SEX AND THE BOY ✓

DROWNING IN THE NIGHT, BLINDED BY THE LIGHTS

"WE'VE BEEN STARING AT EACH other for straight twenty minutes, Leroi. What should we do?"

"Fucking leave me be and ask your captain--oh yeah he's been looted away. Aw!" Leroi is incinerating, walking back and forth while running his hands through his buzzcut. "And fucking ask his fucking brother," he points a bitter finger, "but I wouldn't be surprised if he still doesn't want to speak up."

Leroi has had it with the secrets, the lies, the drama underground. After everything he has done to show them how much of a family they mean to him and what he'll do to keep them safe, the Meyers have no guts, no fucking audacity to keep anything away from him. But as always, he's back to square one. The pampered brat who's better off wallowing in the light and luxuries and ironically kept in the dark because he's a fucking baby.

"For the good Lord's sake Leroi, we don't have the time for this," comments Drake, rolling his eyes and gingerly holding Purvis' bleeding nose for the Red Cross governor of the school, Pharrell to tend to. Leroi had knocked the bottle over out of freaking out and now the smell of methylated spirit is so pungent in the air that the boys can taste it behind their tongues.

Nixon is crouched, leaning against the wall with his hands over his head. Seraphina has her arms around him trying to comfort him but the sobbing just grows louder.

The prom is dispersing gradually, leaving more and more seniors to their last-minute farewells and mischiefs. Nobody has realized half of the basketball team gone yet and it's all peachy on the top floor.

Upon seeing Leroi ditching him for almost twenty minutes just to dance with Maurice, Kaolin had left out of anger and Purvis followed. They got to the parking lot and that's Kaolin notices someone following him. That person being Purvis and bursted in fury and an array of oral tantrums and the expected death threats if Purvis doesn't lay off his dick.

Then three masked men bounced out of the darkness and onto the boys. Purvis said Kaolin struggled like he expected to be jumped, he managed to knock one of them out cold. Purvis could only land a few kicks before he got pounded, multiple times and forcefully to make him faint. Turns out Purvis is more than the "girly basketballer that should be on the cheerleader team".

"The first thing I know for sure is that this matter shouldn't get to the cops," Leroi warns, pulling on his suit tie. The heat within is nothing compared to what is steaming outside.

"Excuse me?" Seraphina interjects.

"He is talking big drug money and deals. This is near El Chapo shit man. So trust me, Kaolin is going to get into a bigger trouble."

"So what are we going to do? Take a quick a trip to the mall for some tutus, corsets and a China set for a tea party with Griselda and Pablo's cousins? You can't negotiate stuff like this," Gerard says.

Leroi shakes his head. "That's exactly what we're going to do."

"I've a gun," Maurice adds.

"Great. He's gone coo-coo too."

Nixon's low croaky voice interrupts them. "Seven hundred and fifty thousand."

"Huh?"

"He stole it all."

The AC fan is the only thing seeming to move in the sparsely illuminated room but light from the top floor shines in and casting a rotating shadow of the same fan. It's hot and Purvis' low but calm breathing from the spirit burning his flesh resonates eerily across the walls. Along with eyes popping out of sockets and jaws dropping on the tiles.

"He must have intercepted the money yesterday when he asked for some of my hackware," Nixon speaks with building conviction, "it all makes sense now oh my God. That bastard was planning to leave town today, but knowing an angsty motherfucker like him, he could've left immediately Leroi--that was why he asked me to tell Leroi--" Nixon keeps his gaze on Leroi, it staggers before precipitating down his cheeks.