If this door is locked, I’m in deep shit.

Lots of people go to school at six thirty on a Friday morning, right? Lots of those outgoing people, like speech geeks who have to practice for meets, or people like Principal Mackowski, who tells us every year at all-school assembly that he comes to school early to work when it’s quiet, before all the “crazy loud people like you” get here, ha ha, big smile. Not introverted weirdos like me, but that’s OK. I’ve practiced being invisible for a long, long time, so nobody will see me.

When I yank it, the door opens, and I slide inside. I’m following Brian the Custodian, who went in about thirty seconds ago. Thank god it didn’t lock behind him. Custodians definitely get to school this early. He’s down the hall, and I’m at the end of a bank of lockers, hoping my shoes won’t squeak when I move fast. I let Brian get another thirty feet, and I start for the cafeteria, as casual as a rogue student can be in the early morning when they don’t want to be seen. Then Brian veers off toward the gym, and I keep going to the caf, making sure my backpack doesn’t make noise.

Finally I’m there, and the mural is in front of me. The ugly, stupid, dumb mural that I’m glad I’m not helping to paint. It’s an idiotic scene of a lake and loons and farm fields and volleyball players and football goalposts and all sorts of other random stuff that’s supposed to signify a high school in a Twin Cities suburb. Minnesota at its best, right? Go, Art Club! So freaking ugly. Sure, it’s nice not to have all-white cafeteria walls, but is art made from slightly deformed loons under a goalpost really any better? And while it would be cool to hang out with a group of people who actually know the difference between oil paint and watercolors, just thinking about it makes my palms sweat.

Over on the far right corner, there’s a lake with some rocks around it—I think it’s supposed to be Lake Superior. I look around one last time and the coast is still clear, so I dig into my bag for my oils. When I check my phone, it’s 6:39. I have less than an hour. I hunch into my hoodie, vanishing as much as I can, and get to work.

The next time I check my phone, it’s 7:31, and everything’s back inside my backpack except the water-skiing Abominable Snowman, who’s waving and laughing on the surface of the lake. He’s maybe six inches tall, and I kind of put him close to a rock so he’d blend in, but if you get close, it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t belong. He’s completely amazing.

I stretch, trying to pretend I’m just loitering, ho hum, vaguely wandering by, it’s early, where’s the Mountain Dew, and I turn to see Rory Carlson across the cafeteria, just watching me. How long has she been standing there? If she’s seen me defiling Lake Superior, it’s not gonna be a good thing. She’s not smiling, but she’s not frowning.

Our caf is a big open common space with lots of places to enter and exit, so I slide around the tables, heading for a hallway opposite of where Rory is standing. She starts walking toward the mural, and I start walking toward my locker, hoping there’s a granola bar in there. I’m hungry. As I go, I don’t hear any yelling, but I also don’t turn around to see what she’s doing. My goal is just to walk fast.

Rory’s in the Art Club, and maybe the prettiest girl in my grade. She has no idea who I am, even though I sit behind her every day in Spanish class. And that’s exactly perfect. I don’t want her to know me. Let the Abominable Snowman stand on his own.

I will admit I spend whole periods of class just staring at the back of her head, which is a perfect oval, not to mention that her hair looks like a waterfall of different kinds of honey, and her shoulders are . . . shapely. I don’t even know what to call them other than that. They’re totally hot. How can shoulders be hot? But hers are.

The rest of my day is spent in the way of my people: go to class, keep my head down, sketch on stuff, say hi to maybe two guys, pretend I’m not there. At lunch, I casually loiter by the mural to see if anybody did anything to my water-skier. He’s still there, smiling in his furry goodness and waving like he’s Mr. Minnesota and there’s a crowd on the lakeshore. Two girls are looking at him, pointing and laughing. I’m happy.

Now it’s Friday night, and Pizza Vendetta is freaking out while I watch. It feels like half my high school is here. Kids are throwing forks and spreading gossip while chowing on the best pizza in the Twin Cities metro area, according to City Pages, pizza made by yours truly. Our cute little suburb is good for something.

