Pizza time, pizza time, Friday night is pizza time. And tonight it’s pizza and soap operas, which makes the time go quick. Geno’s behind me, saying, “Work faster, Pepperoniangelo! Don’t be gawking around! We got pies to make!” And I’m making them. But there’s too much to watch.

Over by where the jocks usually sit, last fall’s starting quarterback for Henderson High School, Sam Ralston, is discovering he’s gonna be a dad in a few months. The girl’s got a serious bump, and he looks like someone smacked him upside the head with a plate. I don’t think she goes to Henderson High, which may explain why he’s so surprised. She isn’t letting him off the hook, either.

Good luck, Sam. Hope you do the right thing, and here’s your sausage and mushroom thin-crust Pizza Vendetta.

The stoner crowd seems to have a quality-control issue. Evidently somebody’s been cutting the good weed from California with crappy Minnesota weed, and customers are complaining. Dewey Decker, who graduated about five years ago, has three different guys yelling at him, though how loud does anyone yell when they’re stoned? It’s more like a moderately animated conversation. You have to know it’s an argument.

Good luck, Dewey. Here’s your Monster Meat Pizza Vendetta with extra cheese—one for you and one for your three stoned worker bees—and here’s some cinnamon sugar breadsticks for dessert, since the munchies can’t be cured with just pizza.

Six brainy kids are having a meltdown because Marshall Geiger just cheated on his SATs. I didn’t even know it was possible to cheat on your SATs. Marshall’s ranked number one in our class, and even though we’re not seniors, it matters a great deal to the brainy posse that SOMEONE FINDS OUT ABOUT THIS, and pronto, dammit, because we don’t want a cheater being the top brain in our class, that’s just not fair. This crowd is definitely arguing, and they’re louder than everyone else. They remind me of a bunch of birds in a tree—squawk, squawk, squawk.

Good luck, smarty-pants kids. Here’s your two veggie Pizza Vendettas, since you’re all so careful about what you put in those skulls of yours and the preservatives in pepperoni upset your delicate systems.

I’m not even sure how to describe the theater kids. They’re so messed up I have three different pizza orders from them. Normally there’d be one. Lou, Allison Lawson, and Brooklyn Smith—one set of flash robbers—are sitting in one booth, heads together, being super quiet. They’ve got something in front of them, a white piece of paper, and they’re whispering. If I squint my eyes, I can almost see the dark cloud that’s hanging over their table.

Sarah Taylor, Carter Stone, and Matt Havelock—the other set of flash robbers—are sitting about three booths away, though in the general theater kid vicinity, and each look they send over to Lou’s booth is made of shiny daggers.

A third group of theater kids seems oblivious to the split. They’re sitting in the middle between the two factions and they’re all reciting lines from Little Shop of Horrors, which a local college is putting on. They’re not paying any attention to anything but themselves.

Good luck, theater kids. Here’s a pepperoni with extra cheese for the stressed flash robbers, a Canadian bacon–pineapple for the pissed flash robbers, and hamburger with black olive Pizza Vendetta for the clueless kids in between.

“Frankie! Get your ass back to work!” Geno’s pissed, because my hands have stopped moving.

“Sorry. Working!” I go back to throwing down the Vs, and the high school drama goes on without me. Just your invisible neighborhood vandal, grinding his day job.

Closing time, and everyone’s gone. Lucky for me I make it out the door by eleven. Geno is nice and lets me go after I’ve mopped. He says he’ll do dishes.

When I get out back to my truck, it’s wrapped in a scarf. The whole freaking truck. But there’s nobody around. It’s the ice-blue-and-screaming-orange thing that Rory’s been knitting in class.

“Rory! What the hell is this?”

No answer.

I walk around the truck, looking for her. “Rory, you need to come take this scarf off my truck. We can’t go anywhere unless you take it off. I can’t get in the doors.”

“Oh, that’s true.” She steps out from behind one of the Dumpsters. “Duh.”

“Yeah, duh.” The scarf covers the truck. “How long is this thing?”

