One of the cops sees us and points to the other one. Two words come ringing out over the din that make my blood drop a couple degrees: “HEY, YOU!” I’ve never had a run-in with the cops before, and personally I don’t want to. Getting picked up downtown by my mom would suck. Even worse, I don’t want to start an argument with people who won’t listen, which is exactly what these two fat, badged, on-edge pieces of shit look like. If the venom breaks out, there would be less Partying without a Permit and more He Must Be on PCP. So I do the only thing I can think of: I hook one of Casey’s arms around my shoulder and we start running.

I expect the cops to leave us be when we sprint away, but no dice. They’re on our asses from the moment we hightail it. Zigzagging, ducking through bushes, nothing works; I glance over my shoulder and they’re behind me, stumbling through the park and swearing under their breath. The 72nd Street stairs come into view, and I begin panicking, because our options are down to Riverside or the Trump Pier, both of which are gonna be packed on a Saturday-

Something catches my eye. The venom twitches nervously, assuring me that it won’t work, that confrontation’s the only option. I swallow it down and go with the only glimmer of hope I have.

I wheel Casey like a sack of potatoes under the picnic table by the park’s baseball diamond, and duck underneath it, squeezed in next to him, our breath quick and purposefully shallow.

“So gentle,” he slurs.

“Shut the fuck up,” I hiss.

Through the opening between the bench and the table, I see the cops, their silhouettes distinguishable only by their cute little hats. They stop, the fatter of the two leaning over on his own knees, panting.

“You see ’em? Did you see where they went?”

Pant, pant. “I think”-pant, pant-“I think we lost ’em back”-pant, pant. Goddammit, just leave-“by the restrooms.”

“Ah, shit.” The less fat one whips back and forth, hoping to catch a blur of frightened teenager, but no dice. “Unbelievable.”

“Long.” Pant. “Coat.” Pant. “Couldn’t’a gone far.”

“Fucking kids. Let’s head back, clean up.” The thinner one stalks back to the rock. The fatter one follows, gulping and gasping as he goes.

A full minute after they disappear, I start breathing again. Casey and I duck out from under the picnic table. We somehow drag our carcasses up the stairs to the tunnel leading out to Riverside Drive. My brain is bobbing in a sea of adrenaline. I can barely hold the cigarette I jam into my face. The night air was never this refreshing before.

Casey laughs like a terrified madman, head back, brow glistening. “I can’t believe…we…that was inten-” Before the word ends, his body lurches like it shouldn’t, and a seemingly endless stream of whiskey-infused horrible gray shit comes pouring out of his mouth and over the edge of the stone balcony, down onto the grass below. The smell hits my nostrils like acid. I smoke harder.

When he’s done puking, Casey sits up on the ledge a little ways from me and says, “Thanks. I owe you one for that.” His torso hangs like an unused marionette.

I just nod and light my smoke. “Why do the cops hate you guys so much?”

He shrugs. “We leave candle wax and trash everywhere. That and, y’know, the drinking and pot smoking. Mostly, it’s just our healthy disrespect for authority.”

I nod again, still a little miffed. “I don’t think I like the police.”

“Good job being a teenager there,” he snorts.

My mind catches up with the rest of my system, and my train of thought comes chugging back to life. “Is that the heavy shit you were talking about?”

His head wheels upward, face scrunched. “Pardon?”

“You said you were dealing with ‘heavy shit.’ Organizing this get-together, the cops-that it?”

His body shakes with lazy chuckles. “No, no, I have…sort of personal issues.”

“What do you mean?”

His eyes focus on some point in the air, and he opens and closes his mouth, like a fish, before he hooks onto the words he needs. “Have you ever just…have you ever gotten angry to, like, the point where it takes you over?”

Wham. I’m interested. “Yes.”

“Well, I have that, but not…not like, tantrums. I have this…this uncontrollable thing in me that just cuts loose when I get angry or depressed enough, like this violent…beast inside of me. Like my Mr. Hyde, only worse, only it’s not just evil, it’s me, it’s got my morals and intelligence. I don’t become someone else. I just become a perverted version of myself.” He shrugs and snorts out a shoelace of vomit-snot. “I know this doesn’t make any sense. It’s named the black… Well, that’s what I call it, anyway. And it sort of took over my life tonight, and so I tried to drown it in booze. That normally works.” He looks at me as though he’s explained this too many times, and he’s used to the standard response. “It’s okay if you don’t get it.”

“No,” I say softly, “no, no, wait.”

My confession ends around the same time the smokes run out. I’ve told him things I realize I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t in my control. I told him about my father, about the few girls I’d tried to be with, and about the violence. The violence was the meat of it, the part full of yelling and swearing and pulling at my hair. But he listened. He heard me, and not like Randall. There wasn’t a lot of “sure” and “yuh-huh.” None of the wise, thoughtful nods that suggested he was thinking deeply on the subject. He listened to me like I was telling him about himself, and then he described his problem, his situation, which was my own. For the first time, both problems were the same. For the first time in…in forever, I guess, I was talking to somebody who thought of the venom as a reality. Imagine that. Imagine what it’s like to finally find somebody who understands not what you’re getting at, but exactly what you’re talking about, after eleven fucking years of people either not giving a shit or screwing up the message along the way. It’s like everyone on Earth has always been blind except for you, and then one day, someone walks up to you and asks you how you feel about the color blue. I couldn’t not talk.

And now we’re sitting on the ledge and looking out at the tunnel. We’ve both gone silent now; we have been for about ten, fifteen minutes; a little embarrassed on top of all our massive relief. It’s as though we’re naked for the first time in our lives, proud of each other for facing up to ourselves. I feel more comfortable than I’ve felt with anyone else in a long time, except maybe my mom, but that’s different, because with my mom, even though she doesn’t understand, she loves me. And while I don’t really know this guy, he understands.

When I turn to look at him, I realize that he’s staring straight at me. He’s got something slightly resembling a smile on his face, and I’m not quite sure what is going on.

“I know, right?” I say, nodding. “Incredible.”

He cocks his head to the side. “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”

And then he reaches up and takes my glasses off, and my vision gets blurry, and I start to get nervous, because I know that movement and I know what it could mean, and it begins to worry me, because if it turns out that I’m right, I’ll be dealing with the most ridiculous, ass-backward thing I could ever imagine, which, given the context of the night (partying, kissing Goth girl, drinking a little bit, running from the cops, and finally releasing my demons to a kindred spirit), would be appropriate while at the same time really, really harrowing. And it means exactly what I think it means, because Casey leans over and kisses me really softly, on the lips.

The first thing I think is, Mmm. Vomit. Then I wonder if I should elbow him in the stomach and knock him off the ledge, but that’s the venom talking. I’m not really pissed at him anyway. I’m just…surprised. And uncomfortable, sure, horribly uncomfortable. But the weird thing is, I let him do it. I sort of sit there and…get kissed. Not because I enjoy it or because I’m attracted to him, just ’cause…Well, honestly, I feel like I owe him one for hearing me out and understanding, for making me feel anything but crazy. Which feels cheap. And wrong. And easy. But I don’t know…This is new. Everything is new. Tonight has been a series of firsts; this is just the worst one of them so far.