7
The Blitzkrieg Bop
============MARY============
He grabbed my hand and smiled back. It then took about two seconds for Danny to get hormonal as hell and start blushing like crazy. He tried fighting it back by clamping down his mouth. But that only lent to strengthening the corners of his jaw, sending his pressed lips into a diagonal smile, emphasizing his high cheekbones. Despite the commotion of the now stirred, rummaging crowd, as the tight mass of bodies tried inching their way out of the bar, all I could find myself paying attention to was the boldness and unexpected manliness in his eyes. It should have left the impression that he was nothing but confident, yet they still quavered nervously as they searched mine. And I'll admit, the sharpness of his brows was piercing; stunning, really. He was stupid to his own ability to seduce. But I wouldn't give in. I would never give in. Danny's eyes then abruptly left mine. Something above my head caught his attention.
"Max!" Squeegee Boy (Danny) shouted.
A boy, who weirdly looked a lot like Danny, just shorter and a little rougher, popped up through the rushing crowd. Danny dropped his mouth and began rambling as Max (with red, glazed-over eyes) halted right in front of him.
"Where were you, bro?"
Danny froze. It was only a second that they stared at each other without saying anything; Danny, dumbfounded; Max, disinterested (but there was an air of something unsettling in that second).
Max then broke his straight-faced skit and laughed. He smelled of pot and I immediately wanted to befriend him. Max looked at me, gurgled, and his eyes lit up.
"Grocery Store Girl?"
I looked at Danny. "Grocery Store Girl?"
"Grocery Store Girl," Danny confirmed.
"I'm sorry," Max said. "You're not wearing a nametag. I'll need an introduction."
"Mary."
"Max, Danny's best friend. Charmed to meet ya, Mary," he said, swiping for my hand.
Max and I spoke the same gang sign-language and did a Gilmore Park Ghetto shake. Swipe. Swipe. Bump. Bump. Up. Down. Pound; explode: "BITCH!"
Max, if maybe he exfoliated his face once in a while, was actually kinda hot.
Our squad stood by the stage and talked until the populace of the bar had filed out. We all agreed that it was not worth struggling with the crowd, and even worse, according to Danny, the parking lot.
"Dude," Max exclaimed once we were all finally walking up to Danny's Porsche. "Not a scratch, aye?"
The hood glimmered under the streetlight, showing off the sparkling metallic texture.
I then yelled, "SHOTTY!" And raced to the passenger side to grab the front seat.
"So where'd you guys go?" Max asked, getting into the back. "You missed, like, the illest show." And flicked his wrist against Danny's shoulder.
My torso snapped, twisting in my seat to face Danny. "Wait. Danny. Did you just leave your friend here?"
"Max," Danny said, ignoring my question, as we were all clicking in our seatbelts. "Check under my seat."
Max shuffled around behind us. "Dude. A Roman Candle? That's the nicest thing you could have done for me—after leaving me for two hours, dickface." Max had a snarky kinda laugh. "You owe me some serious McDick's munchies, bro."
"Oh! Danny! Yes! We need McDick's!" I exclaimed as Danny turned the key in the ignition and the car came on with the radio blasting.
In the wake of Danny spinning the volume down, Max said, "Man, you're lucky she's hot, or I woulda totally been cheesed you ditched me."
I slowly turned around, harnessing all the stank possible in a Bitch Face. His open palms flew up beside him in mock surrender.
"I'm totally just kidding, Mary. I would've thought your nose ring was super gnarly—even if you weren't a total rocket."
I tilted my chin down, applauding his obedience. Boy knew who wore the crown around here. Yeah, me. Queen Vicious, muthafucka.
While crawling out of the parking lot (which Danny had been right about, was slow as hell) me and Max annoyed him to the point where he gave into our artery-clogging cravings and drove us to the McDick's on Lockport. Seriously, when the munchies call and you're craving McDick's—that's no laughing matter.
So, yes, it was pathetic and lame, and very small-town, but for everyone from tweens getting out of the movies, to drunk college kids leaving the bar, McD's was thee place to be. It's where the after-party was at. It was a thing of beauty, let me tell ya. Fights. Hookups. Breakups. Occasionally getting booted out by security. All the kind of shit that gets talked about Monday morning.
McDick's was McJammed packed, and we all saw people we knew from high school. When I'm out, Drunk Bitches always want to be my friend. A group of 'em came up and tried kissing my ass, always, y'know, making sure to remind me of how pretty I am and wanting to hang out. Some skateboard-looking stoner dudes walked off with Max to the bathroom, but no one (from what I saw) talked to Danny.
