Instead of throwing it at the Mitsubishi, however, Gansey sighted a line toward the distant Volvo. He hurled it, high and graceful and true. Heads curved up to watch its progress. A voice from the crowd shouted, “Woop Woop, Gansey Boy!” which meant that at least one member of the Aglionby crew team was present. A moment later, the bottle landed just short of the Volvo’s rear tires. The simultaneous breaking of the glass and explosion made it seem as if the Molotov cocktail had sunk into the ground. Gansey wiped his hand on his pants and turned away.
“Good throw,” Kavinsky said, “but wrong car. Proko!”
Prokopenko handed him another Molotov cocktail. This one Kavinsky pressed into Ronan’s hand. He leaned close — too close — and said, “It’s a bomb. Just like you.”
Something thrilled through Ronan. It was like a dream, the sharpness of all this. The weight of the bottle in his hand, the heat from the flaming wick, the smell of this polluted pleasure.
Kavinsky pointed at the Mitsubishi.
“Aim high,” he advised. His eyes glittered, black pits reflecting the small inferno in Ronan’s grip. “And do it fast, man, or you’ll blow your arm off. No one wants half a tattoo.”
A curious thing happened when the bottle left Ronan’s hand. As it arced through the air, trails of fire-orange in its wake, Ronan felt as if he had hurled his heart. There was a rip, just as he released it. And heat filling his body, pouring in through the hole he’d made. But now he could breathe, now that there was room in his suddenly light chest. The past was something that had happened to another version of himself, a version that could be lit and hurled away.
Then the bottle landed in the driver’s window of the Mitsubishi. It was as if there was no liquid, only fire. Flames poured across the headrest like a living thing. Cheers erupted across the fairground. Partygoers moved toward the car, moths to a new lamp.
Ronan heaved a breath.
Kavinsky, his laugh high and manic, dashed another bomb through the window. Prokopenko threw another. Now the interior was catching, and the smell was becoming toxic.
Part of Ronan couldn’t really believe the Mitsubishi was gone. But as the others began to add their cigarettes and drinks to the bonfire, the music abruptly vanished as the stereo melted. It seemed a vehicle was well and truly dead once the stereo had melted.
“Skov!” shouted Kavinsky. “Music!”
Another car’s stereo boomed to life, taking up where the Mitsubishi had left off.
Kavinsky turned to Ronan with a sly grin. “You coming to Fourth of July this year?”
Ronan exchanged a look with Gansey, but the other boy was looking out over the numerous silhouettes, his eyes narrowed.
“Maybe,” he said.
“It’s a lot like a substance party,” Kavinsky said. “You want to see something explode, bring something that explodes.”
There was a dare there. It was a dare that could be satisfied, maybe, by a drive over the border or by the clever concoction of an explosive from plans found on the Internet.
But, Ronan thought, with the same thrill he’d felt before, it was also one that he could attack with a dream.
He was good at dangerous things, both in his sleep and while awake.
“Maybe,” he replied. Gansey was moving toward the BMW. “I’ll light a candle for your car.”
“You aren’t leaving? Harsh.”
If Gansey was going, Ronan was going. He paused long enough to flick another fake ID at Kavinsky’s bare chest. “Stay out of our place.”
Kavinsky’s smile was wide and crooked. “I only come where they invite me, man.”
“Lynch,” Gansey said. “We’re gone.”
“That’s right,” Kavinsky called after Ronan. “Call your dog!”
He said it like either Ronan or Gansey should be offended by it.
But Ronan felt nothing but that fiery, empty cavern in his chest. He slid himself into the driver’s seat as Gansey shut the passenger door.
Ronan’s phone buzzed in the door pocket. He looked at it — a message from Kavinsky.
see you on the streets
Dropping the phone back into the door, Ronan let the engine rev up high. He backed out with a dramatic spin in the dirt. Gansey made an approving noise.
“Kavinsky,” Gansey said, with a little laugh in his voice, still dismissive. “He thinks he owns this place. He thinks life is a music video.”
He gripped the door as Ronan let the BMW have its head. The car galloped joyfully and recklessly toward home for a few miles, the speedometer setting the pace of their pulses.
Ronan said, “You don’t see the appeal?”
Closing his eyes, Gansey leaned his head back on his seat, chin tilted up, throat green in the dash lights. There was still an unsafe sort of smile about his mouth — what a torment the possibility in that smile was — and he said, “There was never a time when that could’ve been you and me. You know the difference between us and Kavinsky? We matter.”
Just then, in that moment, the thought of Gansey leaving for D.C. without him was unbearable. They had been a two-headed creature for so long, Ronan-and-Gansey. He couldn’t say it, though. There were a thousand reasons why he couldn’t say it.
“While I’m gone,” Gansey said, pausing, “dream me the world. Something new for every night.”