by Amanda Lance
“Hey, Jumper?”
I swallowed hard. Why hadn’t I tried to soak up more of the sound of his laugh when I had the chance? With how serious he looked now, it felt like he might never laugh again. “Yeah?”
“Don’t jump in front of anybody’s car, okay?”
“You ask for a lot of favors, don’t you, William? First seatbelts, now this? Are you going to want my first born next?”
My eyes wandered from his hand to his face. William was smiling with just enough sarcasm and wit to seem charming. No wonder every girl who had walked past us so far had swooned at him and shot me a dirty look. No, I doubted William Do-gooder needed any savior stories to get women into his bed.
“How about we just see how our first date goes before we make any major decisions?”
I felt my brows fix together, my way of trying to make the blush stop. “I’ve known you less than an hour and I think you might be the biggest pain in the ass I’ve ever met.”
Though he fixed his brows together in an equal fashion, his smile remained. Yes, I decided, smiling was definitely his default expression. “The same could be said about you.”
I went to reply, but the crowd responded for me, cheering and yelling out catcalls while the sound of two distinct engines revved up.
“You wanna see a street race before you die, Jumper? Everyone should see at least one before they meet their maker.”
I tugged the remainder of my hair out of its ponytail. The second I did, the headache I wasn’t even aware of ebbed away.
“I’m not making any promises about not jumping in front of your friends’ cars.” I pulled the hood up over my head, my smiled concealed by the faux fur.
“Then I better keep you close.”
Then he took my thumb in his hand and pulled me into the crowd.
There were looks, from guys and girls, but they were strangely easy to ignore as his hand moved from around my thumb to interlace his fingers with mine. There, he held me tight, but not tight enough to be rough, just protective. I closed my eyes and let him pull me along like a lost kid. Continuously, I told myself this attitude of mine was my own low blood sugar, the fact that I hadn’t eaten all day combined with the fact that I had been so ready to die and hadn’t. I was disappointed, that’s all. Getting my hopes up that this attractive person might actually care about me would only make taking my life much more difficult.
Still, these rationales didn’t make his hand feel any less nice than it did.
We were right in the front when a scarcely clad girl—who didn’t look old enough to be out of high school yet—strutted out between two cars. The car on the left was a low thing that was blue on its sides with an orange stripe. To the right of it was lime green car, covered in product stickers for things I’d never heard of. This car seemed to generate a mostly Hispanic fanbase. I barely had time to guess why before the smiling, barely-out-of-high-school-girl blew kisses at the crowd, prompting both drivers to rev their engines until their tires smoked. I coughed at the smell of burning rubber, but no one else seemed to be bothered by it.
Unlike the movies, the girl didn’t take off a piece of clothing to start the race—not that she had anything else to take off. Instead, she waved a flashlight in the air, turning it on and waving the beams in the air. When she did, the cars took off squealing and peeling the tread off the surface so instantly that gravel flew up in the air. I tried to follow the blue and orange car in my line of sight but by the time my eyes looked for the taillights in the smoke, both cars seemed to have vanished completely.
It was about 50/50 in terms of who was cheering for whom, but before I could figure out which one was Rhatt and which one was Eggs, the race itself must have been over—the guy clutching a walkie-talkie shouting out the results to the crowd.
“It’s Eggs!”
They all roared on, William included. The entire time, however, he never let go of my hand, and I felt a strange combination of gratitude and aloofness, my ability to feel out of place dominating over his simple act of kindness.
There were three more races before the spell broke over the swarm. It seemed like within seconds of each other, the guys with walkie-talkies—those declaring the winner—stopped caring so much about the results and more about adjusting the buttons around the antenna on the devices they held. I opened my mouth to ask William about it when one of the regular looking cars parked by the starting-line started flashing its lights and honking its horn as though possessed.
Within seconds, people were cursing loudly, and answering their chiming phones. Even William barely had time to push me behind him before the stampede of people began running back to their car, waving to each other and yelling frantically over the growl of engines and stereos to hear one another.
“What’s going on?” I heard myself ask.
He smiled in the darkness. “Pigs in a blanket.”
William pulled me along with him again, enclosing his hand around my wrist without giving me a chance to complain or say anything smart. Between the yelling and the fascination of how his hand easily overlapped my wrist, my breathing became more difficult, my heart pounding a little faster.
While the panic made the feet of everyone move faster, my body reacted too—a whirlwind of frenzy tunneling in me at the sight. I watched with genuine amusement while girls struggled to keep their breasts in their tops and run away at the same time. I laughed while drivers accidently blocked each other in trying to evade the authorities, and guys who looked like they should be playing football yelled at each other in Spanish and some broken Italian.
Back under the bridge, William steered us back towards his vehicle, my mind not as grateful to see the white muscle car again as I should have been.
“We have to go.” William threw my hand in the direction of the passenger seat, and I felt myself smile. Though I couldn’t see him smiling, couldn’t sense it even, I still felt myself surging with energy—the spike of being with him and watching the races in my bloodstream still fresh.