"I'm not gonna have anything," Dan the Man said defensively, after the Drunk Bitches left me alone and I asked him if he wanted a Big Mac.
I ordered him one anyway and he ended up devouring the whole bastard. More and more kids poured in, all rowdy and drunk as hell, making all the staff fear a terrorist attack. Eventually some random dudes did say Hi to Danny as we picked at our fries in silence. Our schools didn't really party (at Saint Maria Goretti's we pretty much stayed with the North End kids) so there was a lot of Jefferson people I didn't know. Yes, my earlier accusation did, in fact, stand correct: all guys in Gilmore Park are repulsive.
"Beg my pardon, sweetie," I said, leaving Danny confused as hell when I went to con cigarettes off some stoner lacrosse dudes I knew.
Chad Stevenson and Blair Bouche. Both of them, way back in the ninth grade, tried making out with me at the Halloween dance. While I was with Chad and Blair, some gross bitch got a boner over Squeegee Boy and ran up to smother him while he was stuffing his face with fries. The cigarettes practically slid outta Blair's pockets when I started rubbing his arm, reminding him to text me with a cell phone number I no longer used.
The fries were picked down to salt and crumbs by the time Max got back from the bathroom, and that was right when the drama started. It was pretty exciting. This couple was in a major fight. What I was able to pick up on, from their shouting, was that the guy in the Aeropostale polo shirt kissed his ex-girlfriend at the bar, and her best friend saw and took a picture and showed the girl who was now crying hysterically and punching Aeropostale polo shirt guy.
Harsh.
But then things got real when some white guy apparently called a black guy the N word. Immediately they both started threatening to kill each other. Seriously, McDick's is a blast! Me and Danny were standing at the door, ready to leave, but had to wait for Max to casually order nuggets around the same time the white guy was claiming his 'boys' were gonna show. Then the black guy claimed that his 'boys' were gonna show. Why don't they ever call up their 'girls'? We're realistically crazier and more likely to get out of any police trouble. Like, they're really gonna believe that this five foot four white chick punched a six foot something black dude? Max got his nuggets and we left before anyone's 'boys' showed.
"I'm gonna take a pee out back," Danny said as we swung through the doors of McDick's, and then left to go behind the McDonald's dumpster to take his piss.
Max asked if I wanted to burn as he held a thin, freshly rolled, and delicious-smelling little joint in his fingers. Of course, I was tempted, but I politely refused.
"Danny'll have a fit," I said, and held out my Blair-acquired cigarettes instead, offering Max one in return for his charitable offer.
He gladly accepted. Then slipping the cigarettes out of my fingers, he took to lighting them by stacking both in his mouth, and then sparking with his lighter one long flame that encircled both the tips and inhaled. He rolled his lips as so the top cigarette fell, and then stretched them to the corners of his mouth. I clipped the cigarette to the left using my sexy fingers.
"Do you like 'im?" he asked, the remaining smoke flopping in his lips as I moved my hand away.
"Uh. Yeah." I wasn't prepared to answer that question, because I didn't know if I liked Danny. Like, he was annoying. "He's a cool guy," I said, brushing it off.
"He is a cool guy." Max lifted the cigarette to his mouth for another drag. And then in a smoke-clouded voice, said, "Danny and I are practically brothers," and coughed.
Before I could say anything back, Danny returned from behind the dumpster and told us that we were both disgusting. I blew smoke in his face as he walked past us to his car. I don't think he was impressed. I tossed my dart before it was finished. Only because I didn't want to smell.
Max weaseled his way into the backseat, with his smoke still in hand.
"Max!" Danny yelled, "Don't be a dick, put that out!"
Personally, I thought it was kinda funny. But Danny wasn't all that impressed.
"Oh come on, old sport!" Max jabbed his elbow into Danny's shoulder. "Y'all tired or—"
But he never finished his thought because, just then, the night's McDick's race riot suddenly got ushered out onto the street by a security guard.
The smoke from Max's cigarette filled the car.
"Dude, seriously! What the hell? Throw your cigarette out!" Danny yelled again, his eyes shifting between Max and the action broadcasted outside the windshield.
Max caved into Danny's whining and chucked his smoke out the window. I prayed a little prayer for the waste of two such good cigarettes.
