Or the Girl Dies

by Rachel Rust

“I bet they have…’cause you’re rude.”

  “You already said that.”

  “Shut up.”

  At his car, he ditched me at the passenger door and walked around the front to the driver’s side. The street lamp shone on his shoulders. They appeared broader than before, with a hump of muscles leading up to his tan neck. The mysterious Victor Greer had muscles. And the wine in my belly—and in my head—liked muscles.

  I rested my fingers on the door handle. “I can’t open my door.”

  “It’s unlocked, just lift up.”

  My fingers lingered idly on the metal. “I can’t.”

  He huffed and came back around to my side of the car. I leaned back against the handle before he could grab it, dropped my shoes, and placed both hands on his waist. Deep down, the sober version of myself knew I was acting ridiculous, but in that moment, my inebriated self was victim to a revved up libido that had washed over me like a strong breeze. Victor was solid and warm and cute, and had all the body parts I liked. Presumably.

  His torso was firm against my palms, so I gripped onto him harder.

  “What’re you doing?” he asked.

  Without my heels on, I had to go up on my tip toes to get my face in front of his. “You wanna kiss me?” I whispered.

  He grabbed both my hands and removed them from his sides. I snatched a handful of his t-shirt and yanked him closer. He caught his balance by placing both of his hands on his car, one on either side of my shoulders. Only a few inches of chilly night air separated our lips.

  His dark eyes pierced into mine. Why had I never noticed how pretty they were back at school? The heat of his torso and arms radiated onto my cold body. It had been months since a boy kissed me. The wooziness of my head made it difficult to concentrate on keeping my balance. I leaned forward.

  Just before my mouth was going to meet his, he turned his head and my lips brushed his cheek. But he didn’t pull away. Cheek-to-cheek, we stood for a few seconds and I thought, at least for a moment, that his head would twist back around, slipping his lips into mine.

  But instead of kissing me, one of his arms wrapped around my waist and he yanked me away from the car. He grabbed the handle and the car door popped open.

  “Get in,” he said.

  With a pout, I sat down in his car, feeling dejected and rejected. He tossed my shoes onto my lap and slammed the car door. After sitting down in the driver’s seat, he lit a cigarette, and then pulled away from the curb without a word about our almost-kiss.

  The curving roads of Krissy’s hillside neighborhood forced my eyes closed. The wine sloshed in my stomach. A cross between a sigh and groan exited my lips.

  Victor slowed down. “You gonna puke?”

  I shook my head. “No. I need food.”

  “You shouldn’t eat right now.”

  “I hafta eat. I feel icky when I don’t eat, and the wine’s makin’ it worse.” I patted his shoulder harder than necessary. “Buy me food. I don’t have my wallet.”

  There was a pause.

  “Fine, but absolutely no puking in my car.”

  “Deal,” I said. “I want a burger from the Tavern Green.” I patted his shoulder again. “Let’s go there.”

  The Tavern Green was a downtown restaurant, owned by a friend of my father’s. It was the kind of restaurant with lighting so dim I wondered how the servers managed to do their job. Tavern Green was well-known for their steaks, but I always preferred their hamburgers. Josh liked to tell me I had defective taste buds. But I think I just had a defective brother.

  “Natalie,” Victor said, “it’s eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night. The restaurants downtown are closing. Besides you can’t go anywhere half-drunk”—he shot a glance my way—“like that.”

  My strapless dress sagged in front, showing the lace of my bra. I yanked up on it only for it to fall back down again. “My boobs aren’t big enough for this dress.” The alcohol swimming in my head was like an unwelcomed truth serum. I had always hated my small chest and the way it made me feel self-conscious. My hands squished into the sides of my breasts, pushing them together and forward. “You think my boobs are too small?”

  Victor didn’t answer

  “You do, don’t you?”

  More silence.

  “Is that why you didn’t wanna kiss me, ‘cause you don’t like my boobs?”

  He sighed. “Why don’t you just put your head back and take a nap.”

  “I don’t wanna,” I said, laying my head back and closing my eyes. “I’m not even sleepy.”

