They always say real life imitates art. Perhaps, Zitao thinks to himself, this is true. But if it is, then his life is ing high caliber performance art. 

It's not that the dreary exterior of a Denny's is really where he wants to be far too early on a Saturday morning, if it even qualified as morning, it was just that this whole scenario was far too weird for his tastes. There he is, the Chinese foreign exchange student, sitting across from a kid he is vaguely friends with. And when he says he is vaguely friends with him, he means the guy sat across from him in English III and shop. Jongdae grunts in affirmation as a waitress offers them coffee and then goes back to his cigarette ("natural American spirit" Jongdae claims "only the organic . It's healthier") which had only burnt into a with some stubby ashes falling off the end. Jongdae puts it out on the bench (since when did Denny's have outdoor seating?) and pushes his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose. 

"You know we're like," Jongdae pauses to roll up another cigarette. "so ed right? We've got like," another pause, this time to glance at his phone. "maybe forty-eight hours before we're..." Jongdae then drags a thumb across his throat. 

"Yeah, I know, but like are we really gonna spend these hours at a ing Denny's at four AM? I didn't even know they had outdoor seating, or allowed cigs, or hungover teens or..." Zitao says, sentence trailing off as the waitress hands him his coffee. He can see the faint outline of Jongdae rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses. 

Zitao can now really smell the fireball and tequila on Jongdae's breath, a combo he had only become aquatinted with upon the beginning of his travels abroad, when Jongdae leans closer to him. "Between you and me, I think they aren't allowed, this lady just doesn't give a ." Jongdae hisses under his breath. 

All is quiet for a good while, both adolescents drinking coffee, while the wind blew not-so-softly, the sky remaining overcast no matter what. It was absurd for Jongdae to even be wearing sunglasses at this time of night, with this kind of weather, Zitao realized, but then again the entire scenario was completely absurd. There they were, hungover (well only Jongdae was, but he claimed Zitao was as well, but only in spirit) at a Denny's, at four fourteen AM, waiting for two more high schoolers who were perhaps even more hungover than Jongdae was. 

As soon as those thoughts went through his head, the two aforementioned high schoolers walked up to the bench. One was tall and lanky, dressed like a knock-off teen version of Kurt Cobain, complete with unruly mop of hair and flannel overshirt, while the other, much shorter than his companion, sported a far nicer wardrobe. The shorter one Zitao recognized right off the bat, a perfect lineup and contrasting fancy wardrobe is a hard thing not to remember, especially when said owner of hair and clothes, Do Kyungsoo, offered to give you the same haircut. 

"Eeeeyyyy, 'Dae, my boy," Chanyeol grins, stretching every vowel for far too long. "lemme bum a cig off you."

"Oi, you know that's good money man, native spirits aren't cheap." Kyungsoo says, collapsing in the bench next to Zitao. 

"Yeah well I let him have half a tin like a week ago so he oughta give me one, yeah?" Chanyeol says, and Jongdae sighs, shaking his head and sliding him the tin. 

"You're all disgusting, you know that, right?" Zitao hissed, clutching his coffee. 

"Look here, thi-- last night kicked off spring break, and I don't know if wherever in China you come from, but here we try to have a great time the entire week, and you just almost ruined that ." Kyungsoo says, staring expectantly at Zitao. 

"Well what do you want me to do then?" Zitao raises his voice slightly, unsure of all of this. Everything seemed so shady, from the tin of tobacco being passed around, to the way Kyungsoo glinted of fake money contrasting with the cheap run-downness of the Denny's they currently sat at at a time that was breaking any curfew ever set. 

"Your host parents, the Wu family, they've got a great house, y'know." Kyungsoo points a finger at Zitao's head and he gets a whif of cheap cologne. 

Zitao narrows his eyes and furrows his brow "Yes, and..."

"A party. You'll repay us for almost ruining that last house party at Luhan's by letting us throw one at yours." Chanyeol says, drumming the table absentmindedly with his fingers. 

"Look guys, you know I don't know my host parents that well, I don't think they would be okay with it."

Kyungsoo hushes him hurriedly, but is quickly interrupted by the waitress bringing him the mimosa he ordered (since when had Denny's sold mimosas, and to minors?), but speedily resumed his speech. He talks for a long while, and while half of what he was saying did not make any form of sense, Zitao gets the idea that he's going to do as the teens say and there is no way to stop them. After he hears the words "fireworks and alcohol by the pool", Zitao metaphorically taps out of the conversation. Clearly he was out of his midst. 