Then as Danny turned the ignition and the car rumbled to life, I rolled down the window, discreetly attempting to catch a peek of the fight and instantly heard the slap and the crack of a fist to the face. Fights were nothing new to me. Growing up with Jim there was always UFC on TV, and there was practically a fight every other week at Saint Maria Goretti's. But no matter how many I'd seen, there's nothing worse than watching two guys ruthlessly beat each other. Yes, feminists, I said "guys" cuz catfights are just hilarious. The crowd, now amassed in a ring, raved and roared for the fight to go on. What the hell was that, blacks and whites fighting? A historical re-enactment? Progress in America is a lie.
The screaming and singing of police sirens like the Star Spangled Banner got louder from somewhere around the corner as we, in the getaway mobile, pulled out onto Lockport, away from the brawl. The array of red and blue lights bedazzled throughout the interior of the car in the reflection of the rearview mirrors. I spun around and saw two cop cars pull into the McDick's parking lot, and when I turned forward again, coming from the opposite direction, a vaguely familiar vehicular shape drew closer.
The discoloring of the poorly installed headlights were unmistakably those belonging to a particular 2006 Chevrolet Impala. My heart spasmed. Even though there was no reason why Danny or Tanner would recognize each other (or their passing cars) in the dark. And although I was concealed in the passenger seat, stupidly, as the cars slung by each other (both boys for that split-second divided by a mere few feet), I looked into Tanner's car.
Danny and Tanner were unaware, and normally they would be very disinterested in the other, but I sat somewhere in the middle. The common denominator in their mutuality was me. The encounter was dramatized in my mind, because before I could overthink it some more, it had gone by. In the side-mirror, I saw the 2006 Chevrolet Impala zip into the McDick's. For sure Tanner was one of the white dude's boys; as I would imagine his street-cred was a tiny bit insufficient for that of a black thug. But I was still racked up about the whole thing, because, for that second that zoomed by, someone in the backseat of Tanner's car looked directly at me. It wouldn't be long until his crew went on an egging spree of every Porsche Boxster in the city.
"So, y'all tired?" Max popped up, revisiting his words from earlier. "Danny, we should totally make Mary a fire on the beach."
And as the boys bantered about making a fire: where, whose firewood (Danny's), which beach, etc., some act of intuition (more likely a result of my overthinking apparatus) inspired me to click open the glovebox. And as it fell down over my thighs, I discovered what I goddamn knew.
"Oh, so your car won't be egged."
The boys' reactions were stalled, their eyes wide as if knowing they were busted.
"Danny—what's this?" I asked, holding up a convenient ownership paper. "Unless you're a master of grand theft auto, or you're secretly a forty-five-year-old Italian man named Rob Perrucci, you have some serious explaining to do."
Now, Max just thought that was plain hysterical and laughed to the point where it was unrealistic. Like, it wasn't that funny. There's nothing funny about lying. My inner CIA agent interrogated Danny over the vehicular-identity affair. He kept silent by saying that he Pleads the Fifth.
"So, what else did you lie about?"
"That he likes dick," Max snickered.
"Well, I like girls. So what?"
"Wait, you're lesbo?" Max asked, without any effort to hide he was hard as a rock. For real, you'd think I was the Second Cumming of Christ. Why do guys even think lesbians are hot? Leave us be. The whole point is to avoid dick.
The smell of grease seared the air as Max tore open his McDick's bag and started casually munching on his nuggets. That is where Max and I found common ground despite his immature sexism; the smell was heaven. Danny, on the other hand, scrunched his nose. He was such a rich kid.
"Mahn," Max said, chomping on a nugget. "Damn cats outta za bag. You'll be cleanin' this beaut' for Old Robbie Boy anyways. Come on, let's make a fire before Mary throws a fit."
Squeegee Boy looked at me, as if he were a kid needing a parent's approval. A fire it was.
We signaled left onto Ridgeway Avenue and took the highway onramp onto Route 306, en route to the South End of Gilmore Park to Danny's. When all agreed that we wanted to see the power of the Porsche, Danny floored the pedal, and with a bolstering thrust, we slid back against the seats. From out the windshield, the hood of the car broke against the night. Taking Exit 33, we then crawled through the city to the South End.
Beyond the tall trees that's branches stretched out across the street, sheltering the road in an infrequent archway of leaves, loomed massive houses with long, pesticide-protected, and manicured front yards. Moderately expensive cars filled the driveways, and energy conserving lights lit the professionally landscaped gardens. American flags seemed to poke out of the side of every home (it made ya feel very patriotic) it was such a typical rich kid neighborhood. Jim told me that the South End was the part of Gilmore Park where the people who owned our lives, lived theirs.