  And then the world went black.

  Chapter Nine

  I woke up some time later by a nudge on my arm. Victor plopped a warm, white bag onto my lap. The smell of tobacco and mint had been replaced by red meat, ketchup, and warm pickles. And my favorite—french fries. A gurgle rumbled deep in my stomach.

  He chuckled. “Guess you really are hungry.”

  I pressed a hand to my forehead, as if that would stop the post-wine pounding. I glanced out my window. We were parked. Everything was dark. “Where are we?”

  “Mingling with the dinos.”

  “Dinos? Oh my God, you brought me to Dinosaur Park? Seriously?”

  He laughed and got out of the car.

  Dinosaur Park was a ridiculous tourist attraction atop a hill that rose up in the middle of Rapid City. Peering down over the city lights were a bunch of badly done green and white dinosaur statues. The only people who liked Dinosaur Park were old people from out of town and little kids.

  My car door opened. Victor nodded for me to get out.

  “Why can’t we eat in the car?” I asked. “It’s cold outside.”

  He opened the trunk and a few seconds later, a red sweatshirt dropped onto my lap. I slipped my feet back into my heels—ouch—and got out of the car. The sweatshirt went on immediately and did an okay job at keeping the cool air off my skin, though it smelled slightly of secondhand smoke.

  “You sure you wanna eat here?” I asked. “It’s taking up too much time. You need to figure out something with Mason and—”

  “I need some fresh air. Need to take a breather and recalculate.”

  I nodded in understanding, although I was unsure how greasy food would make him more clear-minded. It usually made me want to lie on the couch and watch Netflix.

  We each grabbed our bag of food and our drink, then headed up the steep flagstone steps, which led to the concrete creatures looming above. Despite the pounding in my head, my steps were more sure-footed than they had been pre-nap. I wasn’t sure how long I had been asleep, but it seemed the dizzying wine effects had begun to evacuate from my brain.

  At night, the dinosaur statues were lit up weakly by small street lamps. Beyond the misty yellowed light hung nothing but pine tree blackness all around. At the top of the steps, we followed a pathway that curved around the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

  “What’s your favorite dinosaur?” I asked.

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  “Seriously,” I said. “Everyone has a favorite dinosaur. Which is yours?”

  “T-Rex.”

  “Boo. Bad choice. T-Rex has wimpy little arms.”

  He laughed. “What’s your favorite?”

  We passed by the triceratops. It was always Josh’s favorite and, when we were little, whenever our parents brought us to the park, we’d fight over which dinosaur could win in a massive dino fight. Josh always stood up for the triceratops.

  “I like the stegosaurus,” I said. “They have big spikes on the end of their tail.” I sat down on a stone retaining wall across from the triceratops and took a big sip of my drink. It was cola of some kind. I didn’t care what kind, it tasted good and I downed half of it before coming up for air. “The big spikey tail could take out everyone, even the T-Rex.”

  “Doubtful.” Victor sat down next to me.

  “What’re you going to do, catch the spikes with your tiny little arms, Mr. T-Rex?”

  He laughed, mid-drink, then nodded to th
e white bag in my lap. “Eat.”

  The burger in my bag turned out to be a cheeseburger. “Thanks for getting me food.”

  “You’re welcome. It’s the least I could do considering all the shit you’ve been dragged into tonight.” He paused with a slight chuckle. “Although the wine gut ache is no one’s fault but your own.”

  “I don’t even like wine.”

  “Coulda fooled me.”

  “Shut up,” I said with a mouthful of burger.

  We ate in silence for several minutes. Every warm bite of food made both my stomach and my head feel better. Though with every recharging brain cell, embarrassing memories came crashing back. My cheeks flushed, an inferno against the night air.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “What?” He stared at me—my eyes, my mouth, my nose. I tried to mentally explain to him that I was sorry I had drunkenly tried to kiss him, but he didn’t appear to be picking up on my ESP. I popped a fry into my mouth.

  “Back at your friend’s house, I’m sorry that I tried to kiss you.”

