Summary

Manny and Joel grew up tall and lean, with strong brows and hollow cheeks. They worked at the loading dock after they flunked out of school. They made friends with the white trash boys whose grandfathers had lived in the hills. By comparison, they were new, orphaned, but they were proud. They spat in public and dreamed of a wild future. The boy was outside their understanding now, with his “sharp, sad, pansy scent” and good grades (105). They were disgusted, jealous, and proud.

They finished the bottle of liquor, their stomachs warm with alcohol as they walked through the snow. They found a stray cat with kittens in a dumpster, and went into a gas station to buy it milk. The stay was too exhausted to drink, but the kittens fought for position to suckle. The boy’s brothers joked about the runt...