Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) Read Free Page B

in his pockets,
blasé and bored. “Are we gonna go to this fuckin party or
what?”
    N ow both Trev and I
run after his ass!
    But w e give up quick, because the music’s calling, and I can
already hear it from here.
    The air is icy. Nothing compared to that
Polar Vortex shit we had
back in ’13, but still, it freezes my pores as I head bravely
through it in nothing but a sleeveless tank and some denims. I’ll
be overheating in less than an hour, so I left the jacket and
sweater in the car.
    We parked about a ten minute walk away. I
can hear the thump-thump of
the bass. We pass a gutted warehouse that looks like it might
topple over from the wind, then a shuttered Deli on our left. Then
two places I assume are auto shops. There’s pictures of cars on the
brick walls but the signs are in Chinese or Japanese or
Korean...
    The music’s so loud now I can
almost taste it. I see
two babes with electric blue hair, and less clothes on than me,
standing out on the sidewalk, sharing a smoke. They check out my
sleeve tat, and I let them. I give ’em my best smile and they smile
back. Oh
yeah, it’s gonna be a good night, baby!
    A dude in plastic shades drinks Modelo beer from a can. I smell the
cloying stench of weed, see the zombied-out faces of artistes leaning against the wall, baked
on Downtown
Brown (because they
can’t afford the good shit.) You know: Because art and self-expression and
all that “are all above the fundamentals and laws of basic
economics” and shit—yeah man, wow, peace .
    And then I see the lights from the
dilapidated warehouse’s
cracked windows—blue and red and strobing in time to the
beat. House
Market . We visit the
dude at the door who is probably supposed to be the bouncer (I’m
twice his size, Trev almost three times) and show him our Approved for
Entrance tickets. We get
inside. Outside it might’ve been freezing.
    But in here, I’m already
sweating.
-2-
    Skate sees the Candy Man and brokers me the X. White strobe light
glimmers off his shaved head. The snake tat surrounding his neck
pulses.
    Trev’s already jamming next to me. Dude
can dance, I gotta give him that. He scopes out a ready-for-it blonde and starts
grinding against her. She grinds back—yes, like that . I’m about to drop The Doctor, the pill already
on my tongue, when the music shifts...
    And so does the dance floor.
    And so does my heart...
    Little did I know, that in less than twelve
hours, so would my entire world...
-3-
    I pause, the round white tablet, with the little engraving of a
heart on it, poised between my front teeth. I look up at the DJ
box, see only smoke and laser lights, covering it in a hazy
glow.
    Could it—?
    I squint my eyes. Too much smoke, too many
strobes.
    The energy in the crowd has already
lifted. There’s a lightness in the air. A power of some sort.
    Who is this DJ?
    Meanwhile my heart sings. Trev’s going wild next to me, blonde
babe ever getting closer to him. Because the shit coming through
the speakers now is not that Electroclash New Wave Synthpop Dubjet
grimy crap that’s so
dominant in the commercial club scene in NYC right now. None of
that speedcore skank-mank trash that you need to be tweaking on fifty keys of glass
just to discern a rhythm out of.
    This stuff has groove .
    An angel sings from the speakers, backed
by a deadly thump that’s so old school we could be in one of those
Deep House underground parties of way back in the nineties that
people like you and me only get to read about. Or hear about. Or
watch a YouTube video
about.
    Then the beat changes again.
    I crane my neck, wrapped in the
warm sound-blanket
reeking of Chicago House buried in a bassline so resonant that my
legs can’t help moving to it.
    I take the E from my lips, stick it in my
pocket, look around at the dance floor. A circle has formed. A babe
in high denim shorts swings her legs in the center of it, cheered
by the rhythmic claps and drumming hands of ecstatic
dancers.
    “ Oh, yeah!” someone