The Crashers

by Cubed, Magen

  “Hey, Cait,” he said, holding himself upright despite the weight on his chest.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he lied. “I just wanted to call and see if you were okay.”

  “Of course I’m fine.” It was her turn to lie, but he didn’t dare call her out on it. “You’re the one I’m worried about.”

  He sighed. “I just needed to talk, if that’s all right. I’ve—well, the situation has changed, I guess. I didn’t want you to think I’m trying to hurt you on purpose.”

  “You did hurt me.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you coming home?”

  “No.”

  “Then, what is that going to change?”

  “Cait, it’s not.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, I miss you. I love you. I just need to hear your voice. If that’s selfish, then I’m selfish. I admit that.”

  “You’re not selfish, Bridger. You’re stupid and you’re determined to do stupid things, but you’re not selfish.”

  “Well, it’s been said.”

  “I’m not... angry,” she said carefully. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “You can be. I wouldn’t blame you.”

  “It’s not about blame. It’s about choices. You chose this. I’m just trying to live with it if I can figure out how to.”

  He sighed again. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.” She was silent for a moment, then let out a breath. “A boy came looking for you the other day. Some blonde at the car repair shop.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “He said that he knew you... that he met you at the hospital, although he couldn’t keep his story straight.”

  The weight in his chest turned into a vise. “Was his name Adam?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t sound surprised. “I thought I would give you the chance to explain yourself first.”

  “It’s not what you think.”

  “I didn’t think anything. Should I have?”

  “He’s just...” Bridger caught himself in another lie and gave up. “What did he want?”

  “He wanted me to give you his number in case you needed anything.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  Bridger never showed weakness if he could help it. This time he was willing to let it slide. He looked up directions to Bob’s Repair and Restoration and caught the bus over. He told himself it was the natural urge to reach out and establish meaningful connections. Dr. Kumar would have loved the sound of that. Bridger knew, however, as he found himself haunting the waiting room, that Adam was the only person beside Caitlin who had showed any interest in his well-being. It was a little desperate to realize he was forty-five years old and at the end of his life without real friends. So, he did what he always did and dug himself in. He made himself seen and known. Adam finally noticed him coming around the corner from the garage at lunchtime. The sight of Bridger there brought him up short.

  Bridger tried to smile, if only to be polite. “You came looking for me.”

  Adam nodded. “I did. I mean, I saw your wife and I asked about you. You know.”

  “Yeah,” Bridger said.

  “I just... The last time we met—well, the first time we met, I guess—”

  “I know. Dark place. My brains were scrambled.” Bridger looked around and shrugged. “You want to get out of here?”

  The brightness of Adam’s smile was painful to look at. “Yeah. Just give me ten minutes to finish up here, okay?”

  Bridger tried to smile again and got a little closer this time. Within ten minutes, Adam was cleaned up in a white T-shirt and jeans. He pulled a black bomber jacket on at the door. He said little else and gestured for Bridger to follow him outside to his long, black muscle car in the alleyway. Another five minutes of silence led them to a booth seat by the window of the Go Nightly Diner. It felt like neutral territory. Bridger could stand for some neutrality and conceded to Adam’s offer of coffee and food.

  “Why did you want to see me?” Adam asked, thumbing over the edge of the dog tags collaring his neck.

  Bridger almost laughed. “I don’t know. Why the hell did you want to see me?”

  Adam’s broad shoulders hunched under his jacket, making him look smaller than he was. “This is big and this is terrifying. I don’t feel like anybody should do this alone.”

  “Are you talking about the dying thing or the cancer thing?”

  “All of it. Or none of it. I don’t know. You just seemed like you needed someone to talk to.”

  Bridger shrugged. “I don’t know what I need. My wife thinks I need a therapist. My doctor thinks I need an intervention.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think the universe is seriously fucked. And I think I just spent the last week coming up with fun and interesting ways to kill myself, and I couldn’t even get that right.” The pained look Adam gave him made Bridger feel suddenly guilty. “But I think I just needed someone to talk to.” Slouching in his seat, he noticed the dog tags at Adam’s neck. “So, now you know my sad story. What’s yours?”

