They're crammed like sardines in this ugly rectangle of a room, but it's home. Dani's the oldest by a year, all of nineteen, and she still raids my skittles. My brains are on the busted-ass CRT monitor, trying to synth a loop, but I can't focus because the world’s gone sideways.

Dani's brought a new flavor this time. A skulking ass-monkey with one hand shoved deep in his pocket and baggy shorts doing nothing to hide the hog in his pants. She sits on the floor on a hillock of stale laundry – abandoned hoodies and jeans – which acts like a throne. Her back’s to her shiny laptop, and her eyes are diamond chips. As he crosses to her, the room hums with a phone’s speaker on the floor: some trap beat, all bass and sickly synth wobble.

I glare at my mountain of tangled cables and PC parts, breathing like a scuba diver. A mouse skitters under the PC station; the sound is a knife in the still air. Then his shadow falls over her. A breath sucks the cramped space. She kicks off her slide-flops, and the sharp crack of her feet hitting the floor jolts the beat.

He pulls his shirt off over that zit-riddled bone-rack of a body, and she bites her lip. My scrotum tightens like a fist. She looks past him, straight into my smoldering green eyes, and her gaze is volcanic. Her throat works, she swallows, then speaks loud enough for me to decode over the beat:

"I'll make his balls blue. Watch this