The stars were streamers unraveling in straight, blurred lines like the white stripes on a bustling highway. 

    He was falling over a hundred miles per hour yet he felt like he was floating.  Almost like floating up—up towards that bowl of cream we call a moon, pouring its white-washed radiance over him.  He closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and drank every last drop until he was full.

He shifted the gears and put his pickup into park.  Cowboy-hatted men—some scruffy, some shaved, some sporting handlebar moustaches or chops or mountain-man beards—herded about like the livestock they were herding.  Each man unlocking locks, unlatching latches, and unloading their prized bulls, their greatest steers, their fine heifers.  The excitement and enterprise of the morning was thick and palpable, like the dense fog that shrouded the morning atmosphere with its blanket of white haze.

            A teenaged boy, with short brown hair and brown eyes, could barely see the ranchers and their cattle through the fog, but his palms sweated anyway as he nervously palmed the steering wheel, peering through his dirty windshield, working up the nerve to open his door, step down into the mud, and unload his pitiful cow.  He didn’t have to see the other beasts to know that his was the weakest, the sickliest, the most unsellable of the lot.  God, what an embarrassment.

            A harsh rap at his driver’s side window jerked him in surprise.  A man in a camouflage cap motioned with his hands and mouthed that he needed to pull forward.  Jacky Boy looked in the sideview mirror and realized he was blocking the way; the other man’s bigger, newer trailer waited to charge ahead.   The camouflage man gestured again, mouthing something that rhymed with trucker and Jacky Boy quickly turned the key and revved his engine a few times, the struggling motor further adding to his humiliation.  He pulled away into an empty patch of grass, took a deep breath, and got out of the truck.

            He was hit with a wave of chattering, booming voices—calling to one another, shouting at the livestock, getting things done.  That, and the immediate and crushing stench of cow manure, more suffocating than the rolling fog of the morning. 

            Jacky Boy wished he hadn’t come alone, having no-one to call out to.  No hand to slap him on the back or say “God, it stinks” or help guide the cow down the ramp.  He opened the trailer door with some difficulty, his farm boots slipping in the mud as he yanked the latch down and heaved it out.  The cow stood still as he stepped inside the trailer, watching with the one round eye that faced him.  Her emaciated frame and dusty haunches were vague reminiscences of the fine, white milking cow she once was.  Her name, Milky White, had once seemed suited to her.  Now it was like a sarcastic insult, mocking the yellowed and wizened creature with threadbare ribs that stood before him on shaky legs.

            “That right there is a nice heifer,” whistled a high-pitched man.

            “She’s really not,” said Jacky Boy as he turned around, but no one was there.  He stepped back and peered out the opening, noticing a thin man in overalls approaching a heavyset man leading a robust cow with a dark shine.

            “She’s a first-calf heifer,” said the heavy guy, patting the black hide with big, meaty hands.  “I’d get more money for her if she hadn’t already calved, but oh well.  She’s fit to burst again.”

            “A springer, huh?” replied the first man.  “I don’t want any calves, myself, but someone will want a nice birthing cow.  I’m looking for a bull.”

            “I’m hoping to trade her in for a dairy cow.”

            It relieved Jacky Boy a little to hear there was at least one man interested in dairy cows at the auction, but he wasn’t hopeful enough to think that they might be interested in old Milky White.  But still, he went back in and untied her, gently stroking her bristly hide and making kissy noises with his lips.  She liked that, he thought. He pulled on the rope and her hooves slowly followed.  Seemingly inch by inch they made their way down the ramp.

            The two men stopped talking and looked towards Jacky Boy and his cow.  Jacky Boy met their gaze with a curt nod.  The man in overalls laughed a high hyena cackle, pointing with one hand and grabbing his crotch with the other.  Jacky Boy’s cheeks flushed and he led his cow away from the men, into the foggy and deafening depths of the fairgrounds.

            The gross man with the overalls still bugged Jacky Boy as he made his way through the crowd into the sale barn.  The stockier man hadn’t laughed, but there had been a look in his eyes.  He remembered a glint of condescension.  Of judgment.  He felt like such a fool, head down, right hand gripped on the rope that brought Milky White trudging along behind him.  The other hand was tucked into his pocket, thumb out.  Occasionally he heard a snicker or a comment.

