Stick

by Andrew Smith

  I took her hand. “Come on. Your mom’s going to wonder where you are.”

  “I love you, Stark.” She sounded sad. I knew what this was about.

  “I love you, Emily.”

  * * *

  And later, before I went home, she slipped her hand inside my pocket and tucked sixty dollars in there. Her fingertips found the tip of my penis, too, and it almost made me faint.

  “You might need some money,” she said.

  “Um.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Emily pulled her hand out of my pocket. We stood on the porch, in the cold April wind that blew in from the west.

  “And you better take care of yourself, Stark McClellan.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you better come back.”

  * * *

  Dad wasn’t home.

  I loaded Bosten’s and my stuff into the backseat of the Toyota.

  And when I drove away, I thought,

  I drive at night

  I blow things up

  I French-kiss older girls

  when nobody’s looking

  I take baths

  and go to bed

  with Emily Lohman

  because I love her

  I love her

  I love her

  and I steal cars

  two days before turning fourteen

  so I can drive to California

  and stop my brother

  from falling

  over the edge.

  WILLIE

  On my fourteenth birthday, I slept in the backseat of the car I stole, wrapped in a sleeping bag with my head resting on my brother’s clothes that still smelled like cigarettes and Paul Buckley’s deodorant.

  I had parked in the muddy lot behind a gas station, waiting for someone to come and open the place for business. I knew I was somewhere north of Portland, and the Toyota had run out of gas.

  Fearing the police, I kept off the main highways as much as I could, but I was almost certain I’d taken a wrong turn after crossing into Oregon and ended up going more toward Canada than California.

  A map would probably have been a good idea.

  I’d been too afraid to stop at a filling station. I never in my life put gas in a car all alone, and for the past two days I had convinced myself that everyone in the world would be on the lookout for a car thief who was missing his right ear.

  So I never took off the Steelers cap that Emily had given me.

  I spent most of the first day parked along the Cowlitz River, hungry, waiting for something that never happened.

  I ran out of gas on Wednesday night at about ten o’clock. I had to put the car in neutral and push it by myself with the window down so I could steer, all the way into the station. And it rained on me while I did that, so I threw Emily’s cap inside the car and just kept pushing, counting the cars that drove past me without so much as slowing down.

  Eleven of them.

  By the time I got to the station, I was soaked and shivering; and I stripped naked right there in the mud behind a goddamned gas station, outside a place called Scappoose, Oregon, in the dark and rain, so I could slip into some dry clothes and bundle up in my sleeping bag for the night.

  I left all my wet things in the trunk.

  I hadn’t eaten since the day before.

  That’s how things were going to be, I decided.

  After midnight, I sang “Happy Birthday to Me.”

  There were only three people in the world I missed: Bosten, Emily, and Aunt Dahlia. So I pretended like they were there, singing with me, even if it felt empty.

  The rain sounded like a swarm of bugs trying to eat their way into the husk of my car.

  I was scared.

  Then I went to sleep.

  * * *

  Willie Purcell and a girl named April I just naturally assumed was Willie’s wife or girlfriend found me there and woke me up by tapping on my window around nine the next morning.

  The rain had stopped during the night. The sky was clear and blue.

  “Are you okay? You okay, buddy?” Willie kept tapping on the glass, pinching a quarter between his thumb and index finger.

  When I opened my eyes, I gave him a dirty look. What would anyone else do? It was just about the most annoying sound I had ever heard and I just wanted him to stop that damned tapping.

  At least I had the sense to lock the car doors.

  Maybe Willie and April thought I was dead or something.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I ran out of gas.”

  I bent as far forward as I could, over the flipped-up front passenger seat where I’d stretched my legs, and popped open the door.

  Willie swung it wide the rest of the way and looked in, half smiling at me: the way you’d look at a trout on the end of a fishing line.

  “I guess you picked the best possible place in the world to run out of gas at,” he said.

  When I looked at Willie, I thought he looked sick. He was so pale, his skin was the color of plastic piano keys, and he had curly red hair that swirled around his ears, with just the thinnest trace of beard fuzz that had obviously never been shaved, beneath the hook of his jawbone. His face was splashed with freckles.

  I unzipped my sleeping bag and jammed my feet into the shoes Aunt Dahlia had bought for me.

  It was like they were waiting for me to do something, but what I did was just sit there in the back of that stolen Toyota with my feet stretched out over the front seat, yawning. I realized that I had never, not one time in my life, woken up from a night’s sleep without a boner, and that morning was no exception. So I didn’t really want to fiddle with myself or try to conceal it while attempting to get out of the car in front of Willie and that girl.

  Because she would have given me a boner, anyway, just from the way she was looking at me. And I could tell she didn’t have a bra on. There was something I really liked about the way breasts moved beneath cotton, so subtly heavy.

  I stared at her.

  At her breasts, actually.

  “He’s just a kid,” she said.

  “What are you doing out here?” Willie sounded a little too enthusiastic for me.

  “I was sleeping,” I said. “I told you. I ran out of gas last night.”

