“Is your name Charlie?” she asked.

“Yeah, what’s your name?”

Leering, she walked backward, away from the fence, swaying her hips and beckoning him onto the court. He sprinted to the entrance then stepped onto the court, slowing to a confident waltz, an erection gleefully pushing through his sweaty gym shorts. Sol stood in place as he approached her, her hips protruding unnaturally, like a damaged action figure. Charlie’s swaggy promenading strut continued, his boner leading him forward like a divining rod. Sol held steady, awaiting his arrival.

One punch sufficed. Before Sol could even unclench her fist, Charlie crashed onto the asphalt, his body expanding in all directions like spilled rice on a kitchen floor. “My name’s not Angel,” she scoffed.

With equal scorn, he looked up at her and sneered. “I bet you’ll still be at my party.”

“No contest,” Kai suddenly announced, shrugging and holding up her broken tennis racket. Sol grimaced. The splintered wires reminded her of Jerry’s braces.

“Are you sure they’ll be here?” Theo asked Apollo, pulling into the long driveway of an extravagant Fayette County house and turning left at a fork.

“They should be,” Apollo answered. “Tim said they were headed to a party, and this is the only party happening in this area. Even the barber knew about it,” he continued, stroking his smooth head. Theo groaned as he heard Apollo reach toward the dash, turning off the air conditioning. “Why don’t you ever ride with the windows down? Even when it’s hot, real air is always better,” Apollo said.

Keeping his eyes on the driveway, Theo flicked the air conditioning back on, ignoring Apollo’s obviously stupid question. “My car, my rules.”

“Word. Oh, I meant to tell you, I saw like four people get parts in their head while I was there.”

“So? Parts have been back. They’re like Lil Wayne.”

“Wayne been washed his whole life. I mention it because the parts were all Js. Apparently Insta is really fucking with what we did.”

Theo cringed. Although the hacking plan was supposed to be a final “fuck you” to Six Flags, who’d fired him right before the summer started, he was overwhelmed by the reach of his vengeance. Homes had burned down, dogs had died, power lines had been incinerated, and massive pine trees littered the area surrounding the park. The entirety of Stone Mountain was without power and water. He’d tried following the memes for comfort, but between the jokes emerged images of scorched squirrels, fields of dead birds, cars flayed into metal husks. It was strange to party under such grim conditions, to be responsible for so many crises. He felt fortunate not to have heard any audio from the event.

Theo caught up with Apollo, who was already out of the car and just a few feet from the front door. The house looked like an art project. Each floor of its three stories featured a different material: limestone for the first floor, brick for the second floor, and stucco for the third. The different strata of the house were coated in the same warm pink, but the hybrid composition was still apparent. Theo was reminded of his dad’s tendency to consciously dress casually when they visited their family in the hood, but to still drive his Mercedes instead of Theo’s Civic. Humility always had a threshold.