by Ike Hamill
He ran in front of the SUV and smiled at her, lifting two fingers away from his cup as a little wave. Chelsea smiled. Jayden kept running over to where Alexa and Brandon were standing. Chelsea’s shoulders slumped. Jayden had said that he would be right back. Chelsea had waited in the car for him, hoping for a private moment.
Brandon and Alexa had been going out for two months, so they were really serious. Jayden was Brandon’s new best friend. Jayden transferred mid-year into their school and he and Brandon had bonded over soccer and model rockets. Now they were practically inseparable. Since Alexa was Chelsea’s best friend, didn’t it make sense that she and Jayden should at least try going out? Chelsea thought so. Her daydreams thought so as well. Jayden was practically all she could think about.
Chelsea reached for the door. She pulled the lever and pushed it open a few inches. When the dome light came on, Jayden looked up at her. He was still carrying the two cups. He flashed another two-finger wave at her. Did he mean that she should stay put—that he would be there in two minutes? Was he just waving hello? Chelsea paused—she didn’t know what to do. She pushed open the door and headed for the group.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Alexa said. She was already sloppy drunk on the peppermint schnapps she kept in her flask. It was supposed to be her end-of-the-night drink because she thought it covered the smell of alcohol on her breath, but she’d broken into it early this evening. “Don’t worry,” Alexa whispered to Chelsea. Actually, it was less of a whisper and more of a hoarse shout. “I’m gonna hook you up.”
Chelsea shook her head. She didn’t know what Alexa was planning, but her drunk mind would surely scramble it.
“Hey, Jayden,” Alexa said. “Jayden. JayDEN.”
“Shut up, babe,” Brandon said. “I’m telling a story.”
They were standing in the weedy gravel lot across the street from the town’s seediest bar—Fluke. The neon sign in front of the bar showed a whale’s tail fluke breaching the water. If you squinted at it, it could also look like the back of a woman’s thong. Many of the town’s youngest legal drinkers gathered at the Fluke on Thursday nights. Lots of the younger-than-legal often gathered across the street in the gravel lot.
The sheriff and deputies patrolled regularly, but they never saw any kids in the lot. Each time they drove by, the kids were all well-hidden in the gully behind the stacks of rusty barrels. Their ability to evade the authorities was due to the creativity of the sheriff’s son, Rennie. The kid was smart and devious—a bad combination that the sheriff couldn’t tame. Rennie installed an application of his own design on all the police computers. It used the car’s computer to track each officer and sent a text alert whenever an officer patrolled near the Fluke. All the kids subscribed to the alerts, so they all knew when the sheriff or a deputy was going to drive by.
“I swear that story has been going on for an hour,” Alexa said to Chelsea. “Don’t worry, I’ll get Brandon’s attention. Hey, Brandon. Let’s go in the back seat and make out for a minute.”
“Yeah, hold on,” Brandon said. He tossed his empty cup and took one of the full cups from Jayden.
“God, don’t litter,” Alexa said. She bent to pick up the empty and stumbled for a couple of steps before she regained her balance. She went for the cup again.
Chelsea exhaled a long sigh and looked up at the night sky. When she looked back down to the group, Jayden was looking right at her. He smiled. She smiled back and felt warmth wash through her body. His sweet smile would fuel a thousand more daydreams. Chelsea crossed her arms and shivered for just a second. Jayden returned his focus to Brandon’s story.
“What are you even talking about?” Alexa asked Brandon. “I thought you wanted to make out with me.” She pushed out her bottom lip. “Hey, Brandon, tell Jay about the monster that ate that cop.”
“Oh yeah. Did I tell you about that?” Brandon asked.
“It happened in the woods behind Chelsea’s house, right?” Alexa asked. She waved a drunk hand at Chelsea.
“Yeah, yeah,” Brandon said. “Oh, man, you’ve gotta hear about this one.”
Jayden smiled.
Brandon’s story began with a description of a ring of parked cars, all facing outwards. Their headlights lit up a small clearing surrounded by woods. The image soon transformed into a recap of a movie he’d just seen. Chelsea sighed again as Brandon lost the thread. His new story didn’t take place anywhere near her house. She’d lost Jayden’s attention again.
