Free Betwixt by Tara Bray Smith

helps with the dreams.”
    “So you’re saying you take dust because it makes your bad dreams go away?”
    “Not go away,” Nix said to the window. “Dulls. Mutes.”
    “Dulls,” K.A. repeated. “Mutes. That’s great. You’re fryingyour brain because it ‘mutes’ your dreams. That makes it all better, man. All better.”
    It occurred to K.A., not for the first time, how strange it was that he and Nix had become friends. K.A. was a delivery boy
     for Jacob, had worked for him since he was in ninth grade, running errands, stocking the pantry. He got bumped up to table
     service and then deliveries when he’d gotten his license the previous year. He liked hanging out late at Jacob’s, shooting
     the shit with Neve and Nix. Neve, Jacob’s truly smoking daughter, he’d seen around for years. They’d gone to school together
     until eighth grade, after which her parents transferred her to Penwick. Something about Neve needing special attention—true,
     as far as K.A. could tell. Neve was a total fox — smart, too — but high-strung. Which wasn’t always a bad thing, in K.A.’s
     book. He still saw her at soccer games when their teams played each other. He had a distinct memory of her turning a cartwheel
     in a vintage cheerleading skirt; she’d worn it for the ironic value, but the look was perfectly executed, particularly the
     kneesocks and white cotton panties. Last summer at a party he’d watched her lose a makeshift, late-night limbo when the tips
     of her breasts nudged a Swiffer out of the sweaty hands of some Penwick seniors. But the thing that had really made him take
     notice was the day she’d slammed open the back door of her father’s pizza parlor, where K.A. was hanging out with the new
     dishwasher while he smokeda cigarette. Every bit the boss’s daughter, Neve had said, “Listen, D’Amici, if these three pies don’t make their way over
     to Northwest Glisan
right now,
I’m gonna let you in on my father’s special hippie recipe for making pepperoni without harming any pigs.” Nix had snorted
     so violently his cigarette had flown out of his mouth, and Neve, not expecting an audience, had gone red. After she’d slunk
     back inside, K.A. had said to Nix, “You think I should tell her I just came in to get my paycheck?” The kid had replied, “I
     wouldn’t risk it, man. Not while she’s got access to that meat grinder.”
    Two relationships were born that day: a flirtation with Neve that had grown steadily, and a faster if weirder friendship with
     the slacker-vagrant-runaway dishwasher, or whatever the hell Nix was. The fact of the matter was, Nix Saint-Michael was the
     kind of guy K.A. was supposed to beat up, or at any rate, avoid. Instead he felt like the little brother K.A. never had —
     which was even weirder, since Nix was a year older than him. As the youngest employees of Jacob’s, the threesome often sat
     around the same booth during the slow last hour — the pizza parlor stayed open till midnight on school nights, two AM during the weekends — sipping beer poured into soda cans in deference to Jacob, and sometimes, if it was slow enough and
     they’d managed to drink enough, K.A. would get Nix to tell stories about Alaska and his travels before he came down to Portland.
     He alwaysstopped when the subject of his mother came up. All he would say was that she died young.
    K.A. kept his hands on the wheel now, but looked over.
    “So what happened today? With Jacob?”
    Nix leaned back in his seat and sighed. “I don’t want to talk about it, man.”
    “He likes you, you know. He told me once you reminded him of himself when he first got to Portland.” K.A. saw the older boy
     smile despite himself and shake his head. He decided to press on. “No, man, I’m serious. He told me that.”
    Nix’s expression darkened. He took a deep breath then kicked the dash.
    “Dude! Drop it! I quit. That’s all there is to it.”
    “All right, son. I was just trying to