Spontaneous

by Aaron Starmer

  The stereo was still spitting out music, a god-awful tune where some woman kept hollering, “Everybody dance now!” Like a Navy SEAL changing the clip on an assault rifle, I ripped Carla’s phone from the USB jack and swapped in mine.

  “Play Drive, Fucker, Drive!” I told Siri as I hugged another curve.

  The playlist was on shuffle and kicked things off with a song that didn’t have any swears but had the throbbing beat I needed. It spurred me on and I drove, drove, drove. Faster than . . . well, faster than that Prius. I wasn’t looking at the miles per hour or even the dash for that matter. I was laser-focused on those taillights growing brighter and wider in front of me. I didn’t even roll up the window, which was letting the rain whip against my face and shoulder.

  That rain! Oh, that fucking rain was pounding so hard that the wipers had trouble keeping up. I let the taillights be my guide and I had to trust that the Prius’s cameras and GPS knew where the road was because I could barely see any lines. I did know there was a cliff out there somewhere, skirting the edge of the pavement, and one false move would send me and my vehicle into the Patchcong River Gorge. I was trying not to think too much about that, though, because soon I was close enough to see more than the taillights, to make out a muddy silhouette illuminated by the sparkly lights inside the car.

  I lay on the horn. I would have flashed my brights but I didn’t know where my brights were and all my concentration was on that passenger, on making that passenger holler to the robot chauffeur, “Prius! Prius, my boy! It appears someone is tailing us. Would you be a sport and kindly stop so that I may tell this motorist to, how shall I put this, go suck a dong?”

  But the Prius didn’t kindly stop or even slow down, and when my incessant honking didn’t make the passenger turn around, lean forward, or do much of anything, I considered a more drastic measure: Some bumper-to-bumper action. A love tap, if you will.

  Self-driving cars are sticklers for safety, so I figured the Prius would have to pull over if it sensed danger, and I accelerated until I was tailgating it like a world-class asshole. Only problem was, I didn’t trust myself to finish the move. What if I tapped too hard? Would it send the Prius over the edge? What if I lost control? Where would that send me?

  As much as I thought I was ready to accept any fate the world threw my way, I wasn’t ready for death, and this moment proved it. Death was there if I wanted it. All I had to do was jerk the wheel and say “fuck this noise forever” and dive hundreds of feet down into the gorge. But I wasn’t even willing to risk doing that by mistake.

  I was determined to survive. So Tess was right when, after the crash with the Daltons, she had declared me a survivor. Not that I deserved to be. I couldn’t understand why, of all people, I had made it this far. Why on earth was Mara Carlyle the one who was allowed to keep on going?

  I took a breath, eased off the pedal, and fell back a few car lengths. Meanwhile, the singer on the stereo pleaded:

  I’m right over here, why can’t you see me? Oh-oh-oh.

  I’m giving it my all, but I’m not the girl you’re taking home. Oo-oo-oo.

  I keep dancing on my—

  I pulled the plug on my phone because those lyrics were a bit too on the nose, wouldn’t you say? As I reached forward to turn the stereo off, I finally noticed the blinking lights on the dash. Even now, I’m still ashamed I didn’t notice them earlier, especially the big red one that lit up a display of the battery power:

  0 MILES LEFT. CHARGE NOW!

  On cue, the car let out an electronic sigh, an okay-I’ve-had-about-enough-of-this-for-the-evening-now-get-to-walking kind of noise. Then it went dark. Every light and everything else that whirred and hummed cut out. No matter how hard I pressed the pedal, the car wasn’t going to go any faster. All that was left was momentum and momentum was not enough.

  So the Tesla slowed down as the Prius pressed on. I had no lights of my own, or even wipers, so I stuck my head out the open window and guided the car into a parking area for a viewpoint along the road. That enigmatic silhouette, that dark shape that could have been male or female, that could have been any one of the kids who’d attended prom, got smaller and smaller, and those taillights, burning red like little flames, followed the turns in the road and escaped into the rainy night.

  to be honest

  Enclosed in the lifeless car, with rain drumming the roof, I knew that the silhouette I had seen was probably not my best friend. I knew the more likely scenario was that Tess never left that hill. With my head in her lap, with me sleeping soundly, with her hands on my hair, she had . . . well, she had washed away in the rain.

  Maybe it was the sound of the end that woke me. Maybe it was my head hitting the ground. Maybe I slept through it all, like I’d slept through so much of my best friend’s life, and when I woke up, she was already part of the earth, part of the water trickling down and past the hotel, over the cliff’s edge, and into the river.

  Yes, I knew that. But I wasn’t ready to accept that. I lifted my phone and dialed Tess’s number. It went straight to voice mail.

  “Honey,” I said. “Are you there? If you are, I need you to call me. I need to hear your voice. I love you, Tess. I love you so much.”

  The phone was my only light, and I set it in my lap and it cast its glow across my wet and mulchy dress. There were no texts, snaps, or notifications to check, nothing to indicate anyone out there was thinking of me. So my focus landed on the fluffy pink icon of the MemorEasi app. I pressed it, and when it prompted me for a name, I typed:

  Tess McNulty

  Why? Because if I didn’t have her voice, at least I could have her face.