And, of course, Pizza Vendetta is very segregated, just like high school. Jocks are by the bathrooms, talking game scores and defensive strategies, and the brainy kids are by the jukebox, trying to outdo each other with music trivia and whatever else they talk about. Stoner kids are by the door, so they can go out and get their next hit of whatever as soon as they’re done satisfying their munchies, and regular kids who don’t really fit anywhere are kind of in the middle, talking about TV shows. The goth emo kids are close to me, by the counter where I’m making their delicious pizza, but they don’t care. They’re all too busy piercing their lips with a fork to eat much. The Art Club kids don’t come here, so it might be a while before I get to hear what they think about my Abominable Water-Skier.

The theater kids—this is where my darling sister, Tallulah, also known as Lou, fits in—are the most boring, annoying people in the world. Their conversations sound like this: “Lou, how are YOU?” “Oh, Brittany, how are YOU?” Air kiss, air kiss. “Have you thought about putting your urine in a jar with a crucifix and then dancing around it?” “No, Brittany, I haven’t, have you?” So that conversation’s going on while four different kids recite their lines in the next booth and another group’s making up a song about how to eat pizza, complete with occasional choreography when someone gets up to refill their soda.

And then there’s me.

Back to the green pepper and sausage. The counter I stand behind sticks out into the restaurant like a peninsula, and it’s surrounded by shoulder-high glass so everybody can watch the pizza maker design their supper. Pizza Vendetta is on a FUN vendetta, according to our advertising, even though nobody knows what a fun vendetta is, and a vendetta to stop your hunger, after all, so isn’t it FUN to watch your pizza get made? Ha. Fun if you like watching someone earn just above minimum wage to make your food. We also design the toppings in Vs—for “vendetta,” of course—on top of the cheese, one huge V across the pizza, then smaller Vs all around. If I know the name of the person who’s ordering, I also lay out their initials with the toppings, and if I know something about them, I’ll make a design with other stuff from their life. Last week, for my English teacher, I made a book out of mushrooms with her initials on it. If someone orders a plain cheese pizza, I’m always tempted to lay down a frowny face made out of toothpicks—why would you come to a place that decorates its pizzas if all you want is plain cheese? But all of this is why I, Frankie Neumann, have won the Cool Pizza Award for three months straight. My picture’s on the plaque by the door to prove it.

Seriously. Shoot me. Nobody cares how their pizza toppings are arranged. But my designs make me happy, even if nobody else cares, and I watch life go on around me from behind my glass wall. I’m great at observing. And right now I’m observing my nemesis.

Lou is the only person I know who can wear a tulle dance skirt to a pizza place and look completely at home. She’s standing by Brittany Serger’s booth, talking and laughing and flouncing her skirt like she’s onstage, touching her drama mask necklace as if Jennifer Lawrence gave it to her instead of my parents. All the girls are admiring her, like they’re talking with a princess from a faraway land, and there are plenty of guys staring like they want to take her home, which totally creeps me out. Girls, too, for that matter. Some people just want to hang out, but there’s also a lot of “hey, girl, let’s do it” in those stares. Yuck.

Me? I want to push her off a cliff into the ocean.

For a long time, when you’re little, you don’t know that there’s an option for how to feel about your sibling. It’s all just “oh yeah, I have to deal with it,” and parents don’t help because they’re always making you live with the stupid stuff that goes down, even if you hate it, which of course you do, and you have to forgive your sibling, especially if they’re younger than you. When I was seven and she was five, she stole all my Tinkertoys and threw them into the neighborhood’s annual bonfire when we were roasting marshmallows. When I was nine and she was seven, she took my new bike and wrecked it on a hill so badly we couldn’t fix it, and my parents had no money to get me another one. When I was eleven and she was nine, she stole my first skateboard and broke it trying to ollie on a curb. It was a cheap board, but still. A thousand paper cuts to my soul, and the face of destruction in my life: That’s Lou. Nobody would guess the graceful actress with the lovely face and wonderful voice is actually a soulless demolition machine. After she wrecked my first skateboard, I finally figured out I had the option of not liking her, no matter what my parents said. And it felt so good to hate her, I kept going.

Thayer, the college guy who waits tables on Friday nights, brings over a tray of dishes. “Hey, Pepperoniangelo, will you put these in the kitchen for me? Tables are backing up.” He lifts the plates, silverware, and glasses over the partition. I take it without looking at him, because I know he’s smirking like an asshole.

