Draft I, Section II: Chapterlet 3.

3.
Denver and Brady. This wasn’t it, but he could see it from here. He leaned the bike up against the brick wall of an alley. Up, over his head, a light mist was descending. Soon, it would be pearling on the sleeves of his sweatshirt. His whole body shuddered, cracking his spine like a whip. This was a much shorter bike ride on a summer’s day.
He needed to get warm, stay dry; pneumonia came out to play in this kind of weather--hiding around corners, waiting to jump out and into your chest. Bones laughed. Another would-be poet dies of a lung disease. The shit Kennedy expected him to just swallow. He moved uneasily from foot to foot. His mom would probably say it looked like he was standing on a stranger’s grave. He laughed again, quieter. Always feels stupid to laugh by yourself. Or crazy.
A trick of the mist made the gleaming white milk tower appear as if seen through the dark concave plastic viewing bubble of a child’s big toy. The flood lights lighting it were hissing and popping as water touched their superheated surfaces, but the light didn’t seem to touch the tower itself. Or, maybe the tower seemed like another feature of the sky, a simple extension of its darkness, and, as such, its obscurity was immune to any light but that of the sun. The tower was just one of many modes the darkness could fall into and move about in, like an actor rehearsing a part.
He checked the time on his cell phone. The led screen was a different kind of bright. The screen blurred with mist before he could focus on it. She was late.
A group of three teenagers came around the corner. The street was oddly quiet for this time of night. It made him turn slightly and look at them slantwise. The bars should have been letting out, Cain’s or the Brady should be spilling out their Friday night concerts into the streets to wander back to their cars, laughing, stumbling, talking too loud because of the ring in their ears.
The absence of other people on the street made him uneasy as they approached. They seemed to be talking to each other. Not loud though. They passed a puddle and the reflected light from the streetlight across the way and the floodlights above showed him their outlines. Baggy pants. Long leather coats. Short hair that shone.
As they came closer, Bones shifted his weight, leaning back into the shadows, tried to get his back up to his full height, tried not to be noticed. No, not quite, he tried to be noticed as not worth the trouble. 6’4’’ Mom had always said not to slouch. Now, with the paranoid specter of violence surfacing in his brain, he could tell why. They were all three looking at him. Whatever happened was going to be 90% bluff. They slowed, spread out slightly and stopped, facing him. 70%.
“Where you from?” Great. Not only were they gang bangers, they were clichés, too. Still, they didn’t seem nervous. 60%.
“I’m sorry?” Bones used the deepest register he had. He leaned his head forward and to the side, as if listening. The one on his right tapped the one standing in front of him with the back of his hand. The head motion didn’t make them respond at all. They were either oblivious to his reach, or they were unconcerned. Shit.
“I said, ‘What time is it?’” He inflected that strangely. He had an accent.The one on Bones’s left snickered.
“Quarter after eleven,” Bones said, leaning back against the wall. “We’re right on time, then. Tell that bitch Kennedy, ‘Tino says hi.’” Something small inside of Bones slipped a little. They moved forward. He pushed off the wall at an angle, catching the one to his right in the middle of his gut viciously with his left knee as he slid by. He heard a grunt and took off running. Something hot and blue connected to the back of his left eye. He smelled blood. He fell, legs still moving. The concrete was cold, even through the numbness he wore like a mask. He went to sleep, but, as he slipped off, something hard kept pushing at his face.