Bobby smiled with those big dumb teeth of his. “I’ve communicated with him.”

David sighed. “With who, dipshit?”

I grabbed David’s arm. “Give him a chance.”

“Why? It’s just going to be more of his insane crap.”

I turned to Bobby. “Who did you communicate with?”

Bobby blinked twice. “Baxter, my goldfish.”

David keeled over laughing.

“Your goldfish?” I repeated.

“Yes,” Bobby said. “Using my Grandpa’s eye, I got Baxter to tell me the truth.” He pulled a glass eye out of his pocket.

In those sweaty, July afternoons, we got stoned to escape the heat. On this day it was so scorching you could smell your hair burning. Unsupervised kids spilled out all over the subdivision with Band-Aids on their knees and gum on their shoes. We drank from hoses on the sides of our houses while Cheerios jostled in our pockets. Bobby was the neighborhood crazy, the weird, little nerd no one listened to for more than five seconds. I didn’t mind him as much as others. There was something honest about him, and I was sick of lies, especially from my parents.

“What does the goldfish tell you, Bobby?”

“Seriously?” David asked. “Why are you talking to him?”

“Shut up, man.” I turned back to Bobby. “What does it tell you?”

“He wants to be free,” he said. “Like us but in the ocean.”

“Goldfish die in saltwater, moron,” David chimed in.

I stared at him like I was going to reach into his chest and rip apart his heart. “No one was talking to you.” I shifted over to Bobby. “Where did you get that glass eye?”

“It was Grandpa’s. Mom keeps it in her drawer, but she’s been asleep two days, so I don’t think she’d mind.”

I rubbed the blunt into a wooden panel for a moment to make sure I heard what I thought I did. “Two days? Is that normal?”

“Depends how much she drinks. Usually it’s only a day.”

“Let’s go check on her,” I said.

David lit up. “No way, man, that’s—”

I punched him in the arm. “No one asked you to come.”

“Whatever,” he said, rubbing his bicep. “Don’t see why you spend time with that kid.”

“Let’s go, Bobby,” I said.

He nodded, and I helped him climb down from the treehouse without dropping the fish. When we opened his front door, dead flowers lined the tiled floor. The smell that hit us as we opened his mom’s door was way too strong to be flowers. Pills were scattered on the carpet, and a bottle of Whiskey sat on a shelf next to the bed. I felt her hand.

Ice cold. I felt for her pulse. No beats.

“Can I use your phone, Bobby?”

When I was sure he couldn’t hear me, I called 911 and told them about the body. They said someone was on the way. I returned to Bobby, who clearly hadn’t a clue.

“Your goldfish wants to be free?” I asked.

“Yes, in the ocean.”

“I think he might like the lake across the street.”

Bobby agreed and we left the body and the bedroom. We kneeled by the lake.

“Are you sure Baxter will be okay in there?” he asked.

“Not sure, but you said he wants to be free, right?”

Bobby nodded. An ambulance peeled down the road, its siren exploding like a noise bomb. The paramedics rushed in as kids from the street gathered on Bobby’s lawn.

“Have anything you want to say before you let him go?”

“Yes.” Bobby looked into the plastic bag. “I didn’t have you long, but you were mine, and I love you.”

“That’s good, Bobby.”

He released the fish into the water, and it disappeared into the murk.

“That’s real good, Bobby. Now that you don’t have your fish to talk to, you can talk to me any time you need to.”

He smiled, and I hugged him.