I’d never wanted to be like one of those skinny kids who are dramatic about everything but I couldn’t help it. Victor was there in his old cape and he was pointing at the girls and saying that they were beautiful, now please come with us into our car outside so we can show you a good time. I stood up from our table and put my arm around his shoulders and smiled at the girls and apologised for my stupid friend. I told them that sometimes his good looks get to him and he becomes overconfident. They giggled as I pulled him away. “Alright, Victor, you’ve embarrassed us. We’re leaving.”
He looked back at the girls and gave them the finger before elbowing me. “You haven’t even eaten all your food yet,” he said again and again. He stepped onto our table, yelling at me about never having fun. Everyone was looking at us. Everyone was looking at him. “Those girls adored me. You need to have more fun. Don’t you want to have more fun?”
I ignored him. I exited the restaurant, and, as predicted, he swore at me but followed me nonetheless. His cape lightly ran along the gravel as we headed to the car. I knew Victor’s eyes were wobbling slightly because mine were wobbling slightly. Sometimes I’d find that I couldn’t walk straight, sometimes I’d find that I understood everything about the world. Most of the time there would be a loud, booming ocean wave, blanketing all the other noises that mattered.
I started the car and we headed for the road. Victor played with his sunglasses and made some comment about them that I chose not to respond to. He had his shiny paper crown on again and he adjusted it to his left as he thought about something carefully. He took my sunglasses off and swapped them with his own. “Hmm,” he said, “hmm.” He looked through my sunglasses, thinking about something. “No, no, this won’t work.” He took my sunglasses off and swapped them around again. “Both our sunnies are crap. We’re buying new sunnies.”
“We’re not buying new sunnies,” I said.
“Yes we are, you bastard!” he yelled. “Yes we are!”
I punched his arm, causing us to swerve off the road a little bit. “I would but you make a scene. You always make a scene. We can’t go anywhere without you stuffing everything up.”
He was silent for a while. His arms were strangling his chest and I knew he was thinking hard. Eventually: “So what? So what if I make a scene? Aren’t people allowed to make a scene? You used to always want to make a scene with me.”
“You’re an idiot, Victor. We’re already in trouble. Our aim is not to get in trouble.” I sighed. “I can’t believe you sometimes.” I glanced at him. He looked disappointed. “Look, driving is fun too.”
“You’re ugly,” he said, and left it at that.
The good thing about our road was that it was constant. It was boring, but I believed in it. It flowed and flowed like those pictures of waves my mother drew for us when we were kids. First, the road would take us through suburbs. Then the road would take us through some sunny highway that bore nothing but car dealership after car dealership. Then the background would become factories and storehouses, then a city, then trees, then a beach, then a small town, then a loud gap of nothing, of background and bland and colourful and fresh grass and dead grass and a shack and then more nothing, and then more nothing, and then a suburb would come around and the whole process would repeat. The scenery was a changing loop but the road was simple, it was old it was new it was there it would never end. I adored it more than anything. We’d been driving for one month.
“Park the car,” Victor said, around ten in the morning.
“No,” I said.
“Just park the car.”
“Or else what?”
“Or else the foxes will come out.”
“I’m bored of the foxes,” I said. “I’m sick of the foxes.”