“Obviously.” I laughed as if my remark were the funniest thing I had ever said, had ever even thought to say. If I had been in someone else’s shoes, I probably would have thought I was hysterical. At that moment, however, I didn’t care. I genuinely didn’t give a damn.
I have to say, it almost felt good.
Getting in the car, I put my seatbelt on without instruction, trying to restrain my joy while the trunk of the car in front of us flew open and glass bottles were shattered against the road. William glanced at me but didn’t say a word. He even remained silent as the red and blue lights came into view over the hillside, the sirens echoing in the short distance. It occurred to me somewhere that I should have been feeling bad for him, bad that he had gotten stuck with the most pathetic person in the universe, especially if he was true in his kindness. Here William was just trying to be decent to me, and I was exposing him to a hunger-induced madness, a hysteria encouraged by loneliness.
William Do-gooder O’Reilly’s night had probably started out so promising.
I should have felt about as much sympathy for him as I did gratitude. Instead, my feelings were in-tune with my senses. My olfactory sense heightened, I could smell everything stronger than ever, feel the blood pumping through me, making me break out into a weird kind of sweat even though I was chilly. I felt energized. I felt excited. I felt something other than depressed.
Just when William’s car came to life, so did I.
Chapter Three
Naturally, I thought it was a trick of my mind, but as the blue and red lights closed in, I realized it wasn’t—we were driving straight towards the oncoming police. I stifled my laugh completely and straightened myself back into my seat. With a quick glance behind us, I could see that those who hadn’t gone yet were already being ushered by at least four cop cruisers. Unsure if I was supposed to be afraid or excited, I focused on every moment, every sensation of what I was experiencing. Also, the sternness in William’s expression reminded me of ho
w bad it would be to get arrested. I watched with fixed attention as his gaze became completely concentrated on the road, the blue orbs of his eyes tight and fixed.
The two police cars turned down McKinley Street, ruining any remaining chance of an exit. I looked back from him to the road, more startled about William’s stern expression than the fact that we were about to play chicken with the police. Still, there was no hesitation as we continued heading straight towards them. I should have been scared, terrified, hardly wondering if they were staties or local and if more of them were coming and more if William was afraid. Did he care more about getting arrested than his life? About his car than his friends getting away?
Getting ever closer, my eyes steered away from him, back to the road in front of us. My ears vaguely heard fuzzy speakers from one of the police cars making commands—something about “pull over immediately”, but at the last possible second, the cop leading the barrage hit his breaks, causing the tires to squeal, but giving William’s Bloody Mary just enough room to slide by. I watched the blare of red and blue, craning my neck as the cruisers followed its leader. We went by so fast the lights almost looked purple. I was almost certain I saw one of the cruisers tires blow out. Without question because of the short stop, another car that I hadn’t even been aware of hit the back of the second, putting all of them out of commission.
My body was loose and shaking as I tried to look behind me. It seemed like the sound that followed the actual impact took longer than I would have expected, though in reality I knew it must have happened far faster than that. I continued to watch long after it was out of sight, and the car had slowed down. It was only when William spoke again that I looked forward.
“Sorry about that, Jumper.”
William glanced at me before his hands tightened around the wheel.
“Are you still with me, Jumper?”
I looked from his hands to mine. They were shaking, but not in a bad way. On the contrary, the adrenaline was keeping me from feeling the pain I normally felt. I looked at my hands, to my wrists, and to the ends of my fingernails, half expecting to see the electricity zooming from my fingertips. I clenched them together and inhaled deep.
“I—yeah.” I nodded seriously, feeling the energy there as well my awareness of how much I loved it was wonderfully overwhelming. I smiled so hard my face hurt. “I think so.”
We drove around for a little while longer, stopping across the street from a liquor store that had all of its neon lights on even though it was closed. I stared at the brightly blinking lights of a smiling frog over the Budweiser logo. It was a stupid thing to be hypnotized by—especially considering the company I was keeping—but I couldn’t help it nevertheless, and I stared and stared until I had to blink away the little black dots.
“So,” he said. “What do you think?”
“What do I think?” I shut my eyes until all the colors went away. “I think I’m starving.”
When I opened my eyes they had adjusted to the dark, and I could see him smiling at me.
“I think I am too.”
Leaving Bloody Mary and my jacket behind, we walked to an all-night diner down the block. Right away, I could smell the intoxicating scent of something frying, and my stomach growled at me. Appropriately, the white walls of the diner were stained with small spots of grease, the American flag mural fading from too much sun and lack of cleaning.
On another positive note, other than a couple of students scrambling over books and coffee, William and I had the place to ourselves, and I was hungrier than ever, not at all turned off by the greasy floor.
Without thinking about it, I picked the biggest booth in the place, sitting in the middle and tapping my fingers excitedly on the sticky table. The adrenaline was still working its way through me, making me feel strong and stealthy, my mind centered and ready for anything.
“I’d offer to pay,” I told him in a sing-song voice. “But I didn’t bring my wallet.”
William looked both ways before sitting down across from me, his lips caught somewhere between a smirk and grin.
“That isn’t very Egyptian of you, Jumper.”