            “Oughta put that old cow to rest.  I’d shoot her myself if I didn’t want to waste the bullets.”

            “Wasn’t worth the gas money in hauling her here, I’d say.”

            “Do you think the boy is dumb?”

            Jacky Boy looked up in anger at this one, but was caught by surprise by the face he saw.  He stumbled back, slipping in the mud a little and half-falling onto Milky White.  He regained his footing, now red in the face, but the guy chuckling at him wasn’t anyone he recognized.

            “Are you okay, son?” he asked.

            “Yeah,” said Jacky Boy.  “I’ll be fine.”

            He began to walk faster now, embarrassed and confused.  Hadn’t he seen him?  He was sure he had, but… no.  Couldn’t have been.  His eyes scanned the crowd.  Nothing.

            “Hey!” a female voice called.  “Are you Jack Sprat?”

            “Yeah,” Jack said, turning around.

            The girl glanced over in the direction Jack had been staring, not seeing anything of interest, and fixed her eyes down on her clipboard.  “You’re up next,” she said.

            “Oh.”

            “Don’t be nervous,” she said, looking up at him and noticing he was cute.  She was about his age—16.  She smiled and readjusted her ponytail.

            “Thanks,” Jacky Boy said, not smiling back.  “Is it this way?” he asked, pointing, not meeting her gaze.

            The girl’s smile fell.  “Yeah,” she said flatly.

            Jacky Boy turned without giving her a second thought.  His mind was thinking a hundred negative thoughts per minute; his stomach was tying every knot he had ever learned in cub scouts.  This was it.  With a quivering hand he pushed Milky White along through the metal chute.  Handlers leaned over the railings and prodded her, shouting.  He let them take over and stood nearby where he could watch.

            A gate was opened and Milky White stumbled into the auctioning space.  The young calf that was auctioned before her was rambunctious, kicking his way out the exit chute, but not Milky White.  She stood still and bored, sniffing for grass in the dirt as if she thought she was still at home.  There was a brief but eternal moment of silence.  Jacky Boy didn’t breathe—didn’t blink.  He thrust his sweaty hands back into his pockets, thumbs out, and waited.

            And in an instant all sound flooded back into the sale barn, led by the booming cattle rattle of the auctioneer.  In the quickly-spoken filler words of the auction cry, Jacky Boy picked out Milky White’s stats: Milking Shorthorn, 11 years old, 998 pounds.  He knew that was far too low a weight and far too high an age.  She had outlived her milking years.  She was too skinny to get much salvage as beef. 

            “Twenty, now twenty-one, now twenty-one, will ya' give me twenty-one?”

            The auctioneer had started the bidding low, and while there was lots of talking and murmuring in the stands, not many hands moved.  Not many heads nodded.  The auctioneer repeated the same number many times in his unrelenting bid-calling before a hand would move here and another there.  It had gotten up to twenty-three now.  Jacky Boy tried to remember what the numbers meant.  Were they per every hundred pounds?  He closed his eyes, trying to do the math.  It was up to twenty-four, but seeming to slow down.

            In his mind he pictured his father’s tattooed knuckles on the railing as he shouted “over here” and nodded vigorously, not letting the feller from Mulberry to outbid him.

            “A white cowboy hat,” his dad had said in disgust.  “Jacky Boy, real farmers and ranchers don’t wear cowboy hats like that.  Just rich posers from Mulberry.  Remember that.”

            Funny that he did remember.  They had the highest bid that day, purchasing the then two-year-old heifer Milky White for just shy of $3000.  Seven-year-old Jacky Boy named her that, feeling her bristly white hide under his fingertips and imagining fresh milk in his Froot Loops.  She was the first cow he had ever pet.  Later that night, before returning to Rhyme, his father took him into a bar for a drink.  They ran into the feller from Mulberry and after a few drinks, insults were thrown and punches soon followed.  Jacky Boy’s mom, Jean, had to drive up and get him and the trailer.  Pissed, she let his dad stay in jail for the night.

            “Going, going, gone!” Whap! went the sound of the gavel.

