I don’t care if she [Ms. Whitlock] knows I love Breanna. Besides, the lady hates me and probably won’t read it anyhow.

A new beer with sweat running down the sides slides into view and Pigpen sidles up beside me grinning like a crazy man. “Everyone’s dying to know who you’re texting with. It’s like you’re a twelve-year-old girl chained to that damn cell. Have you started your period yet?

What's going down in your brain?" Pigpen asks."Who shot me?""We don't know." The way he makes direct eye contact, he's not lying.

Pigpen goes silent and that causes my bones to quiver. The two of us get along because I'm the silent one and he's the one who can't shut up.

Pigpen taps his steering wheel. "He's in love with her, but he won't fully commit until you're on board with her or at least talk to him again.

He didn't say school, pinhead." Pigpen interrupts. "He said her parents.

I flip off Pigpen. He suggests something anatomically impossible, and as the familiar ribbing begins[--}

Pigpen says your brothers think we're taking too long.

A smile stretches across his [Pigpen] face. “Naw, but we had a chaplain over in Afghanistan. Cool son of a bitch. And he’d do this. Out of nowhere tell a story that would put it in perspective.