I let myself into the Mario house and went up to Mitch’s bedroom. I threw the door open and was surprised to see that Mitch was awake already. Normally he slept for most of the day.

                But he was sitting in nothing but a pair of shorts, a book in his hands. He glanced at me in annoyance.

                “Can you knock?” he said.

                “No,” I said, shutting his bedroom door. “I’m bored. Hang out with me.”

                He shut his book, tossing it onto his nightstand. “Fine. What do you want to do?”

                “Where’s Jace?” I asked curiously.

                “He’s spending the day with Shane,” Mitch said. “You didn’t answer my question.”

                “Let’s go to the smoothie place. I’m craving a strawberry-banana smoothie,” I said.

                Mitch got up and pulled a tank top on. He pulled on a beanie to hide his messy hair and grabbed his wallet.

                We left his bedroom and walked out of his house. He glanced at the cars in his driveway.

                “Do you want to drive there?” he asked.

                I shook my head. “Nah, it’s a nice day out. Let’s just walk. Besides, it will kill some time.”

                He shrugged, pulling out his phone and starting some music. “Alright, let’s go.”

                We started walking up the street together. I nodded my head along to the music as we walked.

                “I know I expect too much, and not enough all at once. You know I only wanted fun, and you got me all fucked up on love,” I sang along.

                “Stop it. You suck at singing,” Mitch said, shoving me.

                “My talents lie elsewhere,” I said with a flirtatious wink.

                “We both know that’s not happening,” he said.

                “It almost did,” I reminded.

                “Keyword: Almost,” he said. Mitch and I had gotten a little tipsy and horny one night, but nothing really happened. Well, other than me needing some alone time in the shower. God, that had sucked.

                “Silent film stars stuck in talking cinema life, so let’s fade away together one dream at a time,” I sang. “NANANANANANANANANANA!”

                “Rio, stop singing,” Mitch groaned.

                “I have a lovely singing voice,” I argued.

                “Did your mom tell you that?” he asked.

                “I can feel the love,” I said.

                We continued walking until we had reached the smoothie place. We went inside and ordered, grabbing our drinks when they were done and sitting down at a table with them.

                I looked over and nearly choked on my smoothie. Well, no wonder Ezra hadn’t been at the wall today.

                He was sitting at one of the tables with a small group of people. He was sipping on his smoothie and nodding along as some guy talked to him.

                He pulled his lips away from the straw and laughed at whatever the guy was saying. He replied, and I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he looked excited and he moved his hands animatedly as he spoke, his eyes sparkling.

                “Who’s he?”

                I jumped in surprise, suddenly remembering that I was here with Mitch. He was glancing from me to Ezra curiously.

                “I don’t know,” I lied with a shrug.

                Mitch raised an eyebrow. “I’m not stupid. I could see the way you were looking at him. You definitely know him. Who is he?”

                I nearly laughed at the irony of that. Mitch was the one who had given him the scar, and yet Mitch didn’t even remember him. Then again, it was usually pretty dark out when we got in fights, and the adrenaline sometimes made it hard to remember details. Ezra made it sound like the fight had happened a while ago, so Mitch had probably forgotten his face a long time ago.

                “His name is Ezra,” I said. “I barely know him. I just didn’t expect to see him here.”

                “He’s cute,” Mitch said. “Nice scar he’s got.”

                I snickered. “Yea, I wonder how he got that.”

                Mitch said something through a mouthful of smoothie. I raised an eyebrow at him, catching none of what he said.

                “Speak English,” I said.

                “Okay, River.”

                I jumped again and spun around. Ezra smiled easily at me, his smoothie in his hands.

                “What did you say?” I asked.

                “I said okay, River,” he said. “You said to speak English. ‘Rio’ in English is River.”

                “Don’t call me River,” I said. “My name is Rio.”

                “You said to speak English,” he repeated. “Technically your name is River.”

                “No,” I said in annoyance. “My name is Rio. So call me Rio.”

                “I like River,” he said, sitting down with us and sipping on his smoothie.

                “I’m very happy for you,” I said. “But if you call me River one more time, I’m going to punch you.”

