Race's lower lip quivered as he stared at the paper. Didn't Denton say that he was going to outline the positive parts of their essays? All he saw was a lot of red ink. Without warning, tears starting to run down his face. Oh, shit. He was crying. Hurriedly, he started swiping at his face. Why was he crying? This had been going on for the past two weeks. Since Spot mysteriously stopped returning his calls and started ignoring him every day.

"Anthony?" Mr. Denton was looking at him strangely. "Do you want to sit outside class for a minute?"

He shook his head, too confused to speak. He cast a look at Spot who seemed perfectly fine. This, for some reason, just made him cry harder. Sure, he and Spot were no longer together. It was fine. Totally.

Then why couldn't he stop the tears from falling?

--

"I hate her," Mush said stubbornly.

Blink smiled thinly, his patience was wearing as thin as said smile. He put an arm around his boyfriend's shoulders.

"You've met her once," he cajoled.

"Yeah," he pouted. "And she called me a dirty half-breed, the racist."

Ah, so now it was out in the open. The reason why Mush didn't look forward to the meeting with Blink and Skittery's (who, by the way, was conspicuously missing) friend from childhood, Stefanie Armbruster. He had always been kind of sensitive about his background. Blink had never seen why. His mother was gorgeous, with the same full, sensuous lips as him and high, Egyptian goddess cheekbones. So what if she was black and his father was white? Although, Blink recalled, he had showed a flare of pride in fourth grade when he learned that his father was an eighth Argentinean and became fluent in Spanish.

Stefanie had moved away when Blink and Skits were six, having come back to the city once every summer. Evidently, this year she was making her annual visit earlier. A full five months earlier.

Mush had ranted about her being a racist before but his claims had fallen on deaf ears. When he had met Stefanie, he and Blink were just hooking up (as much as he despised using that term) so he figured it was pre-boyfriend jitters.

"Racist?" David screwed his face up. "I think I'm going to leave. I have an interview with someone from Berkley tomorrow at the Plaza."

"Interview?" Blink quirked a brow. "Already?"

He shrugged. "I want to get early admission. This seemed logical. He's in town for a business something or other."

He rubbed his face tiredly. "So this chick's a racist?"

Blink added a smirk to his quirked brow expression. David rarely used words like 'chick'. In fact, he couldn't remember him using them at all. This college thing must've really had him bugging.

"She's not," he argued.

Mush crossed his arms. "Oh, yes she is."

Blink opened his mouth to argue some more but a shrill squeal and a grab from behind made the words halt before they could spring from his larynx.

"Alex, baby!" Stefanie, a tall, angular girl with a platinum blond blunt cut, squeezed him tightly. "How's my favorite modern day pirate?"

"Hey, Stef," he wheezed.

Giggling, she let up on him and planted a platonic kiss on the tip of his nose.

"Sorry, Lexikins," she cooed.

She noticed Mush giving her a venomous look.

"Oh!" she squealed. "It's the mulatto boy! I didn't know you were still dating the half breed."

David crossed his arms, already not liking her.

"Perra," Mush muttered.

That was when she noticed David.

"Who's the kike?"

Blink noticed his friend's eyes go from blue to navy in anger. It was quite a mighty feat. David's jaw clenched and he managed to refrain from talking. A mighty feat for a motormouth like him.

"I have to go," he seethed and stormed away.

Blink sighed. Stefanie was just coming on strong. She hadn't lived in New York for ten years. She didn't know that calling someone a kike in Manhattan was a federal offense. Okay, calling Mush was a half breed was going too far but…

"So how's it like having a nigger for a mother?"

Okay, the braud was a fucking racist.

Mush, unable to muster succinct response, rose and stormed off to the bathroom.

"What'd I say to piss of halfy and your little kike friend?"

"Stefanie," Blink deadpanned. "We have to talk."

"What?" she mewled innocently.

"You're a fucking racist."

"So?"

"So? You keep calling my boyfriend a half-breed. You—"

"Speaking of which," she smiled. "I hope you know that I'm completely uncomfortable with you referring to him as your boyfriend. Guys with guys…it's not natural."

Now that was out of left field. Blink rose.

"Later bitchoid," he snapped and stormed off to the bathroom to find Mush.

--

Snitch flexed his toes inside of his unyielding Doc Martins. It had been a grueling four hours of work, flitting from table to table and being polite to fickle guests until his head felt like it was about to explode.

"You look wiped," a voice observed.

"How astute," he deadpanned.

Snitch turned to face Swifty who looked just as tired as he did.

"Dinner?" he offered, coming to sit next to him. "My treat. We can go to Shells."

Snitch wrinkled his nose. "What makes you think I'll like Shells?"

"Because you seem to have an obsession with aquatic life. I mean, you're wearing a Sea World t-shirt and you were an orca for Halloween."

He laughed mentally. How little Swifty knew. However, dude was loaded and Snitch was starving. Dinner actually sounded…nice.

"Sure," he agreed, doing his best to sound begrudging.

--

Jack was drinking coffee and Jack was not amused.

He tapped his sneakered foot impatiently on the scuffed linoleum floor of the Sullivan's apartment, arms crossed over his chest. It was eight at night and Erin's annoying niece Amelia was over, gushing with her over wedding plans. In her usual way of torturing Jack, she had invited him to sit in. Per usual, it entailed pointing out all of his shortcomings whenever she could.

