“Should I try to make it all the way there without braking?” I asked Jonathan.
“Yeah!” Jonathan yelled from the backseat.
Last year it was a thing everyone was doing—going nowhere slowly. The rules were simple: You’re never allowed to come to a complete stop, so if you see a yellow or red light ahead, you have to glide toward it infinitesimally, enraging everyone behind you. That’s the real test, sustaining your resolve in the face of fury. Sometimes you’re going an inch a minute, but as long as you’re still moving, you’re in the game. Before I got good at it, I’d end up almost a third of the way through an intersection before it mercifully turned green, Ellie laughing and slapping at my arm the whole time. The cops couldn’t understand why every high schooler was suddenly rolling stop signs.
“Great,” said Ellie, beside me. “Tell me again why I relinquished the right to drive my own car?”
“J-Dawg, this might be the most important lesson of dating. The guy should always drive.”
“Oh, shut up,” Ellie said.
“Why?” asked Jonathan.
“He thinks women are bad drivers,” Ellie explained, and snorted.
“That’s horrible. I would never think that. I think Asians are bad drivers,” I said, and she swatted the back of my head. “Ow.”
“So if I’m dating a white girl, does she drive or do I drive?” said Jonathan, perplexed.
“Go with your gut instinct,” said Ellie. “If she says, ‘Should I try to make it all the way there without braking?’ you should drive.”
“I’ve mastered no braking,” I assured them both. “I’m better at it now.”
And I was. It was beautiful. We coasted all the way to Palm Valley Mall without slowing; every traffic light rooted me on and smiled down at me. I gauged exactly when the lights were about to turn green, timed it to perfection, and coasted through each intersection at the right moment, sliding by the cars on either side of us without pause. Each time, raucous cheering from my passengers rewarded me. I knew it was dumb, but I felt like a god.
If I were allowed to freeze parts of an evening, thaw them out, and relive them later, the drive to the cinema on that Wednesday night in January would be on the list.
Ellie patted my shoulder. “Your finest ride by a long shot.” I glanced at her and she smiled at me. My chest expanded, filling me with helium and lifting me to the roof.
“Perfect ten?” I asked. Rate me. Love me again.
“Hmm … 9.9999. And here we are,” Ellie responded.
I pulled in front of the cinema and handed Jonathan the tickets. “I’ll park, you guys get in line.”
Blood of Mars wasn’t on the same popularity level as Star Wars or Matrix, but the crowd for the sneak preview was substantial enough that we needed a strategy to secure good seats together.
When I met up with them in line, Ellie took the reins.
“J-Dawg, play up your vulnerability. Say ‘Excuse me’ to people and run like hell to the front. I’ll take the left side, and babe”—she caught herself—“Charlie, you take the right.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” I saluted.
She unzipped the inside pocket of her fleece and discreetly handed Jonathan his Nerds. “Your contraband-slash-fuel. When the time is right. Godspeed.”
Jonathan didn’t need fuel, but he tore open the package and chugged.
“He’s been really stressed about next year,” Ellie murmured to me.
“About starting eighth? Why?”
“Because he’s probably starting ninth instead, remember? He likes the idea of skipping ahead, but he’s terrified he won’t find a group to run with. That’s why I was talking to Fred the night of the party; I need him to help get Jonathan into Debate. In fact, they’re hanging out tomorrow morning at school so Jonathan can meet some lincoln-douglases before next year.”
I swallowed, aware again how insane I must have looked that night, accusing her of dating Fred when she was just trying to look out for her brother.
“They’d be stupid not to take him,” I said.
Jonathan stared at us. Ellie pulled me aside and said in a lower voice, “Jonathan thinks no one will want a thirteen-year-old in their group. He thinks he’ll be stuck without anyone to protect him.”
Her smile was sad. It was useless for her to ask me to help the kid; he wasn’t built for sports. We slipped into silence. The line behind us snaked around the side of the building. Five minutes until liftoff.
“So how was the choir showdown at the luxurious Pomona Hilton over New Year’s?” I said.
“It was okay.”
“I heard West Side Story Maria almost wrested control from Sound of Music Maria,” I said. “What happened?”
“Besides our usual whipped-cream fights in the hotel room?”
“Don’t tease,” I said, and grinned.
“Yeah, they had a falling out. Again. They’ve been competing for the spring solo, but I think it was more than just a résumé race. They’ve been at each other’s throats about something, but no one really knows what. At least, I don’t. I thought they made up at the party on Sunday, though. They seemed closer, or whatever.”
“How do you mean?”
She half shrugged. “If you’d been there later on, you’d know what I mean.”
I decided not to push. I didn’t really want her thinking too much about my behavior at the party.
“Bridget didn’t seem too torn up about the overdose. Like she thought West Side Story Maria deserved it or something,” I said.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, Bridget’s kind of a sociopath,” said Ellie.
“You are correct,” I said.
“I tell you one thing … of all the girls likely to overdose on anything, let alone acid, West Side Story Maria was the last on the list. It wasn’t like her at all.”
