Free Little Blue Lies by Chris Lynch

and is left to look as foolish as he deserves when Ronny just walks away to come and greet Santo.
    â€œSanto, my brother, how are we doin’ today?” Ronny says, slapping my well-armed haircutter firmly on the shoulder of his clipping hand.
    â€œOuch,” I snap, feeling at the spot behind my ear that isn’t bleeding on the outside but might as well be.
    â€œSanto,” Ronny says, mock-scolding, “be careful. You gotta go extra easy on these delicate rich boys. They ain’t like you and me.”
    Sigh. It’s going to be like this.
    â€œWhat are you doing here in my neighborhood, in my shop, anyway?” Ronny says as he leans right into my face with a polished fun-house smile bearing down on me.
    His neighborhood, his shop.
    The town is shaped roughly like a backward capital letter N , with an additional line drawn straight across the top. That additional line across the top would be the beach boulevard and, obviously, the beach. The right-hand leg of the backward N would basically be my section of town, with the left-hand leg being Junie’s. The diagonal connecting them is a gradually progressing gradation of tone from their harder-edged neighborhood to my, I suppose, more affluent one. A color chart from Blue to me.
    The beach is nobody’s. It’s everybody’s. It’s practically the one thing that everyone understands.
    Everyone except Ronny Blue, apparently. But there are lots of things that he doesn’t understand.
    â€œFunny, Ronny,” I say, “I always thought this place belonged to Santo.”
    Ronny straightens up, turns his backside to me in the rudest manner imaginable, and then addresses me in the mirror. He taps an index finger to the side of his nose, indicating his knowing hush-hush insiderism and Shut up, Junior warning. God, do I hate that gesture.
    Santo says nothing. Goes back to clipping me.
    Ronny throws himself roughly into the one remaining observation chair, the one closest to the door.
    â€œImagine,” he says, folding his hands, all piety and admiration. “The likes of him, coming all the way down here to drop his hairs on our floor. Hey, maybe we can collect them up and sell them to tourists. Or maybe give them to the local poor, like, what do them people do again, sell them like holy water or Mary’s tears or pieces of that cross thing, huh? The upper classes, man, do they ever stop giving?”
    â€œI’m not upper anything,” I say weakly.
    This is so uncomfortable. There cannot have ever been a less relaxing haircut in the history of scissors. And I look up, realize that Santo, working at the speed of Santo, is still less than half-done with me. Ronny glares, grins, and scowls all at once and makes sure there is no doubt he is staring bullets into my eyes and has every intention of continuing to do so.
    â€œWhat about tomorrow, Ronny?” Malcolm asks, and I could personally give him a free all-over baldy haircut right now. What is it about low-level criminality that makes certainposh boys want to roll in it like a dog with a dead thing?
    â€œMaybe,”Ronny says flatly without releasing me from his stare.
    It’s killing me, and I’m pretty sure he knows it.
    I turn to my ally, the ocean. Santo whips my head back. The sudden loss of eye focus is actually rather pleasant. The bite of the pinched nerve in my neck, less so.
    You cannot let this happen. If you let the bully bully, then you’d better learn to love the bullying. You’ve got to give it something .
    I stare as hard as my watery eyes will allow, right back into him.
    â€œJunie back from her vacation yet?”
    Momentarily, deliciously, he looks startled. Then he comes back, leaning hard and mean into the task.
    â€œWhat vacation?” he says, hands outstretched, looking down the line of sycophants, playing to the mob.
    Through gritted teeth I venture further into what already looks like an unfortunate