            Jacky Boy looked around him to see who had won but couldn’t tell.  He didn’t even hear the final bid.  He didn’t dare think of his mom’s reaction if it was lower than they’d hoped.  Although Jacky Boy always knew they were hoping for the impossible.  He didn’t know how to tell his mother that though.

            Back outside, Jacky Boy waited near his trailer with Milky White at his side.

            “Boy, are you dumb?”

            Jacky Boy peered through the mist which was even thicker than before.  A vague shape of a man was moving towards him.

            “Why do you ask that?” Jacky Boy shouted into the white.

            The shape grew larger and more defined as each gauze-like fog layer was pulled back like a bandage.  The man, who Jacky Boy could now see was wearing a brown leather coat and boots, responded, “A hill full, a hole full, yet you cannot catch a bowl full.”

            There was something about his voice that seemed familiar to Jacky Boy, but he had no idea what the man meant.  The hair at the back of his neck prickled.  “Are you the one who bought my cow?”

            “God, you really are dumb.  That’s a shame.  My boy, dumb.”

            His boy?  The man was only a few yards off now, head down slightly, watching his feet as he trekked through the mud.  He only had a dingy wife-beater on under the leather jacket.  His hands were tucked into the front pockets of his blue jeans, thumbs out.

            “How do you do, sir?” Jacky Boy asked.

            “How do you do?” said the man, looking up with a wide grin.

            Jacky Boy’s heart skipped a beat,  It was the man he thought he saw before and he found himself stumbling back again, this time falling on his ass.  Both hands went out to catch his fall, landing in wet mud.  He scrambled onto his feet, wiped his hands on his jeans and stared ahead, speechless.  Milky White, rope dragging in the mud, moved toward the stranger and stood beside him.  They both faced him as he struggled to find the words.

            “You didn’t answer my riddle,” the man said.

            “How—?”

            “How do I do?  I’m good, I’m good.”

            Jacky Boy approached the man, eyes narrowed.  “It’s you.”

            “Yes, son.  It is.”

            Anger rose up within Jacky Boy and his hand had formed a fist before he even realized it.  “You’ve got some nerve, you son of a bitch.”

            The man’s grin switched off in a flash.  “Watch your tongue,” he said firmly, stepping forward threateningly.  He was taller than Jacky Boy still.  Undoubtedly stronger too.

            Jacky Boy stepped back.  “Where have you been?” he asked, his voice struggling with emotion although his fists had slackened.

            “I’m dead,” the man said.

            Jacky Boy snorted.

            “No, I really am, smartass.  And what the hell were you doing trying to sell this sad old thing?” the man asked, stroking Milky White under the chin and making kissy noises at her.  “I always said to your ma, ‘Someday this old girl will jump over the moon.’”

            “I swore if I ever saw you again I’d kill you.”

            “Somebody else beat you to it, I’m afraid.”

            “Why did you leave us?”

            The man stopped coddling the old cow and looked directly into Jacky Boy’s eyes.  It was like staring at a fun house mirror—the face he saw was his own, only warped.  “Life gets to be too much, ya know?”

            Jacky Boy’s bottom lip quivered.

            “I think you know,” the man, his father, said quietly.  He tentatively reached a hand out—perhaps to console the boy—but let it drop back to his side.

            “I hate you,” Jacky Boy said, biting his bottom lip.

            His dad let out a sigh.  “Here’s payment for Milky White,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

            “Mom does too.”

            “Take this.”

            His dad’s clenched hand was extended towards Jacky Boy, the letters J, A, C, and K tattooed on the knuckles.  Jacky Boy put out his palm to receive the expected wad of dirty money but five ordinary beans fell into his reaching, cupped hand instead.  Confused, he stared at the beans—white, dried, shaped like kidneys.  He looked up, eyebrows locked in confusion.

            “Let’s go, Milky White,” his father said.  He gave his son a cocky wink before turning around and walking off.  Milky White took a few steps after him but stopped, looking worse than ever.  Jacky Boy thrust the beans into the mud.

            “Hey!” he shouted.  “You owe me!  I’ll report you to the committee.  You’re obligated to pay me!”

            “I did,” replied the man, not looking back.