                “Mitch Marion,” Ezra said, glancing at him. “Nice to see you again.”

                “Who are you?” Mitch asked in confusion.

                Ezra pointed to his scar. “You cut my eyebrow open a couple of months ago.”

                “Oh,” Mitch said. “I do nice work. That looks like it hurt.”

                “It did,” Ezra agreed with a nod.

                “So are you going to attack us or…?” Mitch raised an eyebrow.

                “Nah, I’m over it. Like I told Rio here, I was drunk the night it happened and probably deserved it for attacking you guys first. I don’t want to fight,” he said.

                “What are you doing here?” I asked.

                “Getting a smoothie,” he said, holding it up.

                “No. I mean here. As in sitting with us,” I said. “Go away. You have your own friends.”

                “Just wanted to swing on by and say hello,” he said with his easy smile.

                “Okay, you’ve said hello. So goodbye,” I said.

                I kind of didn’t want him to go away though. He had on the same purple beanie as yesterday, and was wearing a tank top that showed off his impressively toned arms.

                “You should come hang out with us,” Ezra said.

                “No,” Mitch said.

                “Oh, Mitch, I never even introduced myself!” Ezra said, smacking his palm to his forehead. “I’m Ezra.”

                “I don’t care,” Mitch said.

                “No wonder you and Rio are best friends,” he said, laughing.

                “You’re annoying,” Mitch said, taking a sip of his smoothie. “Goodbye.”

                But I had a feeling that Mitch was just paranoid that Ezra wanted to attack us. I couldn’t really blame him, since Mitch had a lot of enemies and had obviously crossed paths with Ezra before.

                “Don’t be so paranoid,” Ezra said, speaking my thoughts out loud. He smiled at Mitch. “I’m not interested in revenge or anything. Just trying to be polite.”

                “I’m not. Piss off,” Mitch said, waving him away.

                “I can tell when I’m not wanted,” Ezra said, sniffing dramatically.

                “Good,” I said. “Leave us alone.”

                He glanced at me, the smile back on his face. “Wall,” he said simply before heading back over to his friends.

                “Wall? What the hell does that mean?” Mitch asked.

                “Hell if I know,” I lied with a shrug.

                “Whatever, that kid is weird. Want to hang out tonight?” Mitch asked.

                I shook my head. “Nah, I promised my dad I’d help him clean the basement.” Oh, I was a making nasty habit of lying to Mitch.

                “Have fun with that,” he said, returning to sipping on his smoothie.

                I copied him, forcing myself not to look over at Ezra. I knew very well what he meant by “wall”. He meant he wanted me to meet him at the wall tonight.

                Now, I could be paranoid like Mitch and assume that it was a trap. Or I could just trust Ezra and show up.

                I mentally sighed, knowing that I would be at the wall tonight.

                We finished our smoothies and I finally allowed myself to glance over. Ezra and his friends were still sitting there.

                Ezra was talking to a girl and a guy, making some wild hand gestures. They were nodding along in agreement with whatever he was saying, and the girl pointed at him and eagerly said something that had Ezra nodding furiously and replying with more hand gestures.

                I followed Mitch out of the smoothie place. Ezra always seemed so easy and relaxed when he was around me. I liked seeing him fired up and animated.

                I nodded to myself, deciding that I would try to get him that animated when I saw him tonight. With that firmly in mind, I followed Mitch back to his house.

                                                                                                ***

                “It’s getting late. I better head home,” I said, standing up.

                “I’ll drop you off. It’s dark out,” Mitch said, also standing up.

                We got into his car and he drove me back to my house. I thanked him for the ride before heading up my driveway and in through my front door.

                “Rio, you’re home late,” mom said with a concerned frown. “Why didn’t you text me or your father?”

                “Sorry mom, it slipped my mind. I was with Mitch,” I said. “We were just hanging out in his room.”

                My parents had become incredibly overprotective and paranoid because of Hank. They were terrified that I was going to start doing drugs or fall in with the wrong crowd or something. Since they had failed Hank, they were determined to protect me from those kinds of things.

