The flint wheel of the lighter scratches for the hundredth time and in the next trial finally pushes a line of fire.

"About fuckin' time!" Harvey shoots a mouthful of smoke and it disappears into the hazy mist as the blackened background sleeps in utter disturbance.

We are at Elvis Ridge.

It is a common sight to see in this part of town. A bunch of loose women who will soon disappear before midnight, a scattered flock of rough teenagers in their stressed clothes, constantly puffing and fidgeting around to see if someone known has recognized them. A few drunken homeless men who sleep anywhere they like and their haunting stillness often scares the adolescent into wondering if one of them have passed away and became a corpse.

In short, a rioted place to properly understand how rude life can be for some people and their performance against Universe's bad behavior.

Dad blames the shambles of Elvis Ridge onto the economy.

My mother's rooting the reasons on post parental issues, accompanied by adolescent trouble.

I nod at both even both I have never been significantly advised to stay away from there.

Mostly, my parents must have forgotten about announcing a parameter so obvious like this. But the actual reason is their sciolism. Though they don't necessarily treat me as an adult since to this day, I have to sneak around the house in search of Margaret's identity.

Lately, I have been thinking about her, only because of Dolorous. And I am only reminded about Dolorous by cause of Jackie.

Jackie hasn't been to school for 2 days since we are currently smoking away our Friday night. Clay, wearing the adult-responsible pants in the pack, has announced that he's just suffering from a fever and instinctively, Harvey made a joke about Jackie being pregnant.

He is pregnant, impregnated by the prospect that a person of her excitement, ecstasy, Dolorous, is ceasing to exist with him. She isn't there anymore, holding his hand and constantly flashing a smile on his face through every snap of the camera shutter.

I can imagine Jackie laying in his wall side bed, drunk and intoxicated with the wonder the last two weeks have been. And occasionally, he gets up to walk around the lounge with no sense of purpose as to where he's going. Just wildly roaming around his parent's bedroom.

And he will end up peaking at the family guestroom, just to throw one nostalgic, melancholic gaze at the room where a undoubtedly special person in his life rested and woke him up every morning for two weeks.

With the promise that life would be golden again and youth is there for the taking.

Dolorous isn't dead. She's just back to the place she belonged. In Birmingham, going through her silly pointers notes on how to write a proper hate mail to someone.

I think of Dolorous and Jackie and the only word I can hang on their necks will be . . . . .

"PATHETIC"

"Here, have a whiff!" Harvey seeps through and half of the cigarette dangles between his index and middle finger as he waves it around Kenny's face.

The cigarette looks like a little gun because the end leaves a smoking trail every time a gust of wind checks in whilst the branches creek ominously.

A PATHETIC little gun.

"I'm. . . gud." Kenny whistles, making the edges around his lips glister in chips oil.

Harvey blows a disappointed smoke as he looks around.

"Frey." He knocks his head back and hands the cig to me without looking.

I have earned his concrete trust and admiration since I was the one who was willing to get involved for his own selfish reasons, during the fight with Denise.

I hover the yellow papered burning stick near my nose for a second or two before passing it back to him.

Harvey steals this special wrapped cigarettes from his father's desk in his house. Mainly because his father spends such a busy time with phone calls and assorted business actions that businessmen do, he carelessly leaves cases around his room.

Ripe for the picking.

The fourth mortal, standing beside us has no actual interest in talking since Clay is currently too busy being an individual.

An individual in a different sense, other than the honorable definition of a man who's hatching to take over the world or something ambitious in similar scale.

I know he's not suffering silence because of the presence of ambition but for Rommery.

I haven't said a word to him as he said exactly nothing to me too.

They have sat down together in the cafeteria and Rommery wasn't aware of the secretive dance the three of us were having since she chirped their undisclosed information to me during Advanced Math.

"Frey ! Psst. . . here."

