‘Still thinking about getting your tongue lanced?’ Boyce asked. The smoke from his cigarette cleared suddenly from a gust off the gulf that lifted my hair and dropped it forward. I twitched it out of my eyes. Boyce’s military-short hair didn’t move.
The little kids by the water threw their hands in the air and squealed, chasing each other in circles. It was hard to believe that I’d ever been that small. That young. That happy and clueless. They had pain ahead. Heartbreak. Loss. They didn’t know and I didn’t want them to – but at the same time, I hated that I hadn’t known. I’d taken everything for granted – my mother, my friends in Alexandria, playing hockey. I dreamed about the future because that’s what people persuade you to do when you’re a kid, but that’s the biggest lie of all – that you can plan. Reality is, you have no fucking clue what’s coming and neither do they.
A few weeks ago, Grandpa was teaching me to drive on Sunday afternoons. He was there every night to make dinner and buffer the sour desolation between Dad and me. Yesterday, I thought I was falling in love with Melody Dover. Now he was gone, and so was whatever ignorant, na?ve thing I’d felt for her. And I should have known better. I felt like the stupidest fuck alive because I should have known better.
‘Fuck, no,’ I answered Boyce and downed the last of my soda. ‘Lip, I think.’
Boyce made a horrified face. The guy wasn’t afraid of anything – except needles. It was kind of hilarious.
I pointed at him. ‘That right there – that’s why. Everyone who looks at it will have that reaction.’
‘So … you’re doing it to tell everyone that you’re certifiable and like pain?’
‘Okay.’ I offered my empty can and he dropped his cigarette butt into it. Boyce was inexplicably anti-litter – an odd, singular holdover from his days as a cub scout. Before his mother quit this town, his father, his brother and him. Before his dad started using his sons as punching bags, and things like scouting were no longer an option.
‘Huh. Makes a weird sort of sense. I like it.’
He got a text from Rick, who’d skimmed enough off last week’s merchandise to party tonight for free. ‘Thompson’s got molly and weed out the ass. He says bring beer. Up for it?’
‘Fuck yeah. Why not.’
How Boyce typed anything coherent with his Neanderthal thumbs was a mystery, but they flew over the surface of his phone. ‘Score. We’ve got a few hours to kill. Let’s go get your truck from the lot and get some food.’
I’d forgotten about the truck. It was alone in the school lot when we arrived, with FREAK key-carved into the driver’s door.
‘That’s it,’ Boyce said, staring at it. ‘I’m kickin’ his ass.’
I didn’t care what Clark Richards did or said to me, but my truck was an extension of my grandfather, and he’d disrespected him. ‘Get him invited tonight, Wynn.’
Boyce had an evil grin that was all too familiar from my ninth-grade memory vault – if he’d sprouted horns and a villain moustache along with it, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
‘Thatta boy, Maxfield,’ he said, thumbs flying, texting someone. ‘Consider it done.’
According to the bathroom mirror, I’d had a hell of a night. Black eye. Swollen nose. Bruised jaw. The wall clock in the kitchen said it was early afternoon, so school was officially ditched for the day. I plugged my phone in, drank a Coke, started coffee and went to take a shower while it brewed.
My ribs were sore and bruised, too, and my knuckles were scuffed raw. I smeared ointment on to everything still bloody after the soap and water, before pulling on dark grey sweatpants and a red-and-white baseball tee, wincing from the sharp pain in my side the whole time. Deep breaths were agony and coughing was worse. I weighed the possibility of a cracked rib. Head in my hands at the kitchen table, I stared into my empty mug and tried to recall how I’d got that particular injury.
When we’d gone to buy beer, our usual clerk had been out. The woman across the counter wasn’t willing to give us the benefit of a doubt that we were older than we looked. ‘Scram,’ she said, heaving the twelve-pack of Bud Light to her side of the counter. Her mouth hadn’t moved from its disgruntled, horizontal line.
In its stead, we nicked a bottle of the Jim Beam from Bud Wynn’s closet.
‘You sure about this?’ I asked Boyce, who’d be the one paying for it, one way or another.
Boyce shrugged. ‘Maybe he’ll forget he had it.’
I arched a brow. ‘Right.’ His father was one mean-assed alcoholic. And he never forgot anything.
Mateo Vega, one of Boyce’s buddies, was the first to greet us when we hit the beach. The three of us exchanged greetings, Vega tipping his chin when Boyce asked if Richards was there. ‘Yeah, man – saw him five minutes ago.’ Boyce asked something else I couldn’t hear, though I was pretty sure it had to do with whether or not his girlfriend had tagged along. Vega shook his head once. ‘But he brought a couple bros from the team,’ he warned.
‘Gotcha,’ Boyce said.
We handed the bottle to Thompson and scored enough shit to get us both seriously fucked up. ‘I don’t wanna roll until I find Richards,’ I said, unaware until I said the words that I needed to beat the shit out of him, and I didn’t want anything dulling the rage.
Ten minutes later, I got my wish. Richards was parked on a cooler with a blue cup in his hand. Once I saw him, I didn’t see anything else. Not his friends, not mine.
Boyce: You up?
Me: Yeah. Trying to remember last night. You at school?
Boyce: Yeah. Richards is out today too. Man you pounded him. I knew you had it in you but holy shit.
Me: Do I have any possibility of a cracked rib?
Boyce: Shit. Maybe. I’ll be over after school.
I poured another cup of coffee and opened the door to Grandpa’s room. It already smelled musty. Sunlight filtered through tiny gaps in the ancient metal blinds, which were rusted in a few places where the paint was scratched. Dust motes drifted in the beams, disturbed and swirling from my entry. The furniture was stripped bare – no sheets on the bed or glasses on the night table. Dad had stacked a few ledger boxes against a wall. The years were labelled in his jagged scrawl.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I could ask to move into this room instead of remaining in the pantry. Evidently, it hadn’t occurred to Dad, either.
I sat on the edge of the bare mattress and sipped a second cup of coffee, my head clearing little by little. After my fight with Boyce, Grandpa had taught me the proper way to make a fist and throw a punch.
I’d stalked straight to Richards last night and yanked him up, fisting both hands in his shirt. He dropped his cup and jerked free, stumbling back a step. If his friends moved to defend him, Boyce and Mateo convinced them to stay out of it. No one interfered.
‘W-what the fuck, Maxfield?’
I stepped closer and leaned into his space. ‘You’re a cowardly fucking *, Richards.’