Game
limelight, avoiding the press at every turn. Her only comment had come at the end of a long day of being hunted by the media, stalked with the same precision and tenacity Billy evinced when prospecting. A reporter with a camera crew had finally pinned her down in a mall parking garage, where she struggled with a recalcitrant door while trying to balance her purse, a shopping bag, a precarious cup of coffee, and a plastic hanger sheath with a red dress within. As the reporter pestered her for a comment, Samantha gamely and repeatedly said, “I have nothing to say,” as though it were a protective mantra shielding her from a demon.
    But then the door finally came open, jerking her back, andthe beautiful new dress slid off the hanger onto the grimy parking garage floor, with the coffee landing on top of it. To prove that the universe loves synchronicity—whether good or ill—this happened at the exact moment that the reporter asked, “What do you think should happen to your brother?”
    And poor Samantha had had enough. Enough of her brother. Enough of the reporters. Enough of the damn dress it had taken her all day to find. She’d kicked the car door and screamed, “There isn’t a hell in the universe hot enough for my [bleep]damned brother! If they wanted to kill him, I’d flip the [bleep]ing switch myself!”
    The bleeps, of course, were courtesy of network censors. Obviously, they found her justifiable “mature language” too offensive and shocking for the delicate sensibilities of the same viewers who regularly tuned in to hear details of Billy’s extensive career of raping, torturing, and murdering mostly young women.
    “I’ve got some coverage,” Jazz told Howie, “but I need you to backstop.”
    “So that Social Services doesn’t go medieval on you,” Howie said, with what he thought was the air of some Far Eastern mystic. “You could solve all of this, you know, with some paperwork….”
    Jazz groaned. He didn’t want to have this conversation again. Howie had been bugging him recently about filing the paperwork to become an emancipated minor. It would mean no more looking over his shoulder for Social Services and would give him more latitude in taking care of his grandmother.
    “No. We’ve been through this before—”
    “You’ve
dismissed
it before. Not the same thing, bro.”
    “You sound like an idiot when you say ‘bro.’ And it’s too complicated. The background checks and interviews alone would have them swooping down on the house. She’d end up in adult care somewhere, and I’d spend my last few months before I hit eighteen in a foster home while the freakin’ emancipation paperwork was still being processed. No, Howie. Forget it. It’s easier just to lay low until I’m eighteen.”
    “Well, first of all,” Howie said, ticking off points on his fingers, “I totally sound like Ice-T when I say ‘bro.’ Second of all, it’s still your best move. You can’t keep this up forever.” He gestured to the house, encompassing with that one motion the entire complexity of Jazz’s life.
    “I don’t have to. I just have to hold on a little longer. And all you have to do is spell me for a couple of days. Gramma likes you.”
    “Usually she likes me,” Howie said darkly. “Sometimes she thinks I’m some kind of giant skeleton come to eat her soul.”
    “Sometimes you
look
like a giant skeleton,” Jazz reminded him.
    “Yeah, but the soul-eating part is tough to get over. Very well, then. I will be your Sancho Panza once more.”
    “I don’t think that exactly means what you—”
    “But there is, of course, the small matter of my babysitting fee to discuss….”
    “For God’s sake, Howie! How many more tattoos can you put on me? I’m running out of space!”
    “
Au contraire, mein freund.
You have your legs and your forearms, for example.”
    “I’m gonna look like a complete freak by the time you’re done with me. Can you at least make it something cool?”
    “A

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