A/N: Deadass, walking into this blind besides that premise, the characters, and a couple of choice moments, so let's see what happens.

POPULAR BOYS

I

"Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-nine, thirty-four, thirty-five, six, seven, forty-two," Zo said as he finished thumbing through the dollar bills in his hand. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, realizing he in fact was going to have to run by the ATM before they got to the party.

He stood up from the sink in his bathroom, walked back into his room, looking at all of the shirts he'd pulled out, trying once again to figure out which one he was going to wear. He decided he'd figure that out later and flopped down on his bed, "Fuck," he muttered. He grabbed his phone and dialed Rollie.

"Don't be mad," Zo said after the younger boy picked up on the second ring.

"Let me guess you're not ready, even though we're around the corner," they asked.

"Is water wet," he could hear Cole say in the background.

"Eat a dick, Cole. No, I mean yes, but no. We have to stop by the ATM, I'm eight dollars short," Zo said.

Rollie sat in silence for a few moments before sighing, "It's a good thing I make sure we're 15 minutes early to everything, huh? I'm giving you three minutes before we come up to the door, and five after that before I fake an emergency and leave you."

"Not having a dad doesn't mean you get to be mine," Zo said jokingly.

"You don't need a dad, you just need a foot up your ass. And choose the first shirt you picked out, it's probably cuter anyway," Rollie suggested.

"Bye, see you in a second," Zo said hanging up.

He got off the bed and looked at his options again. Zo rolled his eyes as he realized Rollie was right. The first shirt was cuter. He bounced off of the bed and walked into the bathroom to put his earrings in. He'd just closed the fourth hop when the tacky ass doorbell his Aunt Corrie had installed rang. He tried to rush downstairs before his aunt got to the door, but no one answered a door faster than a Black woman worried about a child.

"Well, hello, Roland," my aunt said.

"Hey, Miss Coreene. Is Alonzo's ready yet," he asked sarcastically.

The older woman laughs, swatting the young person's shoulder, "Child, now you know Alonzo ain't ever on time for nothing."

Roland laughed and rolled their eyes, adjusting the choker they had on and leaning against the wall in the foyer, pulling out his phone.

"Alonzo, Roland is here to pick you up," Coreene called up the stairs.

"I'm almost ready," Alonzo called back down as he grabbed his jacket and his shoes. His phone buzzed in his pocket.

"one minute hooker," the text from Roland read. Alonzo rolled his eyes and shoved the phone back into his pocket grabbing his book bag and heading downstairs.

"Oh, she's ready," Roland says.

"Bite me," Alonzo says, drumming his friend's shoulder before heading to the kitchen to grab his house keys and wallet.

"And where will you all be tonight," Coreene asks.

"Mall," Alonzo starts.

"And then my house," Roland finished.

Coreene raises an eyebrow, a trait that's clearly not generic as Alonzo can't do it to save his life, "That's all?"

"We might stop by a small gathering at a friend's. I told you about it though," Alonzo fibbed.

Coreene crossed her arms and switched her stance, eyeing the book bag on Alonzo's back a little before inhaling deeply, "You know the drill," she sighed, "just be careful. You're seniors now and this world is crazy. If you see things are getting worse," she began.

"Leave," Rolland and I finished.

"If the cops show up," she continued.

"Be calm, cooperate, they're gonna see us as very different people. No drinking, no drugs, and be safe," we said.

"And If you need me call me, she said as she pulled me in for a forehead kiss.

A small smile grew on my face, "Okay auntie," I said as I hugged her back.

"You need a ride to practice tomorrow morning," my aunt asked me.

"I got him, I have to work so I can take him on the way," Roland said.

"Okay baby. I'll see y'all tomorrow evening," she said

"Thank you, Miss Coreene," Roland said, giving her a side hug.

"No problem baby, and tell Nicole the next time she doesn't come in the house to say hello, imma thump her in the forehead," Zo's aunt said.

The two teens waved and left the house, "Your aunt's the shit. She totally knows you have a bottle in your bag," Roland gushed.

Alonzo smiled slyly, "Coreene really is that girl."

His aunt was more like a protective, wise older sister than a mother-figure but she was the most acceptable next of kin after his father passed, so she was given guardianship of the young man 5 years ago. Now she definitely had her moments but all-in-all she allowed Alonzo a good bit of leeway in his teenage growing pains. He was always thankful for that.

"Holy shit, Coreene let you leave the house with your tits out," Nicole asked incredulously, noting Alonzo's see-through shirt.

