"Who picked AJ from the lineup?" the woman asked as she leaned across the table to be closer to him. Joey could see down her blouse to the white lace of her bra. He wanted to kiss her and touch her right no, so badly but she always wanted to talk first. In Joey's experience, that was a nationwide thing with girls. So his mouth went one way and his mind another.

"Nobody definitely knows but some people think it was the blonde guy - the one you're friends with. Some of them saw him in the park before they got the other guy and...you know." He didn't want to talk about this right now. He wanted to tell her how soft her red hair looked. She crossed her legs and brushed her knee against his under the table.

"I heard that the boy who got slashed is out of a coma and will be fine," she said.

"Really? Well that's good for AJ. They won't be able to accuse him of murder, just assault. He didn't mean to hurt him that much."

"AJ's in custody? Nobody bailed him out?" she asked. He moved his leg closer to hers.

"Jesus no! It's like a hundred grand. His ma lives in Miami, she doesn't even know about this."

"So maybe you'll need to take his place?"

Joey sat up and tried to look as big as possible. "Yeah, that's the plan. The boss wants me to take care of this old, crazy Jewish guy who plays chess all day in the park." She nodded and slowly stirred her coffee. Joey looked at his own coffee that had barely been touched. He only ordered it because it seemed more mature than ordering a Coke. Why did she want to know so much about this stuff? Nothing he said made her gasp or shocked her even in the slightest. Maybe she was a writer or something. Despite how much older than him she was, he thought she was so incredibly y. He didn't care what she wrote as long as she changed all the names.

"Why the old guy?" she asked.

Joey shrugged. "I don't know, just because he's there. He's the laughing stock of the park. There's this kid who's trying to become part of all of this called Alejandro and he loves the old guy. I guess some of the more senior guys thought it would be funny."

"Are you going to go through with it?"

"We'll see," he said with a smirk he tried to make look tough and serious at the same time.

She didn't send him back a smile. "Do you want anything else?" she asked. "Maybe a Coke?"

He stood up, unable to contain himself. "I want to get out of here."

She stayed in her seat. "I want to finish my coffee."

 

~

 

~

 

~ BAEKHYUN ~

1 poppy-seed bagel with cream cheese

1 large coffee with milk and 2 sugars

3 Wint-O-Green Life Savers

When I was twelve, I would have flashbacks from the night I lost my mother. They threatened to destroy me from the inside-out and it was the most difficult thing to try and make them stop. The worst thing to do is to ask your brain not to think of something. For this reason I invented these methods of distraction.

My first defensive thought was of kids at school. Not my friends really, mainly because I didn't have many, but the people I wanted to be friends with. The cool kids. I'd imagine small scenes with cute dialogue and about all of us palling around together.

Secondly, I would imagine a boy I would fall in love with. What would he look like? What would he say to me? Would it be love at first sight, or would a few minutes of my charm be necessary?

If those two forms of defensive thought didn't work, I'd start listing European capitals which I had been memorising since I was three thanks to my dad.

And finally if all the above was failing, if my brain offered no shelter from all the torment of that horrific night, I'd distract myself by listing everything I'd eaten the day before.

Tonight, while crying my eyes out on my bedroom floor, my first three attempts led to:

1) Kyungsoo

2) Chanyeol

3) Belgrade

I skipped directly to yesterday's breakfast.

 

~

 

Kyungsoo was going to be okay. Kyungsoo was expected to make a full recovery. Baekhyun was so happy he felt like telling the man behind the counter who was making his sandwich,

"Roast beef?" he asked him.

"Yes please," he said politely. "On that one," he added pointing to an expensive looking roll.

The news had been spread around school, it was what everyone had been talking about. Well, that and Baekhyun's role in the whole thing. The way people were talking, Baekhyun suspected that he would be accused of doing the actual slashing by tomorrow. And for that reason, Baekhyun was now buying a sandwich instead of sitting in his math class listening to the so-called 'teacher' drone on and on about things he had learned when he was nine or ten.

He paid for his sandwich and strolled down Sixth Avenue, his bag swinging off his shoulder. Viktor would eat like a king and he imagined the look on his face when he surprised him earlier than usual. Cutting class was a serious offence, as he'd been told many times. He imagined the principal calling Steve or, God forbid, Tiffany. He knew a way to overcome this little problem. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Steve's number. He answered a few seconds later.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Steve, it's Baekhyun. How's it going?"

"I'm fine Baekhyun. Just fine." He sounded shocked and happy at the call. "May I ask why you're calling me?"

"I'm actually calling because left school early because I wasn't feeling well."

"I'm sorry to hear that." He heard genuine concern for her well-being in his voice and felt a bit bad. "Did you go to-"

"It's not serious," he explained quickly. "It's...well, you know, it's flashbacks, I just can't seem to concentrate because I keep thinking of my mother." Baekhyun knew the fastest way to get the man off the phone was to talk about feelings.

"Right. Okay. Understood." He'd never heard him speak so quickly. Poor Steve. He'd never had a child in his life before, let alone one who'd arrived with so much baggage.

"So, could you give the school a call and let them know what's up?" he asked him semi-sweetly.

He was absolutely traumatised, Baekhyun could hear it in his voice. "Sure...I'll just give the office...the office a call. You go home and tell Tiffny about it. She'll help you. There's no better sick nurse then Tiffany."

Baekhyun almost burst out laughing. Tiffany's skirts were too short for her to sit down beside a bed without showing some indignity and she probably had no clue how to distinguish aspirin from arsenic. God help Steve. Love may be blnd but in his case it was also deaf and dumb. It was catatonic. It was vegetative.

