Derrick gassed it out into the oncoming lane, but as he started to overtake the old lady’s car, a sheepdog walked out into the road way up in front of the 18-wheeler, forcing the truck to slow down heavily. Luckily, the sheepdog walked back off the highway; but its presence caused the gap between the 18-wheeler and the old lady’s car to close too much for Derrick’s van to fit.
We were now neck and neck with the oblivious old lady. If we wanted out of oncoming traffic, we'd have to pass the 18-wheeler. To make things worse, as we approached the horizon, another car was now coming straight for us.
Sixteen
“Pull over!”
“Oh my fuck–”
“Go go go go–”
“–cking—”
“I'm TRYING”
“–GO GO GO—”
Derrick FLOORED the gas, picked his foot back up and FLOORED the gas again. The van felt like it was dragging another car behind it. We passed the old lady and slowly inched up on the 18-wheeler. The car coming head-on at us started flashing its high-beams and honking.
“Fucking go!”
“Holy shit! Fuck!”
“Why isn’t he hitting his fucking brakes?!” Derrick shouted as the van finally cleared the bumper of the 18-wheeler.
He jerked the wheel at the very last second, swinging us in front of the 18-wheeler avoiding the head-on collision and saving our lives. The trucker blared his horn.
Steve thrust his head and middle finger out of the window. “Eat shit, you fucking cunts! Fuck you!”
Suddenly we could breathe again.
“Holy...shit,” said Wolf
“Everybody good?” Steve asked.
“We’re dead!” Wolf answered.
“We’re good,” I added.
Derrick was pale. “I almost killed us. Oh my god. I'm so sorry, guys!”
Steve tried to calm him down. “You're good, bro. We’re alive. No worries. Nice save.”
I checked the directions. “We're close to the Vermont border. Let’s pull off on the next exit and hit a gas station.”
We parked in front of an average-looking gas station in some town I can’t remember, hopped out of our vehicles, and all started stretching.
“Holy fuck, dude, how are you guys not dead?” Nico asked me.
“If anything is going to kill me today, it'll be Natalie.”
“True enough.”
As everyone headed inside the gas station I hung back and tried to call Natalie. She didn't answer—but no sooner did I put my phone back in my pocket than it started ringing.
“Hey, Nat—”
“Grayson!” a male voice responded.
“What the fuck? Who—?” I checked the screen. “Chris? What's up?”
“Gray! Freddy is here hiding from his lunatic girlfriend and she found his car parked outside. She’s out here swinging around a baseball bat! What the fuck?!”
Smash!
I heard Freddy yelling in the background: “Get away from my fucking car, you crazy bitch! I’m gonna call the cops!”
Smash!
“Dude, what the fuck?! How fast can you get over here?” Chris asked.
I could hardly hear him over the sound of metal on metal.
“You mothafuckin’ bastard!” Smash! “Pervert-ass motherfucka! Cheatin-ass, tranny-lovin’—” Smash! “—piece of shit!”
“Oh my fucking god. Why am I missing this?” I laughed. “I’m halfway to Vermont, dude. Me, Nico, Ryder, and the band. Tell Freddy not to egg her on. Just go back inside the house. Apparently, she’s a nutjob...and a homophobe.”
“Yo, Freddy, we should go back inside,” I heard Chris say.
“Fuck this crazy bitch,” Freddy yelled. “I wish she did have a dick. I’d punch her right in her fucking cock!”
Smash!
“Oh come ON, you fucking HORSE-FACED CUNT!”
“Freddy, get the FUCK inside!” Chris pleaded.
Nico popped his head out of the gas station, “Hey. You coming?”
“Dude, Freddy’s girlfriend is at Chris’s right now loosing her fucking mind!”
“What? Gimme.” Nico snatched the phone.
“Hey, Chris. Did Freddy tell you he has that weed he owes you? ...Yup. Later.”
I stared at Nico in confusion as he handed my phone back. He shrugged. “I thought you had somewhere to be tonight. Come on.”