The Porsche swung onto a street named Eneleda Crescent. The homes there were smaller, and about eight houses down we disembarked onto the curb right outside what I assumed was Danny's house. It was this generic, ol' white American jalopy, the cliché kind, in the sense that it looked like what kids drew when they needed to draw the typical house. A blonde light from the garden spilled onto the siding of his house, enlarging and creating funky shapes out of the shadows of the flowers.
As the boys walked in front of me to collect firewood from the garage, I slowed my pace, taking a moment to really observe Danny's rich-kid house. I guess you can say I have a weird thing for other people's houses, the cages containing their lives. Maybe, unlike the others on his street, his house seemed less rich kid and tended only enough to ward off the appearance of neglect.
The boys stood at the garage door next to a basketball net with a worn mesh dangling from the rim and, together, yanked it up and opened Danny's garage, and that's when I saw it.
Next to Danny, bent over, sticking his ass up in the air, jeans slipping down just enough for me to read the label on the waistband of his underwear (Fruit of the Loom, by the way), collecting firewood and handing it over to Max, sat the dopest retro car.
"Danny!" I squealed. He jerked up. "This is so sick! Why didn't you tell me you drove... whatever this is?"
Jim was a retro car junkie. Back when I was a kid, every May when they closed off downtown for the car show, the old man used to take me, and I'd get bored as hell when he'd get talking to old dudes with white hair about carburetors, and V6 and V8 and fuel, and whatever guys that don't really know a lot about cars talk about.
"Oh yeah? You like it?" Danny asked as he handed another stack of firewood off to Max.
I hummed in agreement, circling the car. The paint was a deep red, almost maroon, and below the black and white racing stripes across the bottom of the doors, bold white letters read: SVO.
"What's SVO stand for?"
"Mustang SVO," he said (which didn't tell me much).
"Danny, I'm trippin'," I murmured, mostly to myself, peering in through the window at the leather and cloth interior. "It's so tacky." A blue air-freshener dangled from the rearview mirror. "I love it."
"Well, it's not really my car. It's my dad's. But thanks."
Maybe I was so impressed because in my head, I was expecting a 2006 Chevrolet Impala. Maybe. But this baby was straight from, like, the nineties.
"Can we take this sweet sex pistol out? Like, will your dad care?"
"N-no. He won't."
Danny snatched the keys from a hook in the garage and fired his baby up. The engine mumbled first with anticipation, and then burst to life with a galactic tremor, impossibly loud in the tiny garage. Then the taillights blinked and the canvas of the headlights melted off the wall of the garage as he reversed onto his driveway. The air stunk with the nostril stuffing and head-numbing smell of fuel that we all secretly love.
"God," I said, as I squeaked in through the door of the coupe into the back seat. "This makes you such a hipster."
Defensively, Danny began denying the hipster accusation, and then the car shook as Max slammed the trunk of firewood closed.
"It smells musky as hell in here," I said.
Danny scrunched his nose in his own version of The Bitch Face.
"I love it! I swear. I'm not making fun."
Max got in the passenger seat as Danny, facing forward, uttered, "Fine then." And then abruptly swung his hand out—Max quickly ducked—to swap the sunvisors down. He then cranked a latch on both sides, and pressed a button next to the lights. The roof let go of its grip on the windshield, and the electric motor whined as the soft-top fell back, clicking in fanfolds and exposing us, inch by inch, to the atmosphere of the night. Though it only took a matter of seconds, the anticipation stretched out time, and when the final fold fell back into the crevice behind the backseat headrest, like two pieces of a locket snapped in place, the night felt complete.
The boys had decided that the fire would take place at Carraway Beach. Having long since chilled out from the beach-day bullshit of earlier, Carraway was now a lot quieter; only the college kids still going strong in The Alley elicited a noise complaint. As we trekked down the boardwalk, the child-molesting sounds of an organ grew louder. The boys informed me that it was none other than Lunatic Larry (a Danny-original nickname). Apparently, he was some cracked-out old guy (Max's words), who set up his organ every night (never said Hi), and played creepy old carnival songs 'til dawn.
After a few failed attempts at lighting a fire that burned through all of our McDonald's garbage, Max ran to a recycling dumpster and brought back an unnecessary amount of newspaper. He was very particular about setting up our fire Teepee style.
Having kicked off my shoes, my bare feet exposed, I sat next to Danny on the deck of a lifeguard tower, digging my toes into the sand, and watched as Max attempted to tame the roaring pile of flaming newspaper. After reaching some level of embarrassing failure, he announced that he was going to fire off his Roman Candle. Leaving Danny and I alone. We both watched Max cross the beach, and then climb a nearby pile of rocks that the waves crashed against and then exploded into mist.
