brainstorm list.

The boys have names: Drew, Neil, Jude

Neil has a sledgehammer. It is his mother’s, and she keeps it under her bed “in case.”
Ambulances have pulled up to his driveway late in the night.
When it started happening too often, his father left.
Neil’s violence looks like bullying. It looks like menacing that he laughs loud about.
Neil seems like the leader, but he is mostly following Jude’s quiet lead.

Jude has the liquor and weed, both stolen from his dad’s stash.
Jude has forearm muscles that blue veins bulge from.
Jude has tan skin and a blond bowl cut.
Jude has lines of skin that convulse over his forehead when he is concentrating.
He is substantial.
Jude’s anger looks like survival, but the boy has no self-awareness.
In any other circumstances, he would be a good person.
Jude is a natural leader.
Jude has a father, but his mother hung herself.

Drew has a camera.
Drew has his dad’s discarded Playboy’s.
Drew has a mom.
Drew has a good life. This is what it looks like.
Drew is quiet, but less quiet than Jude.
Drew is scared of his own anger. He will not touch the sledgehammer. He will not destroy a house until late in the story.
Drew doesn’t know how Jude’s mother did it, but he imagines scenarios.
Drew’s father is the construction manager for the new neighborhood coming up.
Drew’s mother cheats on his father. But everything looks normal.
Jude and Drew both keep secrets.

The boys ride skateboards at night.
There is the sound of urethane wheels grinding against black asphalt.

In Jude’s garage there is a ping pong table, a dart board, a stereo, an old couch, and old rug, an oak-like coffee table with chips that reveal particle board.
There is one window. Half of the ceiling is dry-walled, but half is not. The room is always damp.

In Drew’s dark room, there are chemicals, a thin wire from which photos hang clipped by clothespins, and his dad’s rescued Playboys buried beneath National Geographic magazines stashed at the bottom of a photo processing supply shelf.

The Vietnamese are moving into Live Oak Acres. With their fishy smells and foreign vegetable gardens.
A black family moves in next door to Drew’s house.
The pecan grove that is the edge of Live Oak Acres is leveled and now bears only the name: Pecan Grove Estates. This will be a gated community. It is the 1980s.
The news thinks that the Vietnamese teenagers are destroying the construction site.
Drew's dad thinks it is the Vietnamese teenagers.

A family photo will fall, crash down so that glass shatters.