I was a hundred miles or so from Rotterdam. Natalie, who I assumed was still my girlfriend for at least a couple more hours, was back home sipping a mimosa in her sundress while her pregnant sister enjoyed a mocktail. Luna was a couple years younger than Natalie. She was pretty and bubbly. She was also dense.
Natalie had picked the venue and decorated it with hard work and sincerity. Luna was grateful.
“Wow, Natalie. This is amazing. Everything is so cute.” Luna’s nose wrinkled when she smiled.
“Aw, thanks. Anything for my little sister,” Natalie said. “So have you thought about names yet?”
Luna looked around the room quick to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “Well, we already have the twins, Kayla and Kaycee. So we were thinking, ‘Kayden’ for a boy...or ‘Kaydence’ for a girl!”
Luna beamed as though she deserved an award for her brilliance; however, all Natalie could force out was a strained “Oh.”
“Yup! My three little K’s,” Luna cooed. “It’ll just be so cute!”
“Um...adorable.”
“I'm so blessed.” Luna rubbed her belly. “So what time is Gray coming?”
Natalie sat up a little straighter in her chair. “Oh. Um...Grayson couldn't make it. Unfortunately. He had to play a last-minute show in Vermont. You know how that is. It's with this band called AngerFM? He's really excited about it.”
Luna’s eyes pierced through Natalie. “So he just blew you off?”
“Well, I mean, his friends all needed him, and you know how Gray is about his friends.”
“Yeah but you're his girlfriend. Tristan never blows me off to hang out with his friends.”
Natalie tried and failed to bite her tongue. “Isn’t Tristan on house arrest for violating his probation? That would probably make it tough for him to see his friends in the first place, right?”
“Well, yeah, but he still sees his friends at Foot Locker…” Luna sipped her mocktail. “...and whatever little whores work there...but then he comes straight home to me. My point is I always know where my man is. How long does Grayson expect to play garage band anyway?”
Natalie raised an eyebrow. “I know Mega Bread isn't Foot Locker, but I've known Gray for a couple years longer than you've been with Tristan, and I trust him to figure things out. Don’t forget that I used to work at Mega Bread too—and now I have a great job.”
“Yeah,” Luna said, “but you were actually motivated to pursue a career. I’m not sure Grayson is really that type.”
Back at the gas station, my guilt was setting in deeper.
“I mean, I had to play this show. How could I possibly miss this? Natalie will cool off in a couple days probably, right?”
Steve was distracted thumbing through the adult magazine rack.
“Gas station porn is too tame,” he said.
“What?” I responded.
“I can’t cum to any of this.”
“Do you need to? When are you going to have time to jerk off between here and the show?”
“Well, if there was anything worth jerking off to, I would consider bringing it home to jerk off to later. But this is all just vanilla nonsense. I thought maybe out of town I’d find something spicy on the rack. Meh.”
Up at the register, Derrick was being cashed out for a couple energy drinks. Nico and Ryder were behind him holding some snacks. Suddenly, Ryder lurched out of line, excited. He snatched a can off the counter and waved it in the air: Silly String. Nico nodded back in approval. They purchased their snacks and Silly-String and walked out.
Next up to the counter was Wolf.
“Grape blunt
wrap?” he said to the young-looking male cashier. The cashier paused for a second, examining Wolf.
“Can I check your ID?”
“Sure.”
The cashier looked back and forth between the ID and Wolf repeatedly.
“This is you?”
“Obviously.”
“Hair’s a lot different in this picture.”
Wolf had taken the picture at age sixteen, back when he'd received his learner's permit. Like most kids, once he got his actual driver’s license he didn’t bother going back to retake the picture. Sixteen-year-old Wolf had trimmed brown hair. Present-Wolf had a bleach-blond mohawk and zero patience.
“It's the same fucking face.”
The cashier backed up a couple feet and held his hands up, about chest height.
“Whoa, whoa. Calm down.”