We sat in what shortly became a familiar silence. Me and Danny hadn't talked, alone, since before the concert, before we ran through The Alley. He nudged closer to my seat. The crest of the fire spun with an abrupt change in the wind, igniting a piece of wood to spontaneously burst into crackling sparks. After a shared, "Whoa!" at the sudden shock, I could feel his eyes looking to connect with mine. I consciously ignored this. I could feel the burning in his cheeks, the heavy ringing in his chest, so as he began rolling through the words, "So earlier—"
I injected: "Yeah! That shit at McDick's was cray!"
"Uh, yeah. But, um—" He was cut off by the sound of a long whistle, like a scream, as the first green fireball shot from Max's firework into the sea. Next, a pink blast tore through the sky, its reflection streaking the rippling black waves below. Max jumped back with each burst like he was shooting a rifle. Danny took the second between the blasts to say, "What I was going to say was—"
"Oh! Our fire's dying!" I cried, jumping to my feet.
Another whistle from the rocks—a blue shot went soaring over the water and Max yelled something indistinguishable. I grabbed a stack of flyers from the pile sitting on the sand and chucked them into the fire. A loose page on fire flapped open in the wind. I shrieked and skidded back to my seat next to Danny. He tried talking again, but another firework cut him off, and I told him I was cold to shut him up. What Squeegee Boy did next was ridiculous. He took off his nineties jean jacket and began wrapping it around my shoulders like a blanket.
"Danny, you don't—"
A pink blast screamed across the sea as he waved his hand in front of my face, which somehow silenced me, and also made me kind of want to punch him. He leaned his lips into my face. I flinched. But he only came up to my ear to whisper: "Look who's stuck in the nineties now."
If there is one thing I hate with guys, it's cheeseball. But Danny was just so cheeseball it wasn't even worth arguing with. So, I reached for the lapels and snugged his jacket closer around me. What? It was warm.
Squeegee Boy gave up trying to talk. Substituting conversation for silence, we alternated between watching the colorful waves roll in, and watching the fireworks scorch the black sky. While watching the pretty colors, my head nodding up and then down, I could feel his unsure glances falling on and off of me. But I kept my gaze fixed on the pyrotechnic show happening before my eyes. The frequency and volume of the blasts shut out the idea of talking. He wanted answers, I know, I know, but I didn't want to give them.
With one final blue burst above us, Max's arsenal of fireworks was finally emptied. A dense brownish smoke hung in a thin cloud above the ocean, which now sounded comparably softer than before. Then, out of nowhere, Danny decided he could force conversation out of me by saying the gayest thing of all.
"The stars are nice."
"Are they?" I laughed. I could tell behind his eyes, in his artsy little mind, he was trying to capture me.
"What do you think of the stars?" he pressed.
"What do I think of the stars?"
"No, no. Don't make fun."
"I'm not making fun. Just, like, what do you mean?"
He paused, and then tilted his cheek cupped in his hand. "I'm not really sure. Tell me anything."
He shifted his eyes down, locking with mine.
"I'm not too sure either," I answered. "I don't really think about that sort of thing. Don't all of our horoscopes, and, like, mood swings and chances of winning the lottery and shit, have to do with the stars? Like, the app on my phone is freakishly accurate. It's never let me down. So, like, something must be legit?"
"Oh, come on. I'm not talking about a stupid phone app!"
And like our fire that grew immense and hot as it scorched through the flyers, and then dissolved and quickly died, so burnt out our conversation about stars. And I, for one, didn't really care. Like, what the actual hell. Who actually talked like that? No one that I knew of, that's for sure. I could so tell Danny was just trying to relive, reinterpret, some scene from a cheesy-ass movie where the broad sucks his dick right after he points out some life-changing, hippie-crap thing about the stars.
Something in me needed to tear him apart for trying to pull that bullshit on me. Anyone who's just so whimsical about life and shit annoys the living hell out of me.
I kept grinding my shoulder along its blade, trying to massage out the tension that seemed to strap my back the angrier I got, waiting for him to say one more stupid thing so I could ridicule and rip him and his stupid beliefs apart. But he stayed silent.
Eventually I peeked over. He twisted his body away from mine as if he were disgusted.
"Okay let me check the app," I said. "Let's see what these fuckers—" I glanced up at the sky, "—have to say. Let's see if we're compatible."