                “Please try to text me next time,” she said.

                “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m tired, though, so I’m going to head off to bed.”

                “Alright. Goodnight Rio. I love you,” she said, hugging me.

                I went into my bedroom and locked the door. I waited about two hours before pushing my window open and sliding out.

                I made my way back to the wall, where, sure enough, Ezra was crouched. He grinned at me as I carefully made my way up the wall and balanced myself next to him.

                “Mitch is a paranoid guy,” he said.

                “He is,” I agreed. “But you can’t really blame him. He has a lot of people after him.”

                “What a shame.” He remained crouched on the wall, like a cat waiting to pounce.

                “What were you talking about today?” I asked. “With your friends at the smoothie place, I mean.”

                “Anime,” he said, laughing. “We were arguing about which is the darkest.”

                “I don’t watch anime,” I said.

                “You should,” he said, his eyes lighting up again. “I say Elfen Lied is the darkest. You should watch that. It’s like an animated version of American Horror Story.”

                “Now that I’ve watched,” I said. “But season 3 kind of sucked.”

                “I like the season 1 the most,” he said. “It dealt so much with more relatable problems, like death and family problems.” He glanced at me. “What do you think of death?”

                I felt my eyes darken. “Death is death. Everyone dies. People are selfish about death. We piss and moan when people we love die because ‘they had their whole lives ahead of them’, but that’s not true. We don’t want people to die because we don’t want to miss them. Because we want them back. Not because they deserve to stay alive, but because we’re selfish and we want them back so we don’t have to miss them.”

                Ezra was watching me, his eyes brighter than usual. “I agree,” he said with a nod. “People who say death is selfish are the selfish ones.”

                “Exactly!” I said. “When people die young, we’re sad because we have to go the rest of our lives without them, not because they had so much potential ahead of them.”

                I noticed that he was smiling and gave him a confused look. “Why are you smiling?”

                “Because you get so passionate about this kind of stuff,” he said. “So much about the world pisses you off. I like the anger inside you. It lights you up like a fire. All I had to do was mention death, and that spark was enough to light a fire inside you.”

                He pulled out his lighter, flicking it so that a spark appeared. He flicked it so that the flame appeared, wavering slightly at the light breeze blowing through the night.

                “You always have that lighter. Do you even smoke?” I asked.

                “Just cigars every once in a while,” he said, playing with his lighter now. “I just like playing with the lighter. I know that makes me sound like a pyromaniac, but I swear I’m not that crazy.”

                I suddenly felt frustrated, realizing that he had gotten me to be passionate and animated, but I hadn’t managed to do the same to him. I just didn’t know what would get him worked up, though.

                “You know about Phoenixes, right?” he said suddenly.

                “Duh,” I said.

                “They rise from their own ashes.” He smiled. “I’ve always loved the idea of that. That you could burn down to nothing but ashes, and then rise from them brand new.”

                “How beautiful and cliché,” I said.           

                “There’s a lot of anger burning in you. Maybe someday the right spark will ignite it, and it’ll burn you down. Then you can rise from that,” he said.

                “Burning alive in anger doesn’t sound pleasant,” I said. “I’d rather not.”

                I didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if I ever lost control of the anger I always felt inside. There was so much I hated, so much anger boiling inside of me. It wouldn’t be a very pretty scene if I ever lost control of that.

                Ezra kept the smile on his face. “Everyone loses control at some point,” he said, and for the first time I caught a glimpse beyond the smile, into a boy who was hiding an anger of his own.

                I felt my own darkness flaring up. “Everyone loses control, everyone has problems, and everyone has secrets,” I said, a bitter grin coming to my face.

                Ezra’s smile grew. “Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. No one is ever as simple as they seem.”

                “Everyone has a breaking point, and it’s a terrifying moment, and every splash has a ripple effect. We’re no exception,” I said.

                Ezra’s smile grew even wider, but I realized for the first time that his smile wasn’t quite right. He and I fell into a comfortable silence, letting our dark thoughts flow away with the night wind, dreading the moment the spark ignited.