“Hold my purse,” Alexa said to Chelsea. It came out, “Hole m’pursh.”
She pressed the bag into Chelsea’s chest but Alexa didn’t let go of the strap. She nearly pulled the purse from Chelsea’s grip as she lunged. Alexa threw herself at Brandon, landing in his arms and spilling his beer down her back.
“Hey, babe. Whoa!” he said. His exclamation turned from angry to happy as her hand shot down the front of his pants.
The two teens stumbled off towards the grass and then collapsed in a giggling pile. Chelsea hugged Alexa’s purse, or pursh, and smiled at Jayden. He tilted his head and took a sip.
“You want a sip? It’s beer,” he said.
“I can’t. I’m driving,” she said.
“Just a sip?”
“Okay,” she said, taking the cup from his outstretched hand. She put the cup to her lips and took just the tiniest amount into her mouth. It was warm and flat. Vinegar mixed with pee might taste better, she thought.
She smiled as she handed it back.
“Where do you go to school?” Jayden asked.
“Same as you,” she said with a laugh. “I was in your history class.”
“Ohmygosh,” he said. “I totally met so many people since I moved here.”
“You sat right behind me,” Chelsea said. Even in the dim light from the moon, and stars, and neon thong from across the street, she could see him blush.
“You look different. Did you change your hair or something?”
“A little, I guess,” Chelsea said with a shy smile. “So what are you doing this summer?”
“My dad’s making me do a bunch of landscaping at my house. We just moved in last winter. I guess you knew that. You want another sip?”
“No, thanks,” she said. “You want to sit in the car?”
“No, I like to move around,” Jayden said. He illustrated his point by standing perfectly still. In fact, she hadn’t seen him move since he’d hustled the beer back from across the road.
“How’d you get that?” Chelsea asked, pointing at the beer.
“I paid a guy ten bucks to hand it out the back window,” he said.
“There’s a back window?”
“Off the bathroom,” he said. He nodded and looked towards the grass where Alexa and Brandon were still giggling and rolling around.
“How’d you get here, anyway?” Chelsea asked. She’d picked up Alexa and Brandon at Alexa’s house. Alexa was inside with her father, and Brandon was hanging around in the bushes like a horny dog. Such was the nature of their relationship when Brandon was sober. Alexa would call him anytime, night or day, and he would trot the half-mile between their houses without question to wait outside until Alexa could evade her father’s supervision. When he was drunk, Brandon seemed to forget to pay attention to Alexa.
“I got a ride from my brother. He was going out to dinner so I caught a ride as far as the exit and then I hoofed it the rest of the way,” Jayden said.
“How are you getting home?” she asked.
He shrugged as he sipped his beer and smiled. “Maybe Brandon will give me a ride.”
“He came in my car.”
“Oh, cool, you have a license?”
“Kind of,” Chelsea said. “I kinda stole my dad’s car.”
Jayden nodded.
“I’ve been pretending that I’m not a good driver. Every time he lets me practice, I always make all kinds of mistakes, like I take off too quickly or I pretend I don’t realize it’s in reverse. He d
oesn’t even suspect how well I can drive.”
“Where do you live?” Jayden asked.
Chelsea suspected that Jayden was angling for a ride, but she didn’t offer. She thought that once he’d secured the favor, he might not pretend to be interested in the conversation anymore.
“I live out on the Bartlett Road. Just past 135,” she said.
“Hey, I know that road. Do you live near where that guy just died?”
“Next door,” she said. “He was my brother’s best friend.”
“My brother drove the ambulance over there,” Jayden said. “He just got a job with the rescue squad and he’s already driving. He said the guy was dead before they even got there.”
“His name is Kyle.”
“Do you know him?”
“Yeah, he was my neighbor and my brother’s best friend.”
“Oh. You already said that, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “His parents are pretty upset.”
“You want another sip?”
“No thanks,” she said.
