by Gregory Ashe
That was more or less how I felt too.
Austin carried me outside.
“Don’t say anything,” I told Becca as I sailed past her.
“It’s very caveman.”
“I said don’t say anything.”
She just laughed, and the sound was as silver as her eyeshadow.
Outside, night blanketed the city, fuzzed around the edge of the asphalt lot by a perimeter of sodium lamps. In the buzz of orange light, the Camaro didn’t look yellow; it was washed out, almost gray. Austin set me down just outside the diner. The wind picked up, and I shivered, and Austin locked his arms around me. He was warm, and his head fit perfectly against mine, and he smelled like sweat and maple syrup and coffee.
“Are we in a fight?” Austin asked, just a whisper in my ear as his fingers tugged at elastic again, his nails dimpling my waist and making me forget all about the night, all about the wind, all about the start-stop prickle of rain.
I kissed him.
“I’m not driving you home if your tongues are down each other’s throats.” The Camaro beeped, and Kaden started toward it.
“Good night,” Becca called again. “You’re making me sick, by the way. I’ll probably puke on the drive home.”
I waved goodnight with my middle finger.
As Becca lifted the latch on the driver door of her little brown Ford, a car shot into the parking lot and came to a screeching halt. The Corolla—a late model that looked hardly used—cut off Austin and Kaden and me from the row of parked cars. Becca stared at the Corolla, and then her eyes cut across its hood to meet mine.
In the weak light from the closest streetlamp, the Corolla’s driver mixed with the shadows. He was bald and big; I could tell that much. Bigger than Austin. Bigger than me, I guessed. Then the passenger door opened, and a guy stepped out. I’d seen him around. He was a transfer student, red-headed, and I’d overheard him talking about playing offensive line next season in football. He certainly had the build for it.
The redhead glanced at Becca. Then he fixed his attention on me, and he gave a half-shrug. His cheeks colored, but his voice was steady and carried across the Corolla’s hum when he said, “You want to come with me?”
From the Corolla, exhaust drifted across the asphalt, hot and dry and tickling my bare legs. Kaden giggled. Austin still had one arm around me, and he didn’t exactly squeeze me against him in some kind of pre-verbal signal of ownership. But he came pretty damn close.
“That’s a lame pickup line,” I said.
“Look, they want to talk to you, and I’m supposed to ask if you’re ready to come.”
“You’re not very good at this,” I said to the redhead. “Try starting at the beginning: full sentences, proper nouns.”
“You don’t even know what a proper noun is,” Austin muttered.
The driver snapped something, and the redhead’s cheeks darkened with blood and he shook his head. Then, to us, he said, “Look, I’m not fucking around with you faggots. Either get in the car or don’t.”
“You can’t talk to him that way.” Becca jangled her keys; she had several of them between her fingers, an improvised weapon, and she brandished them at the redhead. “Shut up and go, all right?”
“To go talk to somebody,” I said to the redhead.
“Are you getting in?”
“Go,” Becca said, taking a step toward the Corolla. “I’m telling you to leave, right now, before things get messy.”
The redhead craned his head at her. “Bitch, be quiet.”
“All right,” I said. I took a step, and then Austin had one of my arms. I tried to take another step—he was a lot stronger than I realized—and Kaden caught my shoulder. “Get off. I’m just going to talk to him.”
“Now the faggot wants to talk,” the redhead muttered.
“I told you not to call him that.” Becca came around the Ford’s trunk, her fist cocked at her side, the keys pointing between her fingers. “Now get lost before I—”
The redhead shoved her, and Becca stumbled back and landed on her butt. The keys rang out as they spun across the blacktop.
“Let me go,” I said, twisting to pull free of Austin and Kaden. “Let the fuck go.”
The redhead smirked at me over the Corolla’s roof. Then he leaned into the brown Ford, pumping the trunk so that the car rocked on its suspension, like he was testing it out and might want to take it for a drive. Then, with a laugh, he said, “They want to make you a deal: leave, and we won’t bother your friends.”
