"Yeah?" Could I ... could I tell you something kind of personal?" Sure Kid." This is pretty serious. Do you promise not to laugh at me?" Of course I p...omise. Hey, we trust each other, right?" he asked me with a serious look on his face."I ... I hope so," I replied."I don't just hope so, I know so," he said confidently. "Now what is it? You can tell me anything."When he said that, it made it much easier for me to say what I wanted to say. I launched into the story of what my life had been like. I could be both. “What are you playing at? No, you know what, let’s play, you say I can tell you to do anything? Tell me what’s going on. What happened with you and your friends?”With all the crying I’d been doing these days you’d think I’d be able to call it up on command, but I couldn’t. I made the saddest face I could and tried to inflect my voice with tears as I began my confession. “They don’t understand. They think I’m a whore.”“What? Why?”I looked down and hid my face, “Because I have. All I do for work is play the same video game over and over. And it’s not exactly a super-social activity. I guess I’m not that social to begin with.” He took another careful sip. “When you’re around others a lot, drinking is seen as fun. When you’re - when you’re by yourself, it’s just… seen as unhealthy.”“Ha.” Lauren chuckled nervously. “I’ve drank alone more times than I’d like to admit. But I think this is more fun.”“Oh yeah?” it was Ken’s turn to ask.“Yeah. I think it’s kind of cool that. “What’s up?”The younger brother shared, “She’s putting me out. Can I come to your place.”“Uh...Yeah,” Maurice hesitated.“If I can’t, it’s cool.”“Naw. You good, man! I got a shawty comin’ through so you gotta chill in the back.”“Bet!”Rodrick arrived at the shingle-exterior house. He went inside and his brother showed him to the back bedroom. Rodrick turned on the lamp and opened up ‘King Leopold’s Ghost’. He had been reading the book about Belgium’s ruler who stripped the Congo of riches for a.