“Do you have any nicknames?” A woman wearing feather wings was walking around asking people. Sunny, Baby, Pickle, and Chicken Sandwich emerged, connecting instantly over the fact that people refused to call them by their given names. Ayanna felt certain no one was nicknamed Chicken Sandwich and that this was a bid for attention, but walked on. Already Sunny and Pickle were holding hands and laughing. In the distance, Jane was having a tense conversation with two women in matching togas and with several cheap necklaces wrapped around their arms and foreheads.

“How do you know Jane?” Ayanna asked a woman wearing a domino mask and a Burger King crown by the coolers.

“I don’t know her. I know Stephen.” The woman pointed to a crowd of men who were all laughing over something on one of their cell phones. “He deals corn.”

“Corn?” Ayanna made a show of looking through the cooler, trying not to acknowledge how uncool she was being. I’m twenty years old, she thought, and I don’t even know what the good drugs are.

“Acre.” She laughed and took a sip of a very uncool wine cooler. “If you’re a cop, you have to tell me.”

“I’m a cop.”

The woman laughed harder, but Ayanna knew she was overdoing it to be kind. She took a canned cocktail and walked toward the group. Seeing a bunch of guys together looking at a cell phone always made Ayanna cautious. There was a good chance they were all laughing at a dumb Naruto meme, but there was just as good a chance they were looking at some exploitative porn thing or something that might make it clear that oh, these are hateful people.

Ayanna didn’t have to ask or do anything. The one wearing a velvet suit jacket and no shirt handed her two small packets and asked for seventy-five. A first-timers discount.

“I only have fifty on me.”

“Take me to coffee and I’ll agree to that.”

“Whoa,” one of the guys in the group said, “someone is smooth.”

“It was fine,” Ayanna said, “not that smooth.”