That Was Then, This Is Now

That Was Then, This Is Now Summary | Chapter 1 Summary

Bryon and Mark start this chapter in a pool hall where they are planning to make some money hustling pool. They are only sixteen years old, so it is illegal for them to be in a pool hall with a bar in it but they are usually successful at hustling because they look so innocent. After checking for an undercover cop and not finding one, Bryon asks Charlie, the bartender for a CCoke. Charlie reminded him that he and Mark already owed for three dollars worth of CokeCokes and refused to give him another until he paid on his debt. Mark joined Bryon at the counter and asked for a Coke. Bryon told him their credit was no good, but Charlie gave in to Mark and gave them Cokes after all when Mark promised to bring the money in the next day. Bryon says that talking people into things is something that Mark is good at, a gift. Charlie told the boys that M&M, the "original flower child" had stopped at the pool hall earlier looking for them.

While the boys are drinking their Cokes, Bryon explains to the reader that he and Mark have always been best friends and grown up together. When he was ten and Mark was nine, Mark's parents shot each other in a drunken fight and Bryon's mother took Mark in like her own son, so now they were brothers too. The boys had never had a fight or even an argument.

After finishing their Cokes, they went to look for M&M. They found him in a drugstore up the street reading a Newsweek magazine. He was thirteen years old with long hair. He got the nickname M&M because he always had a bag of M&M candies in his pocket. They asked him why he had been looking for them, but he had forgotten. As an after-thought, he informed the boys that his older sister, Cathy, had returned from the private school she had been attending. She had paid for the previous school year in the private school with her own money.

Mark suggests that they go to the bowling alley because there was nothing going on at the drugstore and he was bored. On the way to the bowling alley, Mark offered to hotwire a car, which upset Bryon because Mark was on probation for hotwiring vehicles. Bryon thought Mark would be put in foster care if he were caught again and was afraid further trouble might also put him there.

M&M asked Bryon if he was named after the Lord. He was confusing Bryon's name with Lord Byron, the English poet. Bryon strings him along and quotes a dirty limerick he had heard. He admits to the readers that he lies to girls and has a reputation for being a lady-killer.

Mark asks M&M if he can borrow three dollars but all M&M has is fifty cents. It is his weekly allowance for babysitting all of his younger brothers and sisters. Mark and Bryon think he is crazy for babysitting all the time for so little money, but M&M says he does not mind. It is his way of helping out his family.

After a short time in the bowling alley, M&M decided it was time to go home. Mark and Bryon decided to catch up with him and walk him home. They discovered three guys trailing M&M and knew that they planned to jump him. Mark and Bryon cut through an alley to come up behind the bullies and help M&M. They intervened as the bullies began to beat up M&M, each of them jumping a bully as the third bully escaped. Once they had chased off the bullies, they helped M&M up to walk him home. During the fight, Mark had pick-pocketed one of the bullies and had the three dollars that he and Bryon owed Charlie.

As they were walking home, Mark asked Bryon if he wanted some more action and suggested that they jump a black man that was standing on a corner waiting for the light to change. M&M got upset over Mark's suggestion, claiming that they had just saved him from guys who were going to jump him because he was different from them, and now Mark and Bryon were getting ready to jump someone else because he was different from them. M&M ran home crying. Bryon thought about what M&M had said and realized that it was true. Mark found M&M's peace medal on the ground where he had lost it after the fight, and picked it up to give back to M&M later. They headed to the pool hall to pay Charlie the three dollars they owed him. Bryon reminds readers that Mark was his best buddy and he loved him like a brother.