After a few moments, Devon’s phone buzzed. The front of the message read: MOMMA.He clicked open the phone. There was a message from Momma. The message was clear. He clicked shut the phone. “You gave brought shame and ‘disrespct’…” he mouthed the word, pronouncing it like ‘diss-ree-speck.’ He leaned back in his chair, squeezing his eyes shut. “My god, Neveah…someone ought to teach you how to spell.”Clearly it was Neveah’s work. Momma, the educated woman that she, never used slang or mistyped. Ever. All it took was a simple comparison of Momma’s older messages to see the difference. She may have given up on her own children’s slang, but Momma stood firm against that linguistic tide. Did Neveah not notice how her own mother wrote? Did she not care?Key in this was the “u”—that was a young person’s affectation. Devon even used it sometimes. Neveah used it constantly. But Momma? Never. Putting the two texts together only made it more obvious.MOMMA: Love you always Devon-Devilcake

It was Lanie. Picture a butterfly. Imagine drawing a thread in time from the day it was a caterpillar, and follow that thread backwards and forwards. Somewhere in the middle of that journey, the caterpillar would have entered its cocoon and become something entirely different. But her voice…the way her eyes were just a little too far apart…and the Cookie Cat phone-case. It was Lanie. There was no mistaking it. Devon stood mouth agape, barely having the energy to stammer. This person had laid dormant of his mind for years, only popping up on rare occasions he delved into his own childhood. Now, twice in one day, she had come back into his life; first in his thoughts and now before his eyes. And she had not just returned—she had transformed. Her blonde hair was now dyed jet black. Her oversized front teeth now fit neatly behind a mouth that was lightly tinted in professional, fashionable color. She was the very image of consummate professionalism, no longer the dirt-caked playmat

“That’s right,” Marc said. “Just need to make a call and it’ll be done—whole weekend, free hotel, so long as you can keep from breaking anything getting freak-fluids on my floors.”Lanie tugged at Marc’s sleeve. “Marc, stop it. Why are you doing this?”“Well, he’s your friend, isn’t he? Feels like the least I could do. Besides, from the looks of him, I think he could use a hand up right now. Isn’t that right, Hunter Green?”Devon found it hard to look at Marc. His gaze seemed to be drawn to the floor. He did need that money. Practically speaking, he was about to be homeless at the end of the week with nothing but the clothes on his bag and whatever he had thrown into his bag. Those few hundred bucks could go a long way getting him started on his ‘new life’. But the way that Marc sneered. The way he lorded and gloated—his every expression made Devon want to crawl into a hole. Yet here he was, with money on the table—and practically speaking, he wasn’t in a position to refuse. “… I-uh

In what seemed to be a continuing trend ever since he left the house, Devon had only continued to benefit from strangers at the cost of his own dignity. All he wanted to do now was get to his suddenly free hotel and go to sleep. The line for the convention reduced some from earlier, but there was no avoiding the wait. Back he would need to go into the sun. The heat of the day had reduced from blazing to merely stewing hot. The worst of the day’s sun was over, leaving its scorched slag behind. Heat radiated from the sidewalk and everyone who stood upon it was an upright sausage roasting in casings of felt, plaster, and sculpting foam. No dogs allowed at the NHCC, but if any dogs could walk along that sidewalk, they would have been overwhelmed by the collective chemical screams of over a hundred people at once.But despite the opinions of certain staff members of the NHCC, Devon and the convention goers were, in fact, not animals. The only messages they heard during the half an hour w

With the opening of those doors, it was as though all of Devon’s dreams had come true.The main convention hall was far bigger than he had ever imagined, jam-packed with booths and stations to fit every niche and need. Off in the corner were colonies of booths devoid to science fiction. Spaceships from a hundred stories of and shapes and sizes soared through electric nebulae and star-packed skies. Aliens of every description, lovingly crafted and designed, menaced the stalls with terrifying wonder. In the fantasy corner, castles from around the world lay above lofty crags, promising battles with ferocious dragons and deadly breaths of a thousand colors. Wizard towers, tall and mysterious, promised tales of magical delights beyond description. There were sections entirely devoted to tales of horror, with zombies and vampires revealing their terrifying glory. And there were more! Devon’s eyes watered with the breadth and depth of the convention’s offerings. There were separate viewing