Then he dropped into the passenger seat, and the Corolla buzzed away. The taillights winked at the turn, and red light smeared the wet pavement, and then the car was gone.
Austin let me go, and I shoved Kaden off and ran. Becca was already on her feet by the time I reached her. She waved me off.
“I’m fine,” she said. Tears filled her eyes, though, and a tremor shook her. “I’m so clumsy; I can’t believe I fell.”
“I’m going to kill him.”
“Come on,” Austin said, tugging on Becca’s wrist, turning up her hand to expose road rash on her palm. “Let’s get you cleaned up before you go home.”
“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch,” I said.
“Becca, let’s go inside for a minute.”
She was shaking pretty bad by then, and Austin curled one arm around her waist and helped her toward Garry’s. Over his shoulder, he tossed his head at me. “You too. Both of you.”
“I’m going to kill that fucker.”
Kaden laid a hand on my shoulder. “Right, man. Totally.”
I shook him off, but he trailed me toward Garry’s.
When we stepped through the door, though, Kaden grabbed my shoulder again.
“Lay the fuck off, Kaden,” I growled, wriggling free of his touch. Trying to wriggle. He had gathered a handful of my running shirt in a death grip. “I’m going to break your fucking nose just for practice if you don’t—”
“Something’s wrong.”
Austin was guiding Becca into the bathroom, and he threw me a look and motioned for me to wait.
“Yeah,” I said, “something’s wrong. That redheaded piece of shit just shoved Becca.”
“Language,” the waitress called, and when I glared at her, she just put one hand on her hip and glared back at me.
“No.” Kaden twisted the handful of athletic fabric, and his eyes were wide as he glanced back at the lot. “No, fuck. Something’s really wrong with the car. With the metal, something’s wrong, something’s—”
Kaden was a lot of lean, hipster muscle, a kind of grass-fed pretty boy, but he did a pretty good tackle. He crashed into me, bearing me down onto the floor. Something—syrup, God, let it be syrup—stuck to my hair when I rolled my head, and my nose brushed a cigarette butt and sent it rolling.
Then, outside, Becca’s car exploded.
I PUSHED, AND KADEN rolled off of me. From across the parking lot, the smell of burnt rubber and electrical wire and steel rolled into the restaurant. I got up, beads of tempered glass rolling underfoot. The diner’s double doors were gone, the glass blasted out by the force of the explosion, and the metal frames had been forced inward until they caught on the uneven floor. I stared out at the flaming wreckage.
Because that’s what it was: wreckage. It wasn’t like someone had started a flame inside the Ford. It wasn’t like someone had splashed gasoline or lighter fluid or kerosene on the windows and threw a match. Once, when Gage and I had spent a weekend together, a full weekend with his parents gone, and we’d fucked our brains out, I’d found last year’s fireworks stashed in his garage. And I’d taken a Matchbox car from his old toy chest in the basement and jammed it full of Black Cats and tied the fuses together. That explosion had been a huge pop that had rung in my ears for the whole afternoon. It had left nothing but a pretzel of zinc alloy.
Becca’s car didn’t look much better. Flames licked up through the open roof, tas
ting the night air. The tops of the tires bubbled. At the back of the car, the trunk had popped open, and the lid bobbed as currents of hot air brushed against it. A pink spaghetti-strap dress hung halfway out of the trunk, dangling over the bumper, its plastic dry cleaning bag shriveling in the heat.
“What the fuck?”
Austin’s voice sounded distant; the thunder of the explosion lingered in my ears, and it took me a moment to realize Austin was shouting. He ran across the Greasy Spoon to grab my arm; behind him, Becca froze in the bathroom door.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“It exploded,” Kaden said. He kept grabbing the shoulders of his cardigan and pulling, as though he were sliding out of the garment. Someone—maybe Kaden, maybe whoever he was dating this week—had stitched a crude outline of a marijuana leaf on the right breast of the sweater. He yanked at the shoulder again, even though the cardigan wasn’t going anywhere.
Austin just shook his head at Kaden’s response. He cupped my face, looked me up and down, and asked, “Ok?”
“Ears,” I shouted back.
