Matt laughed. ‘Do you ever listen to a word I say?’

‘Mostly,’ Harry said.

‘Lana’s birthday? I’ve been talking about it all week. She thinks we’re going bowling with her sister, but I’ve—’

‘The fancy restaurant,’ Harry remembered. ‘I forgot. I’ve had a ton on my mind, with math, and Janssen, and …’

‘Don’t drink all the booze on your own,’ Matt said. ‘I’ve gotta dash. I’m at the cleaners picking up my suit.’

‘Have a good night,’ Harry said, looking at the road, then at the bag of booze down in the footwell.

Although the car was on auto, the law said drivers had to watch the road and react in an emergency. A siren sounded as Harry took both hands off the steering wheel, growing louder as he grabbed the bag and snatched the Jack Daniels.

The siren stopped as he looked back out at the road. Keeping one hand on the wheel, Harry clamped the bottle between his thighs, twisted the cap, then took a big slug. It burnt his throat and made him cough, but when his eyes stopped watering he saw a neon Shake Shack sign a couple of blocks ahead.

Arguing with Kirsten had nixed breakfast; the condom shock had crushed his appetite for lunch and the planned stop to get tacos had been replaced by the booze stop at Walmart. Harry realised that the only things he’d eaten all day were a few of Charlie’s Hershey Drops in the cinema.

He double tapped the handover button to take back control, pulled off the road and joined a queue at a drive-thru window. He decided to pig out, ordering a large salted caramel shake, cheese fries and a double bacon burger. It took a while for the order to come through, and as Harry waited he realised there was no way he’d get home before sunset.

Driving while eating would mean getting home faster, but it was a big shake and a messy burger. He wanted to enjoy it, and he’d heard a bunch of people at school say that cops let you off with a warning if they stop you after dark, and you act respectful and say you felt ill and had to use a restroom, or got stuck in traffic.

So Harry rolled into a parking bay. The world still felt like a crappy place, but the hot food was comforting, and the shake soothed the burn from the Jack Daniels. It soothed it so much that he experimented, tipping his fries out of their paper cup, and replacing it with a half inch of whiskey and a scoop of milkshake.