The boy walked from the bathroom to his room with a towel around his waist and a beer in his hand and looked for a place to put down the can. His desk was filled with old papers, new papers, course packages, faded receipts, an empty chip bag, a fallen poster, and a weed grinder. For a second, he thought of placing the beer on his mattress but it was bumpy and his sheet already had many stains. Instead he cleared the crusty tissue papers from his bedside table and placed it there. The boy then threw his towel on his bed, slid on a pair of boxers, and sniffed a shirt that had been hanging off his chair. It was wrinkled, but it didn’t smell bad. 

“Yo! You ready?” Mo called from the living room. 

The boy picked up the beer from the nightstand and went into the living room. Mo, Frankie, and Mike were sitting on the couch with Nintendo controllers. The three of them were in their boxers and there were three beers on the coffee table. Mo threw him a controller and the boy sat in his couch spot for Drunk Mario Kart.

Music played while they raced around the courses. During the first laps, the boys would rap and sing along to their drinking playlist, but on the last laps they would focus on winning and fall silent. After each race, the winner drank—the losers drank more. By the time they crossed Rainbow Road then tallied the tournament results, it was 10 o’clock.

Because they thought they were late, the boy and his roommates squeezed into one bathroom. Frankie pissed and Mike brushed his teeth. The boy and Mo styled their own hair. After, they squeezed into the mirror frame and put on cologne, rubbing their forearms and wiping the backs of their ears. The boy returned to his room but did not like being there alone when he drank, so he quickly slid on his jeans then waited at the entrance. He put on his shoes. He checked his phone. And when Mike, Mo, and Frankie were ready, they went out into the night, jogging under swirling stars with beers sloshing around their stomachs.

10 minutes later, the boy and his roommates arrived at Stallion, a low and old building near campus. Stallion had bingo on Tuesday with a drink special: buy a pitcher of Canadian beer, get an American one for free. Because Stallion Tuesdays were so popular, the boy was surprised to see there were only six people in line. Yet he didn’t let himself get excited because he believed he had a face that bouncers disliked. Also, Mo liked fighting, Mike was always losing his I.D., and Frankie vomited when he needed to vomit. After three years in the town, these habits got them denied by some bouncers. But, that night, Stallion had a new bouncer working the front and he let all of them in.

Mo beelined to the bathroom. Mike got the first round. The boy and Frankie hunted for an open table. Eventually, they found one and poached enough spare chairs so that everyone had a seat. The boy filled out his bingo card, nudged Mike when a hot girl walked by, and drank beers. At one point, a few plastic cups fell to the floor, and Mo announced the table was wobbly. Then he argued with Mike about how many coasters to shove under the uneven leg. As it often did, the argument became emotional. The boy stood up and said he was getting a drink, but his true intention was to escape.

Shoulders between strangers, elbows on the sticky wood, the boy was trying to get the bartender’s attention when he heard someone say, “Dunkaroos.” He turned in the direction of the voice and saw a girl. The girl was tall but not taller than the boy. She was older but still an undergrad. And based on the way she stood, he assumed she was independent. 

He leaned over and asked, “Did you hear someone yell Dunkaroos? Was that you?”

“Is that supposed to be a pick-up line?” she responded. 

The boy said no, but the girl didn’t seem to hear. There was chatter and music and Bingo, so he yelled, “I swear I heard you say Dunkaroos!”

“Well, it wasn’t me,” she said. “I don’t just scream out random snack names when I’m at the bar– even if they are a top 5 snack.”

“Top five snack?” the boy replied, happy the girl was open to conversation. “You think Dunkaroos are a top five snack?”

“Definitely top five!” she yelled. She turned her body towards the boy. “I bet you can’t name me five better snacks.”

“Easy!” the boy answered, for he was a frequent late-night snacker. “Skittles, Reese Cups, Peanut M&Ms, Fruit Gush–”

“Fruit Gushers! No way you said Fruit Gushers! My friends and I used to eat those all the time,” the girl said then winced as a table behind them screamed, “BINGO!”

“Follow me,” the girl said. So the boy followed. 

Leaning near a star-shaped sheriff’s badge that hung on the wall, the girl started to tell him about Fruit Gushers. The boy was not a good listener, but he listened as hard as he could. The girl explained that her immigrant parents refused to have candy in the house. So she got her Fruit Gushers at school by letting classmates copy her homework. But one day her school had an assembly about having clean hands, and from then on, everyone started making fun of kids with dirty hands. This made Fruit Gushers dangerous on her playground.