“Pepperoniangelo” was the latest incident. A couple weeks ago, it was a slow Thursday night and Lou and my parents were in here, having supper. I was sculpting a version of Michelangelo’s David with pepperoni and toothpicks, because we’d just talked about it in art history and I didn’t have anything else to do, and Lou saw it. From across the room, she yelled, “Hey, Frankie! Don’t you think Michelangelo had better things to do than work at a pizza place?” I don’t think she knew I was trying for David, I think she just picked a sculptor she knew. And the whole room—I mean every single set of eyes in the place—turned to look at me. “Hold it up, Pepperoniangelo!” she yelled. And my parents nodded, and since they were my parents, and I knew I’d get in trouble if I didn’t hold it up, I did, even though I would have much preferred to die on the spot. Every single soul in Pizza Vendetta laughed because it didn’t look much like anything, and my parents were cackling right along with everyone else. Then Geno, the owner, came out of the back because of the noise and yelled at me, since I was wasting pepperoni. Then he docked my paycheck for the pepperoni and toothpicks I used.

Lou is the Antichrist in a tutu.

When the bell above the door jingles, I look up, because I’m trained like a rat to do it. I need to see how much dough to keep up front based on the number of people who come in. But instead of looking back down at my pizza once I count, I stare. It’s Rory Carlson again, making an entrance like a queen, regal and stately. It’s obvious she knows people stare at her, because she acknowledges the looks with downcast eyes and a smile. Of course, people wouldn’t notice me if I was sitting naked on the counter with my wang covered in pepperoni, holding a big sign that said EAT ME. Though I like it that way. Ninety-eight percent of the time.

I am not paying attention to her. I’m making Vs on the pizza. Pizza Vendetta. Making pizza. Vs. Not looking at her.

Rory walks about twenty feet away from the door and stops by the window, watching as the place begins to flow back into its normal rhythm. Then the bell dings again, and this dude’s walking in, and it’s like an Old West movie—the new gunfighter enters the Cactus Saloon—and all the grown-ups look at him. The guy is tall and skinny—he’d probably call himself slender, because he looks like the kind of guy who’d actually use that word—and he’s a cross between David Bowie in the eighties and a refugee from Rent. But this gunslinger wears a skirt, with clunky Doc Martens to finish off the outfit. It’s obvious by the staring that no adult has ever seen a dude in a skirt. The kids in the place glance up, register the situation, then go back to their various conversations. A little smile keeps creeping onto Rory’s face while she watches Pizza Vendetta look at the gunslinger. Maybe she’s waiting for a show to start.

I look at Lou because I assume the gunslinger is in her crowd, but given the look on her face, he’s not. And she thinks he’s cute, too—I can see it. She’s biting her lip, like she does when she’s thinking, and checking him out like he’s a sales rack at Screw, this goth boutique underneath a warehouse in Uptown, the trendiest part of Minneapolis. And of course she’s crossed the floor to him in two seconds.

“Hi, I’m Lou. Who are you?” Conversation slowly picks up after the dead silence the gunslinger started, but every table and booth has an eye on them.

The guy looks at her like he’s never seen a girl before. “I’m David.”

“No way. Really? David? You look just like David Bowie on his Serious Moonlight tour!”

“I get that a lot.” And he walks around her and heads toward me.

Burn. Nobody walks around Lou. She stomps back to Brittany Serger and glares at the new gunslinger.

I’m going to stand here and make pizza.

Geno is throwing down dough as fast as he can in the kitchen, and from where he’s standing, he can see I’m watching the social situations from my spot at the counter. “Hurry up and move those toppings. We’ve gotta lotta work to do. Don’t be wasteful, Pepperoniangelo.” Geno is as old as my grandpa, at least, and he plays the Italian pizza guy stereotype to the max, right down to the white T-shirt, apron, and little white hat. “Be our best guy, OK? Don’t slow down. And make some pizzas for slices, too.”

“You got it, boss.” I fling down the pepperonis as fast as I can and pretend he didn’t call me Pepperoniangelo.

David stops at the glass and stares directly at me. “You have a delivery truck.”

