Nirvana.

Paradise.

Zion. Whatever they called the dirty little place, Nylla always hated it.

Neverending range of hills covered with pine trees, cloaking the south-east end of Delshaw town was a perfect camouflage for the mafia business. Delshaw was like a blind spot for the eyes of state's law and administration.

Where there's drugs, there's always guns. Whence came the guns, goons came along. Protection money, drugs, murders...Crime had become Delshaw's official mistress.

Fun fact? The doorway to the 'paradise' was through the pinewoods high school, the only public school of Delshaw. The weakest of the weak and the poorest of the poor enrolled their kids in Pinewoods High school.

Mary Jane, angel's dust, mind detergent - you name the drug. It was always there, just in exchange for petty pennies.

For every victim, there was a predator and for every predator there was a marauder. Delshaw's criminal stratification sustained on one central dogma -survival of the fittest.

Got good grades? Hack some computers, heist some bills and take a fair share.

Athletic much? No problem. Join a gang and voila! The world's at your feet.

Just a pretty li'l girl? Not a worry, motel room is all set ready.

'Is Kaycee one of those pretty li'l girls now?

Or is she even alive?

Am I next?'

Thoughts like these kept Nylla awake at night. Fears like that kept her close to sanity.

There were two simple rules that Nylla followed to avoid from falling prey to Delshaw's misdeeds:
One, keep your head low. No matter what...even if you didn't see the hunk coming at you. You were safe as long as you didn't look him in the eye and hurt his fragile ego.

And rule number two, never ever go any near 'the hive' -the hot ground of pinewoods high school for selling all kinds of recreational stuff. It always buzzed with swarming teenagers.

There was always a group of kids hanging around with musical instruments and metal piercings at all kinds of body parts - the emo kids. Their music was bomb though, or atleast that's what Kaycee used to say. That was the reason she hung around in 'the hive' during her later days.

Nylla had warned Kaycee to stay out of the hive for several times.

"Don't you mother me!" Kaycee had scowled, taking a long drag from her butt-less cigarette. "There's already an evil mother to mother me at home."

Nylla had sighed. It wasn't the first time Kaycee had disregarded her. Kaycee had been acting all weird and different during the time before her disappearance.

"Gone goth?" Nylla had poked fun, when she had found Kaycee with her blonde curls turned jet black overnight and had seen HP. Lovecraft's book of 'Necronomicon' in her backpack.

There were also 'Swashbucklers' - the adventurers, who happened to be adventurous only when they were high on mind detergent.

And of course there were 'vapers', who always said they were weaning off the weed but never actually did. And sadly enough Kevin was one of them now.

It had been four long months of Kevin doing dangerous vape tricks. As cool as it looked, Nylla saw vaping as nothing but burning one's own lungs for no good reason, just like smoking cigarettes.

Randall's 'Vapetech™️' was the one to blame. With Delshaw's loose law enforcement and impotent police services, Randall had become the mafia king of paradise. Several of his vapetech vape shops ran like they were liquor bars. But the victims were Delshaw's innocent younglings.

Noah, Nylla's little sweet brother had been asking about E-cigarettes quite a lot lately.

"Nah... it's just for my school's 'make your city smoke free' project. That's all." Noah used to wave it off, his stubby nose all wrinkled up and curly hair more wrinklier.

While their father shunned him most of the times saying that talking about vaping was like using bad words. He even went ahead and made Noah put his savings into the punishment piggy bank. Upside was Noah had at least stopped bugging Nylla with a big mouthful of questions regarding vaping.

"Noah. Stop staring at them." Nylla warned, her brown eyes rounding.

But Noah, was just being Noah. His sight was fixated to the couple doing cheap vaping tricks with neon light near one of Randall's vape shops beside the cross-roads, his mouth munching chocolate coated popcorns from the friday farmer's market.

A bright pink miniature cloud of vapour gushed out of the stick, a branching blast of electric neon light lit the cloud putting a show of light and colours. Noah's jaw dropped and with it dropped a popcorn kernel.

"Tch!"

Gritting her teeth Nylla jolted him out by honking the horn.

Beep. Beep. Beep!

"What?!" Noah glowered at her sullenly. "I was just checking out that girl. Y'knaw... I'm going through a phaaase." He straightened his back and cleared his throat, "which you obviously don't understand. It's called puberty?"

"Oh really?"

"You wouldn't understand. You don't even have a boyfriend, Nylla." Noah perked his chin up.

"Alright mister. You want to go there, huh?"

"Come on Nylla. You need to get a boyfriend. It's supposed to be the first in your checklist." Noah preached, intersecting his hand to the other palm, like he was an experienced adult with fail-proof advice. "If you have had a boyfriend, you wouldn't have needed a twelve year old to babysit you for your dance classes."

"You..." Nylla narrowed her eyes.

Noah went into a fit of giggles as he missed, very closely, from Nylla's angry cat-scratch hands.

"It's not over yet..." Nylla quickly grabbed the steering back as the traffic started to move.

WC -899