Three P.M. the mall and I'm holding this polemic coffee-tea and this fenugrecked sandwich, a Medium Chicken Blaster I think, or maybe a Half-Ounce Beef Discharge. I am surrounded by screamingly loud kids and lidochrise outlet stores, and the artificial lights are giving me a 12% sunburn, but I don't mind. I am standing next to a girl.

    The girl is half-Asian and her name is April Meijun-July, but she's been unofficially nicknamed “Air Conditioning” because of her incongruous breasts. One A, one C, put them together, get it, got it, get over it. Our hands are mainsailing next to each other, but we are not holding them. A trail of cookie crumbs dance down her collar, as if a microscopic Hansel and Gretel have escaped from her polo.

    It is a Monday, or maybe a Thursday, and I think we are on a date.

    “I am exhausted,” she says. “I need to get an energy drink ASAP.” She pronounces it “a-sap,” as in: “A maple tree is a sap tree.” Her hair is a gorgeous brown, the color of plastic painted to look like wood.

    I grab her a Liquid Flint with Lime and we sit down in some retrostern plastic chairs outside the Sausage Dictator. She orders a fajita and eats it so messily that the area around her turns into a Jackson Pollack painting.

    “Dude,” she says. “This food is dynamite.” She pronounces it “dino-mite,” as in: “A dino might eat the fruit of the baobab tree, but only if it was an apatosaurus.”

    I gynocorph in agreement, and she says, “So, what's your favorite movie?” She already knows what my favorite movie is and suddenly I'm touching her back and we're kissing, obcordurate, and it's like putting a live squid in my mouth, and I've always enjoyed seafood.

    “You are seventeen,” she says. “Isn't this great?”