Crash and Burn

by Michael Hassan

  Or did Burn alter the future by not going through with it?

  Or what if I was meant to go to that military school after all, and by virtue of him stepping up that Thanksgiving Day, everything changed and was out of sync. And if somehow we had altered the future, could that affect the entire universe? And maybe my recognition of that fact caused the blackout, and now that I knew, everything would be somehow changed. Maybe it was just me and him left in a world of darkness.

  Except that if I was thinking about Burn and he claimed to be connected to me, could he at that very moment be thinking about me? While it was way beyond midnight, he would still be up, because he never slept, and given that I once, probably more than once, got into his mind, as in the poker game, the question remained: Was he capable of doing the same with me?

  And then it hit me.

  Thinking about the poker game and how sure I was that he was holding a full house, I was now equally absolutely certain that Christina and I were not alone.

  My mind started to spin at the thought of this. It was spinning not because I was stoned, but because I knew, without question, just like I knew his cards during our poker game years before, that I was right. David Burnett was here.

  Except, how?

  My mind answered this question as soon as it heard it, because I had to remind myself as I calculated during the car ride to the cabin, even though I hadn’t told any friends where we were going, I was sure that Christina told a few of hers, including most probably Amanda Jenkins, who might have told Franklin Hawkings, who might have sent an email to Burn, maybe after Burn saw me on television. Maybe there was a phone call or two. Burn would have access to a phone, and there were actually people who, sick as it sounds, admired him and all.

  So even if the world wasn’t plunged into darkness with only two people left alive and the universe wasn’t out of sync after all, it was absolutely possible that Burn knew exactly where we were.

  And knowing where we were, Burn being Burn, he would figure out why we were here. And once he figured that out, there would be no way to contain him in any mental hospital, no matter how secure. He would find a way out. And if he managed to escape, the rest would be easy.

  And that’s when I heard the sounds. Rustling leaves in the distance, then around the other side of the house.

  I was back to full-on heart palpitations again. This time from knowing beyond doubt that Burn was within shouting distance, possibly even inside the house at that very moment. And because I was absolutely positive he was there, I started yelling into the woods at the top of my lungs:

  “David, I know you’re out there. David, you can’t fool me. I’m ready for you.”

  And then, through the sliding glass doors, a shadow of a figure.

  Hard to make out, but my eyes were good enough to tell it was a girl, not a guy.

  “What are you doing?” Christina asked.

  I instantly felt stupid. “The lights went out,” I said.

  “They always do around here,” she said without a trace of fear. I wondered if she sensed mine. “They’ll be back on in a few minutes.”

  And, as if on command, all the lights were suddenly back. Panic time was over. I was in control again. What an idiot, was all I could think. There is no Burn, no end of the world, no glitch in the universe. There is only Jacob’s weed and a warm, very tired girl who wants to sleep with me.

  I put my arm around her, feeling beyond exhausted, feeling chilled to the bone, and I let her lead me back into the room, where I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow and dreamed the dreams of a stoner.

  And apparently kept sleeping until she woke me midday.

  “Steven, you are extremely hot. Are you feeling OK?”

  I was not, not at all. I was covered in sweat, burning up with fever. I could not move. I was having trouble even opening my eyes.

  “We have to go home,” she said.

  “Not me,” I whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.” And drifted back off to sleep for a very, very long time.

  When I awoke, it was dark again, and she was gone. I stumbled into the kitchen, feeling like shit. There was a note on the counter telling me that she had to go, but she would be back either tomorrow or the next day. In the meantime, she had worked it out that someone would deliver food and anything else I needed.

  So not only was I sick, but I was sick and alone. Sick and alone and hungry and, tell you the truth, hating her more than a little at that point.

  At least until I turned the note over. There on the flip side was her final paragraph:

  I know you are probably cursing me by now, but I read more of your book, and you should know that you have real talent. You need to finish it before school starts. So I’m doing you a favor and you will thank me one day, maybe not today though. Get back to writing. There’s nothing else to do here. And thank you for being you. You have not only saved my life, you have changed it forever. Love, C.

  It made me feel good about being me. And this from a girl I had just deflowered. Am I smoooooth or what?

  And I felt smoooooth, until I checked the front window and realized that the bitch took my car.

  And the one remaining nugg of Jacob’s Gold, which was in the glove compartment.

  Fuckme.

  Chapter Sixteen

  How Burn Ruined My Big Night

  These are some of the things that the Club Crew did during sophomore year:

  • Went to school stoned, went to school drunk, went to school late, left school early.

  • Started hanging out at Pinky’s without our families.

  • Drove without licenses (including getting Evan’s father’s car stuck in the swamp by the nature preserve).

  • Partied, mostly with the girls in our grade, and even got two girls to kiss each other.

  • Snuck out in the middle of the night, to hang with each other and some freshman girls.

  • Played lots more poker than we did as freshmen, sometimes even with the guys in Prime Time, guys in our grade that we got along with mostly, but they were more into fighting than we were, plus they were all athletes and had football and lacrosse in common (not to say we weren’t into sports, as almost all of us were on a team or two, but we were not the jocks that the Prime Time guys were).

