“Pregnoids,” said Spike. They watched the tuk-tuk pull away from the curb, carrying Nine, Rhonda, and the money. “He’s totally gonna grab her tits.”

“Hey, words, man,” said Hawk, but he was laughing on the inside.

“What? He said they’re swollen ‘cause she hatchin’ an egg.”

“Christ.”

“You jealous?”

The kid was fishing for a reaction.

“No, and what the hell did you do to your hair?”

“Oh, you noticed! Sun-kissed. Rhonda did them for me.” Spike took one of his soft dreads between his grubby fingers and inspected it. The blond highlights accentuated his caramel complexion.

“I bet we can beat em to the Cage.” Hawk dropped his skateboard onto the cement, wet from a flurry that had fallen and melted. Judging from the low clouds reflecting the flashing lights of Asiatown, it would probably snow again before morning.

“Oh, hell yeah,” said Spike.

Hawk surveilled the alley in front of his building one last time: the woman selling dumplings, their steamy essence evaporating into the air. The red and blue lights of the restaurant across the street cast on the crumbling cement in front of them. That man who tended the trash barrel fire with wooden detritus he collected; now he warmed his hands (gloves with the fingers cut off, a tattered jacket from his military deployment) over the leaping flames, skin darker than Nine’s but different, a bit of the South Asian russet to him, a scar across the bridge of his nose and under his eyes. He kept to himself and, at times, kind of mumbled in the slang, but watched everything like a meticulous recorder. He was handsome but had that edge of a fucked-up veteran. That was all. The coast was clear.

They skated the smooth sidewalks of Minnesota Avenue. On their left, the old, historical, red brick buildings of downtown Billings. On their right, the jungle of Asiatown: low shanty shops, food stalls, and family businesses alight and flickering with elaborate LED signs written in scripts and logographs from far-off lands that were now sinking into the sea or had been swallowed altogether. Large cement tenements rose into the rolling clouds where their tippy-tops faded, home to the countless and growing population of climate refugees, of whom Hawkson Nguyễn, if only by half, was one.

Spike gave a hand signal and turned a block from where the sidewalk ended in a pile of gravel. They skated into the density of the BAT on a narrow side street, weaving in and out of pedestrians and around markets that had stolen street space to display their wares. A tall, White man carrying a tray of bamboo steamers cussed, “Seki-fuckers!”

Spike narrowly avoided him.

“Sorry!” Hawk shouted as he sped by. The smell of rich broth, meat, and garlic assaulted his nostrils, making his mouth water.

He’d not eaten all day long. Maybe he’d grab a slice of pizza at the Cage. It was the best. He’d done a couple of extra jobs, so he had a little pocket money. He wanted to do something nice for his friends, especially Spike. Let him skate. Let him get lost in a VR game and forget about his troubles.

Christ, those fucking dreams.

The narrow path curved and opened slightly, the market falling away as it started to descend. Hawk copied Spike by crouching to pick up speed as they zipped from the sparkling lights into unattended shadows in the deepening night.

Blocks away, he could already hear the rhythmic pounding of the Cage. Spike dared to look back, a wicked smile on his face. Fuck, he was gonna take the shortcut. Hawk shook his head in warning and mouthed, “No.” The boy gave him the finger, leaned back at just the right moment as the road diverged at a wedge-shaped building, and was gone, and Hawk was alone.

He tucked, grabbed the corners of his board and focused on the road ahead. The wind ripped through his hair and stung his eyes. He barely missed smashing into a delivery motorcycle as it cut in front of him. Out of the corner of his vision, he glimpsed a long black car and a dark figure moving into the shadow. Then he was skating past kids loitering and smoking. Their AR glasses flickering, their laughter and languages mixing together, the music ever louder, and the cold smell of water and the rushing river a constant, basic drone.

The road ended in a long ramp into the hundred-year-old warehouse, elevated on massive concrete pillars over the river. Spike stood at the top, resting his head on his skateboard behind his neck, a kiss-my-ass grin plastered across his face.

“You’re gonna kill yourself one of these days,” chided Hawk.

“Maybe. But until then, I win,” bragged the boy.

Together, they entered the sprawling arcade and skate park, the pulsating beat of the music drowning out his thoughts. A giant gas heater blasted hot air down from the rafters. A throng of dancers undulated their bodies as they wove in and out of holographic projections of stars and planets and ghostly ether-dancers. Spinners, most of them. He had to grab Spike by the scruff of his hoodie and pull him away from the sight of two lovers practically mating in the open. The boy feigned a shocked expression and said something, but it was lost in the sultry chaos.

A fat man wearing small, round AR glasses sat at a desk guarding access to the skate ramps. He was distracted arguing with a heavy-breasted woman in net stockings and flashing fingernails, and did not see them drop in on their boards without paying and slip into anonymity among the other skaters.

