Everybody Wants to Rule the World

by Ace Atkins

Genres: Thrillers; Spy Thrillers; Humorous Fiction; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

Elmore Leonard meets Robert Ludlum in a rollicking comedic thriller set in 1985 from acclaimed author Ace Atkins, in which a suburban teen suspects his mom’s new boyfriend is the ultimate bad guy—a KGB agent.

It’s 1985, what will soon become known as “The Year of the Spy,” and fourteen-year-old Peter Bennett is convinced his mom’s new boyfriend is a Russian agent. “Gary” isn’t in the phone book, has an unidentifiable European accent, and keeps a gun in the glove box of his convertible Porsche. Peter thinks Gary only wants to get close to his mom because she works at Scientific Atlanta, a lab with big government contracts. But who is going to believe him? He’s just a kid into BMX and MTV.

But after another woman who works at the lab is killed, Peter recruits an unlikely pair of allies—a has-been pulp writer and muckraker named Dennis Hotchner and his drag performer buddy and heavy, Jackie Demure. Both soon become the target of an unhinged Russian hitman (Is it Gary? Maybe!) with a serious Phil Collins obsession.

Meanwhile, Sylvia Weaver, a young, Black FBI agent, investigates Scientific Atlanta in the wake of the employee’s murder and discovers a nest of Russian spies in the Southern “city too busy to hate.” Little does she know her investigation is being thwarted by a seriously compromised colleague in Washington, D.C., who is in league with a lovesick, hypochondriac KGB defector who is playing both sides of the Cold War to his benefit.

As Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev prepare for a historic nuclear summit in Geneva, what happens in Atlanta might change the course of the Cold War, the twentieth century, and Peter Bennett’s freshman year of high school. 

Release date: December 2, 2025

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 336

Sample

1985

 

 

1
Vitaly

He’d only been in Rome for a week when he walked into the Hotel Ambasciatore, found a bank of pay phones across the broad lobby, and dialed a number he’d memorized for the American embassy. It was early fall but still quite hot for a Russian, and Vitaly Yurchenko had already sweated through his white dress shirt and navy jacket as he’d strolled back and forth in the Borghese Gardens and up and down the Via Veneto trying to work up the courage to betray the Motherland.

“Yes,” Vitaly said, cradling the phone close to his ear and scanning the lobby adorned in marble and gold. “Hello? I am Russian and wish to defect.”

“Can you speak up?” a man said. “We have a bad connection.”

“Do not be a stupid person,” he said. “I am Russian here now. In Rome. And I wish to defect.”

“Call back in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes?” Vitaly crashed the phone back onto the cradle. “Fuck your mother.”

These foreign American agents didn’t know ass from hole in ground. Their incompetence would get him killed as he tried to orchestrate a very professional and quiet defection. Hello. Yes. I am Russian. Can I walk across the street and defect? So very simple. Can you call back, the man had said. Vitaly wasn’t surprised by incompetence everywhere. Should this not be like McDonald’s, where you talk in speaker and order the Big Mac and a piping-hot apple pie? Leave with a smile for such good service like the happy purple monster and his milkshake.

Vitaly moved on to the hotel bar and ordered a double vodka. He’d already had a bit of Chianti that afternoon, becoming very fond of a little café in a narrow alley near the Trevi Fountain. He’d had thoughts of returning one day with his love, Zoya, when it was safe. He patted a handkerchief to his brow. Lovely, lovely Zoya, with her cunning mind and reflexes of the mongoose. Soon they would be reunited as the rest of the world went up in flames.

The bartender set down his drink. Vitaly raised the glass to Zoya but winced after taking only one sip.

