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life.
 They have ways of getting rid of them.
 I m not so sure they re effective. And I think they re pretty painful. I
was feeling so tired, and developing a headache. Although I d not been all
that hungry, given what I d seen this evening, the lack of anything in my
stomach was taking its toll.
 I d just like you to think about it, that s all. Lots of people have them,
and it doesn t make them criminals or anything. Lots of my friends do, and I
know grown-ups who ve got them, too. You know Mr. Drennan, the math teacher?
He s got this little butterfly on his arm, and there s this guy in Grade 9,
his parents let him get this guitar tattoo on 
We were pulling to a stop out front of Andy s. I said,  What does your sister
think of this? You don t see her pestering me for permission to do this. Paul
often turned to Angie for the guidance and wisdom her many years afforded her.
 Jeez, Dad, she s already got one on her  And he saw the dawn of surprise in
my eyes and stopped. He opened the door, said,  See ya, and bolted for Andy s
place.
I didn t have time to think about where Angie might have a tattoo. I sped
home, killing the lights of the Civic as I pulled into the drive. When I
turned the key in the front-door lock, the bolt didn t slide home the way it
usually does. Paul had been the last one out when we d gone over to the
school, and I couldn t recall seeing him lock it. But then again, Angie might
be back from the mall and just hadn t locked the door when she stepped into
the house.
No one listens to me.
 Angie? I called as I stepped in. I turned off my cell and left it and my
keys on the table by the door, and walked into the kitchen.  You home?
There was no answer. I called again, louder this time:  Angie!
No one called back. But I could hear noises coming from the kitchen. The
opening of the fridge, the clinking of bottles.
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 Sarah? Maybe she d come home early. No, that wasn t possible. Her car
wasn t in the drive, and she d called me from the office only moments ago,
when I was in Ms. Wilton s class.  Who s there?
I walked past the door to the study, where the purse stuffed with cash was
still stowed, and into the kitchen.
It was Rick, leaning up against the dishwasher, drinking an Amstel from our
fridge. He was in his jeans and jean jacket, which he wore over a black
T-shirt. Heavy black boots stuck out from the bottom of his worn jeans. He was
smiling enough for me to see that one of his front teeth was chipped.
 What the hell are you doing here? I asked.  And where s my candlestick, you
son of a bitch?
Rick lost his smile.  That s not a very nice way to talk to a guy you want to
fix your shower.
 I don t want you to fix anything. I m going to speak to Mr. Greenway about
you, about the fact that you re a thief, that when you walk into someone s
house to fix something, there s no telling what you ll walk out with. Just get
out. We ll find someone else to fix our shower.
 I didn t even realize when I came here the other day, Rick said,  that your
name was Walker. All they gave me was an address.
 Well, that s me. Walker. And I m asking you to leave.
 Zack Walker. With a  Z. 
That s when it hit me that Rick wasn t here to work on the shower.
He reached into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out the sheet of
paper I had left behind at Stefanie Knight s mother s place, the one with my
name and e-mail address.
 When I looked your name up in the book for an address, I thought, Shit, I
know that house. I been in that house.
I said nothing.
 When I got here, I found the door was open. You really should lock up when
you leave. You never know who s going to barge right in. But I had a look
around the whole house this time. Haven t seen it since it was under
construction. Nice place. Looks like you got a son, and a daughter. That
right?
I nodded very slowly.
 So I was trying to find Stef tonight, she had something of Mr. Greenway s I
had to pick up, and went by her place, and when I couldn t find her there, I
decided to drop in on her mom. You met her, right?
 Her mother, yes. And her brother.
Rick nodded.  You meet Quincy?
 We met.
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 I gave them Quincy. It was a gift, like. I love snakes. I think they re
really beautiful. Merle, that s Stef s mother? She s a nice lady. We got to be
friends when Stef and I were a thing, you know?
 Yeah.
 But Quincy s been giving them a lot of trouble lately. He s a bit of a
handful, I admit, but he s a good snake. So they asked me to take him off
their hands for a while. You want to come out to the car and see him?
I felt a chill.  No, like I said, we met.
 I got him out in the trunk. Gonna take him back to my place. You re sure you
don t want to come out, pet him?
I shook my head.
 Because, if I don t leave here with what I want, then I might insist that
you come out and pet him.
 I m sure we can work something out.
 Merle and Stef, they don t talk that much, but Stef drops by once in a
while, you know, so I thought, maybe she was over there. But she wasn t, but
Merle started talking about this man who came by, saying he had something that
belonged to Stef, but he was acting kind of funny, and I got a bit suspicious,
you know. And he left this e-mail address. So they let me use their computer
so I could send you a little message.
 Yes.
He smiled.  So if you ve got something of Stef s, why don t you just hand it
over to me, and I ll be on my way.
 Okay, I said.  That s fine. Follow me.
I led him out of the kitchen and down the hall to my study. He stepped into
the room, looked around, his eyes landing on the various items of SF kitsch,
and said,  Whoa, I missed this room when I took my tour. This is quite the
setup you ve got here.
He leaned in close to the shelves to admire the models and trinkets and
action figures, stepped back to check out the posters on the walls.  This
here, I know this is a Batmobile, but which one?
 From the animated series.
 I always liked the one from the old TV show, you know, from the sixties,
where they had the words  pow and  bam and everything, when they took
punches at each other. It had the red pinstripes, and little bat symbols on
the wheels? I always thought that one was cool. I had a little Dinky Toy of
that one.
 It was a Corgi, actually, I said.
 Huh?
 A Corgi toy, not a Dinky Toy. It s right there, on the shelf above.
He looked up.  Oh wow. Shit. That s it. That s the one I had as a kid. He
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