Chew. Chew. Chew. The cardboard crunch of approximately eighteen different kinds of preservatives, red #2, green #6, beige #7. Vegetable formaldehyde, just one sample of the new world generation of whole grain, half-caf, 2 percent, 4 cheese, imitation meals. I reach, swig, acid wash my throat all the way down to my stomach, lather, rinse, repeat.

Behind me, the crunch and clink of breakfast shatters the morning. The coffee machine riots on top of the stove and fills the room with heady, earthy scent, the refrigerator hums, and the soft scratches of claws in a cat box creep up from the basement. At the kitchen table, Tommy looks up at me from over the rim of his Rice Krispies, pushes his lips into a lopsided smile, and goes back to chewing.

I smile back at the top of his head, and lower my eyes back to the magazine sprawled across the honey-colored table in front of me. Tommy swallows, and between the frenzied symphony of the kitchen, I can hear the cereal squelching down his skinny throat, and the soft sloshing of his stomach. Tommy fishes another spoonful of cereal from his bowl, and begins the process anew.

I flip a page of the magazine, wondering why we smile when we're nervous.

Tommy is eleven years old, and small for his size. He was born a little less than a month early, six pounds, three ounces, pink and bald and helpless. This I know because his mother, Sheryl, told me so the first time she dropped Tommy off on my stoop. Sheryl was in her late thirties, all clicking heels and dark mascara. She worked at a Jewel Osco about twenty minutes from my doorstep, drove a white Suburban, and went in for a pedicure every other Thursday. Sheryl carried a huge Mom purse that could probably support a small country, were it filled with instant oatmeal.

Don, Sheryl’s husband, had died of a severe case of pneumonia, almost three years before. As it turned out, Don was allergic to penicillin, and having prior a chronic case of asthma, the combination had been lethal. Tommy and Sheryl lived alone now, in a white house, with a two-car garage, in a lovely neighborhood just over the bridge. Just Mother and Son against the world, Sheryl had said, standing on my stoop, her hand wrapped around Tommy’s, as he aimed to scuff a hole to China with the tips of his chunky black-and-white sneakers.

All this was over a year ago. All this was the first time Tommy and I had become a unit. ‘Babysitting’ isn’t quite the right word. As a then-ten-year-old kid, Tommy no longer bore the infant-pattern baldness that his mother still seemed to see. His eyes were not baby-blue but bronze-like brown, and his weight was something closer to seventy pounds. Tommy hated the color white, country music, and the thought of drowning. Tommy did not talk to strangers, or to anyone who wouldn’t think twice about ruffling his hair in that aren’t-you-cute kind of way.

That day on the stoop with Sheryl ticking off a list of allergies, I had wondered if all this Miranda Right type information was really necessary. As far as I knew, this would be the first and last day Tommy and I ever spent together. This was, after all, the first babysitting gig I’d ever undertaken, notwithstanding the fact that I’d had almost sixteen years of training, being the older of two kids. My little brother, like me, was in high school now, though, so this let me off the hook as far as family obligation.

So why start all over again? Because of Betty. Betty happened to be a 1997 Chevy Beretta, red with grey interior, no radio, and a trunk without a key. Betty happened to be the car that was technically mine, with a gas tank that was, technically, empty- just the same as my wallet. On my sweet sixteen, my mother had handed me a card with an ultimatum in black pen: get a job or start walking.

And honestly? McDonalds wasn’t sounding so good, and neither was hoofing it from now until the next winter in Hell. The babysitting thing was sort of lucky, and it fell right into my lap. But deal or not, if this kid was a total booger, I had promised myself to quit. Thirty bucks a night, five nights a week, cash. Not a bad cut. But, the corner of my brain reminded me, the price of my dignity was slightly higher.

I hadn’t expected Tommy.

When Sheryl had finally hugged her son for the seventh time (I had been counting, as a matter of fact) and bid a nervous farewell, I closed the door behind her. Turning to Tommy with a smile I asked, “So, now that The Mom is gone, what do you like to do?”

“I like to play videogames” or, “I enjoy the torture of small animals” both would have been acceptable answers from a ten-year-old boy in a house without any adults. Even my own brother probably would have kicked me in the shin and walked into the pantry.

Tommy just looked up at me from under his corona of chestnut hair, stuck his hands in his pockets, and shrugged. I raised an eyebrow and kept my gaze at him. He shrugged again, “I don’t know. Read mostly.”

I smiled. This was going to be the easiest summer money ever.

“Well, what do you like to read, Tommy?” I asked, reaching for conversation.