Plus, Amelia had designs for him and ew. Just, ew.

"I think paisley would be a fine pattern," Amelia said earnestly. "So Jack, is that nose ring real?"

"Yeah," he replied brusquely.

"It looks infected," Erin wrinkled her surgically enhanced nose.

He eyed her coolly across the square of Formica. "So does that mole on the side of your neck. Better get more surgery."

Erin put a manicured hand over the offending blemish and went back to wedding planning.

"So Jack, you go to Pulitzer High?" Amelia giggled. "Is it true that they call it Homo High?"

"Yeah."

"Are you?"

He nodded, growing bored with her giggling and eyelash fluttering. One: she'd soon be family by marriage and B: he was gayer than an upside down Christmas tree.

"He used to date this adorable kid named David," Erin gushed with what Jack knew not to trust as a sudden flare of maternal urge. "But then he had to fuck it up."

Amelia smiled coyly at him. Jack sighed. It was going to be a long night.

--

It was going to be a long night.

Snitch frowned as he stared at Swifty try to start the Mustang.

"No, no, no," he moaned. "Start!"

They were in a seedy part of town and far, far away from the nearest Shells. They were stalled on the street between a Sky King Fireworks store and a strip joint. Neither venue seemed pleasing to the two boys to go into and ask to use the phone.

"This sucks," Swifty lamented.

Snitch leaned over and looked across the street.

"Maybe not," he smiled.

He didn't know why he was investing so much time with a boy he actively disliked. Maybe it was the car or the fact that he had offered dinner but he didn't just want to get out and call a cab.

Quickly, he unfastened his seatbelt and got out of the car.

"Come on!" he cajoled and started across the street.

Swifty got out of the car and followed him.

"Someone will steal it," he complained.

"I'm sure your daddy has insurance," he didn't bother to look over his shoulder.

He pulled the taller boy's arm and dragged him towards the luminous building in front of them.

"What is it?" Swifty asked.

"Benjamin," he smirked. "This is a Stop'n'Shop."

--

"Mush?" Blink stepped into the men's room. "I told her to fuck off. She shouldn't have said those things to you."

"Whatever!" the voice came from one of the stalls.

Blink all but knelt on the tiled floor to reach him.

"Sweetie, come on out."

There was much sighing but the door flew open and Mush stood, pouting and cross-armed.

"You told her to fuck off?" he asked, not removing his pout.

Blink nodded and tried to pry Mush's arms apart. Finally, he was victorious.

"You know," he smiled. "I've been keeping a log of all the places we've had sex."

"What does this have to do with Stefanie?"

"Nothing," he admitted. "But I'm just saying that men's room isn't on the list."

Stefanie who?

Blink smiled. "I think that's up for change."

He grabbed Mush around the waist and brought their lips together. Mush let out a little moan and wrapped his arms around Blink's shoulders. He turned him around and sat him up on the counter. He opened his mouth and their tongues did a little jig as their hands roamed all over each other, feeling the memory of their skin and the feat of how they were doing something entirely scandalous in a public place.

Mush snaked his legs around his waist and pulled Blink to him.

"Alex? I just wanted to say that I'm lea—"

The boys turned in unison to see Stefanie standing in the doorway.

"Get out," Mush demanded. "This is the men's room!"

She looked at them. "Fags!"

"Bitch!" Mush shouted after her.

Then she was gone and they got back to what they were doing.

--

"Let's switch," Swifty offered.

"No."

"Come on."

"I'm smaller."

They had been in the Stop'n'Shop for a good half hour, most of which was spent tooling around in a shopping cart and filching the remainder of the free samples. Swifty was examining Pringles currently and trying to finagle his way into letting him take Snitch's place inside the metal cart.

"Wait," Snitch held his hand up before he started laughing. "Oh, my God."

Swifty cocked a brow. "What?"

"Listen."

"…We'll drive you crazy…"

"Is that?" he blanched.

Snitch started laughing uncontrollably. "It is!"

"I wanna rock'n'roll all niiiiight!" they sang in unison. "And party every day!"

They burst into hysterics. Who would have thought it? KISS playing in a Stop'n'Shop. Seized by Gene Simmons's voice and a bit of an apple crumble high courtesy of the kindly old lady in the bakery section, Swifty leaned in and kissed Snitch in the cart.

--

Race sat on the cement steps Monday after school, waiting for Jack to hurry his perky ass up. That was when he saw it. Some guy in a yellow sweater and khakis with a blazer and a long ass nose was with Spot. His Spot. Scratch that…formerly his Spot. He had fucked everything up and there he was, hanging off the lapels of some mystery boy.

"Kiss me," he heard Spot say.

To his surprise, sweater boy laughed. "Because you want to or because someone's watching, Patrick?"

Who called him Patrick outside of his parents? What the fuck?

"Both," he heard Spot reply.

Then that fucker pulled Spot in for a slow, movie kiss.

"That has to hurt," Jack picked that moment to finally show up.

"Fuck up, Kelly," but Race could already feel the tears start to well up.

What the fuck was wrong with him?