“Her parents and the sheriff’s department think someone forced her.”
“Has to be. But when? We were within sight of each other all night. She started acting loopy when I left, but before that everyone was having fun, playing stupid party games. Why so many questions, detective?”
“I keep thinking—the last thing she saw before the hospital was the inside of my car. It was part of her night—it’s this weird connection between us. I want to know what happened to her.”
Time was up.
We reached the ticket taker, secured our stubs, and split up, dashing in our respective directions.
Jonathan managed to grab three seats about two-thirds of the way down, a little closer than I would’ve liked, just off center, but still good, considering. He spread his arms crucifixion style to protect the seats on both sides of him, but that wouldn’t do. I wanted to sit next to Ellie.
Ellie and I reached him from opposite directions at about the same time and exchanged high fives over his head.
Jonathan’s gaze was locked, in increasing horror, on the tall man coming up the aisle in the row ahead of us. “No, no, no,” he whispered. There was no escape now; people had filled in all the spots surrounding us.
If this dude sat in front of Jonathan, he would block Jonathan’s view of the entire screen. Frack, he’d block anyone’s view. I acted quickly, dipping down and pouring half my bottled water on the seat in front of Ellie.
“Charlie!” she cried.
The tall man reached the “ruined” seat. “Oh my gosh, watch out, don’t sit there,” I said, dripping with concern for my fellow man. “Someone spilled soda on it.”
He looked at me, surprised by my generosity. “Wow, thanks.” He moved one more seat.
I pulled Jonathan behind the now-empty one. “Best seat in the house.”
Jonathan smiled. He was probably the only person in the theater with an unencumbered view.
“And I’ll take this one,” I said, seating myself behind Tall Guy, and next to Ellie.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Because I don’t care about the movie.”
“So why’d you come?”
She looked lost, and a bit upset. “I don’t know. Let me pay you back for our tickets.”
“No, I wanted to treat you guys. I promised Jonathan a long time ago …”
“I’m not sure I can do this,” she said, fiddling with her hands.
I gently pulled them into mine. “Do what?”
“Be with you, and not be with you. If I have fun tonight, I’ll want to get back together, and I don’t know if that’s the right thing for us.”
“Like, as individuals on some kind of path?” I said, rolling my eyes.
“I thought it would hurt less to break up now rather than later. I was wrong.”
“So you were going to break up with me at the end of the year no matter what?” I said, my voice rising. Did it always come back to graduation and college? Where the fuck had she applied that it would be impossible to stay together?
“No! No—that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“A lot of people drift apart after high school, Charlie. I’m not saying we would have for sure, but—it must have crossed your mind, too?”
Of course it had. It had crossed my mind since our first date. Before we’d even said good night, I was trying to figure out how I would possibly hold on to her.
“It’s just one movie,” I said, monotone. “Your brother’s with us.”
She insisted on giving me a twenty-dollar bill. I closed my hand around hers.
The first preview started. I couldn’t see shit and I didn’t care. I focused all my attention on Ellie’s hand. The movie was only eighty-three minutes, and the one review I’d read said even that was too long.
“How come we almost never went to the movies when we were dating?” I whispered.
“Because you don’t talk if you go to the movies. You just sit there, zoned out.”
TV bored Ellie, and most films annoyed her. She only liked weird films or foreign films. It didn’t have to be good, it just had to be unpredictable. The rare times we’d watched TV at my house or her house, it was with the volume down so we could do all the character voices ourselves. “What you say will be more interesting,” she told me once.
She was always delighted when I found some obscure listing in the paper; she liked crashing meetings for documentary screenings, free art shows, or strange political party offshoots. It was a game, a challenge, to take her to things no one else our age would care about doing, like visiting the Exotic Feline Conservation Center in Rosamond.
Mom once found me in the kitchen at one in the morning in a panic, flipping through the newspaper’s arts section, looking for something cool to do with Ellie on our date. Mom urged me to go to bed, said it “shouldn’t be so hard,” and that if Ellie cared more about what we did than whom she was with, it wasn’t fair to me. Over breakfast, having clearly been briefed by my mother on the situation, Dad chimed in, “When you’re with the right person, you could go grocery shopping and it would still be fun.”
What they didn’t understand was the rush I felt when I’d successfully surprised Ellie; the smile she wore just for me. (And seriously, when’s the last time Mom and Dad frolicked through the frozen-food aisle together?)
“There’s something nice about not being able to talk during a movie, though.”
I caressed her fingertips in tiny circles, one by one. I traced patterns on her palm, wanting her to know her fortunes belonged to me, included me. I was going to make her remember exactly how good I could be.
After about fifteen minutes of all my best moves, she leaned over and licked my ear. It was just a tiny swipe along the shell, but it drove me crazy.
“I don’t want this to be our last date,” she whispered, and her breath was cool and shivery along my skin where she’d licked me.
I’m so thirsty, I wanted to whisper back.