The vodka was American, horrid Smirnoff, and smelled of embalming fluid. Good vodka and real caviar would be what he’d miss most. Certainly not his overbearing wife, Jeannette, with her love of sable coats, diamond necklaces, and Doktorskaya sausages. They’d met while he’d been stationed at Sevastopol submarine base, before the shy and petite young woman had grown so large and opinionated. It was not enough that he’d finally escaped the Third Directorate into the First; she must know why was he still number two man and not number one. Why was their summer dacha so very small and bare? Why was their daughter not in the best schools, already being eyed for top positions in Moscow? And their car. Don’t get her started on the car. That stupid black Lada with the angry gear shifter. This car. It sounds like a wounded cat.

Vitaly smoothed down his brushy walrus mustache with his thumb and index finger. It will not be so long. Zoya, my love. I will free you from such a boring life in America. So very strong, like that wild woman Sheena from the comic books. We will live in New York City or perhaps San Francisco. We will walk arm in arm and look at all the latest fashions in the store windows. We will visit museums and drink good wine from California. We will make much love.

The bartender asked if he would like another vodka and Vitaly shook his head. He must be clearheaded walking into the nest of the eagle. The CIA might become his new master, but that didn’t mean he would trust them any more than he trusted the KGB. Since arriving in Rome, he’d wandered the ancient streets past buildings thousands of years old. Statues memorializing men long dead. Marcus Aurelius staring down with such judgment from atop the Capitoline Hill. Memento mori, as if just written for a middle-aged Russian spy.

Vitaly checked his old Majak watch (so Russian. Rarely keeping the proper time), paid the tab, and returned to the bank of pay phones. He inserted more lira and heard the buzz, buzz, buzz on the line until the same man answered. Again, Vitaly identified himself as a Russian defector. 

Good evening, sir,” this man said. “Have you been followed?”

“Earlier, yes,” he said. “Two men. KGB. But now. No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am professional,” Vitaly said. “Confident of my abilities.”

“Ten minutes,” the man said. “Walk around the palazzo and use the servants’ entrance. You do know how to find us?”

“Do I sound like idiot?”

Vitaly hung up—fuck your mother—and walked back through the Ambasciatore lobby, where a little man in a tuxedo hunched over the grand piano, singing a sad song in English about a total eclipse of the heart. Women in colorful silk dresses with voluminous hair studied him as he passed, taking inventory of his worn blazer, wrinkled gray pants, and sad government shoes. He pushed through the hotel doors and out into the humid Roman night.

The American embassy sat behind a tall iron gate in the old Margherita Palazzo, three stories of stucco and red tile among tall, stately palms. An obvious spoil of the big war. A Black man in a US Marine uniform stood at attention as Vitaly walked straight through the open gates toward what looked like a servants’ entrance. Vitaly wiped the back of his neck with his handkerchief as the Marine followed. All this walking. All this heat.

A rear metal door buzzed and another Marine held it open. The man waved a metal detecting wand over Vitaly’s body. Vitaly waited a beat, took a long breath, and stepped across the threshold. Somehow this reminded him of his childhood in Leningrad and his grandmother’s talk of inviting in bad spirits. Is that what he’d become, a bad spirit roaming the earth looking for refuge? Oh, dorogoy. A fierce pinch of the cheek and a smile on a face shrunken as an old apple.

Vitaly followed the efficient Marine into a sprawling entryway filled with marble statues of gods and conquerors. A life-size nude Venus greeted him with a foot placed high on a pedestal, one hand modestly covering a perfect breast, a robe dropped low around her wide hips.

“Giambalogna carved that,” said a young white American. He was dressed in a khaki suit and wore big, round tortoiseshell glasses. His hair longish around the ears, uncombed and free. “He was a Frenchman who changed his name. The Medicis thought he was the cat’s ass.”

“You are CIA?” Vitaly said.

“Just a friend.”

“Ha,” Vitaly said. “That is bullshit. CIA has no friends. Talking to me of a cat’s ass. Where is head of station? I wish to speak to him now. It is urgent.”

“It may have to wait until morning.”

“Morning?” Vitaly said. “Fuck your mother. I see him now or I go.”

“Or we can see her now.” The man spoke into a radio he’d held carefully against his leg and led the way.

