I half-seriously considered boosting the copy of the Beatles’ White Album I gave Tess on her tenth birthday. I didn’t care who made it; I didn’t care if it was a double record–Seven bucks for a four-year-old album was bullshit. I figured I could easily outrun the burly young clerk who looked like the only person working in The House of Values crazy enough to give chase. For if I did make the move, it would certainly come to that. Getting away unnoticed with an album was almost as dumb as trying to conceal a basketball under your sweater. But a little voice inside told me that it was bad luck to steal a birthday present when you have the money. So, I wound up buying the goddamn thing, but I did hook a Rocky Road bar at the register so I wouldn’t go away feeling like a complete chump.

Still, I walked home slightly unhappy about the situation. A new Speck had taken over the Elmo drops and he stayed until the dirty old bastard answered the bell. The loss of our source ended the picture business, which was probably for the best because one boy got pinched holding an especially vile group sex thing. If he had squealed the money his parents had laid out for braces would have been wasted. But he kept his mouth shut about us and said he found it lying in the street. It was a miracle we never got busted.

The seven dollars took a big bite out of my half of the savings we had stashed at Fort Oxenfree. But I got over it and planned to inform Tess that a shitty little school art project would no longer cut it come my birthday in November. Ironically, that was around the time in her brief life she’d begun to sketch and paint items that continue to sell for sums unimaginable during the era of Fort O. When she began the transformation from a camera to a prism. It’s a shame that money measures the beauty in things.

Charleston has changed little over the years. Although the House of Values bit it long ago, a Wal Mart sprouted in its lot like an atavistic wart sometime in the nineties. Unless replaced by yet another Shipyard parking garage, when a local business goes under it is replaced by a chainstore version of the same stripe. Except for the taverns. The ones that went under became parking garages. There once was a run of fifteen little dives in a six block radius downtown. Today there are three. All are “Sports Pubs,” which is the sort of shitty deal you get when the corner bar is gentrified out of its soul by hipster doofuses who like to pretend they are European bohemians. Rich fucks slumming.

It was exactly nine blocks from the House of Values to our apartment. Six north, three west. Maybe a ten minute walk. But Tess and I took the distance in far less time because, being kids, we had figured out as direct an A to B diagonal route possible through the yards and alleys. Which is precisely what I did after I’d bought the White Album.

I’ve never learned how to ride a bike. Tess had a bike, well sort of; it was a rusty third-hander, the type of thing you didn’t care if it got stolen. She had won it from the Church for memorizing verses during the Jesus phase. I felt bikes were a waste of time. The hilly topography of Charleston resulted in either a lot of pushing uphill or suicidal plunges down–you couldn’t go two blocks without running into a hill. But I excelled at running, hopping fences and trimming distances, and I had a mail man’s awareness of unfriendly dogs.

“Hey,” a slightly familiar voice called from behind as I cut behind a duplex whose yard was free of dog turds, which was a good sign.

I glanced back and recognized Lydia the Jehovah’s Witness. Her last name was Simmons, but we referred to her as Lydia the Jehovah’s Witness. She was a classmate of mine and the only kid in school my height. Lydia was standing in the doorway on the back porch, slightly obscured in shadows; and although she looked different from what she did at school, it was still clearly Lydia the Jehovah’s Witness. She was a loner. I had known her since second grade and the only time we had anything that resembled a conversation was the previous December–and that went strangely. Not a fight; not much of anything at all, yet enough for Lydia to often be near the surface of my mind.

“I didn’t know you lived here,” I said, slowing, but still in motion. It was April, and although the weather was calm for the moment I could tell that another brief spring tantrum was about to blow in off Philo Bay and I figured I’d better hurry. Yet I felt an odd little hitch in my stomach when I saw her; alien yet at the same time something I almost recognized.

“We just moved in, from up the street,” she said. “My mother doesn’t want people cutting through. She’s going to plant a garden.”

I swiftly took the fence, taking care to not bend the album, and turned to face her. “Oughta go to the pound and get a big ol’ retard of a dog. With rabies, if you can swing it. That’ll keep me out.”

She had followed me to the fence. A thin crooked smile insinuated in her face. She had intelligent pale eyes that did not work as well as they looked. She’d always worn a pair of goony kitty cat glasses, but not at that moment. Along with the specs, you always saw her dressed like an old woman with her nondescript hair tied back in a bun. Everyone figured Lydia looked like that because that’s what the Jehovah’s Witnesses wanted; she had no siblings for us to compare her to, so that was the consensus. She was wearing an old fashioned frock, but her hair was loose and long, and was relaxed enough to reflect brown. It was as though I’d interrupted the removal of her Lydia the Jehovah’s Witness costume, and that a real person lay beneath it all. I even saw a run of hitherto unknown freckles on the bridge of her nose that her glasses normally concealed.

“We have a weenie dog, Roscoe. But he’s sleeping now,” she said quietly, humor in her voice, the little crooked smile holding ready. She shifted her eyes left and right without moving her head, save for a tiniest between you and me nod, “I trained him to go for the Achilles–that’s the back of the heel, if you don’t know. Consider yourself warned.”

I wanted to wisecrack something back, something fancy and smart, up to the standard she was flying at, much higher than what you normally get from girls our age. Then something came to mind at the point I almost gave up. I laughed and said, “You look different without glasses –didn’t know Jehovah’s Witnesses were allowed to have freckles–say hi to Roscoe for me.” And I ran away, clutching Tess’s present close.

I was blushing. I had never blushed before. It felt like coming down with something.