We fumbled our way out of our seats and out of the theater into the lobby. I pushed her against the wall and kissed her neck, working my way up the smooth column of her throat, along her jaw, across her cheek, and finally to her lips. She clutched my hair, encouraging me to go harder, faster, higher. I flashed through a dozen memories of making out with her in the days and weeks and months past, in the school hallway (“Get a room,” people griped, oh so originally), in my car, in her bedroom, on the floor, on the couch, and then I stopped and forced myself to focus on this moment, this reality, which was a thousand times better than anything last fall because it was happening now; she was making soft moans I almost couldn’t hear, so soft they were more like vibrations under the surface. She clutched my arms, either pushing me away or pulling me in; I wasn’t sure.
“Damn,” Ellie murmured when we came up for air. “You know that thing I was afraid of? It’s happening.”
My fingers traced the skin just under her shirt at the waistband of her jeans. Her lips were red from the force of my kisses. It was way prettier than any waxy lipstick could ever be.
We reluctantly walked back inside the theater.
When the movie ended, we stood in the lobby again, feeling awkward around each other. Jonathan exited the bathroom and looked at the big clock on the wall above the movie schedule. “It’s still early. Can we see it again?”
“But it’s not a surprise anymore; you already know the twists and turns. It’ll pale in comparison,” said Ellie.
“No it won’t!”
“You know why you want to see it again? Because you want to feel the way you felt the first time, before you knew what would happen.” She looked right at me as she said this. “You don’t care about the movie—you care about how you felt, when it was new.”
“Sometimes it’s better the second time around,” I offered, grasping at straws. Had I lost her again, before I’d really gotten her back?
“I just want to see the car go off the bridge one more time,” said Jonathan, looking between us like we were crazy. “But whatever, maybe someone’ll post it to YouTube.”
We pulled up to my house, and I didn’t want to try to mack in front of the kid so I squeezed Ellie’s hand, and said, “Give me a second with J-dawg?”
I opened the car door for him and motioned for him to follow me a few feet away.
I knew exactly how I was going to get the flash drive out tomorrow. The best part was, Ellie would help me.
I handed Jonathan the twenty dollars she’d given me: redistribution of wealth. “I need you to swipe Ellie’s jacket tonight, the fleece she’s wearing now, and take it to the high school tomorrow morning for your meeting with Fred. When you’re done, drop it in the lost and found.”
“Why?”
“It’s kind of a secret, but I’ll explain later. Do you accept the mission?”
He smiled. “Accepted.”
We shook hands, and I knew I could trust him. Or at least my twenty dollars could.
They drove away, and I walked to my front door. My footsteps triggered the porch light, revealing Ryder curled up in a ball beside the creosote bushes. He had a black eye and a blood-smeared mouth, and he looked about two seconds away from passing out.
THE TRUTH ABOUT RYDER
I HELPED RYDER UP AND LED HIM INTO THE HOUSE. HE weighed a ton. His arm was like an anchor around my neck, dragging me down. We half wobbled, half crawled to the living room couch.
Mom gave him a frozen bag of peas for his eye, some water, and a couple Tylenol. She wanted to call the sheriff’s department, but Ryder begged her not to, so she didn’t; no judgment, no questions asked.
Mom always had a soft spot for Ryder. It was almost like she respected him for surviving his life, respected his ability to withstand circumstances her own son would never have to worry about. She’d never let me get away with the things Ryder did, because she knew I’d never be forced to do them, and I think a small part of her disliked me for it.
We all agreed he should spend the night.
I put a pot of coffee on.
Ryder looked worse in the accusatory light of the kitchen; accusatory toward me, in par
ticular. I had a feeling this night had been a long time coming, and just because I’d preferred to avoid it, and just because I’d sworn up and down to Ellie that Ryder was a good guy, didn’t mean I didn’t know something was seriously wrong and had been since freshman year. The light in the kitchen was about to reveal all and I couldn’t close my eyes against it.
His face had been bludgeoned, and his nose looked like it’d been moved half an inch to the left. Dried blood matted down his hair, sticking it in strands to his neck. It made me think of an animal I’d seen on the freeway, struggling to make it to the side of the road after being hit by a car.
“What happened?” I said, once Mom stopped helicoptering and left for her bedroom, telling us to call her if we needed anything.
“If you couldn’t unlock the window tonight, all you had to do was let me know.” His voice was low and his words were garbled, as though he had rocks in his mouth.
Jesus. “I’m sorry, man. I just forgot. I completely forgot.”
“Whatever. I’m only here to find out about the soccer game, then I’ll go,” Ryder told me. He sounded slow and clogged, like he had a cold, but worse. Maybe blood and snot had mixed up there.
His face was painful to look at. Even though I was afraid of the answer, I asked, “Who did this to you?” but he didn’t reply. Maybe that’s why I’d asked; I knew he wouldn’t tell me, and then I wouldn’t have to do anything about it.
I opened my wallet. “Here, at least take back your cash. I’m really sorry, man.”
Ryder scoffed at the money, knocking it out of my hands. “Don’t be sorry. Just tell me what the deal is,” he said. “I need to know what’s going down on Friday. Right now.”
“I can’t throw the game,” I said.
High and Dry Page 12