I looked back to answer promptly that I know nothing of quantum geometry to whoever that thought I did. But Rommery said nothing other than sliding a piece of paper to me with a loud, ecstatic warble.

It did not hold any luscious, juvenile invites such as a secret invitation to meet with her under the bleachers so I can find out what her tongue tastes like. It just held 11 pointers on "Environment Awareness and Necessary steps"

"Ok? Anything more?"

The annoying, aggravating voice of Mr. Rovet's lecture of Triangle and it's properties faded out as I realized the double meaning this note is going to provide.

The omens are all pointing to the same direction.

Clay's recent involvement with her, the sprinting with clasped hands, sitting at lunch and now her acute interest in the same topic of debate.

"12. Use of solar and Biofuel . . . # ( Alternative energy required )"

That's all I wrote before I handed the note back to her.

She told me everything else when we were walking down to the lockers in the hall.

And everything I thought, appeared to be true.

"You know, Kenny. I have been thinking." Starts Harvey as he picks the bottle from the lining of the railing and swallows an useless amount of cola.

Harvey likes to hold the bottle just on the nook of its mouth because whenever he spies on his father's drinking buddies, jointly getting tipsy in the lounge, they grip the bottles in the same fashion.

"Ya?" Ken inquires inattentively as his hands dive down into the bag of chips.

Donuts, ham sandwiches, burgers and some dislocated fries are mixed together in one pouch. All are the spending of Harvey because he has been good this whole week and his mother saw it as her achievement of the century, finally succeeding at making her son behave.

" You know. . . ." He pauses as the cigarette dangles between his fingers in a fashionable manner, giving him the edge of characteristic depth.

I wonder if Harvey is still copying his father's friends's borrowed approach to strike as more attractive.

"People should act like what they are. Men should be men and someone else. . . you know should let the nature be. . . be what it wants.

"Are you talking to me, Harve'?"
"Oh. Am I, Ken?"
"Sounds like it. I could barely understand what you were trying to say over your bitching."
"I bitch? Well, you woke up on the wrong side of reason."

Harvey's cigarette flies off to the nearby gutter as it suffers a viking's funeral, slowly disappearing under the metal piping.

"If you have something to say, then spit it out."

I grunt a smirk since Harvey might actually form a spitball which will explain everything he's intending to say.

"Oh, I do have something to say. But you can never listen because your big mouth is always running and telling me what to do."

The air runs still and all we can hear are the sound of Ken's munching, his molar teeth gritting up and down, escorted by hooting and screeching sound of wasted youths in the background.

I predict this talk as Harvey's well known parental, coddling issues which he never discloses to anyone.

"Alright, Harve'. Let's hear 'em." Answers Clay as he throws the plastic cup into the gutter and leans onto the railing.

For people who are well aware of plastic's bad effects on nature, we are very ignorant.

Harvey might have been looking for a fight, subconsciously, an argument would have eased his frustrated wish of a tiresome fight.

But acceptance has dismantled his juvenile plans.

"Um. . . um. Yeah. . what I mean to say." Harvey now sounds like a feeble opponent which Clay and I faced in a debate, few months ago. I wasn't standing in the podium but reciting the bullet points in my mind as Clay firmly finished his part, after tumbling at the start.

The rebuttal held the promise of an impossible argument that could go on for some time more, bringing a bad effect for us but the opponent speaker lost the edge of his lips as he mumbled. I was trying my best to hide the large, white grin in the front row and Clay was busy with the same mission.

One man's stutter is another man's winning prose.

"Yes, what you meant to say is . . ." Clay stands leaning on the railing, being fully aware of the fact that Harvey has lost the punch of his inflamed words. So he's playing the role of the teacher who knows the student is total gobshite but just letting him hang on the hook for the sake of it.

"Listen, Clay." He begins again.

I can see his chest puffing intensely in the anticipation of what he's about to say but my money's betting against him because knowing Harvey who's lazy and simply sometimes annoyed by his own existence, he'll probably lose resolve halfway, if not in the beginning.