I whipped out my phone and read aloud what I typed.
"Okay. Sagittarius woman...Virgo man...."
But as I clicked to find out if Danny would get a second kiss or not, Max came skidding up the beach, kicking sand everywhere, smelling like gunpowder.
"Dude, that was sick."
I clicked my phone off.
From within the pile of burnt flakes and dimming embers, another super-fire came ablaze when Danny and Max dumped in the rest of the recycling paper. Each of us sat on unused blocks of wood that we'd brought closer to the super-fire to stay warm, and found things to continually talk and laugh about. At one point, I even asked Danny if he wanted his jacket back. With his arms crossed, he shook his head No.
"Umm, Hysterical Girlfriend and Aeropostale Polo Shirt are having makeup sex right now," Danny said, as we all went around, telling our version of what happened to the McDick's fights. "And realistically, the cops broke up the N-word brawl, and all of their 'boys' were busy doing other things so no one showed and they just went home."
"I don't think so, dude," Max piped up. "I betcha like four of 'em got shot and now there's like a major gang war."
"No way." I corrected both of those idiots. "Hysterical Girlfriend totally ended up getting revenge and hooked up with her ex. And the cops got there and tried breaking up the creed of the street, so the gangs joined forces and are now warring with the cops," I said, then took a swig of my water bottle.
"That's really cute, Mary," Max mocked.
So I shot him the finger.
Max lit a cigarette of his own and offered me one. I looked at Danny for approval. He shrugged, so I took the smoke. The drag felt a little underwhelming, lacking the fulfillment my lungs ached for. But it was when I took another hard drag, burning through half the smoke, that from out of nowhere Danny lunged his arm out.
"Let me try that." He grabbed the cigarette out of my hand without approval, clipped it like a joint, and took a drag. He ended up coughing until he gagged, spitting out a giant wad of saliva.
"Pussy," Max said.
"Screw you," he croaked.
Max went on about some gossip he heard concerning some investor people, who were talking to the city about buying downtown Carraway Beach and the boardwalk, so that they could demolish it to build a condo and some beach club or some shopping thing.
"Oh, that's ridiculous," Danny said. "They're not—no. There's no way they could demolish The Alley."
"Yeah, Max," I piped in, and took another drink outta my water bottle. "Like, the boardwalk is lame as hell, but Gilmore Park would literally be nothing without it."
Which was true. Gilmore Park is Carraway Beach. Without it, the entire city would just be plazas, used car dealerships, and, like, random stretches of gravel parking lots. And tons of drifting crackheads.
Danny, then kicking an outcast piece of wood deeper into the fire, said, "Yeah, like, The Alley's awesome. It's like, the only actual cool thing around here. Wouldn't even be fair if they ripped it out before we're twenty-one."
A glob of spit was drooling out from Max's lips when he blurted, "Oh, pfft—don't gimme that." The red and glowing bud of his cigarette swung through the dark as he went to take a drag. "Danny, you gon be in Cali, bro. What the hell do you care what happens to this shithole?"
"Wait," I interrupted. "I'm confused. Danny, you're going to California?"
Then Max butting in, said, "Yeah don't worry, Mary. I just found out too."
"Oh, Danny, that's sick. Yeah?"
Expressionless and looking down at the sand, Danny said, "Yeah. But, um, yeah—I don't think Carraway Beach is gonna get torn down."
From under the shadow of the firelight crossing Max's eyes, he looked up at Danny. "It's true man." He resumed poking the burnt flakes of newspaper with a stick. "They're gonna bulldoze this whole place. Just you won't be here to see."
The flames crackled. A block of wood fell and crashed in a small firework of embers. I took a swig of my water bottle.
Gradually, the heavy air that settled on our squad lifted, blown completely over when one of the boys made a joke about their manager at work, and the flow of our relentless conversation resumed. Max got up and claimed that now he had to "piss" (boys, I swear—) and in that brief absence, Danny asked for my number. By pure accident, I automatically recited the number I currently used, not that inactive one.
Max returned and we talked until the fire burnt out. I kept my eye on the last flame until it dipped out of sight and arose in a twirling smoke from out of the ashes. Since it had taken us so long just to start the fire, we didn't bother putting out the embers. It was fine.
The Mustang whipped back down Route 306, exited onto Brigham Road in the South End, and then drove through the suburbs to Max's townhouse complex.