----

Zitao tries to go home and sleep, but it's not going to happen. He lays down in his bed, stares at the ceiling and tries to conjure up some form of tiredness, but it seems to have left him. There is no sleeping now. 

His clock ticks a little past 5:00 AM when he hears a buzz. Turning to his bedside table, he is greeted with a text message. While the number has not been assigned a contact, and does not state it's author, by the disjointed and hurried style of writing it is clear that it was penned by Chanyeol. After scanning over it a few times, he sets it back down, determined to ignore the events of the past few hours. It's the first goddamned Saturday morning of spring break, school has been out for about 48 hours now, and he is determined to enjoy it, regardless of what delinquents were going to try to drag him into. 

However, he cannot even finish these thoughts, as his window rattles as a rock hits it. Racing out of bed, Zitao opens the window and peers down. The three guys from Denny's smile up at him, a dusty gold pickup truck humming in the background. 

"Get in, we've got places to be." Jongdae calls out. Zitao sighs, shaking his head and turning back in to put on some real clothes. By the time he turns back to the window a small pile of rocks has gathered by the window. 

"So what in hell is going on?" Zitao asks, being lead to the truck. 

"Well tomorrow night you're going to be hosting one of the best parties of the ing spring break, that's what." Chanyeol grins, patting Zitao on the back. The Chinese teen can hear Kyungsoo mumble that his would have been the best if it weren't for Zitao ruining his. 

"Look, I told you that I can't." Zitao stammers as they near the truck. He tries to explain that he's sure his host family wouldn't be ok with it, and that it would be such late notice, and that his host brother Kris certainly would be weirded out by all of it. 

"Don't worry man, we've got it all planned out, you just gotta follow along." Kyungsoo smiled, patting Zitao's back before pushing him into the back of the pickup truck. Zitao watched as Chanyeol and Jongdae clambered into the back of the truck, while Kyungsoo rode inside the actual thing. As Zitao hopped inside the flatbed, he realized there were a few other people sprawled out in the back as well. 

The truck begins to move almost as soon as Zitao sets foot in it. The driver, someone who he recognizes as a senior and friend of Kris's, Minseok, seems to only vaguely know what he's doing, and everyone in the back is near constantly being slammed around. There are two other people in the back of the truck aside from Chanyeol and Jongdae, two other Chinese exchange students, Luhan and Yixing. The latter is as high as a kite, pupils blown out, head tilted back and eyes almost shut, while the former is sober and annoyed. Yixing is not really the party type as far as Zitao knows, but neither is Luhan. Both are holding cans of Arizona tea, and Yixing is absentmindedly flicking on and off a lighter. 

The drive to wherever they're going is not long, but their destination is strange. Why they were arriving at Home Depot at 5:45 was beyond him, but it seemed like most things were at this point. Zitao hated the illogical, but it was starting to hurt his brain to sort out and make order of this chaos. Kinda like figuring out Young Thug lyrics, Zitao thinks, and then realizes that that was what was blaring out of the truck right then. 

When they arrive at Home Depot, they don't really go into the store, instead entering the "employee barn" in the back. The entire building is dark, cool and smells vaguely of carrots and weed. Kyungsoo pulls out a lawnchair at the table and sits down, the rest of the boys following, each taking a well known seat at the table. It almost looked choreographed. Kyungsoo, while the shortest guy sitting at the table, easily made up for his lack of height by intimidation and confidence.

Within twenty minutes, a multitude of other people flood in, all being boys Zitao can recognize from school. There was Jongin, who was currently failing three classes, Baekhyun, who worked at the local Specs (how he got to work at a liquor store while being clearly a minor was an unanswerable question) and Sehun, who was still wearing his Home Depot apron. All three of them took their seats at the table, and it seemed to be that there was a hierarchy in seating. More important people, like Kyungsoo and Minseok, sat in the nicer chairs at the front, while less important people, like Sehun and Zitao were positioned in the back in dingy older chairs. 

"Zitao! I didn't know you hung out with these guys!" Sehun whisper-yelled to him excitedly, brushing back a strand of rainbow hair behind his ear. The sophomore was beaming from ear to ear, exposing the edges of his clear retainer. 

