Spencer could tell that Sal was still pissed at him as they played basketball. The court was one he’d found during his nighttime wanderings. It was surrounded by a grove of trees, which served as a kind of courtyard for a nearby cluster of university administrative buildings. The offices were closed for the weekend, but their burning white surveillance lights threw strangely angled shadows onto the court.
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The Dirty Kids (Part Three of Seven)
After Spencer downed his bottle of Robitussin, they drove, skirting the edges of town, where the strip malls gave way to surrounding crops of corn and soybeans. They came across a 24-hour Meijer and wandered through aisles of blinding white fluorescence until, chastened by the black surveillance camera domes on the ceilings high above them, they hurried up to the automated checkout counter with their chosen wares: Spencer, a new Spalding basketball; and Sal, a mango he’d been carrying around the store clutched against his chest like a newborn. Then they got back into the car and headed back toward campus, taking bites out of the orange-green skin of mango and spitting chunks of pulp out of their windows. They laughed deliriously as Future’s “I’m Trippin’” played from Spencer’s playlist.
Astronaut at the same time
Gone to Mars at the same time
Pluto Jupiter the same time
Pick a planet the same time
I’m trippin’, I feel ignorant
Keep rollin’, keep sippin’
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The Dirty Kids – Part Two (of Seven)
Spencer and Sal had known each other for as long as either could remember, but had only been friends since middle school. Spencer grew up in a subdivision of well-manicured lawns and streets named after wildflowers. Sal lived across the thoroughfare, on a block populated by run-down apartment buildings and small, five-room houses with weed-choked lawns strewn with broken plastic toys and battered lawn furniture.
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Introduction
I am a Gen X lawyer, powerlifter, music afficionado, veteran record collector, beginner guitar player, husband, and father (not in that order). I started writing short fiction in 1999, then took an extended break from 2002 until 2021, in which time I wasted my twenties partying in Chicago; got my JD from a Big Ten law school (summa cum laud for anyone keeping score); began my career with the prestigious, workaholic, and very evil law firm Wolfram & Hart*; got married and had two children; and nursed an ever increasing alcohol habit.
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The Dirty Kids – Part One (of Seven)
Spencer sat at the wheel of the Honda Civic his father had given him as a high school graduation present, holding an open eight-ounce bottle of Maximum Strength Robitussin in his lap. It was mid-October—homecoming Saturday at the State University—and he had the engine running in the parking lot of a drugstore about a half mile off campus.
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