On the way to the store, we pass a beast with a sign that says "Need SOULS for FOOD" and I itch my scalp as the stars fly overhead. By the time we get to the store, I'm still sussing out the computational vagaries of space and time and who we are in this thing. The corner store is a steel fist on the hill with a gleaming jewel set in the center and Callum pushes it open, he swings it wide and then we're inside, we're really in it.

The tires crunch over gravel and the Camaro rattles to a stop just inches from the guardrail of a bridge. Something in the engine sighs. There’s a construction zone here lit with orange flashing lights. Peter leaps out of the car; he doesn’t even shut it off, he just gets out and he’s running, stumbling, around the front of it. He’s got a beer in his hand, and in the headlights I see him kick at one of the lamps.

All I want is to sleep, to drop into a dark hole and stay there forever, and I think: Princess Diana has died, you asshole. It’s a tragedy. Go on and cry about THAT.

She guffaws, and then she sings and her teeth brighten like neon in the mystic glow of the speedometer, the odometer, the fuel gauge. She’s singing this Debbie Gibson song, hollering it, and flame erupts from her lighter.

"Idiots. They're all idiots!" he yelled, but really I was transfixed by the junk that teetered on his face. All it needed was a simple nudge—a puff of air, really—and it would be gone.

I took the newest shot of rice wine and winced through the pain. “I don’t even have the money I need to play.”

The alcohol situation was downright distressing.

It's all lights, action, sad-eyed children selling trinkets, and calls for sex shows, tuk-tuks, dinner you don't want.

When someone asks you, “Would you do it again?”, you huff up your chest, strike an air of bravado, and reply with a resounding “Maybe.”

How many weeks of the year, he said, do you have to work in order to pay for something that you don't need or want?

“I always think of that scene in ‘Wizard of Oz’ where it’s like, don’t look at that man behind the curtain.”

You grip her love like a driver's license.

“It doesn’t look fucking good. I don’t think a lot of teenagers [today] sit back and think, ‘Why am I on Earth?’ And maybe teenagers never asked that, but I look back at my parents when they were young and I think, ‘Holy shit, look what that generation accomplished.’ I just don’t see the same for this one.”