"I didn't either, I kinda accidentally crashed into Kyungsoo's party with Kris and puked on some chick Kyungsoo was trying to get with. Then they dragged me here." Zitao explained.

Sehun still looked ecstatic. The sophomore thought juniors like Kyungsoo and Jongdae were cool, and the occasional senior like Minseok that rolled with their clique was seen as even cooler. Zitao wasn't sure why the boys let Sehun stay with them, but he had a feeling that it was just to build an image of a close group of very good looking guys. This could be the only reason why they were letting a rather nerdy exchange student like him stay with them too. 

Zitao was awoken from his thoughts by a loud banging on the table. "Alright alright, meeting in ing session, here we go." Minseok said, hand slamming against the wood of the table and nine heads turning to face him. "Look boys, after the success of last year's spring break, we've decided to duplicate it this year."

Minseok's words were met with whoops and hollers. "So this Saturday, Luhan graced us with a spring break kick off party at his place. Tonight is Jongdae and Chanyeol's band's concert." More whoops, and this time they were accompanied by pats on the back and thumbs ups. 

Jongdae stood up. "Alright y'all, me 'n the boys are gonna be playing at Jo's on 35th. Bring yourselves, your friends, your girls, some alcohol, good ." He sat back down, but was pushed back up by Chanyeol and Kyungsoo. "Oh yeah, and for the record, the next party is gonna be hosted by no other than Tao himself!" Jongdae rushed, sitting down.  

Tao's eyes widened. He had nearly forgotten about that. "Wait, like, I'm an exchange student. I really have no clue what's going on. Can't you guys have it at someone else's house?"

"Dude, you've got to host it." Jongin says so lackadaisically that it is comic. 

"And why is that? You guys haven't told me anything!"

"You puked on the of the chick Kyungsoo was trying to sleep with. Now you have to carry the burden of your house getting trashed, like how you trashed that girl's tatas." Baekhyun explains, followed up by a chorus of mumbled agreements. 

"So I'm supposed to host a party tomorrow? And what's supposed to be at this party? And who? How will my parents agree to it?" Zitao asks, beginning to panic. 

"God he really is clueless," Chanyeol murmurs. 

Zitao still feels just as clueless hours later, at 3pm at his house. He's groggily trying to stay awake, and Minseok is there, talking to Kris. Minseok's mother is also there, a woman with a very poofy bob cut, a loud mouth and a thick Staten Island accent. 

"I'm just soooo happy that Minseok has found his passion for photography, it's a wonderful hobby. He's even covering for a concert tonight." Mrs Kim brags, tapping long fake nails on the table. "He'd help the photography team for the yearbook cover all the sports events, but you know how busy the boys are with soccer."

Mrs Wu rolls her eyes, clearly annoyed slightly by the bragging of her friend. "Yes, Kris was anticipating that tournament for a while. Now what's this about a concert? I heard Kris talking about it over the phone."

Mrs Kim grins from ear to ear and all heads in the room quickly turn towards her. "It's some student concert. I think a lot of Minseok's friends are going, and he's getting backstage access! Now, isn't that special?"

Zitao and Kris easily see Minseok mouth the words I'm so sorry.

----

Mrs Kim's words ring true, Minseok does have backstage access. However, so does Zitao, Kris, Kyungsoo and the rest of the boys. Jongdae's band is performing in some seedy pub actually named Hole In The Wall that seemed like every mother's worst nightmare for her son to go to. Baekhyun says "it has everything", from an angry bartender named Jo, vaguely homoual gogo dancers, a man who appears to be in the mafia, and a troop of mimes (fun sized, Chanyeol calls them). Zitao spends his first ten minutes there in the bathroom with the rest of the boys, washing off the Xs drawn onto his hands, marking him as a minor. Kyungsoo and the rest of the guys are chattering happily, and Zitao suddenly feels a longing to join in, but he cannot seem to find an opening in the conversation. 

They are still chattering as they head up to the front of the pub, standing as close to the stage as possible. While the equipment is up, Jongdae, Chanyeol, and the rest of their band are nowhere to be found. Zitao hears one of the guys say that they're probably drinking outside or something like that. I'm living in a ty teen movie, Zitao thinks to himself, rolling his eyes. 