            “You owe it to us!” Jacky Boy screamed into the mist.  But the mist swallowed his father up in its filmy white jowls and didn’t spit him back out again.  He ran forward, but encountered nobody.  All the other trucks and trailers had cleared out, unnoticed.  The sale barn door was locked shut.  It was silent.

            Just then Milky White fell heavily onto her haunches and crumpled sideways into the mud.  Jacky Boy wailed and dropped to his knees near her, wrapping his arms tightly around the animal’s neck.  She didn’t move.  She was dead.

            “It was mist, you asshole!” he cried out.  “The answer to your riddle was mist.”

Five years ago, Jacky Boy was eleven years old.  He remembered because it was his birthday.  His best friend and next door neighbor, Tommy, had come over, and they were playing Super Nintendo down in the living room.  It was a used set, dated even then, but it was all Jacky Boy had.

            “Dang it, I lost my Yoshi,” Tommy murmured under his breath.

            “Sucks to be you, Thumb,” Jacky Boy smirked.  He had always called Tommy that.  Thumb.  Probably because he was shorter than he was, even if he was older.  “Get it?  Thumbsucker.”

            “Hardy har…” Tommy said, working furiously over the gray controller.  “Did you get the star?”

            “Yeah, I did.  Let’s go down this pipe.  I’m small and I need a mushroom.”

            The electronic music changed themes as they went down into a crudely animated cave.

            “Do you know what kind of pants Mario wears?” Tommy asked, stomping on a goomba.

            “No, what kind?” Jacky Boy asked.  He hit a square brick with his head and a red mushroom came out.  He nabbed it and his character grew back to normal size.

            “Denim denim denim,” said Tommy, to the tune of the music.

            “You’re a retard,” Jacky Boy laughed, punching his friend in the knee.

            “Denim denim denim.”

            They both laughed, forgetting to pause and dying in the process.  GAME OVER flashed on the pixelated screen as Jacky Boy’s mom, followed closely behind by Tommy’s younger sister, Jill, came into the room with a lit chocolate cake singing hoarsely, “Happy birthday to you…”

            Tommy joined in, singing loudly in a false falsetto voice and moving his arms dramatically like an opera singer.  Jill giggled.

            “Happy birthday to you…”

            Jacky Boy’s mom set the cake down in front of him on the coffee table, getting some of the chocolate frosting on the back of her hand.  She licked it off with a grin.

            “Happy birthday dear Jaaaa-aaack—”

            The screen door clanged open loudly and his mom turned around in alarm.  Jacky Boy’s eyes grew wide when he saw his father slouched in the doorway, unshaven and dirty.  His mother’s back stiffened and she stood rooted to the spot, staring intently at her husband.  Only Tommy finished the song.

            “Is it his birthday?” his dad asked.

            “Yes,” said Jean.

            “And you weren’t going to invite me?”

            “We haven’t seen you in over a week, Jack,” she said.  “Nobody knew where you were.  Not even your mother.”

            “Hey, son,” his father said.  “Happy birthday.”

            “You stink, Jack.  You’ve been drinking,” his mother continued.

            “I have a present for you,” his dad said to him, ignoring his wife.

            “Don’t.”

            “I have a present for you and your little faggot friend.”  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flask.  “Here.  Happy birthday.”

            “Jack, stop,” she implored.

            Jacky Boy sat on his hands and looked down at his cake.  The candles were still lit.

            “Take it.”

            Jacky Boy didn’t.  Tommy punched his knee, lightly.  Letting him know he was there.  But Jacky Boy didn’t look his way.  He stared at his father, holding his gaze.  Like looking in a mirror.

            His father opened the flask, took a swig, and then slowly poured the rest on the birthday cake, snuffing out the candle’s flames.  He laughed.

            “You’re an asshole,” Jean said, crying.  “Why did you even come back at all?”

            Jack swung his fist like he was going to hit her, but stopped inches away from her face.  Jean flinched and he smirked, straightened his shirt, and walked back out the door.  Jean slid down the wall to the floor and put her face in her hands.  His father never came back again.

            Until now.