  Victor’s lip twitched up. “It’s okay, don’t apologize. I just didn’t want—”

  “You didn’t want to kiss me, it’s okay.”

  He shook his head. “I just didn’t want you to do anything you’d regret. You’ve already had a miserable night. I didn’t wanna make it worse.”

  I shoved more fries in my mouth. He did the same and the number 22 on his wrist became visible, bathed in pale yellow light.

  “How’d you get wrapped up into the drugs?” I asked.

  He took a long sip from his drink before answering. “In ninth grade, I got a job stocking shelves at a hardware store. Minimum wage, working as many hours as I could without falling behind in school, and still had no money to my name. These other guys in my neighborhood, they always had money, ya know? Stacks of it in their pocket, spending like it was no big thing while I had to budget every penny.”

  I nodded along, unable to relate to any of it. Not the job—my dad wanted me to concentrate on my grades. Not the money issue—my dad always gave me an allowance.

  “So one day,” Victor said, “this guy Rudy tells me about an investment. So I think, what the hell? Next payday I buy fifty dollars’ worth of eighties from him and—”

  “Eighties?”

  “Eighty milligrams of OxyContin.”

  “Oh.”

  “So I shadow Rudy for a few days and turn fifty bucks into fifteen hundred.”

  “Jesus.”

  He chuckled. “Too good to be true, right? Except for a long time it really was true. Rudy was an all right guy, but then eventually he introduces me to Little Bobby and one thing led to another and I’m selling for The Barber. I don’t buy in, I just give them a cut of everything.”

  “Easy money.”

  “Used to be, but Bobby and The Barber? Lot of politics. Rules, negotiations. I used to be in control back in the day, but now I’m just a puppet.”

  “That’s why you want out?”

  “Yeah, plus…” He crumpled his burger wrapper and then threw it into the white food bag by his feet. Elbows on knees, he leaned forward, staring at his shoes. “I’ve seen so many people get busted, I need to get out before it’s me.”

  “Would you have to leave Rapid City to truly get out?”

  “Probably.”

  I took another sip of my drink. “Have you always lived in Rapid?”

  “No. I used to live on a farm outside of Akron, Ohio.”

  “You’re from a farm?”

  He smiled. “Why’s that so hard to believe?”

  Because farmers wore ugly shirts and cowboy boots. Not Vans and dark wash denim that hung nicely on their ass. “No reason,” I said. “So are your parents still in Ohio?”

  He ate the remainder of his fries instead of answering.

  “Why’d you leave Ohio?” I asked, sensing the parents were off-limits. “Were you selling drugs back there, too?”

  A heavy sigh huffed from his nostrils. “I didn’t want to leave, I had to. It wasn’t safe and let’s just leave it at that.”

  A zillion questions flooded my mind. What could have been so unsafe at a farm in Ohio that he had to move across country? Farms were full of harmless animals and crops and family meals around tables—or at least that’s what all the children’s books had taught me growing up. But all the questions zooming around in my head about his past stayed put. They couldn’t be asked, at least not without summoning asshole Victor and his ever-enjoyable dickhead responses.

  He stared over at me. “Your turn. Have you always lived here?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “What’s it gonna be like next year when you go to Columbia for school? New York is a long way away. You’ll be homesick.”

  I shrugged, slurping up the remaining bits of liquid around the ice.

  “What’re you gonna major in?” he asked.

  “Pre-med.”

  “Have you always wanted to be a doctor?”

  “No, my dad’s always wanted me to be a doctor.”

  Victor studied my face. “But what do you wanna do?”

  I shrugged again, wishing he’d stop asking questions. Now I knew why I annoyed him so much. Questions that pushed buttons were like being prodded with pins over and over again. Needling. Relentless needling. I wanted him to shut the hell up.

  He nudged my knee. “What do you wanna do?”

  Another shrug.

  “Come on, tell me.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, standing up and shoving my empty drink container into my white food bag. “Jesus, I don’t have my whole life planned out. Maybe I’ll be a teacher. Maybe I’ll go into engineering. Hell, I’ll become a lawyer, my God, how he’d love that!”