"Today. . . lunch."

"Yeah, this lunch. And?" Clay nooks his head and his back arches forward to throw Harvey the insulting feature of tease.

"I was just... listen Denise is. . ."
"Yes, yes. Denise. What about him?" He jaunty rubs his brows as a fortune teller who;s going through a headache in the middle of an ongoing tell.

I am at the brink of laughter and the spray of cola will exactly shower Harvey who's standing in the spraying zone.

"Listen. . . I was just fuckin' around with him." Harvey finally manages to deliver after a gulp of the drink bulges down his long neck.

"Really, Harvey? I thought you weren't gay."

I fail to contain myself and it's mostly Kenny's fault since his booming, loud laughter thumps the unsuspecting, sarcastic, smoke filled air and echoes down to the brick shade in the corner.

The tangy brew almost hangs in mid air before the air becomes a slave to universal motion and the beverage splashes down on Harvey's shoes.

There are little pee stains on the end, long strands of his black jeans.

"Get fucked, Harve' ." Kenny yells on the top of his voice before subsiding his hands into the packet in search for new oil puffed crunches.

Harvey crafts one angry look at Kenny and in the midst of his loud, juvenile laughter, my spitting of drinks has been ignored as Harvey jumps away late and lands near the railing.

"That was a good 'une."
"You damn bet."

I chuckle feverishly and the hysterical overflow ends with Harvey's loud, annoying tone which intends for us to shut up.

"Al'ight. Alright. I screwed up. I mucked it up, okay?"
"Yeah, like you screwed Denise up."

"Intimate, huh?" I throw in the last dirt of mockery since failing to shut us up with verbal abuse, Harvey has resorted to swatting at us like moths and Kenny, being overweight and practically not agile drops the sack of fries on the dark, smelly faded footpath.

They roll around and Harvey smashes a few under his shined shoes to ensure that he is protesting heavily against the subtle indication towards his " plausible homosexual interaction " with Denise.

"The thing is. . . that I was just teasing him. . . it was Denise. Trust me, it was that Dense gayfruit that started it first."

The hooligan song that we started in the interval has died down since Harvey has once again managed to bring the uncomfortable topic in the mix of our mouths.

Clearly, in our education environment, our teachers in ethics class had told us about the slight gender discrimination God has succeeded to perform with mankind. I have forgotten the statistics because I was paying too much attention to the window but every kid in a long sized number can be hanging in the balance of being homosexual, by birth.

"By birth" is the phrase that stuck to me because I was kept wondering who had the misfortune to dangle a womanly mind in a male's body. It stayed with me for the remaining week until Clay and I joked about it on some occasion but I still recall the epiphany.

What has someone done before even materializing to this Universe to earn a lottery ticket and become a walking freak who cannot decide if a half naked woman turns him on or a man's rough beard is attractive.

"Alright, don't believe me, eh?" Harvey stops the rushing pace of his feet and throws a concrete look at me as I crouch down to grab another bottle.

"Okay, ask Frey. He's been there. He's seen it. Now go 'un. Ask him."

I look slightly unconvinced and similarly ignorant to the cause of saving Harvey's moth eaten morals but for the sake of the banter, Clay puffs his face and droops down to the brick wall as he mimics a judge. Banging the empty, glass bottle whilst poking the edges of his imaginary glass with attention.

"Alright. Jury. I'll see to it. Frey."
"Yes, Fudge." I declare myself as I jump away towards the railing and hold it in a playful, afraid manner.

"Did this man or should I say. . . birdbrain. . . attack Denise, commonly know as the Drama Club Juliet, precisely at 2:18 this afternoon, near the cafeteria walls at... ."

"Oh, Clay, stop fuckin around. Frey, just tell 'im."
"Clay, Denise did start it. I mean.." I am deprived of finishing my answer since Harvey uninviting butts in to reclaim his innocence.