“So, eating Fruit Gushers became, like, a badass move at your school?” the boy asked, hoping that she would give a long answer. 

“Yeah, exactly. It was sketchy to eat them, but, because it was so sketchy, anybody who was eating them got attention… so my friends and I ate them everyday. At recess, we’d have our fingers on the Fruit Gushers pack for safety, ripping off jelly junks while all the other kids sucked yogurt tubes. They had admiration in their eyes, jealousy in their thoughts. I thought that meant we were the coolest kids at school.”

“Woah. Poetic. I bet you’re an English Major,” the boy said, pleased with what he thought was a witty comment. 

The girl smiled. Then she made her smile disappear and replaced it with straight lips. This was not the first time the girl had done this. Since the conversation’s start, her lips had been tilting, pursing, and folding against her smile. The boy had seen people with teeth problems do this, but the girl’s teeth were fine. 

“Yup! I’m not getting a job with it, so I might as well use my degree for dramatic speeches and relentless introspection,” the girl answered with a smirk that soon dissolved. 

The girl didn’t smile freely, the boy thought. And this was wrong. The boy had always known smiling to be good and right. The boy was convinced that, tonight, he and the girl should smile.

“Ok, Ms. English Major. Did you discover any deep conclusions from your relationship with Fruit Gushers?” he asked with a smile

With straight lips, she replied, “Of course. Fruit Gushers made me a follower– that was in elementary. Then in middle school I had to dress nice. In high school I needed to go to all the parties. In first year I wanted to have sex with the varsity athletes.”

“And what’s happening now?” the boy asked. He did not smile because he was worried she was still having sex with varsity athletes. 

“Now I’m just trying to figure out what I want. No more chasing candy, no more following,” the girl said.

“Seems like a good idea,” the boy replied. He wanted to seem smart and lighten the mood, so he said, “Well, your elementary school was much more sanitary than mine. Raw Mr. Noodles, yeah, uncooked noodles, were big on my playground. You just put the flavoring salt in the pack, shook it up, then ate them with your fingers. The thing was: we would be playing basketball at the same time. Even though our fingers were black with dirt, we’d still lick all the salt off them.”

“Ew!” the girl said.

“Hey! That’s a big reason why I can drink so much. The dirt and uncooked noodles gave me an iron stomach!” the boy responded.

The boy and girl continued to tell tangential stories around the topic of “snacks”. A top five list was eventually agreed upon. The boy wanted an excuse to touch the girl’s hand, so he said they should shake on their list. When they clasped palms, both of them became silent. The silence scared the boy because he believed the girl would leave when things became silent between them. But the boy couldn’t think of anything to say and just stared at the girl’s mouth. The girl looked at his eyes, lifted her eyebrows, smirked, then leaned in and kissed him. 

Because the boy thought that the girl didn’t smile freely, he was surprised that she used so much tongue, but he didn’t ponder this for long. The boy tried not to think when he kissed. The boy thought it was wrong to wonder about a girl while you kissed her.

After they stopped kissing, the boy and the girl took a shot. The boy was scared to say bye to his friends, but he was excited to leave with the girl. They held hands while they walked through the night. There was silence between them, but it no longer bothered him. 

They let go of each other’s hands when they entered the convenience store. The girl went to the candy section while the boy ordered some hot food. After he paid, the girl told him to wait outside. She told him not to look inside either because she was buying him a surprise. 

Stumbling, pushing, piggybacking, and racing got the boy and the girl to a park hill with a view of the stars. The air was free from the day’s moisture. To their left, streetlights rippled across a small pond. It was quiet, but every once in a while there were joyous shrieks and laughs in the distance.

The serentiy ended when the girl said, “Fuck!” She hadn’t tightened the lid of her coke-and-rum filled water bottle that she’d been carrying in her purse. “I’m so stupid.” While she muttered to herself, the boy laughed and teased her by pretending to be one of her old classmates that cared about sticky hands. 

For revenge, the girl wiped her hands on the boy’s shirt. They started to playfully wrestle on the hill. After a few grass stains, the boy realized that the girl wouldn’t stop until she was on top. Pinning his arms down, she let spit dribble out from her mouth then sucked it back in before it dripped onto the boy’s face. He told her he’d already had enough of her spit in his mouth, so this did not disgust him. The girl laughed then rolled over. 

