"Jesse!" Lea's yell plowed through the weak bathroom door as Jesse washed his hands vigerously under the waterfall in the sink. "There's other people in this house besides you!" Jesse strolled to the door and whipped it open, Lea's patience running as thin as paper and she trucked into the bathroom, pushing past, compared to her petite size, the colossal Jesse.

"All yours, Pipsqueak," Jesse laughed at his sister's anger. His mother claimed it was puberty, something all girls welcomed as becoming higher in life yet they unfortunetly painstakingly trudged through it. But he knew the truth. Lea knew just how to get his blood boiling, acting as unruly and childish as Timmy sometimes displayed toward her.

"You used to be little, too," Leah hissed vendictively, slamming the door in Jesse's face. "Or can't you remember that far back?"

Jesse shook his head, snuggled his hands in his green cargo's pockets and proceeded directly to the stairs. He stopped at Lea's door, music flowing throughout her room like liquid in a cool lagoon as McKenzie straightened her hair. She glanced to Jesse and smiled like a school teacher, full of charm, friendliness and wisdom.

"Where you going all dolled up?" Jesse asked, taking a seat on McKenzie's pull-a-way, scanning over her black flares, pink tube top and cork wedgie sandals.

"Out with Tricia Borg," she informed him, turning off the straightener and digging through her purple jewelery case on the teal-carptened floor for her silver hoops. "She's taking me to this teen club by the city, Alegre, it's called."

Tricia Borg...that name rang a blue bell in Jesse's head. She was the loner of his class, always scribbling in a notebook or reading Stephen King novels intensely at Lunch. Rumors told it that she was trouble, always skipping class and smoking...different things on school property. It's her life, Jesse concluded, but it would be a shame if McKenzie fell in Tricia's rumored sticky web of bad habits. "Does your mom know?" Jesse asked, the thought of her traveling traveling to the Big, Bad, Apple alone with some other vunerable yet threatening girl making him a little nervous.

"I don't tell her everything," McKenzie replied, shrugging her shoulders and raising her thin eyebrows. "As long as I'm home by 11:30, she wouldn't care if I went to the moon. Besides, what she doesn't know won't kill her..." Her voice trailed off into the unknown, the melodies of "Without You" sedating them both.

"What's this from?" Jesse enquired, leeching his hand on the musical's CD Cover.

"Rent," McKenzie stated, carefully poking the earrings throught the tiny holes drilled in her ears. "Only the best musical ever written." Jesse stared at her dumbfounded, his eyes wide indicating his deprived thurst for knowedge. "C'Mon, Jessy, Babe," McKenzie whined, snatching the CD cover from his grasp and running her jittery eyes over the endless pages. "This is like a classic, representing all the problems in today's society. Homosexuality, drugs, AIDS, suicide...all crowd-pleasing attributes." Her eyes parked on Mimi, the songbird of the musical. "Ahhh...Mimi," she sighed hopelessly, a glimmer of devotion popping up in her eyes as her hand gingerly brushed her face, "You and Roger are the perfect couple." She snapped out of her teeny-bopper composure, blinking a few times to rid her eyes of the heart-wrenching sight of Mimi. "I gotta school you, boy."

"Like you try to in baseball?" Jesse quipped, crossing his arms across his chest in defiance.

"Oh, we just got a date at the park tomorrow, Sunny," McKenzie said on the offense, lunging her hand to the ground to pick up her bashe pocketbook and pointing at Jesse dangerously.

"Can't wait!" Jesse shouted in her wake...

"C'Mon," Tricia urged, holding onto McKenzie's arm as they stepped off the sheeny bullet of a bus and into the unknown darkness. "The club is right there," she assured her sweetly, notioning toward the neon blue and green lights that illuminated the shadows down a seemingly endless stretch of sidewalk. They skipped toward the club, laughing and joking as if they've known each other forever.

After about 1/2 hour, they were blown away by heart-thumping music and eye-biting lights crowding lethally closer than the groping crowd. They cut like a knife through the rainbow-lighted people and climbed down the stairs in a fit of laughter to the lower level. It was considerably less crowded and less noisy, the music oozing down on them from the speakers in the upper level, but still engorged with sex and music; a dangerous merger.

"Grab us a table," Tricia shouted above the ear-splitting rendition of Ja Rule's "Always on Time," tugging her long silky black hair behind her ears and scoping the crowd, "I'll get us drinks...Code Red Mountian Dew for you?"

"You know it," McKenzie responded nodding. Tricia only could read the words falling off her lips to a deafening pool of noise, so she smiled and skidded sweetly to the bar.

McKenzie went to the right and took a seat at a high black table with a set of 4 stools. She sat lazily on one, glancing about nonchalantly. She couldn't view faces, only colorful specks of models only a painter can purely capture. She saw a pair of guys obviously exploiting their sexuality for each other, their hands roaming from credible places to places charted unknown. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously as she saw a few pairs of girls dancing in the same erotic, illicit manner. It suddenly hit her like a mac truck; 'Alegre...OMG,' her brain sirened, 'that must mean gay in Spanish!"

She had little notion Tricia was like this. Gay and proud. This newly clicking actuality boggled her mind, her mind computed on the mechanical thoughts of her never meeting anyone gay in Westchester. But, deep inside her hollow being, McKenzie secretly smiled, knowing she wasn't alone.

Her heart began to pound harder than drunken fists as Tricia returned with the drinks, gently placing them on the table. McKenzie didn't know how to bring it up; her palms began to form beads of sweat on the surface and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up involuntarily, as if trying to stand up for what she believes in. Tricia looked up at McKenzie; still wide-eyed with no emotion to depict on her face.

"You OK?" Tricia asked, touching her shoulder.

"Yeah..." McKenzie replied, clutching the drink in her hand and gulping it down. She whiped her hand over her mouth as Tricia continued.

"You need to loosen up a bit," Tricia told her with a chuckle, holding McKenzie's slightly shaken hand in hers, forcing all the doubts to fly from McKenzie into the sweat-stained air. "Let's dance."

They headed to the dance floor, colorful lights shining on them from all angles. The beat grabbed hold of them, making them dance like puppets. McKenzie didn't really care what happened anymore; you can't stop a feeling like this, just embrace it. When she was with Tricia, everything that hovered over her head became tenuous; not important. Tricia smiled brightly, her white teeth glowing eerily from the flecks of iridescent lights that bounced off them. McKenzie smiled back, knowing smiles are the only way to get through this pit in her life.

Then, something happened, even thought McKenzie predicted it would, but she wasn't sure she was ready. During the song break, Tricia motioned with her finger for McKenzie to come closer, a sinfully intrigued glimmer shining in her black eyes. When McKenzie did, their lips touched softly, like how a loose feather from a bird or goose dances on your skin, sparking jealously in your head that you can't fly. Tricia's hand walked gently through her garden of blonde hair, stricking shivers shooting down McKenzie's spine. McKenzie couldn't find the word for what the kiss felt like; it was like that trite expression; magic. Tricia broke her lips from McKenzie, and even under the blanket of flashing lights, one could see them both smiling huge smiles and holding hands.