THEY TOOK Noah’s car. Terry rode in the back. They pooled money for dope and a room.

The place was part of an old two-story house, bottom and top floors divided into three small apartments. Their door was red. The outside of the house was gray.

For three days in April the kids from Echota got their parents to rent houses at one block on the north end of the state’s neon beach. They went around screaming and opening their chests; sometimes they went outside and lay down in the sun; sometimes they didn’t notice the person sleeping beside them.

Noah’s mother rented the place for them. He toothed the key in the lock, and when he turned it, the key went around loose and didn’t click. He took it out and shook the brass knob, put a hand on the door and pushed it open. The lights were off, square window with blinds in the front room, dust clouded in light holed through the slits. There was a brown, sand colored couch against one wall, sink and counter on the other. Francis went to the bedroom. The mattress whined.

Noah came out to the front room with a joint, sat down on the rotten couch, Terry expectant and crosslegged on the floor.

Here, here, here, Noah said.

The joint looked like a plaster cast for a baby’s arm.

That thing is terrible, Terry said.

Past the thin wall Francis snored low, even breaths.

Eventually a doorbell rang, but the place didn’t have a doorbell. The lock didn’t work, even.

Someone’s at the door, Terry said. I’m hearing things, I think.

Noah stood up and wobbled, went over and opened the door on nothing. He came back and sat down again at the couch. Terry’s mouth clenched, eyes jerked and his cheeks yanked with them.

I think something’s wrong with the smoke, he said.

He heard bird wings, like playing cards shuffled and cut. Blood went up at his face and then left; he felt cold for some reason, and moved his ears for the first time.

Look at my ears, Terry said.

He moved them up and down. The sun cracked bright through the blinds. Outside the world caught fire.

Where are my spectacles? Noah said.

He rubbed his eyes.

You don’t wear spectacles, Terry said.

I should.

Francis slept. Terry and Noah went out and started on the main road, passed houses painted mint and pale yellow, brown and white, salt peeled on the sides and stilted, raised high at balconies, kids burnt and dangling there, music a throb in the stirred air and salt light. They hunched for three blocks, and then they took stairs to the back room of the second level on a green house. Inside, it smelled old, and wet. Terry shook his arms to see if they were still there. Someone gave him a beer.

One kid tried to kiss a girl sat next to him. He leaned toward her. She didn’t look at him, kept her face straight, and took a hand soft to his cheek and pushed him away. The kid smiled, head lolled forward, eyes jerked shut and then open. Terry stared at the kid’s gold capped front teeth, suddenly his mouth was full of pennies; a dollar’s worth, it looked. The kid went to kiss the girl again, didn’t seem to remember what came before, even after the fourth time she pushed his face back. Just take him somewhere, okay? she said.

She didn’t look at anyone when she spoke. Noah got up anyway, and Terry did, too. Noah leaned down over the kid and put a hand on his shoulder like he gripped the end of a church pew.

Man, come outside, he said. I need to show you a good place to lay down. It’s choice, if anything.

The kid nodded, seemed to like what he heard. He stood up, taller than both of them, and he wore a thin beard. Noah led him out of the front room and down the plank board stairs.

In the backyard Noah pointed him to the small opening at the base of the back wall, a door that led to the crawl space under the house. The kid crouched, lifted the cover and went feet first. The door fell behind. They stood and waited to see if he’d come out. Noah looped his hands over a clothesline at their backs and pulled, plastic cord stretched down at his weight. He picked an empty beer bottle near his feet, turned the nose down and threw it high over the house at the dark road in front of them. Terry fished the dead man’s pills from his field jacket.

I don’t know what they are, Terry said.

He rattled them in the plastic bottle, opaque, orange brown, and the cap white, label handwrote and faded. Noah took the bottle and studied the label a moment and then he uncapped the lid. He put one to his mouth and chewed, shook another and held it to him a fistful.

Take it, man, he said. It’s fine. My uncle’s a nurse.

Yeah?

He will be in two years. But he’s got the uniform and everything.

The pill was shaped like a football. Terry palmed it, fat and thick in his hand. He studied the pill and then he threw it back. His mouth lacked spit. He bit hard, tasted chalk. Noah put the bottle into a pocket, and then he took it out again quickly and uncapped the lid, looked inside and shook the pills around. He pinched another one, thought for a breath, and then he ate it, lips grazed powder blue.

They took the stairs back up and stood in the kitchen. Some of the ones from the back room came out and milled around. The bony, dark-haired girl from the guesthouse in Echota was there. She came over and stood in front of him with another girl called Finley Right above her bellybutton, moving up to her ribcage, was a thick straight line, rough and pink, like a zipper yanked out. Terry wanted to put his hands to it. Things in the room were looped and funny, like a stranger’s family picture album, like church on television. She let the shirt drop, and took a sip from the red cup, ice beaded drops on the plastic, chewed teeth marks along the white Up.