“Maybe as long as a football field? I haven’t measured it.”

“How long does it take to knit a football field of scarf?” This is impressive.

“I’ve been working on it since Christmas. And now it’s, what, late April?” She’s rolling the scarf up like a fire hose, and the coil is getting so big it’s hard for her to carry. “I had to do it in pieces, then knit the pieces together. Open your truck.”

I open the back end, and she heaves it all back there, then goes to where she was hiding by the Dumpster and pulls out five garbage bags. They’re white and puffed out, like marshmallows.

“What’s all that?”

“More knitting.” She flashes her phone at me. “Yarn Bombers Anonymous has a website, and people post stuff through proxy servers so it’s really anonymous. We’re supposed to do one yarn bomb every three months, minimum, then upload our evidence, but I got an extension because this one is big, and actually more like two jobs. I’ve been saving up my knitting.” She gives me one of those smiles that makes me think I might not be the loser I know I am while she shoves the marshmallows into the back and slams the door. “Let’s go fuck with people. Gently, of course. Knitting is pretty, so nobody ever gets too pissed when you mess things up.”

I do the gentlemanly thing and open the passenger door for her, and she curtseys before she gets in.

Why have I never heard of these people?

Once I’m in and buckled, I turn to her. “Where to, pretty destroyer?” Gag. Stupid thing to say.

“Our first stop is a bank.” She’s not even paying attention, because she’s consulting a list she’s produced from a jacket pocket. “The one over on Marquette Street.”

When we get there, I park in the lot of the grocery store that’s next door, which is hopefully outside the range of the security cameras I’m sure are all over the outside of that building. Rory pulls on a ski mask that’s got a face sewn on it—eyelashes above the eye holes, a big red set of felt lips around the mouth hole, a butterfly on its cheek.

“Did you make that?”

“Yup. I’m the Butterfly Bandit—that’s my YBA name. Do you like me?”

“I do.”

“Stay here and wait. It won’t take long. I have zip ties.” She pulls a handful of them out of her pocket and points them at me like they’re a gun. “No sewing necessary.”

She hops out of the back, white marshmallow bag of knitting over her shoulder, and she’s running across the parking lot to the bank. I watch out the front window.

The first thing she does is wrap the outside of the ATM in a big green blanket, and she zip-ties it all together so the blanket won’t come off the machine. On top of the blanket she lays out something that looks like a snake and she moves it into a shape. Then she zip-ties the snake into place, snaps photos, and runs back to my truck.

Rory pulls off her mask, and her face is flushed. She’s breathing hard. “Such a rush! God, I could do this all day.”

Of course she smells good—a little bit sweaty, a little bit clean, a little like fresh air. I need to think about something besides how gorgeous she is, like her brains, or the fact that she’s making cool art, but god. It’s hard. Ha ha, that’s a pun. I roll the window down. “What the hell is the thing on top of the green blanket? The snake swirly thing?” I make myself sound normal, instead of like a worshipper gushing over a goddess.

“It spells out ‘greedy’ in cursive.” She puts the mask on the dash of the truck and shakes out her hair. “It’s easier to knit a chain of stitches and then shape it into the word instead of knitting individual letters.”

“Now where?” I can’t watch her anymore, because I don’t have anything to put in my lap to cover up what’s going on down there. Clever, socially conscious public art makes me hard.

“The bank on Jackson Street. We have four more ATMs to do, then a mission with the blue-and-orange scarf.”

“Guerilla knitting, take two.” I gun the truck and we go. “Good stuff. You think of it yourself?”

“Of course.” She smiles. “Though I might have run it by Epic.”

Rory does four more ATMs, and I wait in four more parking lots next to the banks. I have no idea if she’s caught on any surveillance cameras, but I’m guessing yes. I hope their reach isn’t far enough to catch the truck, too. Finally we’re done, and she’s panting in the passenger seat beside me, shaking out her hair one last time. There goes my art boner again.

“Ready for the finale?” She leans over from the passenger seat toward me.

“Absolutely ready.” I lean back, but I can still smell her.