  I filtered by geography—Covington, NJ—and there it was, a picture from the local paper of Tess in her field hockey gear. Half-smiling, half-serious, quintessential Tess. I eased my finger down to tap the image, but I stopped short. I closed my eyes, and sat there with them closed for a small slice of eternity.

  Then I hurled my phone sideways out the window toward the gorge. The rain was pounding so hard that I couldn’t hear if the phone bounced off the pavement or was deflected by the railing, but a few moments later, I did hear a voice.

  “I think you dropped this.”

  I opened my eyes and there was light all around me.

  Then there was a hand passing me back my wet, but still functional, phone.

  Then there was a face next to my window.

  Then there was a smile.

  how things got to this point

  That smiling face in my window? Sorry, no. It wasn’t Tess.

  It’s been five days since prom and no one has found a trace of her. Google won’t release any data about their Priuses—something to do driverless-car/dance-attendee confidentiality, I guess—so that’s a dead end. And when Mom called the police station to say, “I think my daughter’s friend might have spontaneously combusted on a hill, but the rain probably washed her away,” it wasn’t the best method to rally the troops. It also didn’t help that when one of the troops apparently did rally and poked around the hotel grounds the next afternoon, all he found was a dude on a John Deere wiping his brow as he looked proudly over the lawn he just mowed the living shit out of.

  So yes, it’s been five days since prom, since I last saw my best friend. Five relatively calm days in the wildest year in this town’s existence. I’d like to say in this world’s existence, but I also want to believe at least some of that Old Testament stuff is true. As twisted as those stories are, they always feature survivors. That God is a wrathful one, all right, but the human race goes on. So too will Covington.

  Why have the last five days been relatively calm? Well, I haven’t heard of anyone blowing up, for one. And I’ve stayed home, where my parents have emptied their stash of liquor, removed the sharp objects, and disabled all data plans and Wi-Fi (though we’re not savages over here; we can still text and call people on our phones).
>
  I can’t blame them. When they found me drenched, barefoot, and bawling at the front door on prom night, they knew something was wrong. I told them about Tess and they worried about what I might do to myself.

  Of course, I haven’t done anything to myself. I’ve spent most of my time in the Mara Carlyle think tank. I’ve been pondering all the theories. Exactly as, I suspect, you have.

  So let me ask me you: Are you Team Tess? Do you think our genetics got flipped-turned upside down? Or is it a government conspiracy like that sad-sack Carla Rosetti believes? Could it be possible that Laura Riggs and a bit of witchcraft caused it all? How about the sex tornado known as Clint Jessup? Do we count out Claire Hanlon and her unstoppable quest for the top of the class order? What about all of the seniors who’ve survived? Should we shoulder the blame together? Or should we simply accept this as a phase we had to go through, the worst growing pains imaginable? And what about me? By unveiling the mystery that is Mara Carlyle, have I satisfied your curiosity about the Covington Curse? Are you happy blaming me for the parade of death?

  Do you really fucking care?

  You do? Well, bless your heart, because I don’t anymore.

  I’ve given up theorizing and I’m focusing on one of the last things Tess told me. She said that we were “the same.” As always, she was right. I am the same. Through all this shit, I haven’t changed. Not really. I love my parents. I love my best friend. I am capable of so much love. Even if I am capable of so many other dark and strange feelings. Maybe because of that fact. I have thoughts. I have opinions. I have emotions that run the gamut. They come on all of a sudden, and I will feel guilty about some of them, sure. I will try to be better, of course. But I can’t will it all away. These things are me.

  And tomorrow, I—along with the rest of Covington High’s seniors—will either go wa-bam or graduate. As much as I’ve mocked the assumption, I do sincerely hope Dad is right, and the dark cloud will pass and everything will be peachy for us as we head out into the world. However, if that’s the case, then I worry a bit about the next crop of seniors. Because there’s always a next crop.

  Which brings us to the face. You’ve been wondering about the smiling face in my window, haven’t you? The noble person who saved my phone from the certain void of warranty? Who was it and what happened?

  Her name was Lucia Watson and she drove me home from prom. In a car of her own, a black Mustang with red leather seats and an engine that sounded like it was chewing on pebbles. As I rested my head against the passenger-side window, she asked me questions.

  “Did you have fun?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “Of what?”

  “That it’s going to happen to you?”

  “You’re really asking me that? What do you think?”

  “I’m curious about how you’ve been dealing with it. That’s why I asked.”

  “Is that why you crashed the prom?”

  “Well, I never had a chance to crash it because I never actually made it there. I found you, remember? At the side of the road? Ditching your phone?”

  “Okay, then is that why you were going to crash it?”

  “I wanted to make sure you were all having fun, that things were ending well for you. This was your last hurrah and then it’s our turn.”

  That idea of turns is an important one. Especially when you find out who Lucia Watson was, and still is. For one more day, she is a junior at Covington High. Well, it’s hard to say whether Covington High actually exists anymore. Classes are officially over. The building will soon be leveled. The Vatican will probably send in someone to sprinkle holy water on the campus and the town will let it run fallow. Maybe they’ll erect a memorial someday, but shit like that gets so mired in controversy that I doubt it’ll happen anytime soon.

