"It’s only a little farther," said Jay.

"Ow. Why would anyone want to live in a place this sunny? Is it leaving marks?"

Doug imagined what a pretty picture he made — zinc oxide on his nose, his cheeks greased with SPF 80. A small crack in the left lens of his spare glasses. Jay bent over to look under Doug’s hood.

"No. You’re just kind of red."

"Ow."

"Does it hurt?" asked Jay.

"What have I been saying for the past eight blocks?"

"It’s only a little farther," said Jay.

"Actually, that’s what you’ve been saying for the past eight blocks."

It was the first day of Comic-Con International, a four-day event in San Diego and the largest comic book and pop-culture convention in America. A building like a shopping mall with fins housed acres of elaborate booths with Jumbo-Tron displays and life-size sculptures of superheroes and signings with actual comics artists and creators. All right next to game-playing stations where you could try out next year’s video games and talk to the programmers and then mosey over to the seller’s area with its hundreds upon hundreds of long boxes packed with hard-to-find-issues and action figures — but who has time for action figures when you have to rush to make the eleven o’clock panel discussion with the creator and stars of Nebula-Bravo followed by a nap-inducing lunch in the food courts where you were forced to eat soft pretzels and pizza because they didn’t sell anything else.

Doug was really going to miss the soft pretzels and pizza.

"Ow. I’m going to have to drink someone soon," he told Jay, and realized he was slurring his speech. Was this what it felt like to be drunk? "I’ve got the shakes. And I was totally getting somewhere with that girl last night, too."

"Sorry," said Jay, for maybe the thirtieth time. Doug’s gut twisted. He hadn’t meant to squeeze another apology out of Jay. He hadn’t meant to give the impression that they’d only been thrown out of the party because of Jay’s monopoly of the hall bathroom, either, but somehow he had.