“Why are you doing that?” Her face looks like it’s lit from inside, like she’s a jack-o’-lantern. “I’m coming close to you for a reason.”

If all the knowledge I have in the world was in this truck, the knowledge of what to do when a girl wants to kiss you, especially a girl like Rory, would be in a truck parked three blocks away. And I’m still not sure I want to be her latest chump, even though she’s hot and smart and smells good.

I turn away, like a moron, and start the engine. “Where to now?”

She leans back and sighs, maybe pissed and maybe not. “Betty Crocker.”

“Seriously?”

“Absolutely.” She checks her phone. “It’s one forty-five, and this one will take a bit longer. And I need your help.”

Frak. How did it get to be that late? I close my eyes and make a wish that nobody hears me come in, then take a deep breath. The art world needs me. Rory needs me.

“I don’t have a mask.”

“Yes you do.” She throws me one that she fishes out of a deflated marshmallow trash bag, and it lands in my lap, which is good. Extra coverage right about now in that spot is excellent, in fact. She continues her upload, giving me the side eye once in a while.

We get on the road to Betty.

General Mills is the largest employer we have around here, and who’s one of the most famous faces of the General Mills brands? Betty Crocker, of course. A ten-foot-tall bronze statue of Betty Crocker stands outside their headquarters. She’s all sixties housewife, in a cute dress and apron, and she’s stirring a bowl of something. Many different things have appeared in that bowl in the last few years. My favorite was a sign that said POT BROWNIES WOULD BE HOT SELLERS. MAKE ME A MIX, BETTY. But obviously the big guns disagreed, because I’ve never seen a box in the grocery stores. Stupid them.

Rory’s surveying the scene. “Do you think there are surveillance cams on Betty?” She looks on the light poles.

“Of course.” Which makes me wonder what people see on those tapes, if people are always throwing stuff in the bowl.

She reaches in her purse and comes up with a pair of scissors. “Come in the back and help me put stuff together. Do you have a light in here?”

“Flashlight.” I dig it out of the glove box and take it back to her.

“Nothing bigger?” She’s unrolling the fire hose of ice blue and screaming orange.

“Nope.” I watch her with the scissors. Rory is chopping the scarf into sections, some of which are about ten feet long, and some of which are maybe a foot long.

“Here.” She throws me a bunch of zip ties, then hands me some of the short sections. “Make these into a puff.”

“A what?”

Rory moves her hands like she’s sculpting the air. “A puff. Like a cheerleader’s pom-pom. Like a shower puff for soap.”

“Don’t be surprised if it ends up looking like some-thing else.”

She sighs without looking up. “I think you can figure it out.”

She’s concentrating, surveying her work, deciding where to cut things. The parking lot lights are seeping in through the window and onto her hair, which is long and dark on her shapely shoulders. The light on her hair flickers when she moves, almost like it’s Christmas tinsel. She’s all in black tonight, and she looks like a cross between a ninja and a ballet dancer.

Why didn’t I let her kiss me? Max Ledermann mopes through my head.

Rory starts zip-tying the longer strips of knitting together. Once she’s got a blanket-ish thing, she threads a white cotton rope through the top of her creation. I’m still fiddling with the little sections. It takes a while, but eventually I get a few blue-and-orange puffballs. They look pretty cool, and they’re round. Round-ish.

“Ready to go?” Her piece is draped over her arm, and she’s poised to jump out the back door.

“Hold on, Butterfly. We’re gonna move the truck, just in case.” I drive it to the farthest corner of the lot, where there are probably still cameras, but maybe not ones that can see close up. Then I throw Rory her mask, which is lying on the passenger seat. “You need this.” I pull mine over my head, and immediately I’m a badass. Or so I think. Rory laughs.

“What?”

She points. “Look at yourself in the mirror.”

I do, and I see a kind of crooked butterfly wing by one eye, and sort of a curlicue thing by the other eyehole, then some sort of pink lip above the mouth hole. “This was your practice mask, I take it?”

“Sure was. And you look completely silly. But let’s go, accomplice.”

