Chapter 3. “Raining glass at the junkyard: pain is a word for the weak.”

The rusted hood of the Ford glowed blood-scabbed in the moonlight. Lucas counted to the seventh overturned Chevy when Rayne's shotgun suddenly boomed and startled crows crashed into the waning moon.

"Pick up the ball." Leather boots crushed his fingers, and Rayne raised his chin toward the top of the pile of junked cars. Twenty meters away, three basketballs dipped in a pit of motor oil, sharp windshield shards scattered around them.

Lucas spat out the rusty taste in his mouth-he'd bitten his tongue when he'd been kicked into the diesel barrel two hours earlier. As he stepped barefoot on the first piece of shattered glass, snickers came from behind him. Three figures in hoodies crouched on a crane boom, their cell phone lenses flashing red.

"Live feed's on." Rayne bit off the cap of a whiskey bottle, "Add bottle dregs to the pit if you get over a thousand likes."

The first ball was heavier than expected. Motor oil made the skin of the ball look like flayed snake scales, and the moment the glass ballast pierced his paw, the reward sound effects on the boom rose and fell. Lucas heard his own gasp mingle with electronic laughter into some kind of inhuman wail.

"Too slow!" Rayne suddenly whipped out the chain, jerking the ball from his arms. Dark red liquid splattered abstract paintings on the car's shell, "Your deadbeat old man had more balls than you climbing a poker table."

As the second ball rolled into the pile of broken glass, Lucas realized something was wrong - the guts were filled with lead grit. The tendons in his right leg gave a sharp whine like a rupture, and he stumbled and lunged for the oil puddle, only to see in his reflection Marcus trying on jersey number 23 in the varsity locker room.

There was a sudden scream from the boom. Some broadcaster lost his footing and fell, the muffled thud against the rusty car door causing Rayne to let loose a laugh. "Seventeenth." He licked off the blood splattered on his lips, "This kind of crap is only good for crow fodder."

When Lucas finally cradled the third ball, Rayne pressed the lit cigarette into his shoulder blade. "Remember the smell." As the smell of charring filled the air, the lights of a school bus flashed across the highway in the distance-the very same private school bus that Marcus flaunted every day.

At four a.m., Lucas was vomiting in a gas station bathroom when he noticed an extra yellowed photo in the inside pocket of his jersey: a young Layne dunking a basketball, with a banner in the stands behind him that read, "Holt High School Championship Game - 2001."

A half-woman's face was visible at the edge of the photo, similar to the face of his mother at her funeral.