“How do you know that?” The V under my hands gets finished, and I start two smaller Vs on either side of the big one.

“I’ve seen it here, and someone else saw you after school.”

I step back from the glass partition. “Don’t make me call the cops, creeper.”

“Get to work, Frankie!” Geno doesn’t like it when I talk to people.

“Look, you have a delivery truck, and I am in need of a delivery truck.” He raises one eyebrow at me. “Someone I know said you were an OK guy who might be willing to help.” He turns to look at Rory, who’s still standing by the windows. She nods at him while she smiles/not-smiles. I don’t know if this is related to the Abominable Water-Skier or not.

“I’m not selling it to you, if that’s what you want.” I get back to work. Madison Meyer, in booth 3A, is the owner of this pizza, so she gets Ms on top of the V, in green olives, just because she’s a regular girl who’s not wearing a black tulle skirt with neon green paint streaks.

“We just want to use it. What time do you get off work?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“We’ll be back at eleven.” And he turns around and walks out. The whole place watches him go. All we’d need are those push-open shutter doors that Old West bars have, and the scene would be complete. Then David Bowie gunslinger in a skirt is gone, and the whole saloon gazes after him. Once people start chatting again, I see Rory slip out the door, too.

I don’t know if I want to know what they want.

Of course I do.

It’s eleven forty-five and I’m in the back parking lot. David and Rory materialize out of the shadows. Thanks to the pizza fight that happened at ten thirty, the one that took forever to clean up, and the one that made us scrub down six booths after we were closed, I figured they were long gone. I have no idea what happened to Lou. It’s not my job to watch her, even though my parents think it is.

“We thought you’d never get out here.” Rory is smiling in a way that makes me think of a cartoon cat who’s just caught a mouse.

“Can you unlock this?” David tries to open the door.

“You people are way too forward. I barely know you.” But I unlock the door, because Rory’s beautiful and nobody leads a more boring life than I do. So I’m curious. Introverts don’t actually hate hanging out with people, and they don’t have to be alone all the time. Just lots of the time.

David pulls and tugs to get the passenger side door open, then he and Rory climb in. Rory settles onto a pile of jackets in the back, shoving them between the seats, and David perches on top of the passenger seat, like he’s waiting for something wonderful to happen in the magical delivery truck. He looks like an owl in drag, with his skirt and his round glasses. His hair even sticks up a little bit in the back like owl feathers do, though owls don’t have the swoop in the front. He looks like a David Bowie owl.

“Put your seat belt on. Otherwise you’ll get thrown around.” Riding in a delivery truck is nothing like riding in a car. Things slide, and if you’re not ready, you’re just a bag of bones that can hit the back wall in two seconds. “And then you need to tell me what you want.”

The eighties owl sticks out his hand. “David Carlson.”

From the back, I hear, “Rory Carlson. You know who I am.” She says it in a voice that’s like a Slinky coated in mink.

I turn to look at her. “You might want to hang on to the straps on the side of the truck. Or you’ll go flying, too. You guys are brother and sister?”

She smirks. “Thanks for the warning, chief. We’re cousins.”

David’s hand is still hanging in the air, and I reach over and shake it briefly. “Do you go to Henderson?” Our school isn’t big, but it isn’t small, either. I could have missed him. But I also think a guy like him would stick out. Then again, Henderson High School is just one of the twenty high schools on the west side of “the greater Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area,” as the official language goes. Just your average dumb high school in the burbs.

David nods. “I came this year. I’m a freshman.”

“How did you know I have delivery truck?”

“Rory saw you after school in it, then I saw the truck behind Pizza Vendetta, and you were working.”

I round the corner, out of the parking lot, and David is thrown into the door. Rory is smart. She grabbed a strap before we started moving.

“Seriously. Your seat belt. And why do you need a delivery truck?”

He’s buckling. “It’s not for me, actually. It’s for my uncle. He’s coming home to do some work, and we like to help him out when we can.”

“Who’s your uncle?”

David doesn’t say anything. Neither does Rory. I feel the vibes go between them.

“Who’s your uncle?” It sounds like the setup line for a joke.

“You’ll see. Take a left.” He points.