No one told him to explain himself and if he didn't solicitously disclose the incident tonight, no one would ever say anything to him about it.

My guess lies in the believe that, even though Harvey misbehaves to almost everyone without the burden of sympathy, he tries to get the approval of his character from us, especially Clay because of reasons easy to see.

"See, I told you he pushed me first."
"And, didn't you do anything to tease him?"
"I might have. . . it was all a joke? Wasn't it? He knew. Frey's there and seen it all."
"You know how kids are, Clay."

"Do I wanna?" He flails his eye in annoyance and in the hope of gaining the wanted consent from Clay, Harvey, for the first time, in a long time, shuts the trap that he came to call his mouth.

If our little gang, who is currently facing the hollow absence of Jackie, is symmetrical to a family, Clay has easily claimed the chair of being the Voice of Reason since in the hazy crossroads of confusion, about everything and anything at all, everyone tries to get a chat with him.

It works a little different with Harvey or seems to be at this moment because for his rebellious acts with his parents, he has no one to seek solace from other than Clay who's words of advice have the gravity to be seen as a form of achievement.

According to my views, after Jackie, Harvey is most likely to have bondage troubles with his family. But Jackie gets away with committing that crime because his parents might actually get a divorce at some point in the near future.

Unlike, Harvey who is an expert of creating mountains out of mole hills in his perfect life.

He'll never admit it but he suffers from affection issues, in the parental guide, commonly know as coddling.

I know this accidentally when I was about to enter my parent's room on a busy Monday night. Fortunately, it was some business occasion that put my father next to my mother in bed and my approach stopped prematurely when I heard my name in the conversation with plump sounds of lotion bottles being chapped.

Corresponding to my mother, I may have the possibility to have affection troubles. My father quickly tried to counter it by saying if he spends too much time with me, he'll start to coddle me and I'll be a limp forever.

My mother halted her lips and one lotion plotch later, she calmly answered that with his work, he could never spend that much of time to enforce coddling. To her vies, he doesn't put in enough minutes to perform tenderness.

I see it in a different way.

"Look, Harvey." Clay starts and from his attentive posture of his back arching over to Harvey's worried disposition tells me the amount of maturity Clay has earned from nameless sources.

"We always screw around and that's fun, isn't it?"

Harvey nods understandingly.

"But there are some limits to it. You know Denise is not actually gay, right?"

"He isn't?" Harvey's voice portraits the exact emotion he has provided when he received the passing marks on his Biology Labs.

"Hell, no. You know, the girl from double Chemistry. Probably in sec G or something." Clay's hands flares around his chest in a particular fashion; one of the tips to attract the listener during debate speech entries.

"Sec F." Harvey answers, fully not understanding who the mystery girl is.
"You know, the one with always one ponytail. What's her name again? Um. . . Patty What'sherface."

"Isn't she in C?" Kenny joins as the salted peanuts crush a beat under his frontal molars.

"Whatever. She hangs around with Denise. They are both in the plays. Always. They're like a thing."
"Really? So he is straight?"
"Yeah !"

I might have been misinformed or the most likely possibility is that whatever girl Clay is describing now doesn't exist or even if she does, she is not intimate with Denise. I am not a subscriber to High School Gossip magazine, run solely though Praisley a.k.a Pastry's mouth.

But I come to know about these things because on Friday's third period, I am painfully appointed to sit in front of her as she preaches the news of class incidents to the surrounded girls. Who touched who's hands, a certain someone wrote a little poem for a boy and which high school skank was seen around a nerd during lunch.

Pastry makes me lose faith in juvenile humanity because all sorts of disgusting, untrue rumors flourish from her mouths and no matter the news, the skinny girls along with the fat ones, all synchronize a timed 'aw' to whatever she says.

But having Pastry in the back seat has also provided an academic advantage since her endless talking bored me enough to put more care to Chemistry itself.

