Excerpt from The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Fart grabs me in a bear hug and swings me off the ground. His Gregg Allman beard presses into my face. "Hey, boss," he yells, then reaches out and noogies Mel hard. "Congratulations, assholes!"

The factory is a former fax machine assembly site. Fireworks someone brought back from down South are whistling off the roof. We're in Barren Brooklyn, all chain-link fences and loading docks and aging signage.

From the roof, the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway is a dark river humming in the distance. A Black Cat spins and pops, tossing sparks. Someone breaks a bottle— not intentionally, not yet, that won't start until Mel is blackout-boot-scootin-boogie wasted. This is merely a party foul, the night's first, and the people yell thusly.

Mel grabs someone's top hat, slaps it onto her head, and lights a couple of sparklers. "What it do, baby," she hoots, jutting her hips alarmingly at an intern. A crowd circles her, bespectacled NYU and Brooklyn College kids, a few transplants from the design school in Rhode Island, all cradling fireworks. Mel's pretty, prettier than me, but the asshole act quashes any signals she accidentally, incidentally puts out. One night at a bar on the Lower East Side, a guy told her she looked just like that actress from the nineties, the one in Tank Girl. "That blond punky thing," he said slovenly. Mel told him he looked like Ned Flanders.

"Someone's losing a finger tonight," I say.

"It's not a party until body parts are separated." She wrings her hands at me, Italian- grandma- style. "So sock it." Hands me a bottle rocket. I give it back. Two of the interns have cigarettes tucked be-hind their ears in knowing imitation of Mel, who tends to have this effect on the young. She begs tribute. I see at least one bleach- blond cut on a guy who was brunet last week; a lesbo haircut on a man turns out to be unremarkable.

I point to a bottle rocket. "Sorta close to a residential area, are we not?"

"Not that close."

"Ridgewood's like three blocks that way."

"So?"

The interns look to me expectantly. "So?"

"Look at you." Mel grabs my face. "So concerned. Let's give her a hand. Sharon Kisses, everyone." She smooches me hard and smacky on the forehead, scampers away. The interns run after her.

I leave Mel on the roof with her followers and go downstairs to see if Beardsley has arrived. No dice. I meander, taking a deep schwag hit from a passing bong, retreating to the drinks table to fill a coffee mug from a box of merlot. The party has become its own entity; we have been forgotten, the room has filled with strangers, each younger and thinner and hipper than the one before. Shit. I'm already itching to escape.

Soon after Mel and I started working together, I realized my virtue was in my constancy. Mel is smarter than me, but I know more than she does. I have a knack for cleanliness, perfect portions. Chronology, arc, storyboarding—those are my areas of expertise. I'm the one who builds the narrative, keeps us on its track. But sometimes I get tired of my role in this partnership. Mel's having all the fun—she has no issues with these horseshit hipster parties—while I'm the steady guy, taking care of the admin stuff, making the appointments. Cleaning up the messes. It is a central truth I've both known and feared for years: The heart- and- soul skill of it all is not something I do as well as Mel, who is still the best I've ever seen. All that goofing off and fucking around belies the focus within. In her own hidden way, Mel is the most serious person I know.

I worry it's written all over my face, when people see us together in places like this. Mel's the realartist. I'm tagging along. In weaker moments, I actually allow myself to feel envy. God knows I don't want her life, her particular burdens, but her talent, what she makes look effortless. As if everyone could do this shit, and do it tomorrow.

Excerpted from The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker. Copyright © 2017 by Kayla Rae Whitaker. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.