For no specific reason, Lana had railed two lines of MDMA at three P.M. on a Thursday. If interrogated on the matter, she’d insist that she was celebrating Cher’s iconic catalogue of tweets, the fact she could’ve sworn there’d been a David Hasselhoff burnt into her toast that morning, or even just that she’d painted a yellow smiley face onto the nail of her middle finger. This was only relevant because of the hyper-fixated rampage it’d incited: when Leo stepped into his room at Kincaid after being elsewhere, he’d find a lime green door knob, various drops of neon paint on the carpet, on surfaces, only growing more frequent towards the windowsill. There, hands wet with a variation of eye scorching shades, Lana stood sprucing a bouquet of flowers she’d dunked to coat every petal. “Hey!” she practically shrieked as she turned to the noise, cheeks achy with a grin. “Huh, didn’t mean to scream -- but, like, honestly, maybe I did, ‘cause sometimes people just need to, you know? Exorcism. Scream and shout and let it all out... Will.I.Am and Britney, Britney. Like Meryl Streep in Big Little Lies when she was all, like, aAAaaaaAArgh, just completely losing it, in front of her grandkids. Anyways, what was I saying?” came as she reached up to itch at her cheek, inadvertently smudging it magenta -- without realising it, her knuckle also knocked her butterfly sunglasses, prompting a “whoa!” like the world had swayed off axis, not her accessory. “Oh! Oh, yeah. I made you these. ‘Cause you’d give me Marj’s, like, all the time, right? So I wanted to get you some, too. Except I couldn’t go to yours, so I went to this, like, loser place, which I’m realising now is, like, totally fuelling the competition, and none of the flowers were bright enough for you there. They weren’t Leo, you know? So I had to make them myself. I’m kinda like Mother Nature but sexier. I mean, she’s pretty sexy, though, so maybe we’re on par. Hashtag girlboss. Feminism.” Whipping back to inspect them, she cupped a still-damp-rose, worsening the transfer on the heel of her palm. “They look kinda like something from a UV rave, don’t you think? Like they’d go all Venus fly trap and, like, eat winged glowsticks. Pretty.” @leofcwlers











