Hot Merchandise
It’s almost eight o’clock on a Friday night, one hour left until the mall closes, and the music store aptly called Da Hot Spot is jumping. Hip hop music pounds from the sound system, rattling the windows and drawing a young crowd. The aisles are jammed with kids, mostly high school age and up, rifling through rows of CDs, jostling each other for a turn at the listening stations, flipping through the poster racks, thumbing through the discount DVDs. Many of them aren’t there to buy anything—they want to be seen, so they stand in small little groups of friends and flick their collars, straighten their jackets, slick their hands through already perfect hair.
In a small city with little else to do, this is the place to be.
At one end of the sales counter, as far from the noi