While eating from a box of taquitos and drinking from the girl’s water bottle booze, the boy said, “Last night, I was watching a lot of Youtube videos on stars. One thing I found interesting, and also kind of bothered me, was that we, humans on earth, have no idea when a star dies. It explodes, but because it’s so far away, it can take days, months, or even years until our eyes are able to see the light from the supernova. See, that star right there, the one right above us, yeah, that’s already dead.”

“Weird,” the girl said.

“Yup”, the boy replied. There was silence. The boy squeezed the girl’s hand, kissed her cheek, and lay back down on the grass. Tracing her knuckles with his thumb, the boy became scared of the silence once again, so he started to speak openly.

The boy told her about getting stoned every night. He explained that he would lie down on his bed with headphones and close his eyes, trying to get lost in an album. This would usually work, but sometimes it didn’t, and he would start thinking about his poor relationship with his parents, his useless sociology degree, his student debt, and the feeling that he wasn’t best friends with his best friends. 

“Yeah, sometimes university can be a lot,” she said.

“Yeah,” the boy replied. When there was more silence, he felt sad.

After a couple seconds, the girl said, “Well, I’m nervous to start working in the big city next year. I’ve never lived anywhere but at home. My dad–classic immigrant–wanted me to get a secure job: accountant, doctor, you know? Instead, I’m going to try and get my own apartment in the city, apply for some magazines, work at a café to pay rent–something like that. I don’t know if I’m going to tell my dad. He just doesn’t understand me needing to do my own thing.”

“You’re smart. I bet you’ll figure it out,” he said.

The boy spotted a pencil lying in the grass. He ripped off the label from the girl’s water bottle. Twisting his back so that the girl couldn’t see, he wrote, “Will you go on a date with me?” and put two boxes underneath with “YES or “NO” next to them. When he turned back around, the girl was staring at the sky and the boy put the note on her stomach. The girl laughed when she read it, but didn’t respond.

“Listen, I know your Fruit Gusher crew is the coolest, and I’m just a noodle licker, but I’d love to try and make you smile more,” the boy said.

“You’re very sweet,” she said then held her grin for longer than usual. 

After more silence, the girl stood up and announced that they should walk to the boy’s house. They held sticky hands until they reached his porch. The boy was unsure if the girl wanted to come in. He was expecting the girl to walk him home then leave. But, when they reached his door, the girl asked him what he was waiting for. 

Standing in the dark entrance, the girl kissed the boy then pushed him on the couch and climbed on top of him. As they kissed, the boy paid attention to her breath. He tried to do the things that made her breathe hard. The girl breathed hardest when she stuck her fingers in the boy’s mouth. After shushing each other many times, they shuffled towards the hallway, gently pin-balled off the walls, and tumbled into the boy’s room. The boy apologized for the mess before they ended up on his bed. 

The next morning, the boy woke up without the girl. He looked around his apartment as if he were playing hide and seek. When he went back to his room, he found the surprise that she’d bought him from the convenience store: a Fruit Gushers packet. The ripped water bottle label was lying on top of it. Beneath the “YES” and “NO” was a box she added and checked that said “SORRY”.

That night was Hip-Hop Wednesday, so the boy went out with Mike, Mo, and Frankie. In line, someone in a backwards hat was staring at Mo, so they started pushing and shoving until the bouncers ordered the boy and his roommates to leave. On the way home, Mike said he forgot his I.D. anyways. Then Frankie puked in a bush. At home, Mo put four beer cans on the table and turned on Mario Kart.

The boy did not touch his beer or controller and went to his room. He opened his desk drawer and placed the girl’s note in a folder where he kept family photos. After locking the door, he lay down on his mattress, opened his laptop, plucked two tissues, plugged in his earphones, and pulled down his pants and underwear. 

The boy opened a private window to watch porn, but the site wouldn’t load. While the small wheel spun, he flipped to another tab.  The Youtube video on stars, from the night before, was already preloaded so he pressed play. For a moment, the boy watched fake stars explode in the CGI sky before closing his laptop. He grabbed the Fruit Gushers pack and walked out of his room. He passed the living room on the way to the balcony.

“Dude! Are you going to play or not?” Mo asked.

“Nah. I’m tired,” the boy said and he didn’t wait for his roommates to respond.

The boy sat down on a lawn chair and put his socks up on the balcony railing. He peeled open the Fruit Gushers pack and licked the jelly residue off his finger. Then he took a clump, put it in his mouth, and chewed on it. The boy looked up at the night sky and spotted a star and thought about how it was shining in his world but dead in another. Then he returned to his room and began to clear his desk.