They climbed a dramatic marble staircase up to a massive ballroom, the floor reminding Vitaly of a sprawling chessboard of black and white. A stout woman with a helmet of red hair leaned against a long dining table. She wore a black silk dress and long diamond earrings that sparkled in their decadence. Just one earring would pay for all of his retirement.

“So many defectors this summer,” the woman said. She checked her watch and then took in a deep, dramatic breath. “So little time.”

“You are head of station?”

“Sorry to disappoint, comrade,” she said. “We were fresh out of peckers this year. My name is Gibson. Like the cocktail. What’s yours?”

“First I would like drink,” Vitaly said, taking a seat at the head of the table. “Do you have the Jack Daniel’s?”

“Do we have the Jack Daniel’s?” This woman Gibson looked to the CIA man and nodded her approval. The man disappeared across the chessboard, his government shoes—much nicer than his own, fashioned of rich brown leather—clacking against the marble floor. The room was cool as a crypt. Vitaly removed his worn navy blazer, folded it carefully, and set it across the back of a chair. His back wet with perspiration.

“I apologize.” Gibson sat down, opened a black leather folder, and clicked open a pen. “The prime minister is hosting Sophia Loren at the Moderno. He’ll be late. She’ll be late. The goddamn Italians just can’t help themselves. It’s in their blood. Okay. So, what is your name, comrade?” 

he scribbled down some notes. His name apparently meant nothing to her.

“And what is your position with the Soviet government?”

Yurchenko sat up taller in the hard chair. He smoothed down his thick mustache. “I am deputy director of First Directorate of KGB.”

Agent Gibson stopped writing, her mouth as wide open as a cattle gate. She looked across the table at Yurchenko. He nodded. Yes, lady. It is true. She looked over his shoulder at the CIA man, bustling back into the room with a tall whiskey dripping onto the floor, and told him that she’d be late for the prime minister. And goddamn Sophia Loren.

“Hold on,” she said, holding up the flat of her hand. “First I have to ask if you’re aware of any imminent threat or attack upon the United States.”

“Imminent?” Vitaly said, shrugging. “No.”

“Are you aware of any American officials currently spying for the Soviet Union?”

“Ha.” Vitaly smiled. “So many.”

“What is it that we can do for you?” she asked. “Mr. Yurchenko.”

“No leaks to press,” Vitaly said. “And I wish to be brought to America, to Washington, immediately by military jet.”

The CIA man set down his whiskey. He’d added ice. Vitaly didn’t care for ice—ice reminded him of Moscow winters and gray skies—but complaining now would be considered rude. He picked up the overfilled glass and toasted them both.

“That might take a few phone calls,” the woman said, smiling. She had the feet of the crow along her pale blue eyes.

“No,” Vitaly said. “For this you will bounce a code off your satellite to Langley. There your message may only be read by six of your top people. I was once stationed in Washington. They have a large file on me and will confirm everything I have told you.”

Vitaly took a large sip of the American whiskey. So much more sweetness than the vodka. He drew in a deep breath and for the first time relaxed his shoulders. He’d made it inside the gates of the embassy. He was safe now and could breathe much easier, but still somehow felt as if a target had been painted on his back. The KGB had thousands of spies in America. Most likely, one would find him someday and place a bullet in his head.

“Why did you come here now?” this woman Gibson said. “Tonight?”

Vitaly shrugged. He looked up at the ornate glass ceiling and pointed his fingers at the heavens. “World annihilation is such a tedious business. Don’t you think?”

“That’s it?” The head of station folded her arms across her chest, smiling. “You have information that can save the world?”

“Has this not been the summer of spies?” Vitaly asked, refusing to comment. “That’s what I have read in the American newspapers. And the Time and the Newsweek. So many of my comrades dead. Your intelligence service is nothing but a sieve.”

“Win some,” she said. “Lose some.”

“In nearly two months, Reagan and Gorbachev will meet in Geneva.”