I dig your wavelength, Terry said.

What? she said.

She put the cup to her mouth, gnawed at a spot already worked on.

Nothing, Terry said.

Noah mixed a glass of grain alcohol with pink instant lemonade powder. Terry drank it straight, and then Noah made another one, and Terry took that one up, too, and drank fast. His face started to beat warmly, hands, thighs, and then his groin went hot in the same way. The ground shifted beneath him. Noah’s face dropped off. One of the girls grew ten feet to a terrible giant.

Terry’s feet were light on the stairs going down, plank rail trembling beneath his right hand; he spit flowers in the yard, fell on the hood of a fast red car, felt his hands slide cool beside the air vent.

Terry woke beside the house, looked up at Noah’s face and his stubby hand held down to him. He propped himself on his elbows.

What’s all this about? Terry said.

His shirt was wet on the front. He thought maybe he was dead, or dreaming he was dead. He tried to stand but could not.

Deceased, Terry said.

He got to his knees, wobbled and fell back against the ground. He took Noah’s hand and pulled himself up, looked then at his jeans, wet at the front, groin to thigh. He strained his head over one shoulder and looked at the backside of his jeans.

I might have pissed myself, he said.

Happens, Noah said.

Terry blinked at the night around him, thought he felt a bug crawl at his neck, and slapped it with a hard swat. He looked at his hand; nothing. He shook it, then. He smacked his lips and it made a noise like tape peeled back from cardboard.

Where’s that red door? Terry said.

He stood still for a moment. Noah dusted grass from his shoulders and pointed to the street at his back.

Terry walked fast, and thought it must be morning, the air wet and pregnant, but it was still night.

He passed another white house with the lights up. In the front yard three men stood at the back of a silver car like moviegoers. Another lay like a sunbather in the grass, lit pink in the taillights, feet out front, propped up to his elbows. Terry didn’t want to know what it was they were doing. He smelled menace, felt some ancient fight playing out. He kept his face down, tried not to look, but he couldn’t stop his eyes from turning up.

Someone said, Hello!

Terry lifted his face, spoke loud to the night dark.

Hello! he said. How are you!

He walked a little faster, crossed his arms jacket tight over his chest.

Two of them came out of the dark and took each of his arms at the bicep. It was not a hard grip. They turned him around, and he walked with them.

Okay, he said. Okay, okay, okay.

Terry’s feet turned pink in the headlights. He studied the man laid there, a boy, really, who looked Terry’s age, or maybe a little older, eyes wet, but not from crying. Terry took in the rest; all of them boys, he saw, faces twisted brown liquor drunk. One of them explained that the boy on the ground was a good friend of all of theirs, but he’d stolen a hundred dollars from one of them.

I did, the boy on the ground said.

He leaned to one arm and raised the other one.

I did do it, he said. I stole. That money and all what.

We don’t know what to do about it, one of them said.

Oh, I don’t care, the boy at the ground said. Just get on with it. All of you tiny shitcakes.

We thought maybe we should hit him with sticks, another one said.

Terry saw, then, that all of them were holding large branches torn from a bush or tree.

Those aren’t sticks, Terry said.

They didn’t seem to hear him.

That’s fine, the one on the ground said. Hit me with sticks and whatall. The branches. Whatever the shit they are.

I think that’s a good idea, Terry said.

He didn’t realize that he’d started to cry; more than anything else, he wished to get away from these four. Terry turned to leave and one of them took his arm again, then bent down to the ground, picked up a branch and held it to him.

What? Terry said.

Terry looked at the one on the ground; he was set on seeing this through. Terry waited, and the others started with the branches, and then the rush of cut air took him, white trails from the branches whimpered in the dark. He raised the branch and brought it down against one of the kid’s shoulders. He felt scared, but good at the same time. He kept swinging, felt each tiny moment of the world turned solid and clear in the sharp whack of wood against bone. The one on the ground clutched his gut, and they stopped hitting him, all of them gripping split branches. The one on the ground raised himself to an elbow and spit, wiped his mouth at both corners with his sleeve.

Terry heard his heart in his ears and ribs when he stumbled away from them. He pushed open the red door; dark inside the room, Noah splayed on the couch, red metal flashlight on the floor beside him like a stowed rifle. Terry went over and took it up and shined it down on his face. Noah had dark, elegant and swooping eyebrows drawn over his real ones with a deep black marker, and a curled mustache over his top lip. He looked like a matador. Terry told him so, even though Noah was sleeping, and patted his head, hair dark wet and cold, breath low and patient through his nose. He turned off the flashlight and put it back on the floor and then he went to the corner beside the couch and sat down, pulled his knees high to his chest.