“I’m parked until you tell me.” I turn the engine off, even though we’re in the middle of the street. A little hardball can’t hurt. Good thing it’s late and there’s not much traffic.

“I thought you might have a sense of adventure.” David sighs and crosses his arms. “You really want to know?”

“Didn’t I just say that?” Obviously this owl isn’t very smart.

He raises his eyebrows at me. “Uncle Epic.”

“THE Uncle Epic?” This isn’t possible. “You mean the Uncle Epic who does street art?”

Rory laughs. “What other Uncle Epic is there?”

Uncle Epic is an art legend. Nobody knows who he is because he works anonymously, mostly in the middle of the night, and nobody’s ever taken a picture of him. If anyone does know who he is, they’ve never spilled it. When I was a little kid, he was a tagger, and then he started making garbage sculptures, and then it was art out of crashed cars, and now he has shows and installations all over the world. Insanely cool. People have no idea what he’ll do next. Plus everything he does annoys the crap out of the cops and city officials and anybody else in authority. He doesn’t do much art in the Twin Cities anymore because people want his work everywhere else—finding out Uncle Epic did a piece in your city is a huge deal—so nobody was even sure he still lived here. And now these two people from Henderson High School are telling me that he’s their actual uncle?

Cool stuff never happens to me.

Lou loves Uncle Epic, too, but in a pretend-intellectual way, like she could ever actually know anything about art. She says she “admires his sensibility,” and she “welcomes his commentary on society, because he’s just as smart as Tennessee Williams,” who’s her favorite playwright. Epic’s art, she says, is “just as trenchant as Williams’s plays.” I heard her say these things to my mom. What does “trenchant” even mean?

I love Uncle Epic in a pure and dedicated fanboy way. I think he’s funny and clever, and I admire the shit out of the fact that he’s stayed anonymous for so long. That’s my kind of art—you make it, you scram, authorities are pissed, and everyone thinks you’re awesome. And I will never admit this to anyone, but I have a scrapbook. Clippings from the newspaper, photos from the Web of his stuff around the world, anything and everything. Epic is my ultimate role model. My parents have no idea how serious I am about my art—as serious as Epic is, even if I haven’t quite figured out what I want to do or say. They’ll make me go to college, but my goal is to be him.

“Prove it to me.” This can’t be real. “Why doesn’t Uncle Epic just rent a truck?”

“He could.” Rory’s voice is a purr. “But I liked your Abominable Water-Skier. Then I saw you driving home after school and realized he wouldn’t have to, if you’d agree to help us. I thought you might be interested, and I told David and Epic about you.”

David’s rummaging around in his wallet, and comes up with a coin. He hands it to me, and I turn on the light above the driver’s seat. The coin says BE EPIC on one side and FOSHAY TOWER on the other.

He’s got to be kidding. “This is from the 1994 Pennies from Heaven piece—before we were even born. How the hell did you get this?” Uncle Epic dropped them out of the windows from the top floor of the Foshay Tower, a thirty-two-story building in downtown Minneapolis, one Wednesday in May of 1994. He plinked them over the side of the building off and on for half an hour, and got away from the cops by walking down a set of service stairs nobody’d used since the fifties. People were both mad and happy, because it was unexpected and cool, though it surprised a lot of people when they got hit by money from the sky. There’s a coin in the lobby of the Foshay, in a little frame on the wall. The Foshay piece was the first time he risked his anonymity.

David nods. “He dropped about five hundred, but he has a few left at his studio.”

“Does he know you have one?” Rory chimes in from the back.

“Yes, don’t be dumb.” David turns to frown at her. “But he told me if I sold it on eBay, he’d kill me.”

I hand the coin back to him. My brain’s still trying to catch up with what he’s saying.

David points left. “Uncle Epic is that way.”

I shift the truck into D and turn left. Boredom is officially over.

Our cute little suburb is west of Minneapolis, and David directs me through a ton of backstreets instead of taking us on the freeway, which makes me really confused. Finally we turn into a driveway in front of a huge brick garage. There are lights on in the windows above the garage, but the garage itself looks dark.

“Wait here.” David hops out and disappears around the side of the building. Rory comes up front and slides out the door David left open, giving me a meaningful look before she slams the door. I have no idea what she’s thinking.

