“Yes, but not like this. We wanted to tag the city, not throw up a billboard! People are already dismissing what happened and making fun of it! ‘I Had a Beam’ is being used to promote a fucking Major Lazer album! I don’t even know who that is, but what the fuck? Even if it’s not me being remembered, that’s not how I want my work to be remembered. I refuse.”

“Calm down. All art gets reused eventually. We can’t control how people receive it. You have to let go.”

“Don’t give me that meme bullshit, Apollo. This isn’t the fucking internet where things get a second chance. This is the real world, where things always mean what they will always mean, where arrows fly straight and they either hit the target or they don’t. Even if it’s just our secret, if we don’t change how it’s understood right now, it will never mean anything else. Jerry will be a joke to the entire world. And it will have been our fault.”

Apollo stared at the moon, contemplating ways to redirect the shame that was bubbling in his gut. Where are those cicadas when you need them? He could feel the insects whirring around him, but they were nowhere to be found. In their absence, he found the sounds of Charli XCX. Apollo sighed. Someone had overridden his playlist. He knew he should have used a more complex encryption algorithm. At least this person had taste, though.

His focus returned to Zed, whose back was still turned to him and the party. He wanted to give her an answer, but variables swarmed through his head like maddened ants. Someone could snitch, someone could die, they could kill people, they could get caught, they could be hunted by drones. Apollo shuddered. Was Jerry, someone he hadn’t even known about twenty-four hours ago, really worth all that? Why was his so-called legacy so important? All he had seemed to do was be a friend. Was friendship really worth hijacking a military weapon and using it for a tag…again? It felt worth it the first time. The tragedy of Jerry’s life spoke to Apollo on a primordial level. He’d enlisted in Theo’s crusade against Six Flags, but he was born into Jerry’s struggle against the police. How could he turn away from that? How could he turn away from Zed?

Apollo found himself gazing into the moon again. Silently, it stared back at him, offering light but not answers, opaque in its very luminescence.