Forget being expelled. I was hoping I didn’t end up in prison. This was very bad. Very, very bad.
Jake finally turned and looked at me. In the mirrored sunglasses, I saw my own face, and it shocked me. A purple bruise was swelling over my eye, and blood darkened my upper lip and my chin. Then the pain finally registered, as if it had been temporarily left behind and had finally caught up; it felt as if my whole face was throbbing. I tasted blood in my mouth.
“Hey, pal,” he said. “Charles. The Chuckster. Chuck the man.”
I stared at him, trying to understand how he could joke at a time like this. I should have been grateful that he had saved me from Leo, but all I could think was that he had now ruined my life. The way I saw it, it wasn’t like I had chosen to get into the Mustang after all. It was more of a self-preservation thing. If he would have just left me alone, I might have gotten my face ripped off, but at least I wouldn’t have ended up in jail.
“Charlie,” I said.
“Aww, come on,” he said. “You know I was just joshing ya.”
“It’s Charlie.”
“Okay, whatever . . . Charlene.” He laughed.
I wanted to go on hating him. It was something to focus on other than my pain and my situation. But despite myself, I laughed, and then suddenly it was like old times. “You’re such a dork,” I said.
He laughed with me. “Double dork.”
“Dork on a stick!”
“Dork on a stick with a turd on top!”
And there we were, laughing until tears were in our eyes, two fourth graders in a stolen Mustang who thought there was nothing funnier than potty talk. I laughed until it was no longer funny, and then I laughed some more, because what do you do in a situation like that except laugh? Finally, our laughter died, and then we rode in somber silence, alone with our thoughts, the rumbling motor, and the cool rush of wind. It finally dawned on me that I couldn’t go on riding in Mr. Harkin’s Mustang forever. Sooner or later I’d have to come to grips with reality, and it would probably be better if it was sooner.
“Better pull over now,” I said.
“Pull over?” Jake said.
“Yeah.”
“What, you need to take a leak or something?”
I touched the bruise over my eye, wincing at the pain. A couple more hours, and the thing would cover my face like a giant wart. “Very funny. What, you think you’re just going to keep driving the principal’s car all day?”
“Sure. All day. All night. Something like that.”
I looked at him. His smirk made it hard to tell if he was joking.
“You’re insane,” I said.
“Nah, just having some fun.”
“Jake, we have to get out now.”
“Why?”
I couldn’t believe he was arguing with me on this. “Why?! Because Mr. Harkin is going to break off all our arms and legs, that’s why! If we stop now, maybe we can tell him you were helping me get away from Leo, but if we keep driving—”
“Don’t be such a pussy.”
It took me a moment to register his insult. “What?”
“A pussy. You’re being a total pussy. Have some fun. Jesus.”
“Fun!”
“Yeah. You knew how to have fun once.”
I stared, incredulous. He wanted to have fun. We were in Mr. Harkin’s Mustang, and he thought we should have some fun.
“Okay, I need to get out now,” I said.
“Aw,” he said.
“I’m serious, Jake. Stop the car.”
“In a little bit.”
“Jake!”
He smiled. “You wanna drive?”
“No, I don’t want to drive!”
“It’s a lot of fun. A lot of pep in this baby. My dad had one like this a long time ago. It was yellow, though.”
“I don’t care! Stop the car!”
Jake drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. We’d gone about a mile from the school, heading out of the residential areas and into the light industrial side of town that surrounded the airport. The buildings were huge and square and gray, one after another. I realized he wasn’t driving randomly. He was driving with somewhere in mind.
“Where are you going?” I said.
He looked at me. “Did you write that note to Tessa Boone?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I just wanna know.”
I shook my head. “Stop the car, Jake.”
“Not until you tell me if you wrote that note.”
I put my hand on the door handle. “If you don’t stop the car, I’m going to jump out.”
“Oh, this should be good,” he said.
“Jake, come on!”
He laughed.
“We’re in serious trouble here!” I protested.
“You worry too much. What happened to you? You used to be the one who threw the first balloon.”
It took me a second to realize what he meant, and then it all came rushing back. I remembered how we used to fill up water balloons and put them into a plastic bucket. I remembered how we had hauled that bucket into the great big pine tree next to our apartment complex, high above the bluff where the complex sat, high enough that we could see Oak Knoll Road over the smaller oak trees. I remembered how we had taken turns lobbing water balloons at passing cars, laughing with delight when one of them hit its mark. I remembered how sometimes the owners would get out, steaming mad, and come looking for us, and how we disappeared through the maze of hedges that surrounded the complex, hiding, stifling our laughter as best we could.
“This is different,” I said.
“How is it different?”
“We were just kids then.”
“Oh, so you’re all grown-up now? Ready to go to some boring job and come home to some boring house and some boring wife and do that again and again?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then lighten up. Have some fun.”
I shook my head. “Jake, we’re going to get arrested.”
“Aw.”
“I’m serious.”
He looked at me. “I can tell. You get that look on your face.”
“What look?”
“That serious look. The Harvard look.”
“Harvard!”
