At some point during the party, they decided to go to taco bells. Mexican food, like crimes against humanity. Are something you can't just have one of. Those taquito platters made them hungry for more. 

It made them trash the place, because school seniors are just shy of being shit-flinging baboons at a zoo, and it ain't because school is not a demeaning jail where people gawk and say how smart they are for learning simple tool use. Honestly, I think humanity itself was a mistake, and we should all reject that and return to monkey. 

But, as always, I'm digressing, which for one I do prefer, since it at least distracts me from the off-white stain on the club couch. 

"So, sour cream or cum?" I ask, poking the stain with a pencil. 

Brayden, ever so curious, starts sniffing and scratching. "dunno, but there is only one way to find out." 

If you guess that he licks it, you would be mistaken. He makes Jungkook lick it. 

"Hey, it's Nivea Cream!" he says. How does he know what it tastes like is beyond me. I guess his shiny skin has to come from somewhere. 

"dibs!" yells Brayden, jumping on the couch and grabbing a single nacho from the floor, using it to scoop up the cream and what the hell is he doing? 

"Hey, brother?" says Hayden, now holding a tiny bucket and a pair of tongs. The kitchen variety, not the bedroom ones. Very necessary to make a distinction, since he is holding thongs in his tongs. Also, why a pair if it is one thong? Seems like a semantic nightmare. "What are you doing?" 

"eating some good ass cream," he says as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "aren't youse some kinda food wizard person?" 

"It's not that type of cream. It is a face cream," corrects Hayden. "I've seen you use cream in your face before."

"duh, sour cream," he says while glomping a dollop of Nivea. "you know what good lactobacillus bacteria do to your pores? makes my face feel like a freely made baby butt, and also delicious, 'cuz I'm a snacc." 

That explains why the three of them smell like sour cream. See, that's what we call a callback. Semantics rules, y'all. 

"No, you eat sour cream, and put cream lotion in your face," says Hayden, grabbing a goop and putting it on his face. And then, silence. A silence that echoed through space and time to inspire one Simon and Garfunkle song. "Brayden."

"that's what momma called me."

"This is not face cream, and no sour cream either. I'll fill you with some of my homemade cream so you can understand the true satisfaction of a good whipping."

"Okay, that's enough cream talk for a day," I say, tossing used condoms and party poppers away. Wait, no, they're not condoms, they're balloons. Balloons full of whatever off-white substance they smeared all over everything. Oddly enough, not on my underwear pile. "If you have time to speak, you have time to clean." 

Empty bottles of beer, a half-chugged José Cuervo, the remnants of someone trying to snort pixie sticks, all tell the most awful tale: that these people are are both cringe and going to hell. Good to know the future of this country is one kegstand away from madness. Maybe Spanish television is right. All teenagers want to do is drugs, sex, and skinny jeans. 

"man, this blows," says Brayden who, in spite of knowing it definitely wasn't cream, he's still eating it while Jungkook and Harry are cleaning around him. "why do we gotta clean after this thing? i'm the messy boy, i'm the one who gets cleaned after!"

All eyes go directly to Okayden, huddled in a corner, eating the garbage we are putting in a pile. He must feel it, for he composes himself and gives us a small soliloquy. That's artsy fartsy for external monologue. 

"My desires ran,
And I got taken over by,
I regret nothing." 

Of course, he doesn't. He's the fucking Id made person. That's some psychoanalysis shit right there. 

I toss the mop to the ground. It flops uneventfully. "I think we should address the elephant in the room before we continue." 

Again, all eyes shift, but this time towards Jungkook. He realizes this and runs away, crying and wailing all the while Harry chases after him. 

"dude, not cool," says Brayden. "you know j-dawg is on a diet and minding his weight." 

"I have no idea what just happened, I'm talking about Aiden. What are we gonna do with him? We can't expel him from the club, lest we get canceled on Twitter, and we can't keep him around, because he is a ticking time bomb. I say that the best way to get rid of him is to follow the same modus operandi with the Queen B: get him expelled."