She opens the door and starts running. I slam the door and follow, carrying the puff. The parking lot is actually pretty huge, and I feel exposed and scared, like any second a helicopter will turn a spotlight on us. Not my favorite set of emotions.

Betty’s really tall, not including her platform, and I don’t know if Rory forgot this, or what, but she looks concerned. She studies for a minute.

“Boost me up.” She flings part of the knitting over her shoulder and points to where Betty’s standing on her broad platform. “I need to reach her shoulders.”

“You can’t do that. She’s too tall.” But I boost Rory up to Betty’s feet.

“Watch me.” Rory jumps and scales up Betty’s skirt and gets the rope around Betty’s shoulders with one arm. She does more tricky maneuvering while clinging on like a leaf, then suddenly Betty is wearing a flowing knitted cape, like a bronze Wonder Woman.

She holds one hand out to me. “Toss me the puff.”

I do, and she catches it, amazingly, then pitches it inside Betty’s bowl, which is shallow enough that the puff sticks out the top, like she’s holding some sort of alien stew.

“Give me your hands.”

I hold my arms up to grab her, and I don’t know if she does it on purpose, but she comes down hard, and she slams against me. I grab her tight. And then, well, we’re hugging.

“Thanks.” Rory pulls away, and her smile tells me that the extra-hard leap wasn’t on purpose, but it also wasn’t such a bad thing.

Betty now looks like a crusader for truth, justice, and baked goods made from ingredients the color of Kool-Aid. If Rory’s ATMs had a social message, this one doesn’t. It’s just a yarn bomb. But it’s still cool as hell.

I look from Betty to Rory. “Happy with your work?”

“It’s fantastic.” She’s grinning like she just ate a pot brownie, and she clicks a few photos with her phone.

Then the headlights hit us, and we freeze. I have no idea if we should put our hands up or not, so I don’t, just so I’m not a cliché. Rory does, but she’s laughing.

A security guard parks about fifteen feet away from us and gets out. He’s short, squatty, and maybe five years older than we are. “What’s the purpose?” He points at Betty, and then at Rory. “Why did you do that to her?” He looks confused, amused, and pissed. We still have our masks on, which is a really good thing.

“Art has lots of purposes.” Rory doesn’t back down. “Why not make it funny?”

“Oh.” He gazes at the statue like it’s going to reveal the mysteries of the universe. “Deep. Are you guys Uncle Epic?”

I burst out laughing. “Oh my god, I wish. Please don’t tell the cops we were here.”

Rory just gives him a look. “Wouldn’t you like to know? And the guerilla-knitting assault is now over.” I clap, and the security guard does, too, even though you can see he doesn’t know why he’s doing it. She addresses the guard. “You won’t be taking this down, will you?”

“Nah. It’s pretty damn hilarious.” And he gets back in his car and drives out of the parking lot, off to watch over some other part of General Mills besides Superhero Betty.

Rory turns back to me. “Take me to Pizza Vendetta.”

“Why there?” It’s 3:12 a.m.

“Because that’s where my car is.” She strips off her mask and shakes her hair again. Why can’t she be ugly, dumb, and talentless?

We walk back to the truck and head to our cute little suburb. It takes us a while, and Rory falls asleep on the way. I watch her breathe when we pass under the freeway lights. She should be in magazines, or museums, or anywhere but inside my truck, because I am just a boring introvert artist and she is a goddess of knitting and the night.

When I turn into the lot, she shifts around.

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”

“Where are we?” She sits up. “Oh.”

I park next to the only car left in the lot. “Do you want all your garbage bags?”

She yawns. “You can keep them to remember me by.”

“Bus your own table.” I hand them to her. “That’s why there’s a Dumpster.”

“Good night.” She leans in, and this time I don’t lean away. It’s barely a kiss, but her lips linger on mine and I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of yarn, which is soft and warm and smells like Rory.

She’s gonna treat me like all those other guys. I know that in my heart. It’s just her way. But I don’t care.

Both my parents are waiting up for me. It’s 4:10 a.m. The nuclear explosion starts when I walk in the door.