“Yeah. Or Yale. Princeton. The serious look of the guy who’s going to one of those big-time schools. It’s the I’m-going-to-be-a-lawyer-or-doctor look. It’s priceless. Hey, you ever seen those MasterCard commercials?”
“What?”
“Those commercials. You ever seen them? They’re pretty good.” He changed his voice, making it more smooth. “A cherry-red Mustang and a sunny afternoon . . . priceless.”
He started reciting some of his favorite MasterCard commercials, and I just went on staring at him, trying to figure out just what planet his brain was on. How could he not be worried? I realized I was going to have to get out of the car before he did something really insane. Next time he stopped for a traffic light or a stop sign, I’d go for it. That was my plan, but he must have sensed what I was up to, because he only tapped the brakes at the next intersection, screeching around the corner.
“Jake, come on!” I pleaded.
“Just wait,” he said.
“I really just want to go home.”
“You will. Later. For now you’re going to have some fun, whether you want to or not. It’s my mission.”
“This is so not funny.”
He burst out laughing. “Oh, but it is. The look on your face . . . priceless.”
“Will you stop saying that!”
He was laughing so hard now his face was turning red. He wiped the tears out of his eyes and turned right onto Mission Street, a four-lane road that led past many of the big box stores like Wal-Mart and Target. It may have been my imagination, but everyone in all the cars we passed seemed to reach for cell phones just as they saw us, and I figured they had Mr. Harkin’s number on speed dial. Rexton was a decent-size city, ove
r a hundred thousand, but I had no doubt in my mind that everyone knew this car.
I kept waiting for Jake to take one of the exits, but he didn’t, and then Mission Street turned into Highway 47, the one that led east out of town. His speed picked up, doing forty, then fifty. I asked him just what he thought he was doing, but he didn’t hear me over the roar of the wind, so I had to shout.
“Where are you going?” I said.
His smirk was so small, so tight, you could barely see his lips. “It’s a secret.”
“Jake . . .”
“All right, all right. We’re going to see a friend of mine.”
“A friend.”
“Yeah. A girl. Lives in Grantville.”
“Grantville! That’s like twenty miles away!”
“Well, that’s where she lives. She goes to high school there. Name’s Laurel. You’ll like her.”
“I don’t want to like her!”
“What, you don’t like girls? You gay or something?”
“I’m not gay!”
“It’s okay if you are. It’s not like I hate fags or anything. It’s not like I’m prejudiced. It’s just, if you’re going to try to grab my ass, I’d like to know.”
“I’m not gay!”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “Then what’s the problem? She’s got girlfriends. They’re hot, too. Maybe not as hot as Tessa Boone, but pretty hot.” He winked at me.
“This is insane!”
He laughed. “Yeah, isn’t it great? Just like old times.”
I thought about telling him we never once stole a car and went for a joyride, but there didn’t seem to be any point. He was crazy. Totally, unbelievably out of his mind. The next twenty minutes, as we raced over the old highway, I tried a few times to get him to stop, but he just laughed.
We passed beyond the Rexton city limits, past the women’s state pen and the yellow fields surrounding it, then turned onto the narrower Highway 42, a two-lane road that wound through a tunnel of pines and oaks. We passed several Christmas tree farms, some houses on big acreage with horses grazing out front, and a wrecking yard. Then we passed the Grantville sign, population 6,567, and dropped to a slow cruise as we drove among the brick buildings of the old downtown. A couple of old-timers sitting outside a barber shop stared at us as we passed. It took me a second before I realized one of the older-timers was wearing a police uniform.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.
“Relax,” Jake said. “If you don’t look like you’re guilty, nobody will think anything.”
We passed through some neighborhoods filled with boxy run-down manufactured homes, then veered sharply into a gravel alley. Overhanging cherry trees lined the way, making the alley cool and shadowy. Fallen cherries had stained the gravel over the years, so it was now more red than gray, as if it was an exposed wound.
We drove past a few backyards, past wild grass, rusted swing sets, and cracked kiddie pools, and then he turned onto a dirt path behind a two-story gray house with cracked windows and red graffiti on the back door. The backyard was filled with junk—the biggest of which was an old VW Bug without wheels or a hood—and also a big, fishing-type boat up on its trailer. The boat was in worse shape than the car, the boards cracked and splintered, the cabin with no glass at all.
There were also small streams of smoke rising out of the darkness of the cabin.
“Something’s on fire,” I said.
Jake laughed. Right after he killed the engine, a face appeared in one of the glassless windows—a girl with curly red hair tied back in a ponytail. She had pale skin with lots of freckles, like vanilla ice cream with chocolate sprinkles. Her eyes lit up when she saw us.
“Jake!” she exclaimed.
“Hey, Laurel,” Jake said. “Like my ride?”
“Your ride?”
“Yeah.”
She ducked out of view. I heard her speaking to someone out of sight, then she and another girl emerged on deck. The deck boards creaked like they might give way at any moment.