  Willie obviously worked there. I wouldn’t imagine anyone would just show up at a gas station in the morning dressed in a blue jumpsuit with an Exxon patch embroidered on his chest unless he was a pump jockey.

  He reached his open hand inside the car for me. “Well, come on. Let’s push her over to the pump and get you set.”

  I pulled my Steelers cap down square so it covered that mistake on my head.

  I was ready to get out.

  While he filled the gas tank, Willie introduced himself and the girl to me. I stumbled getting the words out smoothly but managed to tell them my name was Bosten McClellan. I tried not to look at them when I said it. I’m a horrible liar. Instead, I watched the number wheels as they spun around on the pump.

  “Boston? You mean, like the place?” Willie said.

  “No. It’s with an e. It’s my name.”

  Willie shrugged.

  “I think that’s a cool name,” April said.

  I looked at her breasts; realized I needed to pee.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Um.” I almost told them it was my birthday. I had to think about it. “I’m going to be seventeen in August.”

  And just talking about Bosten—pretending to be inside his life—made me miss him terribly.

  Willie lifted the Toyota’s hood and began checking around in the engine. I didn’t know anything about that kind of stuff.

  The pump shut off.

  Willie said, “Where are you heading, anyway?”

  He wiped the oil stick on a blue rag that hung from his back pocket.

  I thought about lying again but figured it didn’t matter. At least, not here, in a place called Scappoose.

  “I’m going to
stay with my aunt. In California.”

  April said, “Nice.”

  I thanked Willie and paid him for the gas; then I got in behind the wheel and started the car. The engine turned over and ran for about three seconds, then we all heard a sudden pop, and the car died silently.

  I looked up at Willie.

  He said, “Uh-oh,” and lifted the hood again. “That’s a fan belt.”

  “What?”

  When I turned the key again, there was nothing more than a click and a buzz.

  I got out and walked around to the front of the car. When I looked down, I saw a black snake of frayed rubber coiled on the ground beneath the motor.

  “Yep.” Willie looked at me, his eyes sincere and apologetic. “I bet you five dollars that alternator’s done.”

  He might as well have been speaking Chinese.

  “It is?”

  “Done.”

  Counting Emily’s money that I kept in my back pocket, in Bosten’s wallet, along with ten more dollars I’d stashed away in my suitcase, I had a total of sixty-one dollars after paying for the gas. Whatever Willie was talking about didn’t sound too good to me.

  April squeezed up to the front bumper between me and Willie and looked into the engine compartment. I couldn’t help but notice how her breasts hung down when she leaned forward, and I thought she must know more about cars than I ever did.

  She had to have known I’d been looking at her, too.

  I rubbed my eyes. “What’s it going to cost to fix it?”

  “I might be able to get you a rebuilt one installed for about thirty dollars,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  April glanced at me. There was something in her eyes that told me she cared. Maybe I was just hypnotized by her boobs.

  “I think I might be able to afford that.”

  “Well, it’s not happening today. I’ll have to get my parts guy from Portland to drive it up here. Maybe get it in first thing in the morning,” Willie said.

  I sighed.

  “Do you think it would be okay if I slept out back in my car again tonight? I don’t want to pay for a place to stay. I’m afraid I might not have enough money to make it to my aunt’s house at this rate.”

  Willie looked at April, then at me. “I’ll tell you what. I have a houseboat on the river with an extra room I rent out. Nobody’s staying in it right now. I could let you stay there tonight, I guess. Maybe tomorrow, if you need to.”

  “I don’t mind sleeping in my car.”

  “Do whatever you want, kid. I’m not asking you to pay rent. You probably shouldn’t be out here all alone, anyway. We do get the cops in here, pretty much every day, you know.”

  I watched Willie’s eyes when he said that. He knew there was a lot more to what I’d been telling him. He wasn’t stupid.

  “It’s a cool boat,” April said.

  “For nothing?” I asked.

  Willie smiled. “Nothing, kid. I hope you make it to California. We’ll get this car fixed by tomorrow, and I’ll give you as much of a break as I can on the price. Just my cost. No labor.”

  “Why?”

  Willie grinned. “I ran away from home more than a few times. But I never got anywhere doing it.”

  So we pushed the Toyota into the garage, and I hung out at the station for a few hours helping Willie pump gas and wash customers’ windows. It was the least I could do, considering how he was willing to help me out.

  For nothing.

  April cut hair in town for a living. Maybe ten minutes after Willie and I pushed the Toyota into the service bay, she left in their truck; but she said she’d come back and pick me up after noon to take me to the boat.

  I did feel a little uncomfortable about the whole arrangement, but this was how things were going to be. I was stuck, and there was no getting around it. It was like being adrift and alone on the sea. And all I could do to calm my mind was to keep thinking about how, some way, Bosten was going to make it to Aunt Dahlia’s before me, and he would be there waiting, too, when I finally showed up.

  But I did the math.

  I still had a long way to go.

  Both of us did.

  * * *

  I washed up in the dirty restroom around the side of the station. It had one of those towel dispensers that looped a length of filthy cotton from a slot on its underbelly. I didn’t want to touch it.

