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: : : THE MOON RISES OVER THE train station. Boys sit on the platform, smoking cigarettes and flicking the spent ends down onto the tracks. Someone in the parking lot stands on metal pegs attached to his bike's rear wheel. He holds the bike in his arms, twirls, bounces, maintains balance. The front wheel points at the sky.
Tim Pollard glides into the lot, cuts past the guy with the bike, and points himself towards the platform, by way of the wheelchair ramp. Halfway up he executes a turn on the board, successfully negotiating the ramp's switchback. He reaches the top of the ramp, and rolls towards where his friends sit. The long concrete expanse slowly eats up the last of his momentum. He makes a pass by the bank of pay phones, slapping each handset out of its cradle in turn.
—Delinquent, says Matt.
Tim pulls one of his earbuds out. A thin squall of tinny noise sprays into the air. —Say again? he says.
—I said you're social trash, says Matt.
—I've heard it all before, says Tim. He sits down next to Matt, dangling his feet out over the tracks. —Gimme a cigarette.
—Fuck you, man, says Matt. —You ever buy your own?
Tim pulls an empty pack of Marlboros out of his pocket and wads it up and flicks it into Matt's face. —Fuck you, man, he says. —I'm out.
—Parasite, says Matt, but he digs a pack out of his army satchel.
Tim leans over and takes the offered cigarette out of the pack with his mouth. —Thanks, he says. —I'll get you next time.
Matt lights him. —Why you gotta lie to me? he says. —I gave you a cigarette and still you gotta lie to me.
Tim shrugs. —I'm a liar, he says. —That's just the way it is.
He smokes.
—Megan was by here, looking for you, Matt says.
—No shit, Tim says.
—She said you weren't in school today. She wanted to know if we'd seen you.
—What'd you tell her? Tim asks.
—We told her to fuck off, Matt says. —And we told her that if she saw you she should tell you that we said you can fuck off as well.
—What'd she say to that?
Matt shrugs. —That chick don't say much.
—Tell me about it, says Tim.
—So you weren't in school today, Matt says.
—Fuck school, Tim says.
—Listen to you. Fuck school.
—Fuck school, Tim says.
Fuck school. This new year is only a month old and he's already bored to death of everything. He was bored to death of everything before the year even began. Over the summer, he'd be right in the middle of doing something totally fun, hanging with his friends, climbing on playground equipment in the park, smoking a bowl in the back of Nick's van, whatever, and all of a sudden he'd think school starts in a month and he would feel this terrible like advance knowledge of how it would all play out, he could sense what the new year would be like, sense it with this terrible fucking clarity, as though he'd already lived through it once, already gagged down two hundred days of hideous nonsense, and then he finally got to the end and some dickweed went no, boy, do it again, and put him back at fucking start. And so far his goddamn visions have been totally right. Not that there's any big surprise there. He's a senior now—he's been at this fucking school for the last three years, long enough to know that just because you get a new set of teachers and a new set of textbooks, it doesn't mean that they're not serving you the same old pile of bullshit.
—You sick? Matt says. —You don't look sick. Let me feel your head.
Tim slaps Matt's hand away. —Get off, he says.
: : :
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