Bad Kid by David Crabb

house and rarely laid eyes on me. I might also have neglected to tell her about our 2 a.m. walks to Stop & Shop for packs of cigarettes, which would be completely depleted by sunrise.
    Every school morning we woke up extra-early, after a three-hour nap, to brew coffee and get our looks together. Greg introduced me to a whole new world of hair products, which added fifteen minutes to my daily process. Side by sidein the bathroom, we gelled and moussed our hair into a dozen styles before settling on one. Around 7:30 his brothers would groggily stumble from their bedrooms to find us perfectly dressed, styled, and caffeinated. On the way to Taco Cabana for breakfast burritos we’d smoke a cigarette and watch the sun come up. Then we’d smoke another cigarette and stop at 7-Eleven for more coffee. After another cigarette we’d arrive at school, bucking and rocking into the parking lot in my hideous blue tank.
    A few days before Halloween we arrived at school in our usual morning trance, still buzzing from nicotine. I walked into the courtyard wearing acid-washed Guess jeans and a New Order shirt, both borrowed from Greg’s closet, which was really our closet, in our room, in our house.
    â€œHey Greg,” said Lisette, a perky, big-haired blonde we called a “Bowhead,” a girl whose big, ribboned headband made her head look like an ornate Christmas present. “Hi David,” she mumbled plainly in my direction, only because I was standing beside Greg.
    â€œWhat’s up, Lisette?” Greg answered her and slid his Ray-Bans down his nose, looking like Tom Cruise in a movie poster.
    â€œWhat did you do this weekend?” she asked, batting her eyelashes as she fluffed her new, poodlelike bob.
    â€œNot much. We just hung out at the mall and went swimming at my house,” Greg answered Lisette in his bored lower register as she twisted a clump of crimped hair around her finger. Occasionally she glared my way as if to say, “You’re still here?”
    â€œI got a joke, Greg!” she said, hugging her Dooney & Bourke shoulder bag. “What’s red and bubbly and scratches at the window?”
    â€œWhat?” he asked mock-excitedly, knowing the punch line perfectly well.
    â€œA baby in a microwave!” squealed Lisette, leaning against him as she giggled.
    I almost felt bad, watching her bask in Greg’s charitable fake laughter. I knew the sound of Greg’s real laughter. She probably never would. As we watched her massive crimped bouffant bounce away from us, I whispered out the side of my mouth, “When did her head become a dust mop?”
    Greg dropped his books and slowly slid against my shoulder to the ground, roaring with laughter until he was on all fours. I reached down to help him up but was pulled down as well.
    â€œYou asshole,” I chuckled beside him as papers and pens spilled from my backpack. Students in the courtyard looked at us like we were weirdos, rolling around on the concrete, crying with laughter. Being perceived as a weirdo was an experience I’d thought I wanted behind me. But lying in the courtyard beside Greg, staring up at the sun, delirious from barely two hours of sleep, it felt okay. As long as I had Greg, I didn’t care what people thought of me.
    A few weeks later we went to the mall on Black Friday, which was a mob scene and made for some great people watching. We hadn’t noticed the goth crew in the food court for a while. But after an absence they’d returned with their leader, in all her purple-haired, prosthetic-nosed glory. Greg and I were fifteen minutes into watching the freak camp when we heard a familiar nasal squall.
    â€œGreg!” Lisette giggled from across the food court. Her massive hair bounced in time with a dozen shopping bags as her Bowhead posse approached us.
    â€œUgh,” Greg sighed, ripping the tag off his new Erasure T-shirt.
    As the Bowheads neared the freaks, Lisette