  When I came out, I had my flannel unbuttoned and I’d pulled my T-shirt up out of my jeans so I could dry off my face. I had the Steelers cap in my hand and wasn’t really looking where I was going. I walked square into Willie’s chest.

  That’s when he saw my ear.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Careful, there.”

  And he grabbed my shoulders with his oilblack hands and stood me back at arm’s length. He had this look on his face like he was watching some horrible accident.

  * * *

  I am an accident.

  Do you think I don’t know that?

  * * *

  “Wow! What happened to you?”

  I fumbled with my cap, pulled it tight over my head. “Nothing happened to me. I was born this way.”

  Willie could tell I was annoyed. He backed off, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Bosten. I … um. Can you hear okay?”

  I tucked my T-shirt in and began buttoning up my flannel. “I can hear fine. Look, if you think I’m a freak or something, you and April can just let me stay in my car, like I asked.”

  “Hey. Hey now,” Willie said. “I didn’t mean anything, kid. I bet you’ve gotten enough shit about that for two lifetimes. I’m sorry. Really.”

  “Fuck it.” I was fed up. I’d had enough. I walked away from Willie.

  I just kept going, following the highway in the direction of the little town I’d seen in the distance.

  “Hey!” Willie shouted after me. But he didn’t follow.

  “Hey! Bosten!”

  A car pulled into the station when I looked back. I spit at the ground in front of me and kept walking.

  I don’t know what I was thinking. It wasn’t like I was about to walk all the way to California; and just about everything I owned in the world—a suitcase with a tag that was the only thing with my name on it and ten dollars of my money, too—was sitting in that broken-down, stolen car that was stuck at the gas station.

  I was so mad, I wanted to howl and punch somebody.

  Anybody.

  That was my fourteenth birthday.

  Just like that.

  And I was sick of all these rages that had been surging through me, because I couldn’t control them. I couldn’t control anything about myself anymore.

  Because everything had changed.

  So I kept walking until a truck pulled up slowly alongside of me, then drifted over and stopped on the shoulder of the road, right in front of my path.

  April sat behind the wheel. When she turned around and looked at me, I had this momentary fantasy of getting in the cab and sticking my tongue in her mouth. Then I started getting a boner, and that made me even more disgusted with myself. I pulled my flannel out so my shirttail would hang down and cover my crotch. I realized there was nothing nonchalant at all in my doing that, and I felt the skin on my face getting hot, because she watched me the whole time.

  She opened the door and came around to the back of the truck when she saw I had stopped walking.

  “Is everything okay, Bosten?”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Yeah.”

  “Want to get in the truck? I can take you to the boat now. If you want.”

  I couldn’t stop thinking about making out with her.

  I swallowed. “Maybe I should get my suitcase.”

  “Okay. Come on.”

  I climbed up into the cab and April flipped a U-turn across the highway.

  “You’re not mad, are you? Willie feels terrible. Sometimes he just doesn’t know what to say about things. You know, he’s … well, he’s not very mature.”

  “It’s o
kay,” I said. “I’m just stressed out about things, I guess.”

  April put her hand on my thigh.

  I desperately wanted to grab my dick. My hand gripped the armrest, and I pushed myself back in the seat, like I was being thrust forward on a roller coaster.

  “You’ll like the boat,” she said. “It’s a totally cool place to hang out.”

  Willie came up to me while I was digging my suitcase out from the backseat of the Toyota.

  “Look, kid. You gotta believe I didn’t mean anything bad. I hope you’re not bent up about this.”

  He put his hand out to me, and we shook.

  “Don’t worry about your car, man. It’s a piece of cake. As soon as I get that part for you, we’ll have it running and you’ll be in California before you even know it.”

  “Okay.”

  “April will show you around the boat. Make yourself at home. Watch TV. I’ll be around in a few hours.”

  “Willie? Um. I’m sorry about how I acted.”

  “Forget it.”

  I could forget it. That was easy enough. But I couldn’t help but feel that Willie and April had wished they’d never thought about offering help to someone like me.

  * * *

  By the afternoon on my fourteenth birthday, the sky striped flat in ribbons of chalk and slate clouds that hung so low I could almost feel the pressure and weight of them, like a ceiling of sodden sponges that I could press my hands to if I had the courage to raise my arms high enough.

  Here, the Columbia River looked more like a flat, unmoving bay, dotted with small nubbed islands that bristled with combs of gray pines. April pulled the truck off the road, steered it so the tires fit perfectly into naked grooves of mud that had been carved between the amber-burnt grasses that still hadn’t woken up from winter.

  I wondered why anyone would ever think to put a house on water here.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  Willie’s houseboat sprang up square from the blank gray mirror of the river. A white metal catwalk stretched from the grassy bank and bent down to the floating wooden dock surrounding the structure. And it looked just like a house that had been built on the water. It was two stories tall, white, with a blue roof, and a square garage door opening to a boathouse on the lower floor below a railed balcony and porch fronting the windowed living quarters above.