Fireball by Tyler Keevil Page B

people out there. We did, too. Well, Chris did. I didn’t have much luck. We split up and I approached this group of guys standing around one of the tables. There were tons of tables on the balcony – these fancy wooden tables decorated with fresh flowers and Chinese candle lanterns. The guys had cleared everything off their table except for a bunch of coins and buttons and a couple lines of coke. I had no idea what they were doing, but I walked over anyways.
    â€˜We could feed it out here, to the wing.’
    â€˜Not if they’re man-marking.’
    â€˜Well, if they’re man-marking it’s a different story.’
    They all talked pretty fast, bobbing their heads and chewing their lips. Totally coked up. One of the guys bent down and snorted a line through a bill, then stood up and pawed at the powder beneath his nostrils. He started moving buttons around, arranging and rearranging them like a general making a battle plan.
    â€˜If they’re man-marking, we should go inside-outside.’
    â€˜Like a basketball-style pick play?’
    â€˜Exactly!’
    I nodded along with the others. ‘Then you could take a shot from the point.’
    They all looked at me, then at each other.
    â€˜From the point?’
    â€˜Yeah. You know – just throw the puck towards the net.’
    â€˜We’re talking about ultimate, buddy.’
    â€˜Oh. I thought you were talking about hockey.’
    After that they all turned their backs on me and closed ranks. Like I cared. I mean, what kind of treats get ripped on coke and plan frisbee strategy at a house party? I hate coke. Me and Chris could never afford it. This one time we crushed a bunch of caffeine pills and tried snorting them instead. We thought it would be like poor man’s coke. It wasn’t. It just burned our nostrils and tripled our anxiety levels. Next to acid, that was probably the worst narcotics experience of my entire life.
    â€˜Razor!’
    Chris called to me from across the balcony. He was standing by the railing with this dark-haired girl. She was kind of pudgy, but not bad pudgy. Not fat. Just soft. She had a nice smile, too. Chris waved me over and I went to join them.
    â€˜Linda wants to smoke a joint.’
    â€˜Sweet.’
    Me and Linda stood together while Chris got out his stash.
    â€˜Where are you guys from?’ she asked.
    â€˜The Cove.’
    â€˜I knew you weren’t from around here.’
    Chris lit up and handed the joint to Linda. We smoked it sort of furtively, taking big, fast tokes. It got us baked pretty quick – especially Linda. I don’t think she’d smoked a lot of pot before. After two or three rounds, it was like a switch had flipped in her brain. All of a sudden, she couldn’t stop talking. It was nuts.
    â€˜Do you guys like West Van?’ she asked.
    â€˜It’s okay, I guess.’
    â€˜That’s only because you don’t live here. I go to Handsworth, and some days it makes me so crazy I want to scream. I can’t wait to graduate. I’m going to move to Korea and teach English. Oh my God!’ She put her hand to her mouth, eyes wide. ‘I have to tell you about what happened on the weekend. My little cousin’s cat got eaten by a cougar.’
    â€˜Holy shit!’
    â€˜That’s crazy.’
    Me and Chris were both smiling. She was pretty fried.
    â€˜Uh-huh. And get this: it was her birthday. How awful is that? She’s only five years old. And apparently, she was sitting by the window, watching the cat play around in the yard, when this humongous cougar came out of nowhere and gobbled it up.’
    I started giggling. It just seemed too bizarre. ‘In one gulp?’
    â€˜In one gulp!’
    She laughed, too. We couldn’t help it.
    Chris said, ‘How’s that for a birthday present?’
    â€˜Instead of getting a cat, your cat gets eaten.’
    â€˜Happy birthday!’
    We laughed about that for at