So I wait, and I almost fall asleep, despite the fact that I can’t believe this is happening. I had to get up at five thirty to make sure I’d have time to finish the Abominable Water-Skier, and Fridays are exhausting anyway. The heater is also on, so it’s cozy warm in the front seat—even though it’s April, it’s Minnesota. Heaters are necessary until the end of May. I feel myself slumping out of my seat.

Then I hear David yanking on the passenger door again, and finally he gets it open. “OK! You can drive in, but you have to shut your lights off!” He’s almost chirping from delight. Owls don’t chirp. He shuts the door, and I move the shifter to D. An enormous garage door is open in front of us, and the inside of the garage is pitch-black. I have no idea how far to go.

I creep the truck forward inch by inch, it seems, until there’s a huge THUNK in the front of it and I slam on the brakes. A faint light comes on near the floor at the other end of the garage, and it’s just enough to see someone in a hooded bathrobe standing in the middle of the floor, motioning me forward, which sketches me out, because I just hit something. But I let the truck edge up a few more feet. The garage is really, really long, and full of stuff, judging from the shadows, and some of it might be under tarps. But then the place goes dark again. I shut off the truck.

A deep, gravelly voice booms across the space: “GET OUT AND MOVE TO THE FRONT OF YOUR TRUCK.” It could be God, it could be Epic, it could be Satan. I could end up pissing myself.

One lone TV lights up about fifteen feet in front of the truck, casting a spooky glow over everything. The hooded dude is walking toward me, so I get out and walk toward the front of the truck, but I trip over something and crash into a pile of something else as I try to escape what I tripped over. All the crashes and stumbles make me look and sound like a serious asshole. As I scramble up, I tangle myself in what are evidently giant empty boxes and it’s all I can do not to holler, because I have no idea what’s going on. A cardboard edge slices the top of my hand.

Finally I make it to my feet, and the hooded dude is standing right in front of me. I can’t see the guy’s eyes, just his mouth, because his hood is deep. His body is shapeless under the heavy robe.

I may have underestimated the situation. I hope someone calls my folks so they can come get my body.

David materializes next to the guy and points. “This is Uncle Epic.”

“For real?” I wait for the guy to show his face and say, No, I’m really Barack Obama. We’re just messing with you.

The guy nods very slowly.

“Prove it.”

The God/Epic/Satan voice echoes in the garage. “I did the piece at Target Field with the thirty-five toilets in concentric circles around the pitcher’s mound, and I spelled out BASEBALL = AMERICA’S TIME WASTER in toilet paper in center field, but they picked up all the toilet paper on the field and took down the toilet seats from the flagpoles before the paper came to do the story.”

It’s him.

Lou told me about the center field thing. Some of her friends were downtown at three a.m. and they saw toilet seats on the flagpoles of Target Field. They went to investigate, as anyone would when there were toilet seats on the flagpoles of a baseball stadium, and they saw everything, including the toilets and the TP on the field. Her friends couldn’t figure out why the pictures in the paper were different than what they saw—just toilets, nothing else.

“Why do you want my truck? Show me your face.”

“If I show you my face, you have to swear not to tell anyone who I am.” The voice reverberates through me.

“I swear.” My insides are shaking.

The hood comes down. And it’s Rory.

“You’re Uncle Epic? How’d you do that with your voice?” To say I’m disappointed would be the understatement of the year. “And how’d you know about the Target Field thing?”

She grins and turns her head to show me one of those hair-thin mics that goes over your ear and runs on the side of your face. “Vocoder. Our job was to see if you were brave enough to actually get out of your truck. And who do you think helped him find the toilets for Target Field? If we think you’re OK, he’ll think you’re OK, and he’ll let you work with us. But I haven’t decided yet.” She drops her robe and steps away from it, like she’s a nude model posing for a painting class, then she turns to David. “Do you think Epic will like Frankie?”

David shrugs. “I don’t know. I like him.” He winks and runs his eyes over me. “Epic will think he’s OK, and we need his truck. He should be fine.” He flips the hem of his skirt at me.

I have no way to process all the stuff that’s just happened. Either I’ve just stepped into an episode of some mess-with-your-head reality show, or the art gods are smiling on me. I take a deep breath and wait to find out.