“I’m going to go see what those guys are doing,” he said.
Chelsea nodded. She had a pretty good idea what Alexa and Brandon were doing, but she decided to let Jayden figure it out on his own. She wrapped the strap around Alexa’s purse as she walked back to her father’s SUV. The only reason she’d agreed to this trip was because Jayden would be there. Now, after only talking to him for a few minutes, she wasn’t even sure that she really ever liked him. He was completely handsome—that point wasn’t even up for debate. He had a crooked smile and blue eyes and a strong chin. Chelsea could imagine the shape of his dimples perfectly. They were like two little parentheses at the corners of his smile. But somehow, when he talked, a lot of his charm evaporated. How had she missed that earlier?
She closed her eyes and waited in the driver’s seat for her friends to return to the car.
# # # #
She still wasn’t sure how it had happened, but somehow she’d been talked into driving Jayden home. He lived a good five miles past her house—way beyond her comfort-zone of driving her Dad’s car in the middle of the night. And, even worse, she would now have to go past her own house, take Jayden home, and then go all the way back to drop off Alexa and Brandon.
Chelsea gripped the wheel with both hands and sat up straight. It was one thing to roll the SUV away from the house and steal it for a little joy ride down to the Fluke. It was quite another to drive five miles to Jayden’s house with a carload full of drunk teens.
Brandon and Alexa were in the back seat, still making out. They’d rolled around in grass and leaves in the vacant lot and then transferred all that garbage on their clothes to the back seat of the car. Chelsea reminded herself to clean it up before she went to bed.
Jayden—beautiful-jawed Jayden—was in the passenger’s seat, leaning away from Chelsea with his nose in his phone. He was messaging someone and chuckling at the responses. This is what Chelsea had broken all the rules and several laws for—to become a chauffeur to people who didn’t even pay attention to her.
“Who are you texting?”
“Huh?” Jayden asked.
“I said who are you texting?”
“Oh. I’m messaging Rennie. I told him he should have his application put all the cops on a map, like with little dots, so we could just keep away from them. He said he won’t because if a criminal got access to the map, they’d go on a crime spree. I told him that would be cool.”
Chelsea nodded. It was the most she’d ever heard Jayden say at once. She wasn’t impressed.
“It’s up here on the left,” Jayden said, pointing at his street.
“You can walk from here,” Chelsea said.
“What? Come on, it’s like four blocks.”
“You’ll be okay. My parents know a half-dozen people who live on that street. I don’t want any of them to see my dad’s car.”
“Nobody’s up. Seriously,” he said. He made no move for the handle.
“Look, you can get out or you can ride back to Alexa’s house. It’s your choice. I mean, I can see lights on in the Webber’s house from here. Everyone knows this car. My dad has had it forever.”
“Okay, fine,” Jayden said. He got out and slammed the door.
“What the hell?” Alexa asked from the back seat.
Chelsea cranked the wheel and began a big u-turn.
“Just Jayden being a baby,” Chelsea said.
“Who cares, babe,” Brandon said. His voice was low and hoarse. Chelsea sped up a little. She wanted to get them back to Alexa’s house before Brandon finished right there in the back seat. She slowed down with the approach of an oncoming car and realized too late that she still had the high beams on. She turned them off when the other driver flashed her his own high beams.
Chelsea drove awhile with her eyes glued to the patch of illuminated road ahead of her. Movement in the back seat tried to draw her eyes to the mirror, but she fought the urge to look. It was creepy watching Brandon maul Alexa. She still remembered Alexa standing in front of her mirror with no shirt on, hoping that her breasts would soon come in. Now that they had, Alexa seemed determined to get Brandon to mash them back into her chest.
When Brandon started to talk, Chelsea couldn’t keep her eyes on the road any longer.
“Come on, Lex, this is what you want me to do, right?” Brandon asked.
Alexa groaned.
“Hey, guys, can you save it until I drop you off?” Chelsea asked. She took her hand briefly from the wheel to rub her eyes and then put it back.
“Her dad’s home. We can’t make any noise there,” Brandon said.