            Jacky Boy didn’t know what to do about Milky White.  He sat in the mud, with his back leaning against her stomach, and didn’t move for quite a while.  He just sat there, thinking.  About his jerk of a father.  About Tommy.  About Jill.  About his mother.  Oh, his mother.  How would he explain it all to her?  What happened, exactly?  He didn’t himself understand.

            Out of the corner of his eye he saw something flicker.  He turned his head and saw, just a few feet away from him, a tiny green leaf uncoil with a shimmer of light from the earth.

            He crawled slowly forward and looked at it up close.  He reached his fingers down around it, and gently pulled it from the ground.  The bean it had sprouted from came out with it, white and glistening.  He poked around in the mud and found the other four beans, but none of them had sprouted.  He held them all in the palm of his hand, gently nudging the tiny leaflet with his fingertip.  How had it grown so quickly?

            He put the beans into his pocket and stood up to go home.  Milky White was gone and so was the mist.  It was a clear, gray day—like water.  He could see for miles around him, each wave of wheat and corn rippling and cascading everywhere.  Tiny houses, like ships with their proud sails, protruded periodically, drifting towards the Rocky Mountains which were a distant island on the horizon.

            Jacky Boy carefully backed out the trailer and turned around, following the dirt road from the county fairgrounds onto Highway 50.  He turned right, heading south towards home.  It was about an hour’s drive.  Ten minutes into it, he got a phone call from his friend Georgie.

            “Hey,” Jacky Boy said.

            “What’s up, my man?”

            “Not much.  Driving.”

            “Driving from where?” Georgie asked.

            “From Mulberry.”

            “Well, stop and turn right around.  We’re heading up there.”

            “Who is?”

            “Lucy and me.  And she’s got her friend Kitty with her.  I keep telling you she likes you, man.”

            “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

            “Why?  Cuz of Jill?  You told me yourself you didn’t like her.  Does she like you?”

            Jacky Boy remembered the night perfectly.  It was Mother’s Day.  He had come over to Jill’s house to talk to Tommy on the phone.  Tommy was serving a Mormon mission for two years in Chile and was only allowed to call home twice a year—one of those times being Mother’s Day.  After Tommy’s mom talked to him, the phone was passed around to his father, Jill, and then to Jacky Boy.  It was great talking to his friend after not seeing him for four-and-a-half months and the conversation only stopped because Tommy ran out of minutes on his international phone card.  Tommy’s mom joked that they should call it Jacky’s Day and not Mother’s Day because he talked to her son the longest.

            Afterwards, Jacky Boy followed Jill up to her room where they talked about how much they missed Tommy.  He had started off sitting on the bed, but leaned back at some point looking up at the ceiling as they talked.  Before long Jill was lying next to him with her head on his chest.  It felt comfortable.  She kicked off her church shoes and curled her legs around him.  Her knee nuzzled up against his crotch and she looked into his eyes.  Jacky Boy was struck with how much she looked like her brother.

            “Do you like me?” she asked.

            Jacky Boy nodded.

            Then she kissed him.  Jacky Boy had never kissed anyone before.  It felt strange but nice.  The whole evening nobody knocked on Jill’s bedroom door.  Not even once.

            “I don’t know.  She hangs around the house a lot now,” Jacky Boy said to Georgie.

            “That’s cuz her brother is gone and she has nowhere else to go.  Just come out with us.  Please?  If not I’ll just have to bone both of them and as much as I would like that, I might throw out a hip.”

            “Shut up.”

            “Please?  Take Kitty off my hands.  I know Lucy won’t do anything if Kitty’s there unoccupied.”

            “Where?”

            “Seeing a movie at the new multiplex they built.  Meet us there.”

            “Okay, okay.  Hold on.”

            Jacky Boy let a car pass him and then pulled a u-turn, which wasn’t an easy feat with the trailer attached.  Luckily the highway wasn’t very busy.

            “Heading north,” he said.

            “Ata’ boy.  What the hell were you doing up in Mulberry anyway?”

            “Selling Milky White.”

            “Who?  Oh, your dumb cow.  Was there a livestock auction today?  I wonder if my dad went.  I swear to God she’s got listeriosis or coccidiosis or some shit like that.  I’m surprised she’s not dead yet.”

