* * *
“You gotta pay the price if you want to ride, Beady,” says Elizabeth, a girl with curly, long hair and black fingernails. This is the friend Beady promised, who would be at the game and could give us a ride to the after party. She’s taller than me, and she stands with a foot out, chewing gum with one hand on her hip and the other dangling her car keys. Another girl stands beside her, rolling her eyes at Beady and me like we’re kindergartners.
“I’m fine, how are you?” Beady says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “This is Eddie.” He gives me a look so I won’t say anything.
“Hey, Eddie,” Elizabeth says to me. “You’re Beady’s new Mexican friend, huh? You don’t look it.” She turns to Beady. “So?”
“I can get you some gas money,” he says, and looks at me. “Right?”
“Don’t need it,” Elizabeth says. “Full tank. But there is something else you can do for us.”
We walk to her car, which turns out to be a truck. A small one with only two seats up front. Beady climbs into the bed and lies down.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say.
“Air conditioning’s better back there,” Elizabeth’s friend says.
I lie down next to Beady and we both look up at the dark sky. The stadium lights over the football field hide everything else. As the truck gets on the road and the sky goes dark, the air feels even better than I thought it would on my face and my fingertips. Beady and I have our arms crossed over our chests so we don’t touch one another.
“You do the stupidest crap,” I say, loud enough so he can hear me. We must be on the highway now because it seems like we’re flying. The girls listen to loud reggae in the cab.
“Why are you still here, then?” Beady asks.
“You knew they were going to do this.”
“You can leave anytime you want. Tell her to stop the truck. Walk home, go ahead. I’m going to the party.”
“What do they want, anyway?” I ask.
“It’s nothing,” Beady says. “Don’t even worry about it.”
The car stops around the back side of a minimart. Elizabeth’s friend slides open the back cab window. “Get something light,” she says.
“You better get at least a twelve-pack,” Elizabeth says. “And don’t take too long—the truck’s running.”
“You got a full tank, remember?” Beady says, jumping to the ground from the truck’s back bumper. A single, twitching light shines against the building’s wall and gives the two of us short shadows as I follow behind him. It’s quiet. “Come on. I told you, this ain’t nothin.’”
“This is stupid is what it is. What do you think we’re going to do?”
“Grab and run. Don’t get much simpler.”
The door dings when we walk in, and I see Beady and myself on the security television hanging over the entryway. I guess I won’t be able to come in here again, wherever this is. The slushee machine hums from the corner, and classic rock buzzes at us from a small black stereo behind the cashier’s counter. Everything is bright and yellow and cool. The place is empty.
“He’s in the bathroom or something,” I say.
Beady heads for the refrigerators in the back. “Let’s do this quick then,” he says.
“He heard the door. He’s gonna be out here any second.”
The glass door on the refrigerator holding the liquor sticks when Beady pulls on it. “Locked,” he says. “Damn it.” He opens the next door over and tries to reach his hand through, but there’s not enough room to pull anything out. He looks at me for a long time, and I can tell he’s trying to think of what to do next.
“Let’s just get out of here,” I say. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Beady’s eyes get big as he glances back over at the entrance. Twelve-pack boxes of beer are lined up against the front wall. We grab one each, and we’re out the door.
“Good job, guys,” Elizabeth’s friend calls from the passenger window.
“What’s the deal?” Elizabeth asks. “You’re not even running.”
“We handled it,” Beady says.
“Yeah,” I say. “No problem.”
Faintly, I hear the front door of the store ding again, followed by the scrape of shoes on cement. Someone calls loudly from around the corner. Elizabeth floors the gas, and the girls are gone. The tires don’t squeal, but they might as well have. Beady doesn’t have to tell me to run, I just do.
There’s a residential area behind the store, and Beady and I head for it. I look back once to see an older guy in sandals and a red vest slowing down where the blacktop of the parking lot turns to dirt. We keep running full speed, past some small houses. We make a couple turns, and there’s no way the guy kept following us this far, but we don’t stop. I think about dropping the beer, but instead I put it under my arm like a football. Beady carries his with both hands out in front of himself, until he slips at the edge of a gravel driveway and the twelve-pack breaks his fall. He cusses under his breath as he walks over to me, his shirt soaking and dirty, the skunky smell of warm beer all over him and in the air.
“I think we can stop running,” I say. “Where the hell are we?”
“Fucked is where we are. We’re in Joshua Tree.” He looks at his hands, which are dark and slimy, covered in beer mud. “I can’t believe they just left us.”
“Joshua Tree,” I say. An entire town and a fifteen-minute drive from home. “You’ve lived here your whole life, and you don’t have one friend who would just give us a ride to a party without making us do something like this?” I push the beer into his chest. “Here you go. It’s all yours. I’m out of here.”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Home.”
“Do you even know which way to go?”
“That way,” I say, and point west. If I follow the highway, there’s no way to get lost. “I should get there sometime tomorrow morning.”
“You’re just going to leave,” Beady says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I am. I’m sick of your crap.”
“There’s gotta be a payphone somewhere along the highway. I can call Elizabeth’s cell. She’ll come back. We can still go to the party.”
“I’m going home,” I say, and start off down the street.
“Fine,” he calls after me. “Just leave. Like your dad left you. Stupid bastard.”
I walk back over to him and grab him by his wet t-shirt. He’s taller than me, so I have to look up to grit my teeth at him. I don’t mention that at least my dad’s not around to beat the shit out of me whenever he has a bad day at work. “Call me what you want,” I say. As I say it, I feel the anger leave me. With a little shove, I let go of his shirt. “I am what I am.”
“Fuck you,” Beady says quietly, backing away from me. When he’s far enough away, he says, “You go on home, Edwin. I’m going to party.”
“It’s Eduardo, Dwayne. Good luck finding a place to sleep.” He doesn’t say anything. He just walks down the street away from me. I stand in the middle of the street in front of somebody’s house, until a porch light flashes on and I start walking in the direction I think home is.
Where We Are: A Short Story Page 2
