How did we get here Alex says. He is wearing a stocking cap, flannel shirt over a black-t, and jeans that are two size too large with the legs cut off halfway between the knee and the ankle, held up with an expensive black belt he got for Christmas, appropriate for skateboarding although he has never ridden a skateboard before in his life, although he does not dress this way to be fashionable, he hates fashion and skater clothes are not fashionable anyway, he dresses that way in case he ever becomes a skater, that is, not if he decides to pursue becoming a skater, but if, just one day, out of the blue, he is suddenly a skater; it could happen.

Also: the first sentence of the previous paragraph should be pronounced with slight emphasis on the first word, "how," with a slight rising tone on "here." Do not put emphasis on "get," nor let the voice descend in tone on "here." The question is asking for confirmation, repetition even, but not discovery. And it should be a slight emphasis, since strong emphasis suggests that the question is being asked for a third or fourth time, and while it is in fact the case that this is the fifth time Alex has asked this question, he is in fact asking each time as if it were the second, and emphasizing "how" and raising his tone on "here" accordingly.

Jason is not dressed, although he is wearing clothing. This means that no one who even tries to look at him long enough to memorize what he has on, much less register his existence, would be able to say how he has been adorned. This means that no one would be able to say how he is dressed, or in other words, explain adequately the process by which he got into his clothes. But he is not naked, anyone could tell you that, and thus he has clothes on but he is not, essentially, dressed. He says, Your sister brought us.

Important note: neither said dude. They might have; they have before. But the conversation so far would have a completely different mood if it had gone as follows:

"Dude. How did we get here?"

Your sister brought us, dude."

Compare this with the way you have put the conversation in your head from before.

They are completely exhausted. They were sitting on this bench in the middle of the mall since it opened at nine in the morning, and now it is close to midnight. The mall, recognized by local authorities as a hangout for teens, sold no alcohol, was easily policed for drugs, and did not allow smoking. Therefore, it was safer than the streets, and the mall received a sizable tax cut in exchange for staying open.

Suddenly Dean appears. Dean is the person, the boy actually, in every highschool who weighs less than ninety pounds but is the best wrestler in the state. Dean is always very enthusiastic about everything, except, his years of wrestling have smeared his face all over his head, and furthermore, since he is near-sighted, he should wear glasses, but he never does, since he can't wrestle with them, and thus, his face always looks like the face you see on an acquaintance who usually wears glasses but one day doesn't: very odd.

Above, the "except" after describing Dean as enthusiastic about everything, then followed by a description of Dean's face, was to suggest that his face, nonetheless, does not look enthusiastic. But the way he carries himself, his speech, and the flapping of his arms, convey this enthusiasm, his face notwithstanding.

Hey Dean Alex says and Hey Dean Jason says. See the first paragraph for why no extra stress is put on "Jason" above, and recall how neither has said "dude."

Hey you guys says Dean, flopping his arms and looking around himself and wrestling his own shoulders.

How was state Alex says. A few things here. Alex always says this. This is why he says it, not asks it. Alex always says this because for Dean this is like saying "How are you doing," which itself is rarely asked but usually said.

Good. Dean always says this, even if he was actually just at the state wrestling championships and did poorly. Actually, his doing poorly is rare. Do you guys wanna wrestle?

Jason says, Take us over to Cinnabun, Dean. So Dean throws Alex and Jason over his shoulders, and like a pair of rag dolls hauls them across the mall to the Cinnabun.

In the Midwest and some parts of the south, various locales are referred to with the definite article "the," even if there is more than one of the locale in a location. So Wal-Mart is always "the Wal-Mart," and K-mart is always "the K-mart." But this mall is not in the Midwest or in any part of the south; however, Jason's not using "the" in front of Cinnabun should be read as if he left out a definite article, even though no one would have put a "the" in front of Cinnabun. Consider the sentence, "Give me the spoon," referring to a particular spoon, perhaps one that two junkies share to heat up smack over a candle flame before injecting. If one junkie were to say "give me spoon," the word "spoon" is now more of a familiar name, an endearment almost, as this lack of a definite article changes the feeling the reader has toward the spoon entirely. Cinnabun is a name, but there is more than one of them, and Jason's not using the word "the" should give his saying what he said a different feel, even though he would have said the same words if a different feel were desired.

Very quickly: neither Alex nor Jason is a junkie. The above was just an example.

Dean sets Alex and Jason down, nods his head, walks away. Unlike most athletes, the one boy who is the best wrestler in the state at every highschool is not often in the presence of friends. This is not to say that he is a loner. It is just the case that he is often alone. It is not that no one likes him, or that he is unfriendly; it is merely that he is often by himself, walking down the hall with his shoulders hunched and his head bobbing, having imaginary conversations in his head and making small hand gestures towards the lockers for emphasis. Everyone, in fact, likes him, but few think to ask him along, or even realize that they don't know what his phone number is. If he ever got a phone call, his dad would answer it, and would not know why he felt like something odd had happened, and would not even be able to say that it was the phone call to his son, the best wrestler in highschool in the state, which had given him this feeling.