  Still, the kids who are juniors are going to be seniors in no time at all. I can guarantee that. Okay, some will drop out and others will homeschool or go the GED route, but come September, the majority will walk down a hall and step into a classroom. Maybe not in Covington—and hopefully not in a converted Lens-Crafters—but somewhere.

  Lucia Watson is part of that majority. She and her parents believe in the power of a public education and I’m sure they’ve got the tax receipts to prove it. You might even remember her dad as the hard-hatted gentleman who helped reconfigure the Shop City Mall and treated me and Tess like we were a couple of plague rats. Well here’s hoping he treats his daughter a bit better should his daughter have to face what we faced.

  “Will you walk me through it?” Lucia asked me when she pulled her Mustang into my driveway on prom night.

  “What do you mean?” I responded as I opened the passenger side.

  “Tell me how you made it this far. What did you do to deal with it?”

  I stepped onto the pavement and back into the rain. Without looking over my shoulder, I said, “Thanks for the ride.”

  I trudged up the walkway and sat on the front steps with my back to the door. When my parents opened the door, the car coughed away into the night. Dad stepped forward and reached out his hand as Mom asked, “Who was that?”

  “Nobody who matters,” was all I said before grabbing Dad’s fingers, pressing them to my face, and completely breaking down.

  Well, “Nobody who matters” has been texting me all day for the last five days. I don’t know how she got my number. She’s called too, but I haven’t answered. Sure, I could block her cell, but she’s been keeping me abreast of what’s been happening (the search for Tess) and what hasn’t been happening (finding Tess) since prom. That’s valuable information for a housebound girl with no internet.

  Besides, her curiosity has inspired a rare bit of magic. It has spontaneously transformed me into a stark-raving optimist. I’m not kidding. You see, Lucia was there at perhaps the lowest moment in my life, and yet she’s still in awe of me. Weird, right? Like I’m some wise sage who has everything figured out. Like I’ve got my shit together or something. Lucia likes me. She trusts me. She asks me things, which is a sure sign that she’s interested in me.

  What was your strategy for finding humor in your predicament?

  Which books might you have read that helped contextualize this moment in your development?

  What detergent did you use to wash your clothes? You know, after?

  I didn’t respond to her initial questions for fear it would seem like I had nothing better to do. It didn’t stop the barrage, though, and her persistence eventually paid off. Which is to say that this morning, there was finally something I was prepared to answer.

  What comes next for Mara Carlyle?

  this. this. this!

  I will do more with the time I have, but not because I’m afraid that the time I have is limited. It may be a lot longer than I could ever expect, and I sure as hell don’t want to waste it brooding and worrying about my every little thought.

  Assuming I don’t blow up during this next cycle of the sun, I will go ahead and I will graduate. At graduation, I will whistle for my classmates and cry a little. Maybe I will cheer Claire Hanlon’s speech or maybe I will boo it. Depends on what she says. I will definitely collect my diploma and throw my cap to the heavens.

  Then I will keep going, as long as my body keeps itself together. I will kick down the door to Tess McNulty’s room—sorry, Paula—and I will decipher her notes and scribblings and I will drink Russian river water and disable this goddamn tracking device in my body, because Tess said it’s possible, and Tess is always right. I will blast the Drive, Fucker, Drive! playlist and search far and wide for my best friend, because no one has found her yet and as far as I’m concerned that means she’s still out there, Veronica Mars–ing this mystery into submission.

  I will apologize to Jennifer Lawrence, to anyone I have intentionally hurt, but I will never promise to stop hurting people, beca
use I don’t believe that’s a promise I can keep. Maybe Skye Sanchez was on to something, and I will end up at Harvard for a while—or some other school that’s less enamored of itself and more enamored of me—but I will always come home to Covington, because Covington will always be my home, and my parents will always be my parents, and Oinkers will always be the best goddamn sandwiches in the world.

  Maybe I will try to write another novel, something with a one-word title that would make Tess squirm—Awesomesauce or Amazeballs might work—but I will try not to read too deeply into whether it’s a metaphor for something, or an allegory or whatever, because that doesn’t matter, and no one buying a book cares about that crap. All they want to do is cry.

  Which is something I will also do. I will cry. For myself, for other people, for the loves I lose. Because I will have loves. And I will lose at least a few of them.

  No matter what, I will act like a grown-up, because I am one, along with many other things, including a time bomb, perhaps, or even weapon of mass destruction. Without a doubt, I will continue to be a woman who makes a metric shit-ton of mistakes.

  I will be the same, because I am the same.

  I will be the same.

  wrap it up, short stuff

  I repeated that last part because, if Dad is right, saying something twice makes it more likely to come true. Superstitious? Um, yeah. Wouldn’t you be if you were me?

  Of course, I know it’s impossible to say with any certainty what comes next. I could die in a few minutes. Hell, so could you. Leaving a whole lot of “if only” in our wakes. The single truth that I can offer you with full confidence concerns what just happened.