Excerpt from The Agony of Bun O'Keefe by Heather Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Any missions around here?"

"Missions?"

"Yes. Where alcoholics with no homes go."

He smiled. "You're an alcoholic, are you?"

"No. But I have no home."

"Sorry. I don't know of any missions."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

I must have looked doubtful 'cause he said, "Why are you asking me? Do I look like a homeless alcoholic?"

He looked nothing like Jimmy Quinlan or the other derelict human beings. For one thing, he had teeth. But he was begging, which is what Jimmy Quinlan did within the first two minutes of the film. He stopped cars and people on the busy streets. "Bonjour, monsieur! Bonjour, monsieur!"

"You look like a normal person," I said. "But you are begging."

He gathered the loose change from the guitar case in front of him. "I'm not begging. I'm busking."

"So you have a home?"

"I never said that."

"So you don't have a home."

He fit his guitar into the guitar-shaped space and squinted at me. "Who are you?"

"Bun O'Keefe."

He snapped the lid shut and hopped to his feet.

"First time in the city?"

"Yes."

"How did you get here?"

"Hitchhiked."

"You shouldn't do that."

"Why not? I wasn't going to murder anyone."

He gave me a funny look and headed down a steep hill toward the harbor. He didn't say good-bye so I followed. When he went into a coffee shop, I stood behind him in line, and the girl behind the counter said, "You two together?" and I said, "Yes." She asked me what I'd like to order and I didn't know 'cause I'd never ordered anything before so she suggested tea. I said no in a voice louder than I had meant—I was sick of tea—it's what I drank to keep my stomach from growling. She suggested hot chocolate and I said yes 'cause I hadn't had one since my father left.

My mother called me presumptuous once, after I'd asked her what was for supper. I wondered if I was being that

now, so I looked at Busker Boy, but he just nodded at a table and said, "I'll bring it over."

I sat on my hands till he came, then wrapped them around the mug.

He reached into his backpack and pulled out a thick flannel shirt. "When you run away in November, you should wear a coat."

His voice was calm and even, like the narrator of Jimmy Quinlan. It was smoother, though, and softer. All the expression was in his dark brown eyes.

I put my lips to the mug, letting the steam fog my glasses. "I didn't run away. My mother told me to leave. So I did."

"How old are you? Twelve?"

"Fourteen."

I read an article about small talk once. It said if you want to create a bond with your conversation partner you should mirror them, so I said, "How old are you? Twelve?" He laughed. "Twenty-one."

He looked me up and down. "You're small for fourteen."

"Is that bad?"

"Not at all. Look at me."

I did. He was short but thick and bulging with muscles. Stocky would be the word.

"As long as you're strong, that's all that matters. Are you strong?"

I could shift my mother's boxes out of my way when need be. "Yes. I'm strong."

He grinned at me. "Your Smurf shirt kind of threw me off, too."

It could just as easily have been the Bionic Woman or Starsky and Hutch. Both came home in a box called vintage. I told my mother that something from a decade earlier couldn't be called vintage, that seventies stuff didn't count. She called me a smartarse and told me to go away.

I pressed rewind. My head whirred.

Your Smurf shirt kind of threw me off, too.

"Are Smurf shirts only for twelve-year-olds?"

Excerpted from The Agony of Bun O'Keefe by Heather Smith. Copyright © 2017 by Heather Smith. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Random House Canada. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.