  • Got Xbox 360, which was big-time for teenage gamers, and so we all played Call of Duty 2, like, constantly, with the occasional Madden tournaments thrown in for good measure, mostly in Pete’s rec room.

  • Started having issues with some of the Prime Time guys over playing time in football and baseball, and even though I wasn’t involved since I was a solid and reliable shortstop, I had my boys’ backs, knowing that Prime Time loved fighting more than they loved sports or girls.

  • Also, one or two of us started having girlfriends. Me, I was still superclose friends with Annie Russo, but she was not about doing anything except occasionally kissing in tenth grade, which of course left Madelaine Brancato, who was totally into me, like everyone knew that Maddy was totally into me and would do anything to go out with me. So even though she was not part of the Herd Girls, which was the group of girls who we were hanging with more and more, and even though I didn’t even really like her, I started hanging out with her because she liked me, and soon people in school were talking about us like we were a couple, which I did nothing to encourage, but I didn’t exactly discourage it either, reason being, ever since my stretch of unpopularity as a freshman, I was not about to ignore any current opportunity, as I figured that was the best way to ensure future opportunities. In other words, I had a reputation to rebuild and to protect. And to be honest, even though I lost my gut and was in shape, my rep still wasn’t actually all that great by the middle of sophomore year, because most of the Prime Time guys had gotten blow jobs, mostly from girls we used to hang with, girls who weren’t even talking to us now. And what was worse, exactly none of the Club Crew guys had even had a touch, including me. And at the time, it was obvious to me, knowing Evan
and Bosco and Kenny and Pete and Bobby and Newman the way I knew them, that it was up to me or maybe Bobby to get the ball rolling on any kind of meaningful experiences for us. So even though Maddy was not exactly what I had in mind, I figured that if she was into me that much, it was the best shot any of us had.

  • Oh yeah, and during Thanksgiving week, we got into mad trouble for hanging at Pete’s house, problem being Pete and his family were on vacation in Cancún at the time. So we were having this great time until one of Pete’s neighbors reported us and the cops showed up. We didn’t get arrested or anything, thanks to some quick thinking by me and Annie Russo, with her claiming that we were there to water the plants and me adding, “and feed the fish,” even though Pete had no fish to feed and didn’t even own a fish tank. The cops took our names after we told them that we had the garage code, and by the time they talked to our parents, we had already prepared Pete, who talked to his parents, who separately talked to our parents, so while it ended up not being a police matter, we were in collective trouble with adults again, just like in eighth grade, with most of us grounded until Christmas.

  • And oh yeah, we started partying even harder throughout the winter, with better weed and more access to alcohol, as in mostly supercheap vodka, but anything else we could get our hands on, counting on our older brothers or sisters to deliver the goods (not me, as Lindsey could not be relied upon for anything) or pillaging our parents’ or uncles’ or some other relatives’ liquor cabinets, replacing the Ketel One and Grey Goose with Poland Spring and Deer Park.

  • Wrestled, which I excelled in for my weight class, not because I was strong, but because I was quick.

  • Toward the end of spring, discovering the nature preserve as a great place to pregame.

  • Went to the movies a whole lot. These were the movies that we went to see during the school year, probably in order of when we saw them: The 40-Year-Old Virgin (overrated), Wedding Crashers, Waiting . . . (if you didn’t see this, you have to, as everyone in it is famous now and you will never look at your ballsack the same afterward), the second Saw (fucked up), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (best one, if you ask me), Narnia, King Kong, The Polar Express in IMAX 3D (blazing of course), Underworld: Evolution (not as good as the first one), Big Momma’s House 2 (totally stupid), Final Destination 3 (just as good as the first one), V for Vendetta (fucked up), Silent Hill (not scary), Mission: Impossible III (OK), X-3 (over the top), Cars, Click (finally a movie Duncan would go to), and by the time the second Pirates of the Caribbean opened it was summer and sophomore year was over.

  Point of all this being, even though nothing special happened in tenth grade and we all pretty much lived our lives, just like kids in every other high school in America, everything that happened since happened because of who we were by the end of sophomore year.

  More or less, anyways.

  I still sucked at school, still was pretty good at baseball, though it was getting too boring for me, still hated my dad, but had nothing but mad respect for his girlfriend, soon to be my stepmom, had almost nothing to do with Lindsey, and Jamie was still watching TV with Medusa sprawled out on the couch beside her.

  Which of course brings us to David Burnett.

  After the now-famous poker game, he was invited again—not by me, by some of my friends—and while he never actually showed up to play again, he resumed his bond with Kenny and they started hanging out together, doing the same after-school activities, while I was shuttled for the rest of the school year to various after-school courses in hopes that one day I would simply catch on.

  Burn’s mom still talked to my mom regularly, but whatever they talked about stayed between them, and I sensed that there was something going on that was not for teenage ears, as my mother often put it, something that didn’t necessarily have to do with their children.

