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matters. You could be back in that welfare line just as easy.
    I nod and feel a flash of buoyance.
    Oh, I see here you graduated from Jeff, Pam says.
    Yes, I say. I’m a Dem.
    Did you know Ronnie Reid? she asks.
    Ronnie Reid with those colored eyes? I say.
    Yes, him, she says.
    Who didn’t know Ronnie Reid? I say
    He’s my cousin, Pam says.
    Wow, I say. Haven’t seen him in years.
    You aren’t the only one, she says. They got him down there in Salem, gave him ten, but he’s close to home now.
    Pam lays the pen on top of the clipboard and pushes it across the table. Looks like you left this blank, she says.
    And there it is again:
Have you ever been convicted of a felony?
—a blinking neon billboard.
    The choice is yours: Choose wise
.
    We either are or we aren’t
.
    Where we go, there we are
.
    Oh, I say, and force a smirk and grab the pen—a weight.
    Don’t let them tell you otherwise; there’s a big, big difference between lowering and adjusting. Sooner or later there aren’t buttwo choices for all of us. Will they check if I lie? How long will it take for them to find out the truth?
    The first few times you tell the truth and hope for goodwill, but afterwards you take your chance on lie.
    Must’ve overlooked it, I say, and check the wrong box.
    She rubs a finger. The light catches on one of her gold rings.
    She would have hired me anyway, would have. If I’d explained how I’d been broke, out days, and scheming on a hit, if I’d told her how some guys I knew, but didn’t really know, but had been out with, told me about a hustle, if I’d told her how they’d promised that returning the TV they’d heisted would go down without a hitch. No probs, baby girl, is what they said. No problemo. On the other hand, they couldn’t do it, cause they were men and they were in bad shape and no one in their right mind was going to let them return anything, return nothing at all, looking the way they looked. So all I had to do, they explained, was take it back to the store and say I didn’t want it. Take it back and, they promised, we could split the money three ways even. And puff till our heads burst. Smoke till our lungs collapsed. But of course they were wrong, and I was caught and charged and convicted. Pam would have probably still given me the job if I’d come clean about that first conviction and the fraud—collecting state checks in two states—that finally earned me a trip down-state. If I’d explained what I told the judge about the troubles of raising three boys who outgrew clothes by the month, boys who deserved new tenny shoes and the latest games, who were worthy of much more than I could afford on the funky few hundred Oregon was giving me, which is why I kept the Oregon address when I moved across the river to Washington, kept the addressand the state checks, not because I wanted to, but because I had to, and even though the judge just shook his head and gave me a year and a day, Pam would’ve understood why I’d agreed to the TV scheme, why I’d kept the checks, and even why I’d just checked the wrong box.
    The kids rush in with a breeze whipping behind them. The girl working the counter dumps dirty trays. Elsewhere, the soda machine churns ice, meat sizzles, a knife knocks against a cutting board.

Chapter 8
    â€œThat’s a good question.”
—Champ
    Dream within reach, that’s our motto (and by
our
I mean me and Mom) though over the years, once a year, we allow ourselves leeway. Most years that leeway’s named the Street of Dreams. What is it? It’s this showcase they hold every year for homes built for fools who could own the average life times over. They build these show cribs in the burbs (surprised?), blanket the city with ads, and for a month or so, lure an interminable stream of hella wishing gawkers. We got caught in the crush our first couple visits, but you learn what