"I'm three months from 18, I'm almost a grown woman's now," Alonzo said, mocking a southern belle.

"Oh, so mature," Nicole said leaning forward and kissing Alonzo on the cheek.

"You're both fucking ridiculous," Roland said smiling and cranking up the radio.

The three teens stood on the escalator, chit-chatting about the validity of eleventh grader Blake Olsen's 'natural' blonde hair. They were supposed to be meeting the last member of their squad, Thalia.

"As a blonde, I would like to say that there's no fucking way that shit is natural, you can't have brown body hair and bleach blonde hair on your head, that's not how that works," Nicole said adjusting her frilly tube top and ponytail.

"Okay, but like, if she wants to say it's natural who cares," Alonzo said with a chuckle.

"It's not the fact that she says it's natural, it's the fact that she's an asshole about saying it's natural when it's fucking not," she said adjusting her tube top again, a group of guys watching with their mouth open.

"J-F-C, Cole, keep your tits in your top sister," Roland said as they got off the escalator.

"You wanna see em'," the blonde mocked.

"No, but I do," one of the guys in the pack of neanderthals commented.

The gang recognized the pack of idiots, George Hall, Greg Hall, and Alex Kowalski, as one half of the friend group erroneously known as 'The Boys.' Not to be confused with the amazing Amazon Prime original, The Boys was a group made up of the captains from each sports team at John C. Abrams High School.

"Hey, Kowalski, you wanna know what the other scrunchy on my wrist is for," Nicole said flirtatiously as she stepped closer to them.

"Sure," the brunette boy purred back.

"Cutting off the circulation to your little dick so it'll fall off. Don't speak to me like I'm a fucking object," she said with a sarcastic smile before walking away.

"Yikes," Alonzo said before following his friend into the food court.

"I fucking hate him," Nicole snarled.

"No, you hate The Boys, you love Alex," Alonzo said as Cole looked back. She didn't quite love him but she definitely cared. Despite the fact that they were indefinitely off, her on-again-off-again relationship with the brown-haired basketball player still kept a space in her heart.

Cole gave a forlorn sigh before saying, "You're not wrong."

They rounded the corner into the food court. Per usual on a Friday night, the food court was bustling with adolescent life. The mall on Friday night was a sort of watering hole for all the local high school cliques. Near the pizza joint is where the random gaggle of barely mid-tier popular boys sat, making immature dick jokes and being absolutely oblivious to the world around them. By the boba tea bodega is where you could find the theater kids, reminiscing on shows like lost memories, as if they hadn't happened a month ago. The jocks sat in front of the Chik-fil-A, go figure. The band geeks to the far left, the e-kids to the far back, and the VSCO girls sat off-center. The VSCO girls knew to sit off-center because in the dead center of the food court is where you could find not only The Boys, but the cheerleaders as well.

However, to simply say that they were regular Pom-Pom, go team cheerleaders would be remiss. No, these were the kind of cheerleaders who could do a round-off Arabian, quadruple back handspring into a layout into another back handspring. They were the kind of cheerleaders who could thwack themselves in the face with their legs and would curse if they couldn't do it twice in a row. To keep it cute, these were some of the baddest bitches you'd ever meet.

They also happened to be massive assholes, but that's neither here nor there.

With their talent and looks alone, they would still be unstoppable, but it was their crown jewel and leader, Khrissy Farber, that made them invincible. She, and her friends Anastasia, Leah, and Yesinia, pretentiously known as KALY, were like the plastics in real life, except those bitches knew not to cross Khrissy ever. Firstly, because her mother would absolutely sue the shit out of you. Secondly, because her brother was the Kyle Farber, but we'll get to that later.

Alonzo, Roland, and Nicolette sat down at their table mirroring the VSCO girls. See, Alonzo, Roland, Nicolette, and Thalia were different. They were dancers. Not dancers like the kind that take classes at school no, they were the competitive kind. The kind that walked with an air of sophistication, poise, and assuredness that was palpable. And for any serious performer, the world is their stage. But of their entire set, this was no truer for anyone else than Thalia Cooley.

"Jesus Christ, my best friend is a bad bitch," he said, spotting her as she strode up to the table.

Long fucking legs, perfect dark skin, stunning face, and an even more stunning brain. Projected to be Valedictorian, and student body Vice President simply because being President meant she couldn't dance, Thalia Cooley was as close as God could get to perfection.

"Good evening," she greeted, flipping her large mane.

"Ooh shit, that entrance screamed big Leo energy," Roland joked.

