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Chapter 5 Thankfully, I stopped drinking as soon as Bean left me and returned to Troy’s with the extra key I had. Thankfully Mishka was not blasting trance music, though Troy was still gone. Thankfully, sleep came quickly after I guzzled a liter of water, ate some leftover pizza and hopped into bed. Not so thankfully I awoke to someone kicking me. “Dude, I was about to call your parents.” Troy was hovering over me, smiling. I was relieved to see he wasn’t too pissed off at me for disappearing...

Chapter 6 Once I made the decision to just up and leave, the array and intensity of people’s responses was more extreme than I’d expected. Those who were career-minded, and who believed I should (and would) eventually get to such a point, considered my decision suicidal. “What are you going to say when you return? If you return. And where exactly are you going again?” Shelby was my cousin who’d gotten his MBA when most students are still navigating the college circuit of 101s. He’d grown up h...

Chapter 4 “Have you read my script yet?” I awoke to find Bean peering from a bunk above me, his head upside down, like a gargoyle relieved of its earthly trappings. “What script?” “Come on, Phillips. Remember how last night I was talking about the script I’m working on, about how corporate America fucks you in the ass.” “Oh, right.” It came back to me, the walk back from the subway around 4 A.M., and Bean discussing how he was going to turn his script into a movie and live off the proceedings...

Chapter 3 I returned to Troy’s place to find Mishka hung over and mixing trance music on a DJ set up he had in the tiny lounge of the shoebox apartment he shared with my cousin. “Troy, look for you. Very worried. Look for me last night. More worried, ha!” “Do you know when he’s coming back?” I asked, imagining Troy barreling through the apartment door, like an angry parent scolding a pair of wayward children. “Maybe, huk up with girl. I think will be back to go Twilo tonight.” Mishka mentione...

It’s funny how I can let something consume me completely, only to suddenly let go of it and move onto something else. I didn’t exactly get a girlfriend, nor convert from beer to Jesus. I simply began to think how silly I was being: Why would the grass be greener on the south side of the hill? I’d been to Mexico several times as a kid and had never ventured farther than Acapulco on an aborted trip with my parents as an eight-year-old. I’d slipped a half-eaten avocado in my sister’s bed while s...