  As for Roxanne, when she returned to school, it was as if the entire incident at the hospital had been wiped from her memory. I tried to approach her a few times, but she was dismissive and cold, not even her usual sarcastic self, and I chalked it up to her not wanting to remember anything that had happened to her. I had stopped approaching her, feeling very much like what I was at the time, a freshman boy trying to talk to a junior girl, as in totally and completely out of my league.

  Not gonna lie, it stung, but it was also clear in my mind that she was, after all, a Burnett, and how could I ever have forgotten that being a Burnett comes with its own special hall pass for crazy?

  Except her brother was so normal by tenth grade that pretty much everyone forgot he was actually crazy out of his mind. Everyone but me anyways, and I had very little exposure to him. He was big into lifting and was working out in the gym, like, every afternoon with the seniors on the football team. He even got onto the varsity wrestling team, which was just about the only place that he and I would see each other as I was on JV. So even though I didn’t hang with him, he was hanging with other kids, wrestling, playing video games with them, and going to movies and concerts just like us, and, from what we heard from Kenny, still all about the internet and still a motherfucking genius and, of course, totally and completely and publicly in love with Christina Haines.

  For me, I was just happy that I did not have to deal with him at all. And it was probably a good thing that I saw even less of his sister, who I understood was spending most of her time with people she knew in the city.

  By late winter of sophomore year, for some odd reason, I started running into Burn more and more. Sometimes I would see him and Christina, and while I tried not to look at her, I remember noticing the way she noticed me and I thought it wasn’t all that different from the way Madelaine Brancato looked at me. Except, of course, for the fact that according to everyone else at Meadows, Burn and Christina were totally in love, as in just like Burn had said, it was their destiny to be together. At least until they broke up unexpectedly in March of that year. Word spread quickly that the Christina/David universe had imploded and that they didn’t even talk.

  Me, I couldn’t care less, being as I had more important concerns. After months of commitment to the pretend relationship that I was having with Maddy, I was, I convinced myself, finally locked in for my first blow job, as in Maddy was giving me signs that it could finally happen. The only issue was finding a place, as she wasn’t letting me get her into any empty rooms at parties.

  It was at one of Kelly’s parties later that spring that I figured it all out.

  Kelly hadn’t had one of her famous parties since like Halloween, and this one was going to be off the hook, as in juniors and a few seniors, not just our grade.

  Kids were party planning all day, bringing in coolers and ditching them at the edges of her property, away from parental view, behind trees, secured by rocks. This party was going to be a major event. We were closing in on the end of sophomore year, and probably this would be our last chance to celebrate before finals. Plus some kids were driving now, one or two of the sophomores and mostly all of the juniors, so we had access to everything. And I had a plan.

  We pregamed at the nature preserve, like always, and I invited Maddy and some of her friends this time. Lots of cheap alcohol, and me handing out constant refills to all of them, mostly her. No way was I going to screw the opportunity. By the time we got to Kelly’s house, Maddy was full-on wasted.

  Now the delicate part, as in making sure that she didn’t drink anything else, which, I had carefully calculated, would bring her over the edge, given that she had only recently started drinking and didn’t have any appreciation for what her limits could be. It was exceedingly clear that she was falling into the typical amateur’s trap of thinking she wasn’t drunk and that she could handle it.

  So I managed to get us a quiet spot in Kelly’s rec room and left her in the care of Evan as I headed for the tree where a beverage section was set up, intending to cut back on the alcohol content on anything she would get.

  Along the way I checked the pool house, the most important compone
nt of my plan. No one was inside, as pretty much every guy in my grade knew that I had reserved it for the next step. I called Bosco over, told him to guard the door and not to let anyone in. One thing about Bosco, he never said no. So he did what he was told.

  On the way back to the house, two redcups in hand, I ran into Christina, who was working on having her own good time. Clearly the drink she was holding was not her first.

  “Hi, Steven.”

  “Where’s Burn?” is what I asked.

  “Didn’t you hear? We’re not spending time together anymore.”

  I actually had heard.

  “Sorry,” I said, noticing that she was stepping closer to me. For a fleeting instant, I thought that I could switch out. The pool house was reserved, and Christina, getting over Burn, might be a perfect candidate for a rebound hookup. I looked over at the pool house, and Bosco was still standing there like he was one of those English guards protecting the queen or something. No question, between Maddy and Christina, Christina would have been a far better choice.

  Except that she had a way of intimidating me even back then, maybe because I felt like she thought we had a connection that could be more intense than I was ready for.

  More importantly, if Burn found out, he would definitely not take it well. Thankfully, I was sober enough to hear an inner voice practically scream at me, I will hunt you down, mother-fucker, in a voice sounding exactly like Burn, and not the completely normal sophomore Burn who everyone thought was OK but the crazy Burn who I knew all too well, the one who went off the deep end when his fox got dissected.

  “He talked about you a lot actually,” she said. “Told me that you were like a brother to him when you guys were younger.”

  No question, he would have hunted me down and dissected me too. “Not so much” is what I answered, wondering how Burn could have ever said anything like that.