Sixth Avenue whirled by in an array of colours, scents and noises. The buses and baby strollers whizzed past him and the small band playing on the corner of the street delighted his ears. The small coffee shops and delis looked cheerful and bright and even the secondhand bookshop which usually seemed like a dusty mess was looking more alive than usual. The world seemed fresher and more spacious when you were supposed to be in school. He even thought today might be the day he finally bought a bag of the roasted, sugary nuts he'd been craving for a while. He took a deep breath through his nose and could already smell them. Yes, today would be the day.

He almost floated into the park, appreciating the sunshine which cancelled out the maliciousness of Kyungsoo's attack a few nights before. He saw Viktor's familiar, hunched over back at the chess tables and wanted to run and hug him.

Then he stopped. The bag dropped from his hand and the tin-foil wrapped sandwich rolled out along the grey stones. He put his hand on his chest and almost clutched his heart.

He was there. The Boyfriend. Chanyeol. Whatever.

He was sitting across from his friend, concentrating on the game of chess. How dare he? Was he attempting to hustle poor Viktor? Couldn't he see that the poor, old man had nothing to lose except his tattered coat and his small Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure? Shouldn't he be in school or something? He prayed that Viktor would summon all of his skills and beat the crap out of him.

The Boyfriend, Chanyeol, whatever, looked a bit scruffier. The cuffs of his flannel shirt weren't buttoned, they were rolled up to his elbows. His hair was sticking up in twenty different directions and his eyes looked exhausted. Probably from staying up twenty four seven worrying about Kyungsoo.

Blah. Blah. The thought made Baekhyun sick.

Baekhyun picked up his still wrapped sandwich and stuffed it back into the bag. Now what would he do? He didn't want to see him or talk to him or be near him at all, but he didn't want to scurry away like a little mouse either.

Of course, he looked up, just as he looked back at him with his pathetic blue and white plastic bag, paralyzed with uncertainty and eyes like a deer in headlights.

Why did he effect him like this? Why? Did he somehow sense the day they played chess that he was Kyungsoo's boyfriend? Did he somehow just know that this particular boy stood for the best possible way to torment herself?

He couldn't be having these strange feelings for Kyungsoo's boyfriend. It was the cruelest coincidence there could have ever been. Was someone up in heaven having a great big belly laugh at his expense? He flashed back to the last time they'd seen each other at the hospital, what they'd said and he tried not to groan out loud. He felt his cheeks reddening.

He was a femme fatale. A romantic hero for the ages. A heartbreaker. A James Bond type. A role model for guys everywhere.

Of the two boys Baekhyun had ever met in his entire life who could have possibly ever maybe meant something important to him (and coincidentally, the only two who had ever beaten him in chess - Finn from around the corner being the first), he'd told them both he hated them. He was two for two.

No wonder he'd never had his first kiss. "I hate you" wasn't exactly "come-hither". It didn't make guys think 'ah yes, I would like to put my lips on his'. Not ones who belonged on this side of the prison doors anyway. Anyway, it was time to go somewhere else now. Time to turn off the mean-yet-indifferent laser beams he was sending his way from his eyes.

He turned around, sandwich in hand, and walked to the fountain. It was a beautiful day anyway, why didn't he go to the fountain in the first place? Any normal person would have. It was full of mothers with their babies and strollers, college students and people who didn't have jobs. And there, right in front of her, was a big yellow cart filled with sugary, roasted peanuts, the smell alone could make you delirious. And he was going to buy a bag.

"One bag please," he said to the man wheeling the cart as he stirred the caramelised mass. He handed him two dollars and he gave her the warm, paper pouch of nuts. He ate a couple and felt as if all of his troubles were drifting away. He continued to chew on more as he walked from the fountain to the dog run near the perimeter of the park, feeling his hopes diminish as the grease from the nuts soaked through their paper container.

Sugar-roasted nuts, as it turned out, could be added to the list of things that included vanilla extract and bread and meeting a guy you could fall in love with - things that smelled better than they tasted.

 

~

 

"Checkmate."

Chanyeol glanced back at Viktor in surprise. The old man wasn't looking at him with the usual twinkling eye of triumph. He was looking at him with pity.

He had lost? Already? How?

Of course, he had never beaten Viktor, despite the man's insanity he was an excellent player. Back in the day Viktor had either beaten or drawn with many of the world's greatest chess players and Chanyeol and the man would battle for hours at times with dramatic manoeuvres and such. Today it was six minutes and a pawn.

"Vhat happened?" Viktor asked him.

Chanyeol was staring at the place where Gaia had been moments before. "I don't know, I guess I was distracted," he said absentmindedly.

"By zee geerl?"

Chanyeol almost choked on his own saliva. "W-who?"

"Zat preetty vun. She's smart too."

"I - uh - I don't know what you mean."

Viktor smiled at him. " I teenk you do."

Chanyeol bit the side of his mouth in annoyance. After two years of listening to Viktor's wild theories about the man who sold sodas by the fountain (apparently he was a World War II spy named Guntaf) and the social worker from the homeless shelter (an alien from a different solar system), the old man picked the worst moment to become perceptive.

"I have to go," Chanyeol said, standing up from his seat. "Good game, I'll see you on Thursday." He took five dollars out of his pocket and put it on the table.

"Chanyeol?"

Chanyeol turned around amazed at hearing his name. Usually Viktor called him 'boy' and 'kid' and 'you', but he never called him Chanyeol.

"Yeah?"

"Go get zat geerl and tell her I vant my sandveech."

"No way," Chanyeol muttered under his breath. No way was he going near that kind of trouble again.

 

~

 

~ CHANYEOL ~

When I was a kid, I was a disaster. I had an awful stammer that result