“Pardon my French,” the woman said. “But no shit, comrade.”

“Reagan is cocky,” Vitaly replied. “The lone gunfighter come to town to find the order. But his gun is empty. There are not bullets in it.”

“Yeah?” she said. “I know for a damn fact the Gipper is packing more heat than Milton Berle at a burlesque show.”

“I have already said too much,” Vitaly said. “Does any of it matter anymore? Only possible peace and détente to last for the ages. Or we both blow ourselves out of existence and set the world on fire. It’s quite simple.”

“Okay,” Agent Gibson said. “Go on, comrade. Tell me everything you know.”

“Everything?” Vitaly asked, rattling the glass. “First, more whiskey. No ice. And then the jet. Whoosh. We must leave as soon as possible.” 

2
Peter

His room was a total mess, bedspread on the floor, no sheets on the mattress. The walls covered in concert and movie posters—Conan the Barbarian, The Last Starfighter, Prince in Purple Rain—along with cut-out pictures from BMX Plus and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. Carol Alt. Paulina Porizkova is in the pink in Aruba. A small wooden bookshelf held a couple of old Guinness Book of World Records, novels by Forsyth and Ludlum, and an incomplete set of ragged paperbacks by a guy named Dennis Hotchner. Peter hadn’t read one in months, ever since his shrink said they weren’t good for a boy his age. Too much sex and violence. “Total trash,” his mother said.

Peter lay in bed flipping through a year-old copy of Front Page Detective. Some perv in a checkered shirt tying up a woman in a bikini with rope. The woman looked freaked out but the man smirked with pleasure. CAROLE’S LUST KILLER USED A WEIRD WEAPON! Probers Search for the Hooker Smothered in Cat Food! And a headline in red above the magazine’s name: KGB SPIES LIVING NEXT DOOR!

His mom knocked on his door and Peter quickly slid off the bed and tucked the magazine between the mattress and box spring. “Coming.”

“Gary’s here,” she said. “He wants to say hello before we leave.”

“Cool,” Peter said. “Awesome. I’ll be right there.”

“Peter?” she asked from the other side of the door. “Where are you going tonight?”

“Scott’s,” he said. “We’re going to the dollar movie.”

“Does Mrs. Adams know?”

“Of course she knows,” he said. “Jesus.”

Peter had been asking a lot of questions lately about his mom’s new boyfriend, to the point of his mom sitting him down last weekend, after a rare service at the Methodist church, and telling him that no one could take the place of his father. “Gary just wants to be your buddy.” Terrific.

His name was Gary Powers. A real “stud muffin,” according to Connie Bennett—Peter winced every time she said it—that she’d met one night at a singles bar off Powers Ferry. The place where they’d filmed that movie Six Pack, right across the street from the Holiday Inn. He was in his mid-thirties, maybe early forties. A real all-American kind of guy with curly Matt Houston–style hair but without the mustache. He liked ragged blue jeans and V-neck sweaters without undershirts, chest hair and gold medallion spilling out. Gary wore pointy-toe cowboy boots and liked to talk about pro football, saying he’d been drafted by the Dolphins out of college. (Always vague about where he went to school.) He also had a weird European accent sometimes, especially, Peter noticed, after his second Scotch. When he asked his mother about it, she’d just give a dismissive wave and talk about Gary’s dear dead grandmother from Germany, who’d raised him. Don’t say anything, Pete. He’s really self-conscious about it. Why? Peter asked. Because the poor woman is dead! The war was hard on her! She had to eat a rat.

“Peter!”

“Coming!” he said. “Shit, Mom.”

The thing was, Peter really—no, seriously—wanted to like Gary and accept this new man in their crazy, nomadic life. They’d lived in multiple cities and he’d gone to a dozen different schools. Of course, there had been lots of other men since moving to Atlanta. The vice principal/football coach at Sprayberry High, the married guy who sold used Rolls-Royces in Buckhead, more than a few real estate agents, and an older guy who owned a chain of restaurants where you ordered burgers and shakes from private booths with telephones. Connie Bennett liked the company of men. And just because she had a teenage son (all this Peter had overheard on a phone call to one of her coworkers), she didn’t have to become a goddamn nun.