The music dimmed behind them. Spike boasted his ground tricks: a kick flip, a rolling handstand that sent his t-shirt and hoodie falling up around his armpits, showing off the taut muscles of his torso—making sure Hawk saw him—then landed a flawless impossible, as if he was born on a skateboard. He kicked off to the far bank, where he waited in a crouch like a superhero, not moving until Hawk rolled to a stop beside him.

“D’ja see that?” The boy beamed, as if he were God of the ramps, as if nothing could hurt him, as if by hubris alone he was invincible.

“Nope, missed it, sorry.”

Spike glared and let his pink tongue dart out between his lips in the trendy gesture practiced by the kids of the Cage—half enticing, half insulting.

There was that nagging tingle in his solar plexus, the sensation he’d get before the nightmares came with their clawed phantoms, as if someone was watching. He looked back to where they’d come from but saw only skaters and, beyond them, the lights of the dance floor and the dancers.

On this side of the ramps were the PC-Bangs, small shops packed with computers and dredged-up VR units. Here, the kids, mostly of Japanese and Korean ancestry, stared into the simulated war beyond their glasses. Their fingers working the air in front of them, striving to reach the top of the leader boards; in their young way, claiming a semblance of honor for their ancestral homelands now sunk beneath the waves.

“Let’s play!” said Spike.

Hawk shook his head, took the boy’s hand, and led him up the stairs to the Loft.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

The Loft, part shopping mall, part food court, was the open second level of the Cage. When you were tired of games, dancing, or skating, you could escape to this relatively secluded place to make out or peer down on the action below. In one corner was a large theater with an array of different HD screens; tonight, each showing an episode of Eternal Love. It was packed with a gaggle of giggling girls taking selfies whenever a heartthrob appeared on the large screens behind them. Spike dropped his board and skated past the food stalls, rubbing his tummy. He sucked it in to look like a waif.

These shops sold street-food favorites such as banh mi, siu mai, tteokbokki, and steaming noodles of a dozen different ethnicities. There were the milk tea shops, coffee shops, slushy stores, and the aptly named Buffalo Chip Pizza that never, never rested. Operated by a dangerous-looking man with a handlebar mustache, pompadour, and white shirt, who was always either drinking his coffee, smoking a cigarette, or spinning a pizza dough into a level plane above his head.

“Hawk, can we get some pizza? Please, please, please!” begged Spike. It was his favorite place, despite his frenemy repartee with the owner. An one-time insinuation of pepperoni shortage had been lodged by the boy, and the man of some northern name had thereafter indignantly loaded up Spike’s pizzas with absurd amounts of extra meat.

“Later, let’s wait for your brother and Rhonda and do this shit.”

Knowing he’d get fed either way, Spike skated to a large, round, stainless steel table on the balcony. They sat and stared down at it all and waited.

The business at the Cage was hypnotic to watch, a microcosm of Asiatown reflected in its youth. A cacophony of cultures trying to survive and etch out an existence on refuge granted by the state of Montana.

“I bet they stopped for a BJ,” said the boy, his dirty sneakers kicked up on the railing.

“Fuck, do you ever stop?”

“No.” Spike pulled out Hawk’s phone that he’d taken from the apartment and logged on to the Cage’s free internet.

Maybe the kid was right. Asiatown was safe, mostly. Hawk didn’t worry about Nine; his friend could handle himself if he could keep his sarcastic mouth shut, a trait his little brother obviously shared. But Rhonda was a true outsider, a trailer trash girl from Billings. She was soft, and she’d been known to freak out at the most inopportune times. If it wasn’t for the fact she loved Nine—and that she was pregnant with his child and he wouldn’t let her out of his sight—and Nine loved her, Hawk’s sphere would have never coincided with hers, and she would have never even given him the time of day.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Spike said.

“Huh? You ever seen a penny before?”

“No, but it means—”

“I know what it means.”

“What the hell are you thinking about?”

“Where the hell’s your brother?”

Spike did the crude gesture with the invisible phallus and his tongue.

After a bit... “You love Nine,” he said without looking up from the phone.

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

“He’s my friend. Just my friend.”

“Dude, it’s okay. I know a lot of fags.”

Hawk raised an eyebrow. “Like who?”

Spike looked up, furrowing his brow, thinking really deep, then with his middle finger pointed at Hawk, he mouthed silently, “Like you” or “Fuck you.” Hawk couldn’t tell.

The boy jumped to his feet and pointed. “There they are!”

Down below, Nine was guiding Rhonda on the walkway next to the ramps. He had a protective arm around her, and she had her fingers shoved into her ears.

Hawk rolled his eyes.

Spike saw him. “Rhonda gaaaa!” said the boy in the slang.

“Tuk-Tuk double booked,” said Nine as he plopped down. Rhonda slipped off her shoes and put her feet on his lap. He absentmindedly began to rub them.

Hawk tried not to stare at her heel, pushing into his crotch.

Nine reached into his jacket and tossed the envelope onto the table.

“She’s here,” said Hawk.

From the stairs, a middle-aged woman dressed like a schoolteacher in slacks and pumps headed deliberately in their direction. When she got to their table, she looked down on him with motherly disapproval.