Throughout my simplistic, welfare-stricken life, I had only really come across two sorts of people in Gilmore Park: rich and poor. And if you weren't in one of those distinct categories, you got away best with a bungalow that maybe lucked out with a flower garden. So when Danny's Horsy (cuz a Mustang's a horse, right? Oh, better yet, it's a pony) —So when Danny's Pretty Pony came in loud and thrumming into Max's townhouse complex, there wasn't a contest in deciding what category Max fell into. If Gilmore had a ghetto, we were in it. Not that I'm judging or anything, cuz I'm like, Queen Ghetto, after all.
The Pretty Pony crawled over what felt like an endless series of speed bumps before coming to a halt beside Max's driveway at the end of the street.
"Dude," Max said, leaning in from the backseat, his hands gripping the headrests. "See ya tomorrow?"
"Yeah, man. I'll call you."
Max got out of the car by hopping over the open convertible side, and when he landed, turned to me and said, "Later, alligator."
Cuz I'm Queen Vicious, I guess? I responded fashionably with, "In a while, crocodile."
Max ran up the driveway, took the stairs in one leap, and disappeared into his house. Teenage boys just fascinate me. They're so strange.
"He's a cool guy, Danny."
"You think so?"
"Yeah."
Danny then asked me if I wanted to go home. I checked the time, and told him not quite yet. "That's good," he followed up with, a half-smile slipped on his lips. You could tell he thought he was so smooth. Using his fingers, Squeegee Boy combed the underside of his bangs to fan them out, and then drove away.
As we crossed back over the speed bump that anchored the entranceway of Max's semi, we got in a little squabble about what to do next.
"Gawd, Danny, why do I always have to come up with the brilliant ideas?" I complained while he flicked the indicator, looking left then right. "Let's just go on a drive? Actually, yes. Let's do that. You know what, actually? Play me some of your favorite music and just drive," knowing that would light Squeegee Boy up like a Sears flyer set on fire.
Without any hesitation, he plugged his phone into the dashboard's auxiliary and put on his Oldies playlist; he liked a lot of the same music as Jim.
Not long after we began driving, the gaslight blinked. I bugged him about getting us stranded. After crossing over the Delaware Road Bridge in the South End, we passed a Mobil gas station.
"Why aren't you stopping there?" I asked.
"Because there's a cheaper gas station that my mom wants me to use."
"Your mom pays for your gas?"
"Yeah. My mom gives me this Emergency Credit Card for gas."
"Your mom gives you a credit card?"
I'd never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. Danny defended his spoiled life by claiming that the 'Emergency Credit Card' was only for gas and, well, emergencies. We got on the 306 at the Lockport on-ramp and escaped north out of town. Some miles later, we got off the highway and drove to County Line 55. Silhouettes of indistinguishable farmland lay on both sides of the long, dark, and relatively deserted road. And in the distance, a brightly illuminated gas station stood out like a beacon in the night.
The Mustang rolled into the gravel parking lot (I told you it's all gravel lots) and Danny told me to wait in the car as he paid with the ECC (Emergency Credit Card, for those of you who are a tad slow and didn't pick up on my brilliantly crafted acronym).
Bored as hell, waiting for Danny to remember his pin, I began reading all the writing on the fuel pump, and once I educated myself on the prices of fuel, I looked out to the bank of the road and read the sign staked into the grass:
Express Route 16 to I-67 West.
Obedient to New Jersey gas laws, the gas station attendant walked out with Danny, filled the Mustang up, grunted for a tip, and then we bolted back onto the road, rerouting our drive, opting out of the highway in favor of the scenic route that hugged the coast.
The southbound excursion back to Gilmore Park took us through a brief detour of the swampy Jersey Meadowlands. The marshes growing out of the deep ditches were so tall it nearly convinced me that Squeegee Boy had driven us straight into the mud. And as we drove, relentlessly chasing the glowing tunnel the highbeams cut on the lane and on the high reeds around us, the rolling wind swarmed the roofless car. Playing with the blowing ends of my hair that tickled my face. But it was when I pulled the elastic band from around my wrist to prevent my hair from becoming a disastrous mess, and funneled it between my hands, that Danny reached over and touched my arm.
"Just try it," he said.
And before I could even ask what he meant, Danny tilted his head back outside the door of the car. The force of the wind blasted the hair off of his forehead, revealing his hidden face again. So, as we drove through the swampy and winding road, where the crickets were louder than the music Danny played, my head fell back between the headrest and the door, and I let the wind blow back my hair. Having lived a lifetime with a lioness's mass of a mane, there was such an unfamiliar weightlessness I felt in that moment. And sealing my eyes shut against the wind seemed to enhance my other senses. Suddenly the wallowing mask of the racing breeze was all I could hear, and the balmy aquatic air was all I could smell.
