To move or to be moved

	Eli thought mostly about girls, though sometimes he thought about sports too. He was seventeen and he drove down Divisadero street, the sober half-light of the mid-afternoon illuminating the street ahead of him. The sky was incomprehensibly large and surreal above him, bursting with muted light and quiet music. He smiled to himself.
	On dark nights where the walls spun Eli would find a pretty girl, maybe one with heavy eyelashes and a nose ring, and as the night went he would grab her waist and pull her close to him and make her laugh shyly before putting his hand under her chin, angling her mouth up to his and kissing her. He rarely did more than kiss. He fell out of love with them quickly after that first coy laugh.
	Now, though, the sun was still up. Harry had given him a package to deliver, weed to sell to some freshman who would pay more than its value. Eli felt guilty sometimes when he took the kids' money, usually twenties fresh from the hand or wallet of a parent, but that was how it went. He had paid too much for weed when he was a freshman. When this kid is a senior he'll sell overpriced weed to freshmen as well. He thought to himself them's the fucking breaks and smiled at the quaintness of the saying. He couldn't remember where he had read it.
	Eli's friends didn't read fiction. Harry and the rest of them were concerned with history and with social problems. They wanted to be bankers or lawyers or businessmen. Eli didn't like that. His philosophy was that money is only useful as much as it can make you happy. Anyone who tells you money can't by happiness is a damn liar, he thought, but the more you spend the less you get back. What's that? Diminishing returns, he remembered, and he let out a little laugh at himself for finding an application of his damn feel-good liberal arts bullshit education to real life.
	He was driving to this kids house. Harry would normally have made the delivery himself but he had wanted to take a nap before tonight. He had offered Eli a cut to take it over, which Eli hadn't minded. He didn't like to sleep during the day and he could use the money. With the money, he thought, he wouldn't have to spend any of his savings from the summer for booze tonight.
	The kid was a big motherfucker. He played football or basketball at the Catholic school where he went. Catholic school kids spent their nights drinking forties in parks. The kid probably couldn't talk to a girl to save his life. Not Eli or Harry's crowd, but Harry knew a lot of people. He liked to sell to people like that - acquaintances he didn't respect enough to give a straight deal. Made the money faster and easier.
	Eli turned off of Geary onto 42nd to arrive at the house, a two-door victorian, no garage. The street was quiet in the cool mid-afternoon, and Eli briefly felt lonely, sitting in his car in the wide, empty street. He would have felt self-conscious for having such a stupid car if it was anyone else he was meeting. Eli had the number in his phone. He unplugged it from the speakers and pressed the number. It rang.
	"Hello?"
	"Yo. It's me, with your trees."
	"For sure. Hang on. Are you outside?"
	"Yeah. Double-parked."
	"All right. I'll be out in a second."
	The kid hung up and Eli waited. He rolled down his window as he saw the kid emerge from the downstairs door.
	The kid stuck his hand through the window for a greeting. Eli held back a smile.
	"Hey, man. Eli, right?"
	"Yeah." He had forgotten the kid's name. Harry had told him to get sixty for the eighth. The kid was a rook, Harry said. The kid handed him sixty. Harry grabbed the paper bag from beside him and shook it, teasing the kid, before he handed it over. "Take it easy."
	The kid replied "Thanks, man." Eli rolled up the window and drove off. When he was younger he had always put the paper bags in the trunk, but he'd stopped. Seniority had given him confidence. He had spend a lot of his younger life feigning nonchalance, and it was nice to not have to pretend anymore.
	When he returned Harry didn't pick up his phone. Probably still asleep, Eli thought. He could have rang the doorbell and woken him up, but he wasn't in any hurry. It was already dark but it was January and still early. He drove to a coffee shop and sat on the steps of an apartment, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette as he played chess on his phone.
	Thirty or forty minutes passed and Eli was eager to go. He went back to Harry's and they took the bus north to another friend's house. He left his car at Harry's. They stopped at a liquor store along the way, and Eli used the new money to buy glass-bottle whiskey. He normally drank plastic to save money and also because he liked the romance of cheap whiskey. He was a good drinker, he thought, able to drink a lot and almost never vomit or make a fool of himself. Harry was not such a good drinker and he bought beer and cheap rum, and a can of energy drink to wash away the taste of the rum.
	They arrived at the party late. Later, Eli was leaned up against the wall with a dark eyed girl wearing tight pants and a white shirt, cropped at the stomach. She looked up at him with admiration. Harry had disappeared to the back yard or the basement, and the few couples left inside talked softly and sweetly, close together on couches or walls to hear and feel each other.
	"So what's the grand plan? High school, college, then? Hopes, dreams, aspirations. I want to hear all of it" Eli joked. The girl giggled shyly.
	"I don't know, baby. Eli - Eli, I'm drunk. What about you? You must have some grand plan. I know you have a flair for-" she rolled her eyes and leaned in to him as she flourished her hands "-the dramatic, Eli."
	"As a matter of fact I do have a plan, a grand plan." She laughed.
	"I'm going to be a painter. Bohemian artist, live in poverty and filth, sacrifice myself for my art. All that."
	"Oh my. Eli, if anyone can it's you. Really."
	"Well that's sweet. And you know, little one, a filthy bohemian artist always needs something of a harem of women. I think you'd do perfectly as one of my filthy bohemian girlfriends." As she laughed again and leaned in to kiss him he heard a voice from the party say "There his is." He turned to look and it was the kid from earlier. He was with a group of friends and he walked towards Eli and the girl and he stood very close to them. Eli held the girl to his side.
	"Hey, fuckhead. What the fuck are you trying to pull? What the fuck," he said, pulling out the bag from earlier, "is this?" Eli looked at it and saw that it was undeniably short. Fucking Harry.
	"That's marijuana," he said. "Do you need help smoking it?"
	The girl smiled and the kid hit him and Eli fell to the ground. His whiskey was open and it spilled on his chest, wet. He got up. The kid pushed him back down and kicked him in his ribs.
	Eli curled up and the kid kicked him again. The floor was slick and as the whiskey poured his courage went too. Suddenly he was alone on the concrete floor of the strange garage, his face hot with shame and wet with booze. The sour smell filled his nostrils as the kid and his friend kicked and taunted him as he lay on the sticky ground. The party continued around him. He looked up and saw the girl looking at him through her dark eyelashes. Her lip curled. In her eyes he could see that she now knew him as he knew himself and that she hated him now for his weakness and his cowardice, and he closed his eyes and waited for it to end.