            Georgie’s father, Patricio Porro, owned the largest feedlot in the county and Georgie always acted like he knew everything there was to know about cattle.  Jacky Boy didn’t say anything about his cow dying.

            “Did you make any money off her?” Georgie asked.

            “Yeah, a fair amount,” Jacky Boy lied.

            “Liar.  How much?”

            “Nunya.”

            “Okay, okay, Mr. Moneybags.  We’ll be there in like twenty minutes.  You can buy us all tickets with your cow money.”

            “Twenty minutes?  Were you guys already on your way when you called me?”

            “Maybe we were or maybe I’m a fast driver.  Just turn around.”

            “Hi, Jacky!” a girl’s voice called out in the background.  Another voice giggled.

            “That was Lucy.  The girls are excited to see you.  Let’s do this, faggot.  Out.”  And he hung up.

            Jacky Boy hated that word.  Faggot.  It was Georgie’s favorite word, it seemed.  He remembered how his dad had called Tommy that.  He never understood why, because Tommy was most definitely not gay.  Before he went on his mission, he had to confess some things to his Mormon church leader—his bishop or whatever they called him.  He had done a little more than he should have with his girlfriend, Kitty’s older sister, Karen.  They didn’t go all the way, Jacky Boy didn’t think.  But still, enough to repent for.

            Before long he was passing the exit towards the fairgrounds and heading up into the southern part of Mulberry proper.  The movie theater was visible from the highway, massive and gleaming and new.  It stuck out like a sore thumb.  He took the exit, turned at the first light, and was there.  He saw Georgie’s truck in the parking lot—last year’s Chevy Silverado 1500 LT in black—a much nicer vehicle than the piece-of-shit Jacky Boy drove around.  He wished he didn’t have a trailer attached when he parked at the back of the lot, furthest away from the theater.  He took up several parking stalls.

            “Jacky, my man!” said Georgie, thumping him on the back with his heavy, brown hands.  “Took you long enough.”

            “I had the trailer,” Jacky Boy said in defense.

            “Hey, Jacky,” Kitty said coyly, eyeing him up and down.

            “Hey,” he said.  “What movie are we watching, Georgie.”

            “Does it matter?” Georgie asked, thrusting back and forth.  “I’m just gonna be doing this the whole time!”

            Lucy slapped him.  “You are not.”

            “We get to pick the movie though, don’t us, Lucy?” Kitty said, smiling.

            “What chick flick will it be, ladies?” Georgie asked.

            “Fast & Furious 6, as a matter of fact, asshole,” Lucy said.

            Georgie gasped, clutched his heart, and pretended to stagger.  “I’m in shock!  I’m in shock!”

            Lucy slapped him again.  “Shut up!”

            Jacky Boy pulled Georgie aside while the girls talked about how hot Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson were.  “Do you think you can spot me some money?” Jacky Boy asked.

            Georgie raised an eyebrow.  “Didn’t you just sell a cow?”

            “I did, but the guy wrote me a check,” he lied.  “I’ll pay you back.”

            “Should have stopped at the bank, faggot,” he said, annoyed.

            “I was trying to hurry here.  I’m sorry.  I’ll pay you back.”

            “Fine,” Georgie said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a twenty.  “Don’t ruin this for me,” he added, pointing his fat finger in Jacky Boy’s face.  “Show Kitty a good time or else, you broke-ass homo.”

            “Thanks, you’re a peach.”

            The movie was pretty dumb to be totally honest, although Jacky Boy tried very hard to concentrate on it.  Lucy and Georgie started making out the minute they sat down, it seemed, before the movie even started.  The screen had been lecturing them about cell phone use and all Jacky Boy could hear was slurp slurp.  Much more distracting than a lit-up cell phone screen.  Once the movie started, the kissing got even more severe, and Jacky Boy got jabbed in the ribs several times with a flailing elbow.  On his right, Kitty was struggling with the decision to be forward or not.  She fidgeted in her seat, sometimes scooting her butt closer to him, then switching to the other side with a heavy sigh.  Her hand would often sit on the armrest between them, tapping impatiently.  Jacky Boy considered taking it, but never committed.

