she’d have one of the bus driving subs cover her route for a week or so and she’d let me skip school to ride across the country with GBG in his big old red tractor-trailer truck, which he called Melissa. Since GBG was making these trips all the time, I missed tons of school.
    When we’d head west, we would drive right through the night, hardly ever stopping, because Good Boyfriend Gerald got paid more if he got the load there early. We’d all sit in his truck, Mom in the middle, holding both of our hands, and it was fun to drive on the highways of America like that, sorta like a family. GBG was pretty damn old and didn’t ever say much, but he had a kind, wrinkly face—he loved to smile, and even though he was really big and was rough-looking with a gray bushy beard, he was the type of guy you trust right away, sorta like Santa Claus or something like that.
    After he’d drop his load off, we’d drive back east a little more leisurely, and GBG used to take us to see cool stuff too. The best thing he ever showed us was the Grand Canyon. Word. We went there in December when there was snow all around the edge, and looking down into that big beautiful gap in the earth was sorta like a spiritual experience for me. I remember that there were so many shades of brown and tan inside that majestic hole that it didn’t even look real. And the clouds—those were like looking at something too beautiful, like it actually hurt your eyes to see something so gorgeous. I wanted to hike down into that canyon, and will one day—word—but Mom was against it, saying that it wasn’t safe in the winter, even though tons of other people were doing it with huge backpacks and spikes strapped onto their boots. Hard-core.
    GBG paid for a hotel in Arizona, and after eating dinner at this little greasy diner of sorts, Mom and I went for a walk while GBG took a shower in the hotel room, because he never could shower if I was in the room, saying it wasn’t proper, which was sorta noble of him, like he was a knight from olden times. I remember walking, holding hands with my mom in this dumpy little town, and once we got away from the main drag, once we walked far enough down this empty road, my mom told me to look up.
    Holding her hand, I tilted my head back and then watched my gray breath climb up toward a