Another cashier walked over, a Black woman in her mid-thirties. The look on her face made it clear she was not about to have any customer give her coworker shit. She stepped between the young cashier and the counter.
“SIR—you are going to have to CALM DOWN, sir!”
“Why?” Wolf asked, “I'm trying to buy a blunt wrap with my state-issued ID and this guy is giving me a hard time!”
Steve and I exchanged looks.
“Oh, shit,” I said.
The young cashier spoke up. “Sir, I could be fined five hundred dollars for selling tobacco products to a minor.” His voice cracked. “I could lose my job.”
Wolf paused for a beat. “Give me the goddamn wrap!”
“I'M GONNA PRESS THE PANIC BUTTON!” the older cashier yelled.
I rushed to the counter and jumped in front of Wolf.
“NO. No panic button! Ma’am, please.” I held my hands up. “It's cool. We'll go to another gas station.”
Wolf wouldn't budge. “I'm not going to another gas station!”
“Just go wait in the car,” I whispered through my teeth. “I'll buy your wrap.”
“Ah, whatever. I still gotta piss.”
I turned to the older cashier. “Ma'am, do you mind if my friend politely uses your restroom?”
She glanced at Wolf, whose arms were crossed. He refused to make eye contact.
“Fine.”
Wolf stormed off to the restroom in the back of the gas station while Steve and I dumped our coffee and snacks on the counter.
“Is that it?” the young cashier asked.
“And a grape blunt wrap, please.”
Wolf later told us he’d urinated all over that restroom. Nothing was spared. Walls, trash can, toilet seat, mirror, sink—all of it got covered in Wolf piss.
As everyone gathered in the parking lot, ready to hit the road again, Nico broke out the medicine bottle full of vaped weed joints and passed them around.
“Thanks, Nico.”
“I got you,” he said as he got into the driver’s seat of my station wagon.
I was frustrated with the entire day’s events already, and we had a whole night of god-knows-what ahead of us. I threw my phone on Derrick's dashboard, rolled the window down, lit my joint, and tried to center myself.
Everyone else piled back into our two vehicles. I remember thinking fuck this place. That’s what I loved about our road trips, though. At any point in time, you could just pack up and decide fuck this place. We’re done here. Everywhere we went felt disposable.
When I look back, I think man, that was the only time in my life that I had ever just stood out in front of a gas station in broad daylight, myself and five of my friends, all smoking joints without a second thought of any sort of consequence. I’ve never been back to that gas station. I don’t even know which exit it was off of. I think about it all the time, though—how much I would love to park in front of that store again on a summer day and just smell the air. I realize now that some of the places we went probably weren’t as disposable as we once thought.
* * *
“We gotta pull back that way to get on the highway,” Nico said. “Follow me.”
Our caravan swung left out of the lot, onto the main road that led back to the highway. My phone started to vibrate, displaying “Natalie” on its tiny screen as the gravity from the sharp turn caused it to slip across the dashboard of Derrick's van.
“Shit!” I yelled.
I reached for the phone, but I couldn't catch it in time as it dropped out of the window, onto the pavement.
“Pull over!”
Seventeen
Trooper
I jumped out of the van and spotted the phone lying in the middle of the road faceup. As I took a step in its direction, a car blew by—just missing it. I took another step forward, then a quick step back as a second car sped past. A direct hit.
“FUCK!”
Traffic finally broke and I walked out to the middle of the road to pick up the pieces of the first cell phone I’d ever owned.
“Fuuuuck. WHY?”
I could feel Derrick, Wolf, and Steve staring at me when I climbed back into the van.
I clutched my broken phone.
“Drive.”
Derrick looked straight ahead and took off.
We continued down the highway, occasionally relighting our joints. I still had my window cracked, but the van was for the most part hotboxed with smoke at this point. Wolf had calmed down. Steve was enjoying himself. Derrick, I think, was still just happy we were all alive.