Gary was nice enough to Peter. But who was he? Really? He talked about dabbling in commercial real estate. And that previous investments afforded him a life of leisure. What the hell did that even mean? Peter couldn’t even find the right Gary Powers in the Greater Atlanta White Pages. One was a Pentecostal preacher and the other had died five years ago. And then there was that time in July—the

first time Gary had stayed overnight—and Peter snuck out to snoop through his 911 convertible parked in their driveway. Inside the glove compartment, he found a loaded .38 Special and two unmarked Maxell cassettes. The first one he played sounded like computer gibberish from War Games, beeps and boops that helped computers speak to each other, and the other tape was filled with this crazy bombastic marching music. Sung in Russian! This according to Fat Sam, who worked the back room at Ole Sarge’s military surplus. “Where the hell did you get this?” Sam had asked. “Holy shit, kid. This is the goddamn ‘Invincible and Legendary.’ The theme song of the fucking Soviet Army.”

“Peter!”

“Coming, Mom.”

Peter pulled on an old green Adidas T-shirt and his worn-out Nikes, reached under the mattress, and stuffed the rolled-up Front Page Detective into his back pocket. He’d already torn out a page from the Yellow Pages last week, his first lead on where he might find Dennis Hotchner. Dennis X. Hotchner, a former muckraker, current raconteur, and internationally bestselling writer of men’s fiction, lives in Atlanta. A little more work at the public library found Peter an old profile in Atlanta magazine with Hotchner explaining that the publishing business was a crock of shit and Hotchner was forced to write freelance articles and work at a used bookstore. Dennis X. Hotchner shelving books! Hard for Pete to imagine.

But Peter had been worried about his mom since June. Now it was October, and his mom was already talking about going on a vacation with Gary somewhere out west. Oh, you know how much Gary likes cowboys. That was the other thing Hotchner had written about: Russians fucking loved Westerns! Especially some movie called Mackenna’s Gold. This guy had KGB written all over him, hiding in plain sight in the Atlanta suburbs.

Peter walked down the hall of their basic but failing ranch house in the sad Woodland Hills subdivision, with its fake wooden paneling and corroded brass light fixtures, and into the living room and kitchen. Gary was holding court at their glass-topped gold kitchenette. He leaned back in the chair, wearing an eye-blinding white V-neck, a glass of his mom’s cheap red wine in his left hand. “Peter,

Peter,” he said. “Pumpkin eater.”

Peter had heard him say that about a million times. And now it was starting to sound less dirty and more condescending, as if Peter was still a kid. Peter was fourteen. He was a freshman in high school and soon he’d be driving Connie’s stupid worn-out Mazda RX-7. He’d been over nursery rhymes for a long time.

“Big movie night?” Gary asked. He was swirling the wine around the glass, like he was in some expensive restaurant.

Peter shrugged.

“What are you boys seeing?” his mom asked. “Tell Gary. He just loves movies.”

“Invasion U.S.A.,” Peter said. “I guess.”

“I saw the trailer,” Gary said. “Chuck Norris takes on hundreds of scumbag terrorists. I think he kills five hundred guys. Sounds really cool, Pete. Have fun.”

Peter could smell Gary’s aftershave from six feet away. Brut. He could also smell the Scotch (his personal gallon of J&B kept in the cabinet over the refrigerator). The man’s eyes were unsteady and bloodshot. They must’ve hit happy hour at the country-western place where they two-stepped and listened to fucking Kenny Rogers. How his mother loved Kenny Rogers. If he had to hear “Islands in the Stream” or “The Gambler” one more time, he thought he might puke. She once dated a real estate agent who wore this totally gross cowboy hat ringed in bird feathers with a real bird’s head in the center. Bubba from Sandy Springs.

