The Best Bad Dream by Robert Ward

penned up somewhere. I'm not sure where their jail is but a good place to start would be the Jackalope Ranch. I hear tell that's their jumping-off point.”
    The Jackalope. That was the name on the pack of matches Jack had found at Jennifer's place.
    “Thanks for the tip,” Jack said. “But why are you being so helpful?”
    “First of all, we don't kidnap people. We find that scumful. Second of all, the Jesters are a nuisance. They can't really compete with us but they can get in our way sometimes. I'd be less than honest if I said I wouldn't like to wipe them out.”
    Lucky threw his head back and laughed out loud and a black tooth fell out of his head and into his hand. He tossed it into a candy dish on the coffee table.
    “See, I have lots of businesses around here. Mainly the car biz.”
    “Really?” Jack asked. “I heard your main business was meth.”
    “You hear all kinds of things,” Lucky said. “Meth is so last year. The stuff I'm into now, it's twenty-first-century stuff. Lucky Avila is all about the future. I'm investing our bankroll in genetic meds. That and tourism are the future. Illegal, renegade shit is for losers.”

    “I thought that's what you guys were,” Jack said.
    “Again, so old school. See, what we, the third generation of bikers, realize is that we don't want to terrorize the street . . . well, a little bit, once in a while, for nostalgia's sake . . . but really, what we want now is to own it. All the rest—the bikes, the colors, the badass attitude— that's just show business.”
    Lucky laughed happily, a black-leathered, scar-faced, soon-to-be-toothless entrepreneur.
    Jack didn't quite buy it. That tooth falling out seemed very much like a symptom of rampant meth use, but the rest of it sounded pretty good. The mob, after all, did the same thing. And the ones who stayed in the dope business for too long ended up in prison for life, or wrapped in bailing wire.
    “I'm telling you, it's the Jesters,” Lucky said. “You want to find Jennifer Wu, look there. But be careful. Unlike us, the Jesters have been very slow to evolve. They might really cut your dick off and feed it to the hogs.”
    Jack nodded and looked around.
    Lucky looked at him and smiled like a mind reader.
    “Your car is right out front. We took real good care of it for you.” Lucky laughed, and spit out another tooth.
    “It's been fun, Jack. When you find Jen, tell her the offer is still open. With or without Michelle.”
    He flicked the second tooth into the candy dish as Jack went out the door.

Chapter Fourteen
    Kevin couldn't get his mind off her. He'd get a hard-on just thinking about her body. The way her breasts looked, her hard nipples, her flat stomach. Man, he couldn't believe it. And her ass . . . that was too much. Really. It was so compact, so hard, and when she opened her perfect long legs, he could see the triangle of hair and her wet, waiting pussy.
    Just today, someone threw him a pass and he missed it altogether, something he never did. He wasn't the best player on the team but he was known for his reliability.
    Or at least he used to be. Now the ball just zipped right by him. Another time there had been a loose ball on the field, and Kevin had just sort of forgotten to go after it.
    His coach, Jerry Schmidt, went nuts.
    “Kevin, what the hell you doing out there, jerking off?”
    Kevin almost wanted to yell back, “As a matter of fact, yeah. That's exactly what I'm doing. If you ever saw Vicki Hastings open her legs with her silk stockings still on, you'd be jerking off, too.”
    Of course he said nothing at all. Just ran after the next ground ball and was glad that he was wearing a protective cup so no one could see what a hard-on he had.

    He couldn't stop thinking about her. Not at lacrosse, not at home, not talking to Grandpa. No way.
    He couldn't wait for school to end.
    Tonight, Friday, only two days after they had first done it, was no different, at first.
    He left practice, picked up