I frowned at him, but didn’t really mean the glare. My hunger was my new priority, like every inch of my stomach was empty, and the only possible way to make it right was to eat all the unhealthy food I could get my hands on.
“Hi there, my name is Johanna. I’ll be taking care of you tonight. Do you know what you want to drink?”
The waitress was hard looking with streaky hair that had been dyed one too many times, and though she didn’t look at us, I looked at her. Much older than me, but still slightly younger than my own mother, the middle aged woman seemed far too old to be working in the service industry, or at least I thought, too old to be a waitress in an all-night diner. When I started thinking about the circumstances that may have led her to that life, I felt an innate sadness emerge from the depths of me. Doing my best to push it down, I looked past her to the soda machines.
“Can I have an ice tea please? And pancakes and hash browns? Oh, and bacon? And lots and lots of syrup?”
William looked from her back to me, smiling the entire time. “Make it two.”
When we were alone, I started tapping the table again, using my fingernails again to vary the sound of the noise. I only spoke up again when I felt his gaze drift from my hands to my face, questions he clearly wanted to ask not being verbalized.
“What?” I snapped. Where had my sing-song voice gone? Did suicide attempts cause mood swings? I made a decision to look it up later and focused on the sound of William’s voice.
“Nothing,” he said dismissively. “I just didn’t peg you for a high carbs kind of girl.”
I stopped tapping and looked up. With the better lighting, I could see William’s eyes were not only blue, but speckled with yellow as well. They reminded me of late summer, the way leaves threatened to change colors while still occupying a blue sky. Liking it far more than I deserved, I stared at the withered, shaking hands of the waitress as she placed my iced tea in front of me. When she left, I stared at the ice cubes that struggled to melt.
“What kind of girl did you peg me for?”
“I don’t know.” Clearly uninterested in ice cubes or the hands of overaged waitresses, William slid his iced tea to the side and put his elbows on the table. “The carrot smoothie kind?”
It hadn’t occurred to me how thirsty I was until I started drinking, but now that I did, I gulped my iced tea like my life depended on it. That notion made me laugh, and I ended up snorting a particularly strong gulp of lemon flavor, causing me to sputter and cough out my laugher.
“You should watch your stereotypes, William. Just because I’m a girl doesn’t automatically mean I have an eating disorder. I didn’t assume you were Catholic just because you have an Irish surname.”
“I’d be the first in my family if I wasn’t.” He said with shining pride. “But I never said you did, Jumper—had an eating disorder that is.” He leaned back into the seat and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Women who look like you just tend not to eat things with ‘lots and lots of syrup’.”
I wasn’t sure if he was trying to compliment me or make fun of me, but either way I still kind of liked it and felt myself rise to the challenge for the second time that night.
“Syrup is a staple food for all other foods, the base of the food pyramid, the founder of all other foods…”
One of his eyebrows went up. “I’m pretty sure syrup isn’t technically even a food.”
“That’s just non-believer talk. Clearly, you have not accepted syrup into your life as your one true savior.”
Considering that he had confirmed his religion, I thought for a second that I had taken my joke too far and offended him. Once his face broke back out into a smile, I knew I was in the clear. Again, though, he leaned forward with his elbows on the table, his smell that much more potent, that much more lovely.
“Right then, so the whole water
into wine thing, are you going to tell me that was actually syrup?”
I nodded and let myself laugh. “Amen.”
William chuckled like he really thought I was funny, and slid his iced tea across the table. Normally, I would have felt bad about it, awkward, but at that moment I didn’t care. I liked the game we were playing and was too thirsty, too hungry to care about much else other than making him laugh some more and quenching my thirst.
“Amazing.” He rolled his eyes but never stopped smiling. “Anything else I should know?”
“The tree of knowledge.” I waved him away. “Was actually a river of syrup.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “This has all the makings for a conspiracy novel.”
“I know.” I nodded seriously. “I know.”
“The first man and woman?”
I looked over my shoulder, feigning paranoia. “Sugar cane.”
“Wow,” William gasped.
If humoring me wasn’t enough, William interlaced his fingers as if in prayer. By itself, this drew more than one look from the diner’s other patrons, but when he closed his eyes and started mumbling to himself I was certain I might die of literal embarrassment. I grimaced into my hand, turning to the wall and closing my own eyes.
“What, Jumper? You’ve converted me!” Laughing still, he hit the booth table with his fist. “Take all my money! Where’s the compound? Where do I sign up?”
I couldn’t help it—I laughed.
When the food came, we both ate, though admittedly, I ate faster and probably more too. Hardly looking up from my plate, I never could have known for sure.
“Damn, Jumper, eat much?”
I poured more syrup over my hash browns. “Last meal.” I shrugged. “What can I say?”
From the corner of my eye I saw him tense, but he didn’t say anything, not even a joke, and for some reason that bothered me more than I wanted to let on.
“Lighten-up, William Do-gooder O’Reilly.” I stared at the dirty linoleum floor. “I think it’s safe to say you met your good deed quota for the day. Hell, maybe even the week.”
