Luckily, Ming is there after debate practice to talk me down from the ledge. Or, at least, to lend an ear to the myriad ways in which I would personally go about killing Greg Polan.

“Maiming is the way to go,” I say, biting into an apple from the East Hall lunchroom machine like it’s Greg’s ankle and I’m a pit bull mix. “Also evisceration. And don’t you forget skinning.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Ming smiles, filling a cup of black coffee from the machine. He hands it to me as he taps his credit card. Both the coffee and the presumably limitless credit card look appealing this morning.

“Oh, no, it’s oka—”

He interrupts me with a performative eye roll. “You look tired as shit this morning. It’s coffee, not a mortgage. Don’t get weird on me again, and just take it, Haltiwanger.”

I used to get a bit weird about benefiting too much from the (as far as I can tell) unlimited credit card Ming’s parents have given him instead of an allowance. I kept diligent track of the amounts incurred whenever he grabbed me coffee or lunch or gum from the bodega or MetroCard swipes in the subway when my card was empty.

At some point paying him back these small amounts in quarters and crumpled bills, often days after the fact, became its own weird conversation until last year in which I was drunkenly told, Dude, there’s no receipt or tab. Trust me. So find your chill about money stuff!

In hindsight, it might have been the one time Ming ever snapped at me.

“Thanks,” I say, after a sip of the coffee. He pours himself one too. And then I take two more sips after that. FATE admittedly has really good coffee. I’ve never bothered to look into it, but it’s probably made from those expensive coffee beans that first pass through a civet’s intestinal tract before being collected from the creature’s poop and retailing for an absurd amount. “Where was I?”

“Maiming?”

“Oh, yes,” I continue, feeling like I just hit a bonus, caffeinated life. “Well, the maiming is essential, obviously. Oh, and all that stuff? The maiming and the eviscerating? It’s all happening to Greg’s flayed body.”

Ming smiles as we walk through the hallways, nodding to people here and there. “Here.” He pulls a rolled-up magazine out of his messenger and hands it to me. It’s the latest issue of Pavement, a biannual designer shoe wear magazine filled with jaw-dropping photos.

“New collection. Let the beautiful, pretty sneakers calm you down from wanting to go House Bolton on Greg Polan.”