I was pretty upset about my phone. It was cheap and shitty, sure. Basically a burner. All I needed to do was buy a new one for $40 at Walmart and swap the SIM card out. But for now, Natalie had no way to reach me. I sat there zoned out, mulling over that last call. Whether she was calling to apologize or break up with me.
* * *
Steve and Wolf took this time on the road to haze Derrick a bit before his first show with us.
“Let me ask you this, Derrick — if that’s even your real name,” Steve started. “You ever NASA-bate?”
“What? Do I masturbate?” Derrick squinted at Steve in the rearview mirror.
“Nah. We know you beat-off, bro. Do you ever NASA-bate, though? It’s when you jerk off lying down, then blast your load off straight into the air and see how high it goes.”
“Yeah,” Wolf chimed in, “then you try to catch it in your mouth. You’re going to want to practice that. We all do it.”
I finally cracked a smile. Derrick seemingly tried to dissect the sarcasm, but I could tell he was still trying to settle into our sense of humor.
Ahead of us, Nico and Ryder were cruising along in my station wagon, smoking their joints. Ryder liked to do impressions of authority figures.
“Yeah, I’m from the uh...New York State Department of the Government, son. We got a call you were uh...operating a permit without a license.”
They laughed. Ryder took a hit, performing a quality French inhale but botched it at the end.
“Yo,” he coughed, “how come they got all these Barbies and shit that get pregnant...but they got no G.I. Joes that get boners or shoot loads?”
Nico almost snorted Red Bull out his nose. “You can't give a kid a toy that shoots loads,” he laughed. “What the fuck?”
“It’s not equal, is all I’m saying. I think that shit's messed up.”
Nico drew a deep hit, then blew a lengthy exhale and stared down the long highway, far out where the Adirondack Mountains almost touched the sky.
“Dude, you ever have a lucid dream?”
Ryder nodded. “Yeah, a couple times. I don't like that shit, though. Then I gotta wash my sheets, but my mom's always home.”
“Nah, not a wet dream. A lucid dream. It's when you know you're dreaming and you can pretty much do whatever you want.”
“Oh, yeah! That happens to me sometimes,” Ryder said.
“That happens to me almost every time, dude. I like it. It's always the same small version of Rotterdam where all the landmarks are closer together. Like, the mall, the school, the post office—they're all condensed into a couple bloc
ks, and I just go around doing whatever I can think of.”
“Like what?”
“Like one time I just pooped in my hand and threw it at a cop car.”
Ryder choked on smoke and started wheezing. “What? Haha.”
“So last night, I'm having one of these dreams again but no one is around. The cars are all stopped in the road, and no one is in them. I go to the mall and it's empty. It was actually scary. I go to Gray's house; I go to Chris’s house, your house, and no one is home until I get to Wolf's house. And he's just jamming on his guitar in his parents’ garage. So I was like Yo Wolf, what’s up? Where is everyone? And all he said was ‘Everyone left town but us.’”
Ryder zoned out to Nico’s story, then suddenly snapped back. “You just gave me goosebumps, son!—Oh wait!”
He popped open the glove box and pulled out the Silly String. Then he waved it at Nico. They both started smiling.
In Derrick’s van, the hazing continued. He made the mistake of mentioning a new girl who’d started working at his job a couple weeks ago. This couldn’t end well.
“Do you like her?” Wolf asked.
“I dunno.”
“Do you jerk off to her?” Steve asked.
“Really?” I asked Steve.
Derrick hesitated.
“...Yeah.”
“Nice,” Wolf added.
“So tell her you jerk off to her,” Steve advised. “See what she says. Find out if she likes you.”
“What?” Derrick said.
I jumped in. “Do not tell her you jerk off to her.”
“Why would I just tell her I jerk off to her?”
“Hey, I think that might be a crime maybe?” I said.
“You’re right. Don’t tell her that,” Steve said. “Tell her you tried to jerk off to her but couldn’t cum 'cause she’s too ugly.”
Trouble Bored Page 10