So, for her and her hideously gross stories, I am keeping a good stand in Chemical.

"That's not the point, Harvey."
"Yeah, that is not. . what the point is." I cannot tell if Kenny is trying to imitate Harvey's stuttering speech or if he has turned intoxicated from all the fast food he swallowed in the past half an hour.

I didn't know oil was eye popping.

"I know we screw around with people but that's just fun. Getting in a fight is getting in trouble. Especially it's pathetic if you get into trouble with someone so. . . dumb like Denise."

"Yeah, yeah. " Kenny raps as he slip his hand near his side and a can of Premium Delmar, "non alcoholic" root bear with much alcohol in it appears near his mouth before it returns to its safety of Kenny's stuffed pockets of his jacket.

Kenny's the real culprit when it comes to drowning drinks secretively. It's too soon to tell but this might be the start of an unwanted alcoholism.

I say nothing.

"Besides, just imagine the mess if you do get caught. Then your mom and dad will have to come down. You know how the Principal is."
"Yeah. A well, gay snitch."

At this point, Harvey has become an annoyance since every sentence of him in the past half an hour had the word gay in it, in some way.

I am wearing a fully miffed disposition, pointed at Harvey and Clay, being the matured adult in this scenery, has picked up on my bothersome behavior as he pulls Harvey away for a short walk near the railings.

We can hear the fluttering of teenage defiance and voice of reason, muddled into one conversation.

"It won't be any fun if your mom has to come down here now would it? Well, it would be a scene but. . ."
"No, my mom's gonna kill me later if she finds me doing this."

Harvey is not fooling anyone with his lies because of his constant irritating personality goes to show the fact that his mother plays a very pathetic role in terms of his character build.

"So, Frey. What's the shiz with Jackie?"

I fall momentarily flabbergasted with fear because after Harvey's outraging existence, the next disturbing element of my social life falls down to Jackie.

And the way Kenny started the roll of the conversation with that topic prods me to think that secretively, Kenny's a mind reading psychic ( there are fake psychics that cannot mind read ) and he acts innocent and and dumb to concrete his obscure, freaky gift.

"I dunno." I answer as I swoon towards Kenny's pillaresque stance and reach down to grasp a sandwich.

"Is it because Dolorous left?"
"Meh. . . who knows."
"Huh, shit. I quite liked her."
"Oh, really, Harvey?"

I craft a giddy tone as I retract myself back to the brick wall and lean on it with my constant gaze at Kenny who has become alerted from my change of pitch.

"I mean. . . not. . ."
"What do you like about her? Hmm?" I'm breaking my tease because of simultaneous bouts of chuckles which are slipping from my mouth.

"Is it her hair? Kenny, is it?" I poke at him and without answering his drooping eyes switches away from me to the extension of the park where fuzzy silhouettes of baked teenagers and homeless folks are gathering.

"Is the way she smiles? Or is it her 6 feet tall body? Huh, Kenny?"
"Oh, fuck off, Frey." Kenny rages playfully as his hands ram forward to shove me away but I dodge just in time to evade his strong bulldoze.

I huff a few constant breaths for the unscheduled show of physical attributes and when the breaths fall in uniforms, I lean on the lake railing and harmonize.

"Ken and Dolorous, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G."

In the presence of darkness, with a few needles of light rays, I spot the dangle of an half eaten doughnut just in time to sway way from it but it deflects away from my shoulder and plumps onto the dark water.

My hand is in place and positioned to lob the sandwich at his face but Ham and Cheese are too good to waste, especially in this occasion of teasing Kenny with someone like Dolorous.

Someone like Dolorous.

Clearly, I have thought of her enough and maybe a bit more than enough but yet she still exists in a label less box in my attic room. Mainly for the lack of my commitment to what to call her. The first draft of the examination of her characteristics rests her as a villain, of sorts, probably social.

After that, I elongated my hypothesis of her act to present her with a name other than an evil mastermind since favoritism towards her has really messed with my concrete idea of everyone's personality.