Gary, still seated, stuck out his right hand. Peter dutifully stepped forward and shook it, feeling his knuckles cracking under Gary’s weighted stare. He knows. The fucking commie knows I’m onto him. Peter didn’t often say fucking, but Fat Sam’s words came to him.

“I have something for you,” Gary said, the accent showing. “And all your buddies.”

Gary stood up and reached into his ridiculously tight jeans. He opened his hand and pawned off a stack of business cards all stamped with a logo for some place called the Muscle Factory. The logo featured a disembodied red arm curling a dumbbell. Even the arm was red!

“Gary’s opening up next month,” Connie said, beaming. “Right across from the Chuck E. Cheese.”

“Yeah,” Peter said. “Cool.” 

ys really bulk up.”

“Wow,” Peter said, noting school with an s. “Gee, thanks, Gary.”

“Be safe,” his mom said. “Love you.”

Peter nodded and headed to the back kitchen door and the carport where he kept the white PK Ripper he’d built from parts mail-ordered from California. It had taken him two years to cobble together an exact replica of his favorite freestyler’s bike.

“Call if you need us,” his mom said.

But Peter knew that was all just another polite lie. Gary and his mother would be gone until the early hours or maybe she wouldn’t come home at all. If she did, she’d complain of a splitting headache she’d gotten from a busy week at the office. She’d still reek of booze and Gary’s cheap cologne, and then there were the bruises on her neck.

Peter really hated seeing the bruises. One way or another, Gary had to go.

---

Peter was on his bike, riding through Woodland Hills, zipping down past the subdivision’s nearly identical squat ranch houses, the same shingle roofs, fake window shutters, and black iron lampposts just now flickering to life. Tall transformers towered behind the homes like enormous Erector sets. Woodland Hills was one of the older neighborhoods in East Cobb County, with so many houses needing paint or new roofs, the asphalt broken and cracked. Peter swept a wide left into Twin Lakes, where Scott Adams lived. The broken concrete became smooth asphalt as he pedaled uphill past two, three, four houses and then up onto the dead grass and behind Scott’s house, jumping off his bike and carefully laying it down in the yard.

He ran up under the back patio and knocked on the basement window, where he spotted Scott’s neighbor Brenda Yee watching television. Brenda was his age but looked older, at least a foot taller and twenty pounds heavier than Peter. Her parents owned the Chinese restaurant—China Palace—in the strip mall near National Video, and Brenda usually hung out at the Adamses’ house until her mother picked her up to run the register.

The worn-out old basement door was unlocked, the brass knob loose and busted, as he walked inside and said hello to Brenda, Martha Quinn on MTV in some kind of crazy big-shouldered jacket introducing the weekend video countdown. Stay tuned for number one . . . You don’t want to miss it.

“What’s up, dipshit?” Brenda asked.

Peter didn’t answer. He wandered into the disheveled basement, which Scott’s parents had never entered as far as Peter knew. There were old Domino’s pizza boxes and half-empty plastic bottles of warm Pepsi. People magazines and board games that no one ever played. A cable box from Scientific Atlanta, the company where his mom worked, sat on top of the big, square TV.

“Scott’s in the bathroom,” she said, taking a drink from a can of Pepsi.

“Okay.”

“Probably whacking off.”

“Why do you have to be so gross, Brenda?”

“I’m gross?” she said. “Isn’t that all you boys do? Whack off?”

The sofa was a brownish-beige-ish mess, as rough as burlap, that somehow had withstood years of punishment. The horrors of Pepsi spills and cigarette burns (although no one admitted to smoking), pizza stains, and worst of all, being used as a trampoline launch pad. Not to mention the kinky shit that happened when Scott’s older sister, Liz, came down into the basement with her boyfriend to watch movies. Peter and Brenda spied on them once and witnessed what they believed was a hand job but later realized was just the stupid remote control up under a blanket. Liz changing channels during a network showing of Superman II. Kneel before Zod!