I can see Hayden try and grab my shoulder again, but he relents. Good. Don't touch the goods. "Brother, isn't that blowing things a little bit out of proportion? I know he's not like us quite yet, but he's a bad boy! Kindred spirits! Maybe we misunderstood his actions? You know better than us that actions can be misconstrued. Why not think he just wanted to make a good impression and bridge the gap between bad boy and common folk?" 

"Brayden? Anything to add?" I ask.

"nah, i livestreamed the whole shebang and it's doing great for my metrics. rise, you arbitrary algorithm number, and give me my self-worth?" 

"Okayden?" I ask, knowing the answer. 

"Pretty good trash food,
Pretty good foot sniffing sesh,
Can't complain here, bro."

Nice. I seem to be the only one that seems to have an issue with inviting the snake into our garden of Eden. If I am to turn this thing around, I'll have to get a page of the ol' Sun Tzu book. Whichever one he wrote. The Art of War. Just pretend I said something smart. 

If you're not familiar with this little here book, the Art of War is about puppies trying to find their way home. That, and also of idiots who don't know how to properly interpret titles. The art of war is, as many of you not trying to be Instagram famous might know, is a treatise written by Chinese General and man who literally made an army of killer prostitutes for the lols, Sun Tzu, who won war after war and later wrote how baller he was. 

In it, he wrote the tenets on how to conduct an army, warfare, the philosophy of war, and other bullshit that made the best Disney song ever. Yes, I'm swift as a coursing river and strong as a great typhoon. Man, such a banger. 

If one were to follow its tenets, one is surely win in war. And today, we entered a war, one in which Aiden shot the first shot. 

My fellow bad boys seem somewhat ambivalent toward him. They are not with me.

Then, they're against me.

"Just, give it some time, bro," says Hayden. "Anyone can do a fuck up. I see no reason to judge him for that, do you?"

"Oh, I kinda do," I say, "Because he used your homemade nachos as a fire starter for a homemade bong made of apples they found in the fridge."

Hayden grabs the thongs and perfectly tosses them towards the wall, embedding them against it. We are talking about the undergarment, not the utensil. "That son of a bitch! I was gonna use those to make a welcome pie for him tomorrow!" 

"And Brayden," I say, "you so deftly threw your special Timothee Chalamet shoes at my head, and missed, I might add, right?" 

"yeah, who would've thunk suede wasn't aerodynamic enough to handle my stease," he says. 

"Well, where are they now?" I ask. 

Brayden looks at his feet, wondering why they weren't attached to his shoes. "i dunno, around?" 

I sit next to him, sitting on top of the unidentified cream. Thankfully, leather is a good recipient for weird stains. It slips right off. Believe me on this. "I know where they are. He took a photo of them and called them '2000 and lane' while telling everyone his own shoes were '3000 and based' and threw them into the bin."

"bitch, you don't diss my funky fresh style!" 

"And Okayden!" I say. Hmmm, what can I say to Okayden? The only thing he cares about here is his feet magazines. I take one from the floor, opening it up for some inspiration and...it's filled with the mysterious, off-white liquid. 

It's most certainly not sour cream. But it is enough to make Okayden red with anger, I think. Maybe because the scarf is red that I think he is. 

Call me mad, but it works. All three are with me. I see their resolve in their eyes, or something. Dark glasses in a dank room are not something that gives me much of a sense of dept, or color, or anything besides general shapes. 

"This asshole is going down," says Hayden. 

"yeah, what hay-hay says," chimes Brayden. "unless it's some weird innuendo." 

I look towards Okayden. All he does is give me a grin with all his teeth bared out. The grin has a half-broken beer can. 

"Great," I say while I grab the trash bag off the ground. "Lemme toss this out, and as soon as I return, we are planning how to get him to buckle down." 

They think I do this to be nice. Far from it. I do this because, on the bottom of the bag are Hayden's apples and Brayden's shoes. 

The first and most important tenet of The Art of War is that all warfare is based on deception. When we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. 

If you have to lie, cheat, and deceive to get your way, then so be it. I'm going full-on against you, Aiden. Be prepared. This surely will not bite me in the ass. Am I going a bit overboard? Maybe, but one has to nip it in the bud. A nuclear nip.

And no, I had nothing to do with Okayden's magazines. That's just disgusting.