Down, left, straight, twist, down again, stairs. We push a final door open and spill into the underground parking lot. I’ve been here before, watching boys skate. Watching Kane and Omar crash shopping trolleys into each other, back when we were fourteen. When life was safe. It still has that tarmac/carbon monoxide stench I remember, the ribbons of tar repairing the cracks, the concrete pillars, the low ceiling. The mesh gate, like a curtain of metal rectangles.
I’m starving and thirsty. My body clock is all mixed up.
‘It’s beyond midnight, right?’
‘Check the watch on your org,’ she says with a snort. She rattles the metal mesh curtain-net separating the parking lot from the street.
Dead end. No way out of here but back.
Orgs, man. Bone of contention. Poor Hopey got hers put in by Chil