Alex looks at the counter for a while, Jason at the store opposite, which sells framed posters. Neither drool. They might have drooled, if they were catatonic, or perhaps mentally handicapped, and given to living inside their own heads. But neither is. They just look like it, except for the drooling.

Deidre is the sister to which Jason referred when Alex asked how they got there. If he were to ask the question again, in the same way, there would be no way for anyone to know whether he meant the mall, or Cinnabun, and as such, the ambiguous nature of the question would lead most to wonder if perhaps he even meant here in the larger sense of the word, making the question the unanswered philosophical riddle. Many would then make a joke about the question at this point, and would be unable to adequately justify or defend having done so, not having an understanding of why they were led to wonder it themselves, not realizing that in one case the question quite obviously referred to the mall as here, but by having been moved by Dean the question took on this other nature. And yet Jason was quite incapable of ever in his life mustering up enough energy to either wonder why he existed in the first place or to make an attempt at clarifying what Alex might have been saying if he were to ask the question again. Instead, his brain would freeze up and he would either ask a question himself, answer a different, unasked question, or merely say nothing as he continued to stare at the same poster in the store across the way which sold framed posters, namely, a picture of Marilyn Monroe in a very pretty albeit chaste dress leaning out of a window. Marilyn, not the dress. Leaning.

Although Jason doesn't actually see what he is staring at, the word "poster" is echoing endlessly in his head. A mind reader would confuse it for his heartbeat, call him unreadable, and move on to other minds.

Deidre has a secret crush on Jason. She does not, to set the record straight, read minds. She does drive a car, however. However, this is not what Jason meant when he replied to the question Alex asked by saying Your sister brought us. She did drive them there, early in the morning, on her way to tennis practice. Deidre is a horrible tennis player, but superb in practice. That is why for her tennis is not practice, but it is what she practices, in much the same way a doctor does not try to get better at medicine through exercises and drills, even though we say that he practices it. So too for Deidre. She never wins in tournaments, and can not teach. But she practices tennis, and she practices tennis in practice.

Her secret crush is so secret that she does not even know that she has it, and is so secret that it is capable of only being a very very tiny crush, very small and fleeting, except permanently so. She does not think about him when she takes showers, does not want to marry or date him, does not even remember that he occupies space most of the time. Her crush is only barely enough to want to not mind driving him and her brother to the mall in the mornings, and sometimes, if she remembers, and if she happens to be there, and thinks of it, to take them home again.

She looks exactly like the poster of Marilyn Monroe. Coincidence.

She appears. She looks at her brother. Deidre was born before Alex and when he was born she did not realize that he had not been there before. She just assumed, as a wee toddler, that she hadn't seen him around. He was no more a stranger than the back of her house was when she finally saw it at about age three, when her parents left the sliding glass door open and she decided that the only way to close it was to walk through it. She was only three, and so she thought that a door is open until one walks through it, and then a person would be in the same room as before, but with the door shut. This was the first point in her life when her brain went from the automatic instinct driven brain of your average ape to that of an actual self-aware human being, and as such she always had various musings when it came to doors. She was never aware of it, but inside she became uneasy if for some reason she left a room by a different door than the one she entered, and if she were able to go deep inside herself she would have discovered that subliminally she believes one has not left a room until one goes out the door one went in, and as such, if one leaves by a different door one is still in the room, even if one ends up driving her brother and his friend to the mall and then goes to tennis practice. But if one can then re-enter the room through the last door exited, and then exit through the original entrance, one is fine. It may be possible, however, they a series of unfortunate events means a person becomes inextricably entangled in a series of rooms and several doors, even such that a person is in a room without having left it after leaving it, so he or she is in a two rooms at the same time and they are the same room. Or three or four or a dozen. Ghosts, therefore, are not the wrongfully killed, but people who died without having left one or more several rooms.

Right now, Deidre is in the mall, her living room which has the sliding glass door, and her grade school library, where grade school graduation took place, when everybody filed in the front door and out the propped-open fire-door exit. She didn't know why, but she had an urge to go back to her grade school, and be nostalgic.

Hey Alex mom says framma jamma tamm blamma. This is not what Deidre said. What she said was Hey Alex mom says you have to take out the garbage tonight. But Alex heard the above. For his part, Jason heard Lamma damma ding hoopa woopa garbage tonight. Then Deidre picked them both up, slung them over her shoulders, and took them out to the car.

In the car, which Deidre had been in once for three years, owing to having learned how to drive by her father, who had her scoot over from the passenger side to the driver's side after he drove them to an old dirt road, Deidre adjusted her seat belt, looked in the rearview mirror at Alex and Jason who were by coincidence only staring at the same patch of mall wall and thinking Wall wall wall, then turned the ignition and drove them home.

Actually, she drove them to Jason's house, and they were surprised a few hours later to discover themselves in the basement, watching comedy central, and eating cheetos.

Dude Alex said this time. This seemed to suffice.

Dude Jason replied, answering.

It was a conversation about the mall, the way they got down to the basement, and how the cheetos made it out of the bag, into the bowl, out of the bowl, and into their stomach. Alex rarely remembered chewing, even when he concentrated. Jason sometimes remembered, but rarely cared. Later Dean stopped by, but they wme in the mall again, exhausted.