Danny didn't exist. Neither did his music. Or his Mustang. Call it an out-of-body experience, maybe, but that's what it felt like.
Something then inspired me to open my eyes to the night sky, to the blue and white stars shining fiercely above. My long hair lashed out and upwards as if trying to touch them.
With the Meadowlands coming to an end at the county line, I could see in the distance where the coast swallowed in at Danae's Bay. The moonlight threw a vague path onto the water that flowed into the inlet. It really amazed me to see how much more there was to the shore that rolled on south for countless miles. I looked down to the rushing road, watching as the right headlamp devoured the road line, and thought about how my entire world, the neighborhood streets, the encased homes, the patches in the pavement, could all be driven by on the highway in a second.
===========DANNY===========
The night had long since crawled over the threshold of midnight and into the infant hours of morning. By then, the after-hour pursuers, the drunkards, and the agents of speed had all cleared the roads. We owned the city, we owned the night. Our only adversary, the occasional red light. I had driven down those streets a hundred times before, and would a hundred times again, but there must have been something in the air that night that made them feel brand new. If I had to guess, some invisible mist composed of diesel and stardust put a spell on those dumpy streets. Making me, for the first time in my life, sort of glad I was from Gilmore Park, New Jersey.
I was all too aware that I never really participated in the moment that was happening. My mind was always reconstructing the past, imagining the future, or playing pretend in the present. People and places were always losing themselves to my imagination. Losing their true identities so that they could elaborate the story I wanted to tell. Such as that night had. That night must have held something in its hands that Mary and I were both secretly looking for—and maybe it didn't really matter who was beside us in that car. Maybe it only mattered that we weren't alone.
I'm not sure who decided the night was over, maybe neither of us did; maybe I was too eager to go home to lose her to lyrics and to chords on the guitar.
Telephone wire shadows continuously rolled over the dashboard as we drove through the narrow streets of Danae's Bay as Mary, again, guided me through the maze of one-way streets and fire lanes. And again, as I pushed down the brake pedal at the Fisherman's Alley stop sign, she told me to stop the car.
"Can I walk you to your door?"
The pleasant expression on Mary's face dropped back down to that of The Bitch Face.
"Why would you do that?"
"Oh. I dunno."
Mary tilted her head back against the headrest, highlighting the roundness of her cheek all the way down to the narrow dip of her chin before looking at me. "You can open my door, if you'd like."
Taking every opportunity to fulfill any romantic expectation––anything to reaffirm that the night was more than just a drive around town––I got out of the car. And as I circled the hood to her door, I could smell under the breeze of the salty air the faint sweetness from a flower garden. And as Mary stepped out of the car, the line of her shin caught the same light that colored the tops of the rustling leaves.
Mary clutched my jean jacket tighter around her shoulders, and then rolling in her lips like how waves roll back to sea, her eyes dipped with the colors of the midnight sun fell large and black and bewildering on mine. For the first time, I was able to look at Mary without any words, without any interruptions. Her beauty struck me as something new, all over again. The composition of her face concurred with a set of rules symmetry recognized, blossoming a rare harmony; a quintessence typically reserved for the glory of nature.
"So," I said, stretching my thumbs around my belt loops. "Earlier—"
"Yeah! Your car is awesome."
"Mary, I'm not talking about my car."
"Okay."
"I'm talking about—"
"Danny, I'm glad I met you. You're a great friend," Mary said with a smile and then ran off through the ringed beam of the orange streetlight, disappearing around the corner, vanishing into the night.
"Hey, Mary, wait!" I yelled down Fisherman's Alley, listening, waiting for her reply. But this time, Mary did not come back.
=========Author's Note===========
Thank you for reading this chapter of "Some Place Better Than Here"!
Writing this book certainly wasn't easy by any means. It was an honest-to-God from the bottom of my heart labour of love. And so, if the writing has touched you in anyway, please share your thoughts in the comments or vote on a chapter that you particularly liked!
Sharing a little bit of love back really helps me grow my platform as a writer so I can continue to publish great works for you and I both to enjoy !
Also, if you enjoyed SPBTH please check out my latest project "The Roar of Andora," a explorative fantasy that will be told over a three-part anthology.
https://www.wattpad.com/611263651-the-roar-of-andora-book-one-prologue-the-boy-king
Thank you for reading "Some Place Better Than Here"!
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