My ol’ man was always drunk. Day, night, whatever, didn’t matter. Look, Pacifica’s no picnic and we was scrapin’ by like, barely. What else you gonna do? Dear dad drank to forget about things. ‘Bout me. Least then he was quiet. Anyways, that’s how I met Kirk. One school day. Y’know, it’s funny – I liked school. Had no friends, classes was f*ckin’ lame and the kids were all out to get me. But they had hot, square meals, and I was a big boy. Always hungry. So one day I come home, dad’s already there. Already sloshed, nothin’ left in the fridge. I head to the diner round the corner. I sit, Kirk’s over there in the next booth. I get me the number two, cheapest scop on the menu. Kirk gets up, plants himself across from me and hands me half his burger. Choom, I can still taste it. You don’t get synthloin at school, I’ll tell you that. We start talkin’. He didn’t have a dad to grumble about, so I grumbled about mine. And Kirk, he listened. “Want more of that synthjunk?” he asked as we was leavin’. “You work for me, you’ll be eatin’ like that every day.” And I did. Like I said, always hungry.