Kasper and I are smashing fluorescent light tubes on the ground behind the Dollar Tree, swinging them down like clubs. We found them sticking out from the store’s dumpster, then a handful of large industrial bulbs which we treat like precious jewels, especially after Kasper lets the first one slip before he even gets a toss off; it falls with a depressing pop and it’s agreed that I will handle the bulbs, since I was fifth in the rotation freshman year until Mr. Gedtz found me huffing in a Port-a-John I forgot to lock.

“You decide where you’re going?” Kasper says.
“No.”
“I’m going to Penn State McKeesport,” he says, handing me a bulb. “My parents say the degree is just as good as main campus.”
“How good is any degree that had pedophiles coaching football, though.”
“I don’t play football.”
“Because you don’t apply yourself,” I say, hurling a lightbulb so fast and gorgeous that it loses solidity. It leaves my hand and blends into the air, a burnt-out sun exploding against the Dollar Tree’s DELIVERIES ONLY sign, turning glass into stardust.

“Your parents haven’t told you you have to go to college?”

“They said I either have to do that, get a job, or leave.” Kasper and I copped a couple 40s of Hurricane from a kid we know who works at the grocery store. They were like sludgy acid, but it helped to laugh at the bottle’s backhanded motto: Brace Yourself for the Mellow Taste.

“So they might kick you out?” Kasper picks up a half-smoked cigarette and smells it, winces, then puts it down. We’re both buzzed. “Where would you go if you didn’t go to school or have a job?”

“That’s probably the point. It’s like that Devo song, ‘Freedom of Choice,’ where you could either have a handgun or a grenade.”

“You listen to weird music.”

“And you’re too pale to be Greek,” I say. “You’re probably adopted.”

I will pick grenade, I think, gently taking another bulb from the dumpster and lobbing it, hand over shoulder, high up. It arcs above and falls a couple feet in front of us, but leaves no crater. Aside from us, there is hardly any sound nearby. It is so quiet I can hear distant stoplights swaying in the wind.

“Well, you gotta do something,” Kasper says. He doesn’t get that my parents can’t afford to put me through school like his, even at a sister campus, so school isn’t actually an option because I’m not hopeful like other kids who are taking financial aid and think the country is going to collapse and everyone’s loans will evaporate. It’s cool to read online articles about the Pentagon preparing for widespread chaos from Seattle to Miami—how the ninety-nine percent will eat the rich—but none of our debts are going anywhere. None of us are going anywhere. This is all there is.

“I’ll figure it out,” I lie. We’re all out of lights so we launch our Hurricane bottles against the wall. I forget to take mine out of the brown paper bag, so the collision is muffled.

“If I can get my own place off-campus, you can stay with me,” Kasper suggests. “Just say fuck it to all this.”

“That won’t solve anything,” I say, shaking bits of glass out of my hair, brushing it off my clothes. “It’s alright.”

“Seriously dude, you won’t have to pay rent or anything.”

“Neither will you.” I shove my dust-covered hands deep into my jacket pockets.

“Shut up,” he laughs.
“Okay.”
And I do. I shut up, and I stand in place, shifting my weight side to side. Remnants crunch beneath my shoes. Inside my pockets I rub my thumbs against my fingers and wonder if the powder coating them from the fluorescent lights is dangerous. I shake my head. It wouldn’t matter if it was.

Kasper is looking off at Overton Manor, these fancy condos high on the hill across the river. They’re not that far away—one day he might even live in one—but the closest he’s probably ever been to them is when we go fishing down below. One time he caught a condom. I pull my hands from my pockets and cup them around Kasper’s face, kiss- ing him deeply, as if I’m giving him air to survive this swirling cloud of cancer we’ve surrounded ourselves in. His body goes limp. His mouth doesn’t move. He simply does nothing.

I open my eyes and see Kasper staring at me, mouth hung. How can he be seven months older than me? Looking like a baby deer, his face marked by phosphor handprints. He mutters something I can’t hear and runs past me; by the time I think to turn around he’s so far in the distance I can barely squish him between my fingers.

I don’t know why I did that. Sometimes it feels like things are happening. But everything is happening in my head, and when I look around nothing actually is. I think I would have kissed anyone at that moment. I think I don’t really want to be here—or anywhere—but am, still.