  Adam tugged at the chain. “I did two tours as an army mechanic in Delaram.”

  “What, for God and country?”

  “For my dad. He’s a big, tough guy—a real Irish brawler, you know? My dad was in the army back in the ‘80s before I was born, then he came back and opened his own auto shop. I came out of high school with some pretty underwhelming college prospects, but I was good at fixing cars. It was about the only thing I ever did right. Dad made that pretty clear. So, I figured I could join the army and make something of myself by keeping the trucks running. I wanted to make him proud.”

  “Did it work?”

  “I guess so, for a while. Then, I got hit by two IEDs.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then, I finally got hit by the third. Roadside ambush wiped out my entire supply convoy. I was trapped under the truck for twelve hours before they found me. I was the only survivor.”

  Bridger nodded. “And you wondered why you lived and they didn’t.”

  “I wondered about a lot of things. After a while, it didn’t matter why I lived. God wasn’t answering my prayers anymore, but that didn’t matter, either. All I knew was that being alive hurt so much I couldn’t stand it. It was like I couldn’t breathe. I was just... crushed.”

  “So, what’d you do?”

  “I put a gun in my mouth and tried to pull the trigger. But I got caught, so I was sent home instead.” Adam gripped the chain and pulled it taut. “This is my prayer now. I pull on it to remind myself that I’m still alive—that I can keep going.”

  After a moment, Bridger leaned back and crossed his arms. “Nice story. You practice it?”

  Something about that made Adam smirk, if only just. “In the mirror when I get up every morning.”

  “Does it work?”

  “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah. I guess you are.”

  The waitress came by with their plates, refilled their coffee cups and walked away when Adam thanked her with a smile. Bridger didn’t look up at her; eye contact felt a little out of his wheelhouse at that moment. He looked to his plate instead. If he had been paying attention, he would have heard the sirens howling in the distance as they closed in on the streets of Camden.

  IV.

  Moving the fruit on the kitchen counter helped Norah accept her powers. Then came larger, more substantial objects, like countertop appliances and picture frames. The furniture came last, under Hannah’s careful supervision, and only with silent concentration. Every fiber of Norah’s being had to focus. It was the only way she could feel that electric charge in the air again. The current moved through her fingers and toes to reach out into the world.

  “Careful, Mom,” Hannah murmured from the relative safety of the hallway. “Don’t go so fast this time.”

  Norah, from her station in the center of their cramped living ro
om, made the entire apartment move. It jumped and shuddered. Chair legs twitched and books rustled on their shelves. Everything shook before finally submitting to her gravitational pull. Her table, sofa and television hovered above her head and lazily revolved like obedient satellites. Hannah’s little fingers gripped the raised molding of the doorway like it was a tether and she, too, could sweep up and float away.

  Norah felt powerful in a way she never had before. She spoke to the universe in a silent language only she could understand. She had always been at the mercy of forces larger than herself—the kind that ended her marriage with a grainy ultrasound photo, killed her wages over district budget cuts, and put her on the train that killed her.

  For what it was now worth, Norah was finally as strong as she’d always wanted to be. That was why Norah arrived at Kyle’s doorstep in Koreatown at 8:30 in the morning. Something she couldn’t explain brought her to the stoop outside his red door. She took a deep breath, pressed the buzzer, and received no response. After a moment, she pressed it again.

  “What are you doing?”

  She turned. Kyle appeared at the bottom of the stoop. His hands were hand stuffed into his pocket, a cigarette in his mouth. He looked at her like she was crazy. She didn’t let it stop her.

  “Looking for you.”

  “I don’t live here anymore. Just picking up my mail.” He walked past her to unlock his door. She followed him inside the shoebox of a foyer. “Are you following me?”

