River Teeth

Killing Me

"In the end I'll be the one who's killing me.

It's killing me. It's killing me. It's killing me."

-The Cleansing, BUTCHER BABIES

January 2017

Kenny pulled up to the bus stop in a cloud of ice and dirt with a blue pickup truck that had a squealing belt and a rusting hood. The thing was old and ugly; smelled of McDonald's, sex, and weed (not even the "black ice" air freshener could save it) but it was reliable and that was all he needed. Taking girls out was different though. He tried to clean it up when that happened, but as soon they saw that monstrosity from 1995, it became instantly evident that all he needed, at the most, was fifteen minutes of their time. And those minutes contained no eye contact or kissing.

They were suspicious of him. His mind was always somewhere else. With someone else.

Girls: they know everything, he mused with a half-smile, staring at the only boy at the bus stop who hadn't noticed that someone had pulled up. His headphones were in and his face was craned over his phone. Dressed in all black- the Phantogram hoodie, basketball shorts, decrepit Adidas; except for his hat. The hat was red and blue, as always, it had stretched out with his head. This morning was especially stingingly cold and bitter, but he didn't so much as shiver.

Kenny rolled down his window and yelled: "Hey!"

Startled, Stan fell back a little. Realizing who it was, he took out his headphones.

"Hey, Kenny!" he grinned, "Long time, no see."

"Yeah... How are you?"

"I'm great, doing great." A lie. "How are you?"

"Good!" Another lie. "Where's your mensch on a bench?"

Stan laughed while wrapping the earbuds around his phone, "I'm gonna start calling him that now, thanks. Kyle's sick."

"Oh, that sucks," Kenny tried not to sound overly concerned, "I heard that the flu is making the rounds."

"It's not-" Stan started to say, shoving his phone in his back pocket, "It's not the flu."

Kenny shrugged, "Well, okay. Whatever. You wanna ride to school or something?"

"Um, sure. If it's okay with you."

"I wouldn't have asked if it wasn't. Get in."

"Okay. Thanks, Ken."

"Sure," he watched as Stan crossed over the front of the truck and opened the passenger door. "Don't worry about the stuff on the floor."

The black flooring was covered in old receipts, pop bottles, gas station coffee cups and various other kinds of wadded up trash that no one would care to know about.

"Oh, it's okay," Stan hoisted himself up into the seat, went to put his backpack on the floor, hesitated, then elected to keep it on his lap.

"So..." said Kenny, shifting gears while Stan fumbled with the seatbelt, "What's with the fuckboy outfit?"

"Huh?"

"A hoodie with basketball shorts? That's fuckboy culture right there. Stop stealing my culture"

Stan laughed, "Oops."

"I'm serious," but he was laughing too, doing his best to drive around the larger potholes. The last thing he needed was to have another tire pop off.

"You're gonna have to take that up with Kyle, these are his shorts."

"No wonder they look so long on you."