I can see the prophet and the misguided sheep, a witty and somewhat angry synonym for Clay and Harvey, making their way back to the Brick wall. For the absence of my playful act and retaliation with the waste of fast food, Kenny has simmered down to an unlikely halt as he rolls another sip of Delmar.

"Did ya guys see the shade?" Harvey points back to the store house where a low 5 watt bulb is doing its very best to stay alive in the dingy drab.

"What about it?" I ask and my voice quirks a second before it changes from raspy to puberty.

This is a common sign that I have been thinking about Dolarous, lately.

"You know, I got a great idea." He bellows out loudly to the wind and huffs to breathe some air.
"We should get some markers and sign our name on it. You know, like. . . a sign or something."

I stop to convey one look at Kenny before it goes to Clay who is wearing a happy complexion on his face from his idealistic win over Harvey.

"That doesn't sound half bad."

"Yah, sounds good." I join after hearing Clay's approval. As much as I hate to admit the prophet characteristics and the myth about wanting his blessing on important things, it is true that his sanction starts everything.

"Um. . . . let's see. When's the next Friday? Or the next Sat?"
"Um. . . what's uh. . . this 25th?"

The simple learning of the date is enough to puzzle us because no one's brain is really putting any actual emphasize on time.

"Ah, screw it. It must be 24th. We should come back and mark our shit done."

This seems like a conclusive sound of our night out and before the request to scram comes out of anyone's mouth, I start my pacing around the steel railing and throw occasional looks at the Lakeside wall.

Unwashed garbage, half drunk beer bottles, tarps of energetic colors and a strong lump of something that is covered with rotten plastic.

It can be a dead body or it can be a collection of some homeless peasant's favorite buckets.

I compare my mind with this mess of the Lakeside wall.

They are both uncannily similar.

"And we better get that Jackie bastard with us. All this sitting at home is gonna make him a woman."

Harvey has definitely learned from the little walk Clay and he took because instead of using his favorite cuss words and adding gay to anything and everything, he chose to say " Woman " . Which is insulting but an improvement, nonetheless.

"What? We leaving?" Kenny hinders the walk as his eyes throw a gaze at the distant smoking.

His premature alcoholism compass is pointing to the mix to find something hard to knock himself out.

"Come on, Kenth. Do ya still want to stay? Just look at this gobsh. . ."

The siren wails just in time and its unexpected presence turns the question into a no brainer as Kenny conjures an uncomfortable smile and coaxes the fast food pouch under his arm.

The three pair of shoes start to walk to the blind alley's entrance and I lag behind to catch any action.

The spinning light seems to provide everyone with migraines as a harmonized loud groan floats from the cusp of the middle. Dimly lit lights are giving me a clear view of a bunch of young men swatting at the quad of cops who are questionably taking small steps with care.

The crisp sound of a smashed bottle throws me a fit as well as the others since we are all currently running in a 100 meter race.

Instinctively, I lag behind from the trio because usually Jackie's tight waist needs a boost to get up from the 6 foot fence, on the east side of the Alley.

"Come on, boy." Harvey frustratingly kicks at the wall as I slowly jump out from the top.

His irritation is mostly at me because I am messing his new beginning of being a good boy.

The lungs are put to a rest as one other police car skids away from the sidewalk and towards Elvis Ridge in agile urgency.

"See you dongs on Monday!" Harvey yells unnecessarily as he thumps Kenny's back and starts his sprint towards the cafe, around the corner.

The three of us are left to enjoy and indulge ourselves by the comfort of a night's bus ride as we jog away.

In this interval of action and talk, I utilize the time in thinking about Dolarous.

"Kenny and Dolorous sitting on a tree."

I imagine them in that posture, huddled.

That's a worrying sight.

The tree should be strong and stout, like a good oak if Kenny and Dolorous both wants to stay without falling down.