Rot and Ruin (Benny Imura 1)

“My mom won’t let me anywhere near those guys,” said Nix. She and her mother lived alone in a tiny house by the west wall, over in the poorest part of town. Up until this past winter, Nix had always been a skinny, gangly kid who was more one of the guys than a girl. Like Chong, Nix was a bookworm and always had several books in her satchel, but unlike Chong, Nix wanted to write books of her own. She was always scribbling poems and short stories in her journal. Of all of them she’d always been the real geek, but that had changed over the last ten months. Now Nix wasn’t a stick figure anymore, and Benny found it weird being around her. Especially on hot days when she wore a tight T-shirt and shorts. He kept wanting to look at her—especially at what she was doing to that T-shirt—but it made him feel really awkward. Nix had always been like Morgie and Chong. Now she was a girl. There was no way to ignore that fact anymore.

What made it worse was that Benny was pretty sure Nix had a crush on him. He liked her, too, though he’d rather have an arm cut off than say so. Even to Chong. Dating a friend was an old taboo among his crew. He and Chong had sworn a blood oath on it when they were nine or ten. Nix was really cute, and he liked looking at her, but dating her would be like dating Chong. Besides, with a girl who he’d known since they were just out of diapers, there was no chance at all that she’d think he was mysterious and interesting. Sure, she already liked him, but what would happen if they started dating and she tried to discover his secrets, only to find out that he didn’t have any? Or, worse, what would happen if he asked her out and found out that Nix really didn’t have a thing for him? Benny couldn’t imagine dealing with rejection from someone who knew everything about him and who he’d be seeing all the time. The whole thing made Benny want to bang his head against a wall.

“How come?” asked Morgie. The question brought Benny back to the conversation.

“It’s complicated,” Nix said, looking down at the sunlight on the rippling water. “And Mom won’t tell me all of it, but I think she and Charlie had some kind of fight or something. She really doesn’t like him. I’m not allowed to be around him unless Mom’s there. Or Mayor Kirsch or Tom. ”

She nudged Benny with her foot while she talked.

Benny pretended not to notice the nudge. He asked, “Why Tom?”

“Mom likes Tom. ”

“Likes? You mean likes him like she likes your dog, Pirate, or likes likes?”

“Likes likes. ” She cut him a sideways look. “Tom’s hot. ”

“That’s sick,” Benny said.

“You look a lot alike, you know,” said Nix.

“Please kill me now,” Benny asked the heavens.

“Why can’t you be around Charlie without your mom or Tom?” Morgie asked. Unlike Benny, Morgie had become infatuated with Nix. And with more than her new figure. He actually liked her. Morgie had never made that oath about never dating friends, and Benny couldn’t quite grasp how he was able to fixate on Nix without feeling weird about it.

“She says that he doesn’t treat girls the right way sometimes. ”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Benny, his voice sharper than intended.

Nix gave him a long considering stare. “You can be so naive sometimes. ”

“I repeat, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that guys like Charlie seem to think that anything they put their hands on belongs to them. Mom’s afraid to be alone with either of them, and I wouldn’t want to be caught in a dark alley with them either. ”

“You’re nuts. ”

“You’re not a girl,” Nix said. “Or let me put it another way: You’re a boy, so therefore you’re probably incapable of understanding. ”

“I understand,” said Morgie, but Nix and Benny both ignored him.

“Is your mom just saying this stuff or did something actually happen?” asked Benny. His voice was heavy with skepticism, and Nix simply shook her head and turned away. She kept staring off at the distant fence line.

“Well, I think Charlie and them are really cool,” said Benny.

The moment stretched too thin to support any more conversation, at least on that topic, so they let it go and said nothing. After a while a cool breeze came along, and they all laid back and closed their eyes. The breeze blew the tension away like fine grains of sand.

Without looking at Benny, Nix said, “Did you get a job yet?”

“Nah. ” He told them about all the jobs he’d applied for and how each one had turned out.

Nix and Morgie were not yet fifteen. They hated the thought of getting jobs nearly as much as Benny hated the process of finding one, but at least they had a couple of months before they had to go looking.

“What are you going to do?” Nix asked, propping herself up on her elbows. The sunlight on the water flickered like flecks of gold in her green eyes, and when Benny realized he was thinking that, he made himself look away.

“I don’t know. ”

“Why don’t you ask your brother for a job?” she said.