He nodded. His eyes darted to Kaden and then back to me.
Grunting, I shoved him toward his first crush.
Austin repeated the process, checking Kaden for visible injuries and then asking, “Ok?”
Kaden stared past Austin. He reached up absently, yanking the cardigan into place—it still hadn’t shifted.
“Hey,” Austin said, taking Kaden by the chin—Austin’s eyes cut to me for a moment, blue-green mirrors that gave me nothing—and he wagged Kaden’s chin side to side. “Kade, buddy. You’ve got to talk to me.”
“My car,” Kaden said, fingers searching for the cardigan’s shoulder seam again.
A soft hand touched me, and I jumped. Becca planted a hand in my chest and gave me a push. “Go.”
“What?”
With her voice muffled by paper towels and by the aftershocks in my hearing, I could barely understand her, but I managed to make out her words: “You’ve got to go. Now.”
Shaking my head, I said, “No way, we’re witnesses. I’m going to tell—”
Becca brushed past me and grabbed Austin’s shoulder. I couldn’t hear her then; the thunder in my ears was too loud. Whatever she said, though, made Austin freeze. He nodded. He wagged Kaden’s chin again.
“Kade. You’ve got to be with me. Right now, buddy.”
Kaden blinked. “My car, my fucking car.”
The yellow Camaro that was so pretty and so goddamn expensive was parked two spots away from the burning Ford. The paint blistered, and heat shimmered above the metal.
“We’re going,” Austin shouted, grabbing me with one hand and Kaden with the other and dragging us through the mangled doors.
“But Becca—”
“She’ll be fine.” Austin patted down Kaden; granola boy was still in a daze, staring at the funeral pyre of Becca’s car, and didn’t even seem to notice. Christ, I thought as the thick outlines of Austin’s fingers worked under the denim of Kaden’s pockets. When this was over, they’d both be having wet dreams for a month. Then Austin produced the keys and pushed Kaden into my arms. “Get him in the back seat.”
With the kind of grace that only real athletes, natural athletes, have, Austin spun himself out of his shirt, the whole movement fluid and singular and carrying him closer to the Camaro. With the fabric wadded up around his hand, he yanked on the latch, and the driver door opened. “Now, Vie,” he shouted.
I moved to the passenger side, and even here, the heat off of Becca’s car hit hard, and the greasy smoke made my eyes tear. I packed Kaden into the back and dropped into the front next to Austin. The Camaro roared to life, jolted into reverse, and swept a long arc across the blacktop. Metal shrieked, and then a clattering, cat-with-tin-cans cacophony started up as Austin drove out of the lot. I glanced back; an uneven length of metal that looked like it might originally have been part of the Ford’s frame tumbled and clanked behind us. At the next turn, it spun free, glittering once under a vapor lamp and then was swallowed by a storm drain.
The Camaro’s engine roared as Austin punched the gas. He bent low over the wheel, his eyes fixed on the white circles the headlights cut out of the night. I flipped on the dome light.
“Shit,” I said. “Your back.”
“It’s fine.”
Shirtless, he had stood with his back to the inferno, and in the crisp blue-white LED light, the skin was pink. I pressed a fingertip into his shoulder, and a blanched spot remained behind.
“Ow. Don’t do that.”
“Oh fuck,” Kaden said from behind. He was scrambling on the back seat, moving from door to door, jabbing at the window buttons. Window lock must have been on because the glass stayed in place. Groaning, Kaden squirmed across the leather again, hammering on the windows. “Oh fuck. Guys, we’ve got to get out. We’ve got to—oh fuck, oh fuck.”
“Vie.” Austin jerked his head without his eyes leaving the road.
“You handle him.”
“I’m driving.”
“I’ll hold the wheel.”
Blindly, Austin grabbed a handful of my shirt and yanked me toward the back seat. “Will you get back there and take care of him?”
My knee cracked against the center console, and I squeezed between the seats. Take care of him. Austin was never physical with me—never physical in a way I didn’t want, at least. Take care of him. Grabbing me like that, manhandling me like that. Take care of him. Who the fuck did Austin think he was? And why the fuck wasn’t he worried about taking care of me?