“Where the hell have you been? Why haven’t you answered your phone? You can’t do this anymore. We were worried sick!” My mother’s screeching like a crazy woman, which is an odd combination with her Frank Sinatra suit. Why hasn’t she changed?

“Answer her, Frankie.” My dad is still in his bustier and fishnets, which I also don’t understand. That stuff has to be uncomfortable.

I look at my phone. “There’s nothing here.” I show them. “Who were you calling?”

My mother looks at her phone. “Oh. Shit.” She holds it out to me to show me she’s been calling Lou instead.

“So why not get pissed at her? Why hasn’t she been calling you back?”

“Because she’s upstairs asleep! She came home crying at eleven. Where have you been? You can’t do this, Frankie.” My mom is shaking, she’s so mad. My heart stutters a bit. Nobody wants to make their mom shake like that.

“We thought you’d been hurt or something. The cops will be here any second.” Dad’s trying to calm my mother down, with his arm around her.

“I’m fine. I was out with a friend. Rory.”

“Were you doing illegal stuff?” My dad looks pretty convinced I was.

I think for a second, just to be sure. “No.”

My mom pulls away from my dad. “If you get arrested, Frankie, it’s all over for you. Keep that in mind the next time you decide to stay out all night. Your truck privileges are hereby limited. Work and maybe school. No going out. And only work and school because we’re not always around to drive you, and sometimes you have to drive your sister. Otherwise I’d take it entirely.” She glares at us both, even though my dad doesn’t deserve it, and storms toward their bedroom, slamming her hand down on the light switch. The room goes dark except for the streetlights outside.

“You have to consider other people, Frankie.” My dad’s shaking his head, though I don’t know if it’s at me or at my mom. “We need to know where you are. You’re going to have a curfew from now on.”

“Pardon me?” He didn’t really just say that.

“The city’s too big, too much can happen, your truck is big enough to get you in a lot of trouble, and you’re too young to be out so late. We’ll talk in the morning. Your mom and I are tired. Have some consideration for us.”

He gives me a look like I’ve just snapped the heels off his favorite pair of stilettos, then he glances at the window when car lights sweep into the living room. “That’s the cops. Go talk to them. It’s your fault they’re here.” He heads toward his bedroom.

A curfew? Limited truck privileges?

I can’t think it through right now. I put on my I’m-sorry face and go outside.

Two officers are just getting out of their car that’s now parked in our driveway, next to my truck and behind my parents’ purple one. One man and one woman. They look like it’s been a long night already, and they’re not ready for a smart-ass high school kid.

I am as contrite as possible. “Good morning, Officers. My parents called you because they thought I’d been hurt or killed, but as you can see, I’m home now, so everything’s fine.” I have no idea what to say that’s convincing.

The man nods his head. “Could you please go get one of your parents, son? We need to confirm what you’re telling us. And we need to talk about this truck.” He cocks his thumb at mine, not my parents’. My throat starts to close up.

“Just a minute, sir.” I almost strangle on the words, and I’m trying not to sweat, but my armpits are suddenly soaked. I go in and knock on my parents’ door. “Dad, could you come out here?”

He emerges in his boxers, pulling his pink bathrobe over him. “What’s the trouble?”

“I don’t know. The cops want you to say I’m telling the truth.”

He frowns but he follows me outside.

The female officer starts talking. “Sir, are you Mr. Neumann? Did your wife, Bridget, call the police at approximately 4:01 this morning?” The other officer is reading from a sheet of paper, checking details.

“Yes, I’m Brett Neumann. This is my son. He’s home safe now.” He puts his hand on my shoulder, which feels heavy. Like it means business. Like I should tell the truth. And I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do that.

“Thank you for the confirmation. Is this your truck?” The male officer points.

“Yes, it is.” The hand on my shoulder clamps down. I try not to squirm.

“We had a report of a truck like that at Uncle Epic’s sheep installation. Were you in Loring Park the night Uncle Epic made his mess?” The female officer is looking directly at me.