“Hawk,” spoke Mrs. Olsen in her slight Norwegian accent, “Thor hopes this isn’t for you.”

“I don’t spin,” he said.

Mrs. Olsen was a representative of the drug dealer known only as Thor. As anonymous as he was legend, no one outside his tight circle could identify him, but Hawk always pictured a mountain of a man with a horned helmet wielding battle axes and machine guns. His syndicate, like many, had slowly been pushed abroad by the endless war between the West and FEEN and the shrinking real estate due to the rising ocean levels.

The woman took a seat at the end of the table and set a small, blue pillbox in front of her. “This is the fourth time you’ve purchased L3 from us this year. That’s twenty-eight thousand dollars. A lot of money for a kid.”

“I got the money.” He pushed the envelope past Spike. The boy was lost in his own little world of social media—or pretended to be. But Hawk knew Spike saw all with his curious, wondering, beautiful eyes that twinkled with undiscovered possibility and an equal share of mischief.

She looked at the envelope for a moment, then back at Hawk. “It’s come to Thor’s attention that someone has been selling dabs in Billings. Three soccer moms were hospitalized up in the Heights last week.”

“I’m not selling dabs.”

“You’re not selling dabs. You’re not using it. Like I said, a lot of money for nothing.”

“I got a job,” said Hawk.

“A job?” She looked them over, picked up the pillbox, and put it in her pocket.

“Please,” said Nine. “It’s for my mom.”

“It’s always for somebody else.” She started to walk away.

“Hawk, what the hell? Stop her. Mom needs that.”

“Hey, wait. Please,” called Hawk, but she kept walking. He shut his eyes in frustration so he would not cry and said louder than he intended, “I sell my ass.”

She stopped.

In their little company in that loft in the corner of the Cage, sequestered from the night’s fun, time seemed to slow down.

“Hawk,” spoke Nine, his voice breaking.

He looked at the tall, dark boy, his strong presence, his pleading eyes. “What? Is there a problem with that? Where else would this money come from, huh? How do you think I live? How do you think I pay rent for that fucking hole? I suck cock too! So, I guess you’re right.”

Mrs. Olsen returned to the table and sat with poise in the empty chair next to Spike, who, for his part, stopped slouching, put his hands on his lap, and looked at Hawk.

He wanted to shrink into a microscopic spec and vanish into the air or explode into a trillion dust particles and have a hurricane blow him away.

“How old are you?” the woman asked.

“Fifteen,” he said. He was going to lie as he did on all his profiles, but it didn’t matter. “I’ll be sixteen in a few months.”

There was a look on her face of sadness and compassion. Perhaps she had a son. Perhaps she could recognize.

“Times are tough,” she said. She took out the pillbox, pushed it to the center of the table, picked up the envelope, and put it in her pocket.

“Thank you,” said Hawk, staring down. The stainless steel of the tabletop had been vandalized in a mélange of languages; the etching of a shooting boner protruded from the forehead of his dull reflection.

“Be careful,” she warned. “A boy could meet the wrong person. The BAT isn’t all flashing lights and music.”

The words stung with their truth—the truth of what he had learned from experience. But she didn’t know shit about him, about the fire that burned inside—the fire he could barely control.

“I’ll be fine. There’re worse things than jizz.”

They were all looking at him, his friends. He could feel their eyes on him, mapping the contours of his shame.

“Yes. Yes, I guess there are.” She said to Nine, “Fifth dose of L3. You know what that means?”

In the looking glass of the table, Hawk saw him nod.

“Has she started to splinter?”

He nodded again.

“I’m sorry then. Good luck to you.” She stood, stopping for a moment as if she had a final dose of motherly wisdom to inject into the scene, but instead walked away without turning and was gone.

Someone grabbed his fingers—a dark little hand pressed warm palm to palm. He pulled away from Spike’s touch. He shouldn’t be anywhere near him, lest the perversion of his nature already add to the wreckage of the boy’s world.

Nine fell into his chair and laid his head on the table between his outstretched hands. “I’m sorry, man. Hawk, I… I shouldn’t have asked you. Don’t do that anymore.” There was gravel in his voice.

“It’s okay, man,” said Hawk. But it wasn’t.

The muscles in Nine’s neck began to tense.

“Nine?” Had he spoken?

Nine’s fingers twitched and tapped on the table. The air became crisp, and Hawk’s teeth tingled. He wanted to lie down on the floor, stretch out, and take deep breaths.

Spike’s hands on his shoulder were hot. “Nine’s gonna…” The boy’s voice was distant, like an echo across a canyon. “Nine’s gonna chant!”

“Nine, don’t,” pleaded Hawk. “It’s okay. I’m okay. Don’t. Don’t. They’ll feel it.”

His friend’s hands bunched into fists.

The boy stood up fast, trembling with his strength. He raised his fists and yelled, “Arhhhhaaa,” and brought them down on the metal mirror of the table. The stainless steel buckled and bent in half as if it were tinfoil, and the tiles beneath it shattered as the floor shook.