Ten minutes from the start of the start of the show, Zitao realizes he is missing something crucial: the knowledge of what is going on with Jongdae's band. He's only vaguely friends with the guy, doesn't know a single thing about the boy's music taste save for the Dead Boys t-shirt the junior always wore. Judging by the multitude of Pistols and The Clash paraphernalia there are on the walls, this place seemed to generally hold punk bands. 

"Hey Kris?"

"Yeah?"

"What type of band are Jongdae and Chanyeol in?"

Kris opens his mouth to answer, but the curtains split to reveal the band standing on the dingy stage. Jongdae is still wearing his trademark sunglasses, and Chanyeol is grinning the same smile from behind the drum kit. Jongdae starts announcing their band and goes through a bunch of mumbo jumbo that Zitao forgets in a minute. However, the words yelled right before the first song starts certainly set the mood for the rest of the concert. 

"Alright, we're the , and this song is called We Hate The Police!"

As soon as Jongdae and his bandmates jump into the crowd Zitao knows he will not forget this night. 

----

After Jongdae's band finishes their set the next band is on. And the next. And the next. It seems to be an endless array of bands, each band seeming to get increasingly loud, until the ringing in Zitao's ears makes him grimace. Jongdae seems to notice and leads him out of the dingy tavern and into the back alleyway. They sit down on old wood carts and around cardboard boxes, with the scuttling of mice among the detritus and the chirping of crickets as ambiance. Jongdae pulls out the familiar altoids box full of tobacco and rolls a cigarette. 

"So, uh, nice show." Zitao says, looking up at the only half working street lamp that illuminated their section of the alleyway. 

Jongdae smiles around his cigarette, turning to Zitao. "Thanks. I didn't figure you'd be the punk rock type." He passes it to Zitao in what seems to be a habit. 

"Uh, thanks." Zitao says, looking down at the cigarette. He didn't smoke, but he was eager to impress. Mimicking Jongdae's motions, he brought the cigarette to his lips. 

Jongdae chuckles as Zitao grimaces and then coughs, smoke escaping his mouth. Zitao glares at him through teary eyes as Jongdae slaps his knees. "Oh my god, are you okay?"

"Why did you even pass this to me?"

Jongdae's chuckles begin to die out. "It's habit. I always share them with Kyungsoo. You didn't have to." 

And as he takes the cigarette back, Jongdae suddenly seems so much more human to Zitao. 

----

Zitao's watch reads 2:43 AM in light green numbers. The clock on the bar reads tequila time. While Zitao doesn't know when tequila time really is, he has his doubts that it is at 2:43 AM. Long ago had his gang of fellow high schoolers had celebrated the scrubbing off of the Xs that once adorned their hands and scrambled over to the bar. Zitao had followed them, not wanting to be left out and excited to see what made his friends run over there. So this is what teen life is like outside of China, thinks Zitao. He knows this is all so wrong, drinking and smoking and passing around all of the illicit drugs that haunted the place, but the toxicity of this life intrigues him. 

Kyungsoo is up in the DJ's booth, trying his best to DJ and drink a screwdriver at the same time. The real DJ had long left the building, and Kyungsoo had been more than eager to show off his "sick DJing skills". These "skills" seem to be splicing up clips of Turn Down For What with I'm y and I Know It and bass-boosting the whole thing to high hell. The walls shake and the air is muggy, and the moshpit had long ago turned into a mass of moving bodies pulsating along to the same beat. Some girl had grabbed Zitao's nearly twelve times in the last fifteen minutes and Kris had already punched two different men in the face. Half of his newly found gang of friends are nowhere to be found, and the other half are far too intoxicated to be of any help. 

A body swings from the ceiling, arms deftly grappling to the bars and beams that ran parallel and perpendicular to it. After a few minutes of swinging about, the person falls, directly left of Zitao, falling into Minseok and Luhan, both of which are stoned out of their of their minds. The person appears to be Jongdae, and he crowdsurfs over to where Zitao is, grinning from ear to ear. 

"Hey!" Jongdae shouts, loud over the music. His face is barely illuminated by the flashing lights and smog, and all of his features seem to be overacted in an attempt to be seen through the chaos. 

"What's going on?" Zitao exclaims, grabbing on to the other male's shoulder. 

"The ing party is going on!" Jongdae yells, and almost seemingly synchronized, the bass drops and an electronic voice stating "DJ Soo 499" plays all too loud. This combination seems too ridiculous for the two, and both began to laugh. 

