Despite Steve's anger, Mal couldn't quite believe that Rona would write such an article: he had to see it for himself. He got off the tram a stop early and scampered through the rain along the shopping strip near his house, looking in the doorways of the shops for the tell-tale stack of magazines that might include the Word on the Street. He saw several such stacks, but none of them appeared to contain the Word. In fact, all of them did - but it wasn't until the third stack that he passed that Mal noticed it: he'd missed it earlier because it didn't look like the Word.

For starters, it was unusually colourful. Apart from the bold red of the title banner, the Word on the Street had traditionally been a pretty dour magazine; but this week it was splashed gaudily with seemingly every major colour available through modern printing technology. Also, it was twice the size that it was normally: A3 instead of its usual dependable, easily foldable A4. They weren't kidding about it being a 'Special Edition'.

And Steve wasn't kidding about it being about drugs, either: that was inescapably the case, with the cover a hastily Photoshopped collage of famous musicians, artists, actors, and various other public figures, all of them known as much for their drug habits as for any other endeavour. The theme was also made apparent by the huge letters across the front cover that proclaimed: 'DRUGS: THE SCOURGE DESTROYING OUR KIDS.' Mal smirked with laughter, despite his concerns, as he wondered precisely whose kids they were talking about, given the magazine's target audience. Nonetheless it was with trepidation that he opened the cover to look at the table of contents.

He was thrown a bit at first when he found himself smack-bang in the middle of an article about . . . something, he couldn't quite understand what the writer was on about. Out of habit he'd turned the first five or six pages all of a piece, assuming that (as usual) they'd all be filled with advertising. But this week they weren't: in fact, as Mal flicked through the magazine (still slightly disbelieving that this thing he was holding was the Word, about which he'd become quite fond recently), he found that there appeared to be no advertising of any kind. There also didn't seem to be any of the usual sections: no gig listings, no gig reviews, no C.D. reviews. He wondered why Rona had let this happen. At the half-way point of the magazine, as some kind of bizarre centrefold, he found the same image as on the front cover reproduced, but in scratchy black-and-white, complete with a list of who each of the people depicted in it were, how they'd died (if applicable) and what their connection to the theme of 'drugs' was. As Mal flicked back and forth through the magazine looking for the interview with him (he'd given up on the table of contents after the initial confusion, and just continued from where he'd opened the magazine) he noticed that there was more space given to pictures than to text. This would be fine, except that none of the pictures were particularly illuminating: just pictures of celebrities, newspaper clippings of drug busts, even stills from old detective films (out of copyright, presumably). It was all very perplexing.

Finally, with a peculiar mix of delight and horror, Mal found the interview. It was billed as the 'Cover Story' - even though, flicking back to the cover briefly, he could find no mention of it. The headline above the interview said: 'DRUG HELL: SEX, DRUGS, & ROCK 'N' ROLL.' Underneath this it said:

Mal [surname?], of the upcoming band the Pterodactyls, speaks frankly to Rona McKendrie about the drug tragedy that nearly tore his band apart.

"What the fuck?" Mal muttered in disbelief. Apart from anything else, surely Rona knew his surname? As the rain splattered down on the cheap paper unfolded before him, he reached into his back pocked to pull out his 'phone. Now he really did have to talk to Rona.