Laurel wore an acid-burn jean jacket over a softball shirt, as well as dirt-stained white sweatpants. She was a little on the heavy side, but she was still pretty good looking because she had a lot of curves for somebody her age. The other girl looked completely different, one of those goth types dressed all in black. Her hair was black, her eyebrows black, her eyeliner black. Her hair was cut really short, hardly over her ears, and she was very thin, with no breasts at all. In fact, you might have thought her a boy until you got a good look at her face, which was really kind of pretty, if you could get past the eyeliner and the eyebrows. The two girls didn’t seem to belong together at all. Athletic types never hung out with goths. It was like trying to mix oil and water.
They scooted off the bow and jumped down to the ground. Both girls held smoldering cigarettes. They approached the car, standing on Jake’s side. The goth girl seemed to be trying hard not to make eye contact with Jake or me, as if she was doing her best Dustin Hoffman Rain Man impersonation. Laurel looked at the car a long time, her eyes getting real wide.
“You like?” Jake said.
“Where’d you get this?” she said.
“We stole it,” Jake said. “Actually Charlie here stole it. I just went along with him.”
“I did not,” I said.
Jake laughed. “He just doesn’t like to brag. Who’s your friend?”
Laurel took a drag from her cigarette. “This is Kari. She just moved here from New Jersey.”
“Well hey, Kari,” Jake said. “I’m Jake, and this here is Charlie.”
Kari was staring at the side of the car, as if there was a scratch there and she was trying to make it go away with her mind.
“What, can’t they talk in New Jersey?” Jake said.
“Screw you, asshole,” Kari said. She said this without even looking at him.
Laurel looked at her. “Hey, be nice. Jake’s a cool guy.”
“Whatever,” Kari said.
Laurel sighed. “Don’t mind her. She just hates everything and everyone. But she’s still cool.”
“Everything sucks,” Kari said. “What happened to your face, anyway?”
She asked this question without glancing in my direction, so it took me a moment to realize that she was asking about me. I’d forgotten for a moment about what a mess Leo had made of my face. I already had a hard enough time talking to girls in general—it was like giving a speech to the entire school, only worse, every single time I tried to open my mouth—and looking so awful only made it worse.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said.
“You look like crap,” Kari said.
Jake must have thought this was very funny, because he burst into laughter. “Oh, that’s great,” he said. “Actually, Charlie here was in a pretty bad fight. Took on three guys. You should have seen the wreck he made of them.” He whistled. “And all because they insulted this girl he’s taking to prom.”
For the first time, Kari looked at me. Her eyes, which were actually not black at all—instead, a very light, uneven blue, like water with a few drops of food coloring—seemed very different from the rest of her. It was like there was somebody else inside, somebody really lonely or afraid, and she was doing her best to hide that person behind all her black walls. I wondered if maybe that’s why she never wanted to look at anyone directly, because she knew people could see right inside her through her eyes, right into the real her. She looked at me only a moment before looking away.
Laurel was also looking at me, with what seemed newfound admiration. “Seriously?”
“Well . . .” I began.
“He doesn’t like to talk about that stuff,” Jake said. “He was in a lot of fights when he was little, and he doesn’t like to talk about it.”
“Oh,” Laurel said, nodding.
“Hey, you guys want to go for a ride?”
“Yeah!” Laurel exclaimed.
She ground her cigarette into the dirt with her heel. Then, before I could
argue—and really, I wasn’t going to argue, because I could hardly speak around girls, and if you can’t speak, you can’t argue—Laurel climbed into the backseat. Kari climbed in after her, taking her time, like it really didn’t matter to her one way or another.
Jake backed out of the alley onto the street. Smiling at us, he revved the engine a few times, then popped it in gear. The tires squealed and the Mustang took off like a rocket.
“Let’s have some fun,” Jake said.
We were halfway down the street before I realized that I had had all the time in the world to get out of the car, and I hadn’t bothered to do it.
chapter four
We cruised through the side streets until we ended up in the old downtown, the rumbling motor echoing off the brick buildings. I saw our reflection in some of the store windows, and it was like something out of a James Dean movie, two guys and two girls in a Mustang, cruising for action. There were lots of loitering teenagers down there, mostly loser types, some hanging around the theater or the drugstore, and Laurel laughed and waved to them. Most of them just stared back with blank expressions.
The air had cooled, and a light breeze stirred up the dust from the sidewalks. The clock by the bank showed that it was closing in on four o’clock. Another hour and a half and Mom would be home. When she didn’t find me, she’d get worried.
That was, if she wasn’t already. Mr. Harkin may have already called her at work. No doubt he knew by now it was me and Jake who took his car. As we rumbled along, I tried to understand why I hadn’t gotten out of the car. Jake had stopped at a bunch of stop signs, and I hadn’t gotten out at any of those, either. I knew I was supposed to get out, that I had to get out, and yet I didn’t. Something was wrong with me. I was having a meltdown and I didn’t even know why.
Jake turned and looked at Laurel. “So how was softball practice?” he asked.
“Oh, shut up,” Laurel said.
Jake looked at me, and when he saw the puzzled expression on my face, said with a laugh, “Laurel’s not really on the team. She just pretends.”
The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys Page 3