He squirmed a little, as if the verbalizations were causing him a physical pain, or something, and then replied, “Stephen King, lately.”

Dayum, ten years old and reading adult fiction?

It wasn’t until later, until I hooked Tommy up with a stack of novels taller than himself, that we really started talking. He beamed up at the titles as I passed them to him from my own bookshelf, which was crammed and slightly tilted to the left.

“Mom doesn’t like me to read these,” Tommy said quietly over a water stained copy of The Talisman, “She says they give me ideas.”

“That’s a bad thing?” I replied and dug out a couple more books.

As it turned out, Thomas ‘Tommy’ Lewis Redding was more intelligent than most of the people in my sophomore class. It was a few days before he admitted to having been given an IQ test shortly before the end of the school year. I’m sure I made some whoop-like utterance when he mentioned the number the test had shelled out- over 145.

Not just smart, but the kind of intelligence that drives most people crazy. Well, Tommy didn’t seem crazy, not yet, anyway. He’d just finished the fourth grade when we met. Now, a year later, he was in the seventh, and taking high school English on Saturdays. In a manner of speaking, Tommy is a beast for knowledge. Besides that though, he’s still an eleven-year-old kid. Last year I tutored him in the fine art of sticking a spoon to one’s nose. Last week little Kelly Alton from across the street sent him into a veritable frenzy by inviting him to her birthday party.

And last night, without warning, a thug in a pair of white velvet sweats made Tommy into an orphan over approximately one-hundred-eighty-two dollars. We both slept in the living room last night- me on the floor, Tommy on the couch. When I woke up he was curled up with his face burrowed into my side. I made pancakes, which he wouldn’t eat, then we watched mindless television until his stomach roared so loud I had to force some cereal down his mouth.

The phone had chirruped around seven pm. It was my mother, telling me with mock-calmness what had happened to Sheryl. She had been on her way over, and stopped at a gas station just out of town. When she came back out to the pump, a man was leaning against her car. When she didn’t give him her purse, he fired three rounds into her chest. When the paramedics got there, the car was gone, and so was the purse. Sheryl was facedown in the gum-stuck pavement. I think my face must have lost about a gallon of blood in less than a second.

Tommy came in carrying one of my cats, hugged against his chest, and froze dead when he saw me, just hanging up the phone.

“What happened?” he asked, then flinched even though I hadn’t yet moved or spoken.

“Tommy…” I said, not able to tell this kid that his only remaining relative was dead. Like it hadn’t been bad enough with his father. And the extended family were as good as gone anyway, for all the support they offered. “I’m… so sorry.” I trailed off lamely.

He just looked at me, “What?” he asked in a dead, old tone that was absolutely chilling. I could lie. Lying was always an option, though never a solution. But he’d find out sooner or later anyway.

“It’s… Sheryl-er- your mom, she’s, well…”

“Dead.” He finished, and walked out of the room, setting the cat down as he turned.

Tommy had not said a word since.

My own mother had been out all morning, calling the family, locking the Reddings’ house up, talking to the police. Tommy and I had played three rounds of Street fighter in total silence, watched television for an hour, and finally, laid sprawled in the living room staring off into space, also in total silence. Now there was a creak from the front of the house, and my brother Liam came shuffling in.

He’d been out with Mom for the past couple hours, playing man of the house and driving sometimes while she tried to tie up loose ends via cell phone. Sheryl and my mother had been good friends, so I assumed that she was probably a wreck. Liam looked only mildly fazed, though, as he came in and kicked the door shut behind him.

“Well?” I asked him expectantly.

“Well what?” he replied with a trace of annoyance, kicking his shoes off.

I tugged him out of earshot of the kitchen, “Well, what’s going to happen to…” I jerked my head toward Tommy.

Liam just sighed, “I don’t know. They don’t know. Nobody will tell me a damn thing. And quite frankly, I’m sick of asking.” He barked, and lurked out of the room and up the stairs with all the apathetic grandeur of a sixteen-year-old male. I just stood there glaring at his considerable back, not bothering to chase after him. Things were bad enough without fighting. So instead I went back into the kitchen, where Tommy was pushing the remnants of his cereal into the sink, still quiet, eyes still magnetically attracted to the linoleum.

He turned around, and made eye contact with me for the first time since the phone call. His eyes were glossy, his normally pale face already sapping to a sickly grey, his shoulders hunched harshly.

“Hey, this is gonna be okay.” I said, and took a step towards him. Tommy just ran into my open arms and hugged me fiercely, burying his head in my stomach.