Hipster is a perfectly valid word,” Wendy argued, about to write down her score on the little notepad that had come with the game. “Okay, so what does it mean?” Mandy wanted to know. Wendy struggled to come up with an answer, and finally just changed the subject with school gossip. Mandy found herself just ignoring it… it always sounded the same, the same events, same rumors, same secrets, same affairs, but never anything of interest to her.“Well Sarah’s on drugs again and that’s why she did it in Mario’s backseat, but now she might be pregnant, oh, and that messed-up Seth kid’s been cutting himself again so he was sent away to Halifax last week, and there’s a festival in Colville, but Kathy won’t go because Audrey-Rose is going to be there, and they hate each other, and….” Mandy had learned two years ago to detach herself from gossip; she’d learned it from Mud’s death. Wendy may have been eighteen years old, but she could be immature on the best of days.

Smog City