  “No. Well, not really.” All she did was put his name in a search engine and his address popped up. Hardly creepy, she decided. “I just needed to talk to you about the other day.”

  “I told you before—there’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Then I want to talk about that.”

  He unlocked his mailbox, thumbed through the day’s junk mail and credit card offers, and shut it again. “I don’t know what you want me to say. We’re not capable of doing anything about this. The best thing we can do for ourselves is go back to our lives, try to keep our heads down, and act like none of this ever happened.”

  “But I can’t do that. This accident—these attacks—changed us. I can’t just let that go.”

  “I already heard this routine at the coffee shop.” They walked out of his building. Norah stayed on his heels. “And I’m going to tell you one more time in case you need a reminder: go home.”

  “Yeah, and you’re full of shit. Whether you like it or not, Adam and Clara were right about us. We need to know why this is happening.”

  Kyle sighed. “Adam is a wide-eyed idiot and Clara is a small child with a big mouth. Trust me, you’re better off forgetting you ever met the rest of us.”

  “He’s a veteran. He survived an IED in Afghanistan.”

  “What, did you Google him, too?”

  She scoffed. “Whatever. Shut up. And you used to be a cop. Of all the people this could’ve happened to, you two fit the hero mold pretty well.”

  “Yeah, he’s a soldier, I’m a cop, and you’re a waitress,” he chided her. “What’s your point?”

  “I used to be a waitress, yeah. I used to teach elementary school, too. Now, I can move my living room furniture with my mind, and you just want me to forget about all of it.”

  “Is this going somewhere?”

  Norah stopped in her tracks and pointed a finger against Kyle’s breastbone. “Look, up until a month ago, all I ever did was try to make sure my kid was fed, clothed, and had a roof over her head. Now, I can’t die and neither can you. Maybe it’s fate. Maybe it’s bullshit. Either way, you, me and everybody else on that train—we’re connected. Even if we don’t matter to anybody else in the world, we should at least matter to each other.”

  Kyle blinked. “Is this the part where we kiss?”

  “You’re a douchebag.”

  “It’s been said.”

  “Probably because it’s true.”

  He didn’t budge.

  She sighed. “All right, I don’t have a plan, either. I’m not saying we need one. Just don’t write this off yet.”

  “And do what? Sit around and talk about our feelings? No thanks. I’ve got plans.”

  “Yeah, so did I. Now, I can make pasta explode, so don’t tell me you’re too busy.”

  He paused before shaking his head. “I’m sorry this happened to you, okay? I am. This is huge and awful, but it’s out of our hands. So, please, go home to your kid. I don’t have any answers.”

  She scoffed again. “Nobody expects you to have answers. We just expect you to have a fucking heart.”

  She turned to walk away, leaving Kyle to his theories and conspiracies. Before she could make it to the street, a sedan raced to the curb. A set of police lights was on the dash. The door opened, and Norah stepped back. Kyle appeared behind her.

  “Kyle Jeong, Norah Aroyan,” Amanda said as she slid out and showed her badge. “Can you come with me?”

  Norah deadpanned. “And why is this necessary?”

  “Because you’re wanted for questioning in the Welsh Regional Bank Bombing.”

  Kyle rolled his eyes. “Amanda, you’ve got to be shitting me.”

  Chapter Eight

  I.

  Damon White recorded a video file. He wrote a script, set up his camera, and ran the footage through editing software. He didn’t know anything about Kyle Jeong or the rest of the Camden Five as he burned six copies on discs and addressed them to news stations across the city. He didn’t know anything about what would happen next.

  II.

  The Camden Five all came in handcuffs to the 41st precinct station, filing into separate interrogation rooms in a sad parade of snarling and cursing and pleading. Agents Reinhardt and Torres watched the interviews from behind two-way mirrors as they took notes and checked facts with credit card statements and security footage from across the city.

  The interviews lasted a total of seven hours.

  III.