I crushed the last thought out as I came down on the leather next to Kaden. He was dragging on the door handle, trying to open the door, but it was locked. He must have realized his mistake because he gave a little moan and scrabbled at the latch.
“Shit.” I grabbed. Too late.
He got the handle again, and this time, the door cracked open. Air pressed against the door, forcing it closed because of the speed of our passage, and Kaden swore. He shifted position, swinging his legs in front of him, planting both feet on the door, and shoved. This time, he got it open, and the cold, wet drizzle sprayed my face. The sensation, on skin still superheated from the burning car, shocked some clarity into me.
Kaden’s back was to me, just a few inches away. I wrapped both arms around him and pulled him against me.
You’d think I’d stuck a knife in him. He went crazy. Insane. He screamed—the only words I could make out were, “Let me go,” but most of the noises weren’t even close to words, they were just high-pitched, animal shrieks. He ripped at my hands. He was begging.
“Jesus Christ, Vie,” Austin shouted, his head whipping toward us for a moment before the Camaro swerved and he had to jerk his attention forward again.
“Me?” I shouted back, “why am I—” Then Kaden’s head came back and caught me in the mouth.
It was just a glancing blow, but it cut the inside of my mouth against my teeth, and blood pooled under my tongue. For fuck’s sake. I twisted backward, dragging Kaden with me. I was bigger than he was. I was stronger than he was. I wasn’t a little twinkie granola boy who owned too many goddamn cardigans, and even with him spinning and spitting and kicking and clawing like a Tasmanian devil, it wasn’t that hard to get him on his back, my knee in his chest, his wrists locked in my hands.
“For the love of fuck,” I said. I swallowed blood, touched the tongue to my teeth, probed for any that were loose.
“Get off me. Just get off, all right? We’ve got to get out, please, Vie, the car’s going to blow, it’s going to fucking blow, all right, just let me—”
Metal popped somewhere: the sound of bolts being forced, maybe. Or of the frame twisting. Kaden’s eyes were wide and blank; they’d been scraped clean by terror. His ability to manipulate metal was going to be a real bitch once he remembered it. Or, for that matter, if panic made him do something stupid unintentio
nally. He might rip off one of the Camaro’s wheels. He might tear off a door. He might crumple the frame and crush us to death. Or he might do what I figured he’d been wanting to do for a while: accidentally find a way to put a nice long piece of steel through my chest.
Another gust of air swept through the Camaro before the wind knocked the door shut, but the prickle of that cold April rain on the back of my neck made me shiver. It wasn’t quite at the level of conscious thought, nothing I could put into words, but it was there anyway: the sudden realization that I had this little cocktease right where I wanted him, and he was so fucking hysterical I could do just about anything.
The slap knocked his head sideways. It sounded a hell of a lot worse than it was; it sounded huge, and as the noise clapped through the small space, I knew I was a piece of shit for doing it. Kaden’s shrill pleas cut off. The only noise was the engine revving, the tires buzzing through planes of water, the whistle of air through the door that wasn’t all the way closed.
Austin bent farther over the steering wheel. His foot must have dropped because the Camaro launched forward like a rocket.
Beneath me, Kaden made a clicking noise in his throat, and he rocked his head back and forth. The print of my hand was huge and red on his cheek. Christ, my hand had never been that big. I touched the side of his head—not that ballooned print, I wasn’t stupid, at least, not that stupid—and he flinched and pulled away.
With a sigh, I eased my weight off of him. He took a shuddering breath and pulled inward, his whole body contracting. His breathing was ragged, but he wasn’t hyperventilating, and he wasn’t screaming, so I figured it had all worked out. Except my face was still hot, and my hands were still tingling, and I thought throwing myself out of the car might be better than this silence.
“You all right?” I touched his arm this time; he flinched again.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t look like you’re all right. Will you sit up?”
“Leave him alone, Vie.”
“I just want him to sit up so I can check him out. He was pretty freaked, and—”
“Leave him the fuck alone.”