“Let’s pretend that you can’t make any noise here either,” Chelsea said.
Alexa groaned again.
“Please guys, just wait,” Chelsea said.
She was going to follow it up with a mild threat—maybe about never driving them anywhere ever again—but suddenly her full attention was required by the road. A dog darted out from the bushes and was just about to cross the double-yellow line. Chelsea slammed on the brakes, with one foot and then with both. When his daughter began her driving lessons, Wes got the anti-lock brakes fixed. That repair probably saved her life. Chelsea hauled the wheel to the left, straining muscles she’d developed with years of competitive swimming. The brakes pulsed, preventing a skid—a skid which could have easily rolled the big SUV onto its side and then roof.
In the back seat, the lip-locked couple slid across the seat and slammed into the door. Alexa’s head hit the window, her jaw hit her chest, and her teeth slammed together, piercing Brandon’s upper lip in two places.
“Aw, fuck!” Brandon screamed. He pushed away from Alexa as Chelsea dragged the wheel back to the right to avoid running off the road. Two hubcaps sprung free from the sudden pressure and shot forward from the slowing vehicle. Chelsea registered their paths into the tall grass at the side of the road as the pulsing from the brake pedal numbed her feet. The vehicle finally came to a stop and stalled. The headlights dimmed immediately. Chelsea flipped switch, turning them off.
“Come on! Fuck this,” Brandon said. He pressed his hand to his bitten lip.
“Stop pushing me,” Alexa said, finally responding to his earlier shove.
Chelsea put the vehicle in park and tried to crank the engine. The starter churned but the engine wouldn’t fire. She found the switch for the hazard lights on the steering column and she pulled it up. The yellow light blinked into the surrounding trees with a loud clink-clonk, clink-clonk, clink-clonk.
“Damn, bitch, you nearly bit my lip off.”
“Don’t call me a bitch,” Alexa said. Chelsea could hear the tears in her voice.
“Call her that again and you’re walking home,” Chelsea said.
“I’m walking home anyway. You bitches are crazy,” he said. He tried several times to open his door. His fingers kept slipping on the handle. When he finally jerked it open, he jumped out and slammed it shut again,
nearly catching Alexa in the face, who was moving to try to dissuade him.
“My god, why did you stop? What happened?” Alexa asked.
“There was a dog,” Chelsea said. She tried to crank the engine again. It finally turned over and caught. Chelsea exhaled a big sigh as she turned on the headlights again. Her heart jumped to her throat when she looked up. Brandon was standing in front of the SUV. He had blood surrounding his mouth and running from his chin down to his shirt. He was giving them a big, double-pumping, fuck you with his middle fingers. He laughed and ran down the road.
“Quick,” Alexa said, leaning between the seats. “Catch him. I’ll ask him to get back in the car.”
“Screw him,” Chelsea said. She eased the car back to the correct side of the road and pulled over to the shoulder. “I have to find the hubcaps.”
“What?”
“They fell off when we stopped. I saw where they went,” Chelsea said. She put the car in park and opened her door. The hazard lights still blinked and she left the headlights on with the engine running. A cone of white light shone out in front. The sides and back were illuminated by the flashing yellow.
“Don’t!” Alexa called. “Let’s catch up with Brandon and go home. It’s too dark out there to find anything.”
Chelsea reached into the door’s side pocket and brought her hand up. She clicked on the flashlight under her chin, showing a grin to Alexa. “Come one,” she said. “It will just take a second. I’ll grab the hubcaps and we’ll catch him before he gets far. He’s slow.”
“This is stupid,” Alexa said. She jumped out of the back seat and closed her door. She spat Brandon’s blood into the road and then jogged to catch up with Chelsea. “What made you slam on the brakes, anyway?”
“I told you—there was a dog. It looked like Kyle’s dog, actually,” Chelsea said. She walked back down the road and pointed her flashlight into the tall grass. A part in the grass ended with something shiny. Chelsea ran to it, leaving Alexa to run behind her. Chelsea grabbed the hubcap and held it up. “That’s one,” she said.