  Harlow, Adam, 25. March 13th, 2014. Interview conducted by Detective Pettigrew.

  My story? I don’t know anything, just what I see on the news. Yes, I was on the train. No, I don’t remember much. Just... pieces, I guess. The train jumping the track, people dying. No, I was at the bank because I was walking from my group meeting at the VA hospital. We meet twice a week. Yes, you can check with them. You can check with my boss, too. Yes, that’s his number.

  No, I’m not sick. I just – I just get anxious.

  Look, I’m telling you, I don’t know anything. I didn’t notice anything strange. So you think my mental health history played a part in this. Well, you brought it up. Yes, I was there. I came to the intersection and it felt like a bomb went off. Because I’ve been blown up three times—that’s how I know what a bomb feels like. And I thought the news said it was a natural gas leak.

  Why are you asking me about Al Qaeda?

  Can we stop for a minute? No, I just feel really dizzy. Can I get some water or something?

  No, I didn’t know any of the others prior to the crash. No, I don’t know how they all got there. Bridger Levi? No. No, it’s not like that. He and I started talking afterwards. Because he needed someone to talk to. His wife? Why would I know anything about his wife? No, I’m not sleeping with her, either. Because I don’t sleep with women.

  Look, I don’t know anything about Al Qaeda. Can we stop? Please?

  IV.

  Reyes, Clara, 19. March 13th, 2014. Interview conducted by Detective Avnindar.

  I don’t know. Like, I literally don’t know anything about this. There I was just walking along, and then boom: I’m lying across the street with my pants almost blown off my ass. Yeah, it’s crazy, right? It’s like those dudes are all attached at the hip now. We’re just always right there. That’s, like, statistically impossible. I know, right?

  No, I had a couple Red Bulls with breakfast, but I’m fine now. Is it hot in here? It feels really hot in here. Can you turn up the AC or something?

  Shit, are you recording this
? This won’t affect my financial aid, will it? Oh my god. I can’t get thrown out of school. I can’t handle that right now. I’ve just been under so much stress with the internship and all my classes. Oh god, you won’t call my mom, will you? Please, don’t call my mom. She’ll cry. She always cries. Oh god, I can’t go to prison. Abuelita will hate me. Just, please, promise me you won’t call my mom.

  It’s so hot in here. I think I need to lie down.

  V.

  Levi, Bridger, 45. March 13th, 2014. Interview conducted by Detective Lee.

  You are a bunch of cunts and I want my fucking lawyer. No, I don’t know any one of them. Okay, fine, fuck, I know Adam Harlow, but that wasn’t until after the explosion. Is that a crime now? Having coffee with another guy is a crime? Fucking fascists. No, of course I don’t have paperwork for that gun. I bought it at a gun show. Because I’m a wealthy white man in America and I’ve been informed that I have more rights as a gun owner than anybody else on the street. By god, I’m going to exploit that while I still can.

  You say one more word about my wife and I’m coming across this table, I swear to fucking god.

  No. No, I’m not saying another word until I see my lawyer. If you don’t have anything to charge me with then I’m walking out of here right fucking now. No, you calm the fuck down. Guess what, fuck face? I know my rights. And this is me exercising my right not to say shit all until I see my goddamn lawyer.

  VI.

  Aroyan, Norah, 32. March 13th, 2014. Interview conducted by Detective Sinclair.

  You better pray there’s no video in that camera because I’m going to sue your asses so fast it’ll make your heads spin. Yes, that’s a threat. Why? Because I’m an unemployed, single mother and I’m late to pick up my goddamn kid. And I hear that reporter on Channel 8 loves a good sob story.

  Can I get a phone call or something? I’ve got to call my mother.

  VII.

  “You’ve got to be out of your mind,” Kyle all but snarled as Amanda walked into the interrogation room. She took the seat opposite him. “If you honestly think I’m above petty retribution, you are sorely mistaken, because this is the lowest thing you’ve ever pulled.”