  The entire space went silent. I stared at the triceratops. I hated it. I hated it because everyone assumed it was the most beloved dinosaur. Like I was just supposed to like it because so many other people said they did. I was supposed to be a sheep.

  But I liked the stegosaurus. Screw everyone else. Screw Josh. Screw my dad.

  “I think you’d be a good lawyer,” Victor said. “You’re smart and you can put up with pieces of shit like me.”

  I sat back down, pulling my arms inside the sweatshirt. “You’re not a total piece of shit.”

  He cocked an eyebrow, which made me laugh. We sat together for a long time. In silence. In the dark. On top of a hill. Stared at by concrete dinosaurs. Trying to figure out how to find a kidnapped kid.

  Life was messed up.

  Victor’s eyes were near-black in the low light, peering into the dark pine tree fortress around us. A deep wrinkle had nestled between his eyebrows.

  “Are you and Mason close?” I asked.

  Victor shrugged. “He’s a good kid. His dad died when he was about eight, and he took it pretty hard, so I think he actually likes that I moved here. He’s good at basketball and he’s always trying to get me to shoot hoops with him out in the driveway like his dad used to.” Victor chuckled softly. “I’ve told him a million times I’m no good at basketball and practicing with me will make him a worse player, but he always asks—even after I make fun of the ugly-ass white Nikes he wears everywhere.” Victor looked over at me, studying my face for the longest time before finally speaking again. “All of this is my fault. He’s just an innocent kid.”

  I forced a small smile. “I think he’ll be okay. But that probably sounds stupidly optimistic, huh?”

  “That’s all right, I could use some optimism.”

  “Did Krissy tell you anything helpful?”

  “She said a few things.” Victor stretched back and a vertebra popped. “The Barber’s started a new operation—he’s really pushing weed now. Guess he’s hitting up the schools pretty hard, Kennedy in particular.”

  “Why Kennedy?”

  “Rich kids do drugs, too. And a lot of ‘em because they can afford it. Especially pills and pot. Anyway, Krissy told me The Barber has a new place that he’s
been working out of since he started moving weed. So I’m thinking, if I can figure out the location where he’s working now, that could be where he has Mason.”

  “How are you going to figure out where his new location is?”

  Victor produced a long sigh. “I don’t know. Someone at Kennedy is selling weed for him, so if I can determine who, then…”

  “But you worked for The Barber and you go to Kennedy, so don’t you know who else sells for him? Don’t you guys network and stuff? Pill people, weed people, coke people…don’t you know each other?”

  “No, it doesn’t really work that way. I stay out of other people’s business if I can help it. And weed’s not my thing. The market’s too saturated.”

  “Okay, so you have no idea who else is working for The Barber at Kennedy?”

  He shook his head.

  A smile crept across my face with the realization that the tables had turned. Now it was me who knew where to go next. No one knew more about marijuana at Kennedy High than my very own brother. I grabbed both bags of garbage. “Come on, we have to go.”

  “Where?”

  “I know who can help us.”

  Victor pulled out his phone. “It’s midnight.”

  “So?”

  “I promised I’d help you with the paper and take you home at midnight, remember?”

  “Oh yeah. I forgot.” All around the night swirled. The breeze, the scent of ponderosa, the sight of the Trans Am parked down the hill. In my head, conflicting thoughts crashed into one another like bumper cars, each one trying to out ram the other to get to the forefront of my thoughts, to sway my decision. Except my decision had been made. Our school assignment was still there, lingering as unfinished business in my mind—and in my computer back home. But my worries of the assignment had faded in the shadow of the night. Maybe it was the crisp air in my lungs or blowing against my bare legs, but I didn’t want to go home anymore. All night my heart had beat one tick faster than usual.

  I wasn’t ready for it to end.

  “Screw it,” I said. “Let’s go find Mason.”

  Victor grinned. “I think the red shoes have gone to your head.” He stood up, right in front of me, his dark eyes on mine, muscular shoulders looming broadly.