            “Psst.  Jacky Boy,” Georgie whispered angrily halfway through the movie.  “Lucy’s worried about Kitty.  She thinks she’s not having fun.  Quit being a faggot and grab her tit or something.”

            Jacky Boy flicked popcorn at his face and then offered some to Kitty.  Their hands bumped awkwardly together in the tub, and soon their butter-greased hands were locked together on Jacky Boy’s lap.  She practically cooed and leaned her head on his shoulder, kicking over the popcorn tub with her foot.  Even though he didn’t really pay for it, that kind of bugged Jacky Boy.

            “I need to pee,” he whispered, letting go of her hand.

            “Oh,” she said.  “Okay.”

            Someone told them to be quiet and Georgie replied with something rude.  Jacky Boy slid his way across the aisle and down the stairs.

            In the bathroom he stopped and stared at the mirror for a second, internally giving himself a “get out there and play the game” pep talk.  Or something.  He just didn’t know what he was doing and the realization that he couldn’t postpone going home forever was becoming starker by the minute.  He had no cow.  He had no money.  He was on a double date… with Kitty Fisher...

            What the hell?

            The bathroom door opened and in the mirror Jacky Boy saw a couple of guys walk in.  One of them had a Colorado State hoodie on and the other was wearing a dark brown bomber’s jacket.  The one in the hoodie stepped into a stall and the other, with curly brown hair, walked up to the sink alongside Jacky Boy.  Through the mirror, their eyes made contact and Jacky Boy, uncomfortable, moved to the urinal.  He had almost forgotten he needed to pee.

            He unbuckled his belt, untucked his plaid shirt, and unzipped his jeans.  His hands were shaking as he did so, like leaves in the wind.  He wasn’t sure why.  He stood for a moment, willing himself to urinate.  Someone stepped up to the stall next to him and he glanced over.  It was the guy in the bomber’s jacket, who winked.  Jacky Boy quickly turned away, zipped up his jeans and left the bathroom.

            Out in the hall he tucked in the front of his shirt and did the buckle of his belt.  He became aware of a sudden, uncomfortable heat at his upper left thigh.  It felt like he was burning and he realized it was coming from his pocket.  He reached in and pulled out the beans, which were glowing bright white.  They were hot to the fingertips, like touching a lit light bulb.  He moved them from hand to hand, like playing hot potato—the glow illuminating his face in the dim hallway.  A movie theater usher swept up spilled popcorn nearby, eying him suspiciously.

            The door to the bathroom swung open and the two college guys came out.  The curly-haired guy looked at him, smiling.  Jacky Boy’s eyes were wide and mouth ajar, still holding the glowing beans.  The whole thing was so confusing.  So strange.  As they walked past, something fluttered to the ground—a piece of paper.  The beans grew even brighter, which Jacky Boy didn’t think was possible.

            “What do you have there?” asked the usher, a pimply-faced kid about Jacky Boy’s age.

            “Um… just some beans.”

            “What?”

            “Something I got over at the mall…” Jacky Boy pointed.  He stooped down and snatched the paper.  Just then a crowd of people came out of one of the theaters as a movie let out.  The beans were starting to dim down again, and Jacky Boy shoved them and the note into his pocket.

            “There he is,” said an icy voice.  It was Lucy.

            “Oh, is it over?” Jacky Boy asked.

            Georgie didn’t say anything as he walked past, his hand on Lucy’s butt.

            “Kitty?”

            “Hey,” she said glumly.

            “Sorry.  If I had realized how close to the end it was, I would have waited.”

            “It’s okay,” she said.

            Jacky Boy didn’t know what else to do, so he took her hand into his.  That seemed to cheer her up.  They walked hand-in-hand to Georgie’s truck and he helped her climb up inside.

            “Wait,” she said, as he turned to walk away.  She leaned down and gave him a small kiss on the mouth.  She blushed.

            “See ya soon,” Jacky Boy said.

            “Call me!” he heard her say as he shut the door.  He waved as they pulled away before heading to his own truck at the back of the lot.  He reached into the other pocket and pulled out his cellphone.  Three missed calls, five text messages and a voicemail from his mother. 

            Shit, he thought.  The cow.