"As it should have. Plus, your friends should be coming at any second," she directed at Cole and Alonzo.

The two looked past her head and at the gaggle of obnoxious jocks walked towards them. Alex Kowalski and a few of the other members stopped by to bother Thalia and Nicole and fake nice with Roland and Alonzo. But Alonzo's eyes were trained on one boy in particular.

"Hey," Marcus Dodson, said as he kept a curious sort of eye contact with Alonzo. Alonzo rolled his eyes, and quickly shifted his countenance to one of annoyance. The older boy took the rejection with a quiet type of grace and fell back into the fold of his friend group.

"Yikes, what was that about," Nicole asked Alonzo.

Alonzo turned around, motioning his three friends to do the same. Across the food court stood a very heterosexual looking and very "committed" Marcus Dodson with a short brown-skinned girl hanging off his body.

"We hate a liar," Alonzo said with all of the enthusiastic sarcasm he could muster.

"I'm sorry," Thalia said, trying to show as much compassion and care as she could. Of all of them, it seemed like Zo had the worst luck with men. And sure they were aware of the fact that they were 17-year-old seniors with their whole lives ahead of them but that didn't mean that it didn't hurt Alonzo when he ended up single and betrayed often, and it didn't stop his friends from feeling a portion of his pain too,

"Eh, it's not like you're his annoying, poorly-dressed girlfriend with split ends," Zo said with almost no energy at all.

His friends tried their best not to pity him, as they knew that would do absolutely nothing to help him feel better. Alonzo was a special type of prideful. He could be hurt, but he'd be damned if he let you see him that way for long, or even at all.

Thankfully for him, the moment didn't last long. Though it wouldn't be remiss to hear the chatter of pretty inappropriate teenage conversation, what would be a little bit much is the booming and proud musical rendition of the phrase, "Tiny vagina!"

At least a good third of the food court turns their head in the direction of the noise and standing dead middle of the chaos with a shit-eating grin on his face is none other than local douchebag and king of the social scene, Kyle Farber.

Kyle Farber was probably about as All-American as you could get, and not just in the aesthetic sense. Yes, the tall blonde slab of man meat looked like a budding Chris Evans with a dash of WWE's Hardy Boys, but he was also a crass, hypersexual, womanizing, ignoramus. Yeah, not a whole lot of redeeming qualities. But people loved the ever-loving shit out of him. The manchild was utter neutral chaos and you never knew what he would do next or what would come out of him. Example in case: the melodic superhero chant of "tiny vagina".

"God, he's annoying," Roland sighed.

"Very, but everyone loves him," Thalia said off-handedly.

"But why," Cole questioned with a disgusted look on her face.

"Says the girl who crushed on him from 5th to 8th grade," Alonzo started with a smile.

"Oh like we all didn't," Cole said referring to their respective crushes on the stereotypical white meathead.

"For the record, I did not," Alonzo cut in.

"Very true, but that's because you've been noncommittally transfixed to Alan your entire life," Thalia said jokingly.

"No," Alonzo said with a glare, plucking the dark-skinned girl for bringing up his annoying but endearing ex, "It's because I can clearly see that Farber is a walking dillweed. And while the rest of you may fall for that whole Captain America as a human Four Loko schtick, I do not."

"Oh my god, Zo, abstaining from Caucasian men isn't a personality trait," Roland said leaning forward.

"I never said that I'm abstaining from white men, you and Cole are my best friends, how could I say that," he said with mock shock earning a few chuckles from his friends.

"Besides, at this rate, I'm going to have to pick up a rich white sugar daddy with a boat for college," he said begrudgingly as he glanced over to Marcus.

His resentful glare was cut short by a pair of ugly Hollister blue jeans, "Good evening ladies," Kyle Farber said, making sure to let everyone know he was addressing everyone at the table.

"Three questions," The blonde directed to Thalia confidently.

"One answer, what do you want Farber," Nicole cut in.

"I'd ask you to do it, but I'm trying to pass AP English with an A, not a maybe B-," Kyle directed at her quickly, before turning his attention to Thalia, "How much for this week's analysis worksheets?"

Thalia looked at home with a raised eyebrow, "So you're asking to copy my homework."

"I'm asking to buy an altered copy of your homework," Kyle retorted.

"Kyle, what is your current grade in Mrs. Tenny's class," Thalia asked.

"Uh...I think it's a B+," he said, rightfully questioning his illegitimate grade

Thalia sat quietly for a second before she sighed, "I will give you A- work, which should average your grade out for the quarter, with that being said, I'm expecting more than last time."