“Hey, Brenda,” Peter said. “Did you ever talk to Stacey?”

“Get over it, Pete,” she said. “She dumped your ass.”

“Because she believed a bunch of crap about me.”

“What?” she said. “Didn’t you make out with Laurie Saye? People saw you in the Monster Plantation at Six Flags giving her the tongue.”

“That’s bullshit,” he said. “That’s not what happened.”

“Maybe not,” Brenda said. “But Stacey’s telling everyone you’re a total pillow humper.”

landing right next to Brenda and knocking the Pepsi out of her hand. “What the hell, Scott?”

“Brenda said Stacey says I’m a pillow humper.”

“A total pillow humper,” Brenda said, standing up and wiping the Pepsi off her jeans. She had on a gray Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, now stained. “I saw her after school with Mitch Siegel. He was giving her a ride on that stupid moped.”

“No way,” Scott said. “Shit, man. I’m so sorry, Pete. A fucking moped. How embarrassing.”

Scott was still in his school clothes, a faded blue polo, jeans, and Docksiders. The shirt smeared with sauce from the crappy pizza they had for lunch. He was about the same height as Pete, only skinnier and with light brown, super-curly hair. They’d been friends since seventh grade and had gone on a lot of adventures together and rented thousands of movies. Scott and his mom had been working on a script they were going to send to Steven Spielberg someday. Indiana Jones meets E.T. Peter wasn’t sure if that meant Indiana Jones actually meets E.T. or if it was just a mash-up.

“Forget all that shit,” Peter said. “Who cares? Listen, man. I need a big favor. I need your sister to give me a ride somewhere.”

“She’s taking us to the movies,” Scott said. “On the way to wherever the hell she’s headed.”

“What about after the movies?”

“You can ask,” he said. “Where are we going?”

“Downtown.”

“Downtown?” Scott said. “Are you nuts? We can’t go downtown. We’ll get killed. Or worse.”

“The address is more midtown on Peachtree,” Peter said. “Listen, it’s not a big deal. It won’t take long and I promise to pay for her gas.”

“My mom would totally shit if we went downtown,” Scott said. “If we don’t die, she’d murder me. Remember when we went out to Cumberland Mall to get you those nunchucks? I couldn’t leave the house for two weeks. My mom made me read these stupid self-improvement books. Guy’s name was Zig Ziglar. It’s not how high you fall but how far you bounce.”

“You don’t have to come,” Peter said. “I just need to find someone and then I’ll come right back here. No one will even know I’m gone. My mom is out somewhere disco dancing with Gary. She doesn’t give a shit what I do.”

“Why don’t you ask Brenda?” Scott said. “She’s the one who sends out deliveries. Maybe one of her cousins can drop you off?”

“Downtown?” Brenda said, both boys surprised she’d even been listening. She’d acted like she’d been engrossed in a commercial for Lee Press On Nails. A fancy woman with big hair about to shit a brick because she broke a nail before an important dinner with her husband. “We don’t deliver to downtown. My dad’s the one who sends out the orders. Not me. And you know my dad.”

Brenda’s father was a hot-tempered man allegedly from Hong Kong who could swear in seven different languages (at least according to Brenda). Last spring, after Brenda got into a fight with Tommy Hicks on the school bus, Mr. Yee hopped on board with Brenda one morning and tried to interrogate Tommy and some of the other kids on the way to school. He was dressed in a serious dark suit and tie with a tan raincoat. He looked like a cop and spoke in broken English, wanting to know who’d messed with his darling Brenda. The true story was Brenda could’ve beaten Tommy’s ass any day of the week. It had taken three kids to hold her back.

“What’s the movie tonight?” Brenda asked.

“Invasion U.S.A.,” Peter said.

“That looks like something you dorks would watch,” she said. “One man taking on an army in a stupid shopping mall. I remember when you two idiots cried at the end of Red Dawn.”

“That’s complete bullshit, ...