"This is insane!" Zitao exclaims, staring in a mixture of shock and awe at Kyungsoo's overdramatic DJ set. 

"This is Kyungsoo every time he gets to DJ." Jongdae responds, perfectly deadpan. Judging by the facial expression, Zitao decides that this happens far too often for his new found friends to laugh at as much as he is. 

Zitao would open his mouth to fire off a witty retort, but he is nearly kicked in the face by a man in a zebra mask crowd surfing on a blow up raft. Said man screams something about partying, and the distinct Chinese accent gave it away as Yixing. The teen smelled far too much like a combination of tequila and gin, and judging by the small amount of white powder visible on his chin, he may have been on something else as well. Zitao rolls his eyes, he preferred the man stoned to strung out and drunk. 

----

Zitao wakes up sprawled on a blow-up mattress, limbs tangled up with many other people's. There is a ringing in his ears and a pounding in his head, and a girl in his bed. Wait, Zitao thinks to himself, a girl? Since when? Zitao quickly goes through the list of Girls He Knows and it is not long. Another glance at the girl lying on the edge of the blowup mattress and he realizes the figure is not that as much of a girl as it is a boy in drag. 

A quick flashback makes him realize that they picked up the guy in drag three quarters through the night, right after Kyungsoo's DJ set and before the start after that seemingly snack-themed edm group, Crispi Crunch. His name was Hyoseob, and his dress was made of newspaper clippings (one in particular read "Police make off with 30 pounds of crack from alligator farming floridians") and despite the fact that he was in drag, he was still wearing the newest yeezies ("you gotta always stay fresh," Hyoseob had answered). After picking up Hyoseob up they had gathered a few other people from the club and made their way into some connivence store (judging by the receipt stuck to Chanyeol's arm it was a CVS) with far too much alcohol (one of the many benefits of coming in at 2AM is that no one cared enough to care you). 

While the rest of the night was a blur, Zitao was sure of around three things. One, he had managed to fall asleep in his glasses, tangled up with the bassist for Jongdae's band and the aforementioned teenager in drag, and his glasses had not so much as come off his face. Two, the alibi for the night had gone through, as upon checking his phone his host mother had not texted him even once angrily, and three, nothing R rated had gone down as miraculously everyone was fully clothed and completely asleep. Upon further investigation of he house and it's occupants, Zitao realized that it did not belong to any of the teenagers he knew and that the snack-themed duo of DJs (crispi crunch, Zitao remembered, as they sounded like a cereal) were also there, asleep in an actual bed. 

Zitao begins to explore the house, finding Advil for his hangover and finding Kyungsoo in the kitchen, chatting with the guitarist of Jongdae's band. 

"Morning, Tao." Kyungsoo says, holding up his mug of coffee as a greeting. "How's the head?"

Zitao pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and glares wholeheartedly at the shorter teen. "I feel like I died."

The guitarist (Kyung, Zitao later realizes) nods his head knowingly. "Water. You gotta drink water while you drink." 

"What time is it?" Zitao asks, and then looks around the house, scanning the walls for a clock. "And where are we?"

"We're at those guys' house. Y'know, the gay snack DJs." Kyungsoo then looks down at his fake expensive watch. "And it's 7:45 AM. Which means we have like twelve hours until your party."

Zitao feels something inside him deflate. "We're really still having that? Haven't you had enough of partying? Why not a nice long scrabble session?"

Kyung chuckles. "But there's no alcohol involved."

"Fine, scrabble and wine!"

"It's okay, your host parents are gonna be away." Kyungsoo smiles a knowing smile, readjusting his hair. 

Zitao squints at the boy in disbelief. "How do you know that?"

"Your parents go to play bridge with my mom and all the other parents. It's like a Monday night thing, don't think I didn't know."
Kyungsoo pauses to let the information sink in. "And my mom may have decided to bring vodka instead of wine this time. They're not coming back." Kyungsoo winks, clearly behind the whole scheme. 

Zitao cradles his head in his hands. He has given up. There is nothing he can do. 

----

A/N 

Does anyone have bridge clubs anymore lol? I know they were popular in suburbia in the 60s. And they actually have tequila time clocks! They're as trashy as it comes (my uncle has one). The DJ Soo99 comes from this horrible song my friend made that we have tormented him with forever. Please comment/upvote/subscribe or give me your thoughts on this so far.