My dad’s giving me the death stare, too, and I blink, making my face look innocent. “Remember? We were in the country, looking at the stars. You got called. I told you I was at Whole Latte Shakin’ beforehand, which is close to Loring Park, but I didn’t tell you we were at Pleasure Palace buying gross porn to leave on the principal’s car, and Pleasure Palace is close to Loring Park, too, so we were there, but we weren’t there when Epic was making his piece.” I end up talking faster and faster as that sentence goes on, which could totally mess me up.

“Sorry, Officer.” My dad takes his hand off my shoulder, and it’s such sweet relief. “He wasn’t there.”

“Thank you, sir. Get some sleep.” The female officer sounds like she doesn’t believe me, but she turns and gets back in the car. The male one raises a hand in acknowledgment as he gets in the driver’s side, and Dad raises a hand in return. Then he grabs my elbow and shoves me inside, but not so hard the cops will notice.

Once we’re inside, he stops and turns to me. “You’d better not be doing something stupid. And stay out of Pleasure Palace. I don’t know how you got in there anyway. You have to be eighteen to go into a porn shop.”

“I didn’t actually go in. Tanner Castle did, and he’s eighteen.” I’m so glad it’s dim and he can’t see the red on my cheeks, and I hope he doesn’t look to see if there’s a dude named Tanner Castle at Henderson, because there isn’t. “I’m clean. I’m not being stupid.”

For the record, making art is not stupid. Uncle Epic is not stupid.

“I was seventeen once, remember. I know the special brand of dumbass a seventeen-year-old boy is.” In his pink bathrobe, this statement seems pretty unbelievable.

“Yes, sir.”

“Go to bed.” He turns away from me and heads toward his room.

I go to the kitchen and make myself a peanut butter sandwich. Ramona is in the corner, by the back door, and I hear her whisper, very faintly: Fraaaaaaaaaankieeeeeeeee. It’s gonna be just you and me, baby, if you don’t watch it.

I take my sandwich and my memory of Rory’s kiss to my room, and I don’t wake up until midafternoon. My parents are watching a DVD of The Book of Mormon, which has to be bootlegged from somewhere, since there’s no official recording of the show. It’s a musical I actually like, but it’s hard not to like a show made by the writers of South Park that includes a character named General Butt-Fucking Naked.

I try and sneak by the living room when I’m getting a sandwich, but I don’t make it.

“Frankie, come in here.” My mom pats the couch next to her, the look on her face not really giving me a chance to refuse. I go and sit.

She looks directly into my eyes. “Nobody was kidding about limited truck privileges.”

I try not to blink. “I didn’t think you were.”

“What’s so interesting that you stay out so late?”

“Friends.” I blurt it out before I even think. “I like being out with my friends.” God, how dumb does that sound? But I guess it’s the truth. Probably the most truth I’ve told them since the night we did the eyes at the capitol.

This isn’t the answer she’s expecting. It’s all over her face. She feels sorry for me. But she pulls it together enough to get the stern mom look back. “I can understand that, but you have to be more responsible. Curfew is ten on weeknights, one on weekends. And truck limitations are what I told you last night: only school and work. So I hope your friends have cars.”

David’s definitely too young to drive, but Rory isn’t. “I have to go to work. Anything else?”

“No.” Her face softens. “We love you, Frankie. We’re not asking because we’re awful, and Dad and I want you to hang out with friends. We really do. But we want you to be safe, too, and you don’t even know what kinds of threats are out there.”

“OK.” I can’t bear the look on her face, or the tears in her eyes. “Gotta go.”

My dad hasn’t said a word the whole time, just nodded along with what Mom said. He looks almost as sad as she does. When he holds his fist out for a bump, I do it as I go past, even though it’s the dorkiest thing ever.

They could be worse parents. But they could also be better. Or I could be a better son.

The most interesting thing: Lou is nowhere to be seen. Not before I leave for work. Not after I get home around eleven thirty. Very faintly, when I go by on my way up to see Donna Russell, I hear Wicked from under her door.

My hand comes up to knock, but I pull it back down and walk on.