He even tried to bring Amir to the house, warned him to wear the collared shirt they’d bought together, giggling and kissing in the Flamingos Vintage dressing room. But his mom immediately acted like an idiot, with the high voice and constant “are you sure you boys don’t want some nachos” bullshit. By which she means Costco cheese microwaved on tortilla chips.
Charlie’s mom has nothing but him, he gets it. But after Amir left, her inquisition about him—what did his parents do, was he a good student—was too much. He watched her mouth move, and he thought, I don’t even know you.
Worse, he thought, I don’t want to know you.
His mom! They’d been so close. Pizza and movies on Saturday night, “us against the world,” et cetera. But the story she’d been telling him unraveled when he started to examine it around sixth grade. Why was his father a lie about a heart attack on a ski slope? Who was he really? Why didn’t his mom trust him to understand any situation that had gotten her pregnant?
Had she been raped?
Who were her family?
Where were her family?
Who was he?
What was his DNA?
Where did he belong?
Eventually, his anger about the questions she refused to answer turned to contempt for her. He hid it well, he knew. She thought he was easygoing, without cares. Worse, she thought she’d given him a perfect childhood. Honestly, he was done with her. Especially after that speech about Amir. Fuck her.
So he’d gotten a DNA test. He’d found his family, even his father, who was not dead after all. Charlie had ignored all messages from ancestry.com except the one giving him his father’s contact info and name: Patrick Hamilton. （So regal!）
His dad definitely seemed sketchy, what with no Facebook, a hotmail.com email, and needing three hundred dollars sent via PayPal, but Patrick Hamilton was flying into Austin that afternoon. Fine, he would pay his dad to see him, whatever.
Charlie would work his lifeguard shift, then meet his dad, then end up next to Amir, who would make it all OK.
There’s also a party tonight in the neighborhood, a big one. A kid he doesn’t know, a younger kid, posted on his Snapchat story that his parents were away. A hyped-up video of him yelling about a rager on Barton Skyway. Any idiot who would post his address on Snapchat was asking to have his house burned down. It was like buying drugs on Snap. Just dumb.
Everyone knows: if you want drugs, you text.
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Austin American-Statesman
AUSTIN POLICE CHIEF JOS? RAMIREZ VOWS TO PROSECUTE “CRAIGSLIST DRUG DEALERS”
In the first arrest of its kind, Austin Police Chief José Ramirez has charged seventeen-year-old Cameron Levy, a so-called Craigslist drug dealer, with murder. Levy allegedly sold fentanyl-laced pills to Jessica Finlay, a classmate at Live Oak High School, who died of an opioid overdose. Investigators say that Levy knew about the deadly overdose risks of fentanyl consumption—he had used his smartphone to search “fentanyl overdose death” the same night he met up with Finlay in the parking lot of a Braker Lane Taco Bell restaurant.
“These illegal opioids have ravaged many parts of the United States,” said Ramirez. “We will not allow this to happen in Austin. Not on my watch. If anyone sells these extremely dangerous, illegal drugs, they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, regardless of their age.”
The Austin Police Department determined that the victim bought pills from Levy on March 30, meeting him at Taco Bell. She overdosed later that night at her family’s home in the exclusive Central Austin neighborhood of Tarrytown. Jessica was found by her younger sister when she did not come downstairs for breakfast, according to EMS reports.
When police tracked down Levy, also a Tarrytown resident, they seized Xanax, more of the fentanyl-laced pills, and an array of other drugs including LSD, ecstasy, cocaine, and codeine, and a digital scale. He had also advertised these items on Craigslist. A search of Levy’s phone also showed a Google search for “what does aspiration mean,” which investigators believe refers to pulmonary aspiration, a common cause of death from a drug overdose due to the inhalation of saliva or vomit.
A murder charge for an underage teen is the first of its kind, and will require proving that Levy knew his conduct was so dangerous that it could lead to someone dying. Jurors could believe risk is accepted by both parties in an illicit drug deal. “You can’t prosecute every drug dealer as a murderer,” says criminal defense attorney Raj James. “That’s ridiculous.”
Ridiculous or not, Austin Mayor Remshart Janicki supports the murder charge. “We’re going to do what we have to do to stop opioid abuse, especially by teenagers in our community,” says Janicki. “I am making opioid prevention the cornerstone of my reelection campaign. If you’re a drug dealer—whether you’re on TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, Craigslist, Instagram, Instacart, or a street corner—listen up: we will catch you, and we will put you in jail for a very long time.”
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Liza
I GAVE UP TRYING to sleep at 5:00 a.m. and made a pot of coffee, sprinkling cinnamon over the grounds for a bit of spice. I loved sitting on my front step, waving to the early-morning joggers, watching the birds. I kept a bird book and a pair of binoculars by the door, and sometimes Charlie and I sat side by side, crying out, “Blue jay! Look!” and “Ugh, another grackle.” Our lawn was small and neat, watered by a lone sprinkler and kept trimmed by Charlie borrowing our neighbor’s mower twice a month. We even had a live oak tree, which cast intricate shadows.
It started to heat up by six, so I went inside to begin work. Sam wanted a chapter on breakfast, so she’d submitted a list of recipe ideas. I started with kao tom goong soup, a traditional Thai dish that Sam made her own by adding grilled vegetables and shrimp. When Charlie woke, he padded into the kitchen in running shorts and an Austin City Limits T-shirt.
The shirt was from the year when his elementary school choir opened for Charlie Sexton. That had been a weird experience—I’d once owned a poster of Sexton, and had gazed at his full-lipped pout, his extravagant hairstyle, full of teen lust. He’d seemed the epitome of the bad boy who could get me out of Massachusetts, show me wild worlds of dimly lit bars and poolside parties and making out during rainstorms. And so to be standing in an audience of moms （all of us dressed up as teenagers—jean shorts, trucker hats, spaghetti-strap tops） watching my own flesh-and-blood sing “Blowing Up Detroit” and “Cruel and Gentle Things” earnestly, sweetly, his chubby twelve-year-old face and Sexton’s wizened visage and a few morning mimosas…I had felt swoony, enjoying the rare sense that all the pieces had come together in my jagged jigsaw puzzle of a life.
* * *
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“WHOA,” SAID CHARLIE NOW, using a worn-out pot holder to lift the top off my concoction, inhaling the fragrant steam.
“It’s Thai,” I said. “Kao tom goong.”
“Hmmm,” said Charlie.
“In other countries, shrimp for breakfast is a thing,” I said. “Sit down and let me ladle you a bowl.”
“Sounds good.” Charlie leaned against the avocado-colored laminate counter. It was trimmed in gold, with a patterned wallpaper backsplash. Our floor was green-and-white linoleum. Our wooden kitchen table had come from an estate sale years before.