"Last time," the entire table said.

"I expect nothing less from the genius skirt," he said with a devilish grin, as he handed over a roll of cash. She grabbed the wad of cash and put her hand under the table.

"I'll bring it to the gym tomorrow, and the price is going up for next semester," Thalia said pulling out her phone and opening Instagram to effectively end the conversation.

"Preesh," he said, "Ladies," he repeated as he bid us all farewell.

When he'd gotten to his table, Roland and Cole let out pretty egregious sighs.

"I cannot believe that you, Thalia Cooley, Queen of Academic Integrity, are doing homework for Kyle Farber, the living embodiment of white boy privilege," Cole said incredulously.

With absolute ease, Thalia produced the roll of cash from her hand and undid the rubber band, "You'd do it too for a hundred of his white boy privilege dollars."

"Wait, what," Alonzo asked in disbelief.

"Damn, daddy's got money to blow, huh," Roland said.

"Well let me shut my white ass up, huh," Cole said with a grin.

"Order 567," they heard called from the burger joint they'd chosen to eat at.

"Nose goes for who gets it," Cole calls out before losing, adjusting her tube top for the umpteenth time and going to grab the food.

Roland ignited the lighter and precariously looked at the bowl in front of them, "Oh fuck, okay, how do you do this," they asked worriedly.

Cole, who was already high as a kite, burst out laughing, "Jesus, Rollie."

Alonzo, who was well on his way, laughed as well, "Put the flame on the weed, suck from his end," he said pointing to the hole at the end of the pipe.

Roland followed the instructions, accidentally taking a giant rip, coughing on the harsh smoke, "Ah, fuck, shit, shit, shit, no, mm-mm, not for me," they said taking off their choker as if that was prohibiting them from breathing.

"Oh come one, one more rip," Cole said.

Cole and Alonzo had recently just taken up smoking weed the summer before their senior year and had dragged Thalia into the fold with them. Determined to get the uptight teen to loosen up, they peer pressured them into 'a few rips' and so far it looked like this one was all Roland had in them.

"Nope. Abso-fucking-lutely not again," they protested.

Thalia, also high, floated one of her freshly earned twenties in her face, "Promise you'll change your mind after two more rips," she goaded.

Roland glared at the bill before taking it. And Thalia was right. Ten minutes later the four intoxicated teens strolled into the already busy party and continued to get more intoxicated. The party, a birthday party for regular school cheerleader Torrance Beam, was definitely a good one. It wasn't one of Brody Bennet's infamous, end-of-year 'My Parents Went Away for Their Couple's Retreat,' party, but it was solid.

The party had finally started its descent and some of the less usual suspects had begun to go home. Alonzo, Cole, Thalia, and Roland were sitting in the kitchen sipping drinks they'd made about half an hour ago when Khrissy Farber and her gang rolled up to them.

"Hi, Thal. Nicole. Roland," Khrissy said, looking Alonzo up and down as she made sure to leave a space before she stated the reason she'd come over, "So, Thal, me and some of my friends are going upstairs to play a few games while gen pop goes home. You guys are def welcome to come and play. You too Alonzo," she said finally acknowledging the Black boy.

"Oh my god, Khrissy did you re-bleach your hair? It's like, super flat and straight," Alonzo said, exaggerating the femininity in his voice.

Khrissy's face twitched ever so slightly before regaining composure, "Nope, just flat ironed it," she said pointedly as she eyed Alonzo's 3b curls.

"Yeah, so if you guys wanna come up it's totally fine," Leah Madison, Khrissy's second in command butted in sensing the tension.

"Yeah, we'll probably come up maybe," Thalia responded.

"Cool," Leah said before dragging her friends with her.

"You think that the general public would forgive me for punching the dog shit out of a girl if it was Khrissy Farber," Alonzo asked.

"Probably," Thalia said, "So are we going up?"

"Will there be more booze," Cole asked.

"Hopefully so," Roland replied.

Alonzo sighed, "I'll try not to punch her the titty."

"Good, let's go," Thalia said, getting up as they all made their way to the steps. Generally speaking nothing about that night was particularly different than any other night. Same booze, same weed, same teens. However, if they'd known that their decision to go upstairs would drastically change their lives, especially Alonzo's, maybe they would've decided to say fuck it and go home.

But hell, you win some you lose some.

A/N: Well color me surprised, I actually really like this one. Let's see if I can be consistent. Leave a review if you liked it.

Until next time,

W.W.