Sugar Trip[Driam]

2. sick man's salary

Summer came to Liam in forms of social severance and star fruit-flavored bubblegum spilling out of old quarter machines uptown.

At some point these dog days had rendered his skull a syrupy, substanceless porridge of what it used to be when it wasn't bubbling inside hell's iron-hot oven. He's stuck between a rock and a hard place to measure whether Rosemeadow was the one running a fever or just him. And all the coastal torridity is only more magnified when you're in the most astir place planet Earth has to offer for Saturday evening antics.

The uptown plaza in Rosemeadow is paraded with throngs of people on cream-colored cobblestone concrete and a slew of sales by the strip mall; a color-blasted kaleidoscope of things Liam couldn't care less for.

The spring of heat is aculeate and sour to the touch underneath the summer-land hellscape and the cinnamon smell of some Auntie Anne's across the street.

Honey gold street lamps line the walkway and Liam's seated criss-cross on the sidewalk beside one. This part of the uptown is as deserted as it gets, save for a stream of people always swamping the antique store like fish in clusters. Henry called it the second coming of gold rush hysterics since some old crow purchased a painting there that turned out to be worth a couple million.

An augmenting lilt of hyperpop radio music wafts from the little ice cream shop behind them. Henry sits with his untied shoes on the sidewalk gutter as he eats a salad and natters to himself like the chatterbox he pretends not to be. Liam puts forth his best attempt to pose like he can hear him babble over the teeming pedestrian cacophony.

"And, then, she said,'' he says, mouth full of something that should've looked like, you know, actually chewing, "It's because you aren't 6'4. What did you think was gonna happen?' Then I said, 'I am when I put my shoes on.' And then she walked away from me," Henry drones with a placid kind of static in his tone.

"If you ask Drew enough times, he'll give you money to go get height enhancement surgery in China with," Liam comments wryly, dryly prodding at the weeds growing within a narrow crevice of the uptown's carefully carved cobblestone pathway.

"Here," Henry wiggles a tomato off his plastic fork and onto Liam's paper plate beside him. "You think they can change my hair color too?"

"A plain old hairdresser can do that," Liam scoffs, stabbing at the tomato and rolling his head to serve Henry an incredulous look.

Henry forks over another tomato from his small amassment. "No, I mean, like, permanently," he clarifies.

Liam's face has dubious written all over it. "Well, what color do you want it?"

"Green."

"Henry, I swear-"

"Hear me out!"

"How is this," Liam vaguely gestures to Henry's full upper half, "not green enough for you?"

"Listen, listen! It's too much of a drag to keep up with, alright?" Henry raises his hands in defense.

"Well, you seem to be doing just fine. I don't even know what your real hair color is."

"Dude, we went to grade school together, how do you not remember?" Henry frowns.

Liam hooks his head around stiffly. "Well, it's not like I knew you back then. Plus you were a grade higher." He reasons it twice; it'd be easy to figure out by probably just perusing an old yearbook or something-if he cared to. Not like he did. Having Henry around was closer to having a second sister than a friend. You're stuck with her and you know you'll part ways at some point but she's what you got and you make do with it.