Son of Destruction

35




Steffy


They’ve been riding around in Mr Bellinger’s ragtop Buick, like, forever. Wild, being out with Carter at this strange, still hour when real people are locked inside their houses, but while they were running free at the tippy end of Pierce Point the dark bled out of the night; too late turned into too early and Steffy is f*cking exhausted.

Carter looks tired too, hunched over the wheel with his cheeks caved in, but Steffy isn’t about to end this, even though she’s beyond ready to go home.

She can’t.

She loves him so much!

Plus, she can’t go back to her house just yet. It’s way too early to get caught sneaking in, and her mom hasn’t been sleeping much since the big fight. Cough in the night and the woman comes in to check on you; get up to pee and she springs out. Steffy doesn’t dare show until it’s time for breakfast somewhere, or her mom will find out that instead of staying over at Jen’s house as advertised, she’s been out all night, running around with Carter Bellinger.

When he yanked her aside after the Saturday night movie she thought, OK then. This is it. He grabbed her elbow in the parking lot, clamped her hand under his arm and growled into her hair, ‘Want to do something really trippy?’

Steffy’s heart jumped. In a shitty week, maybe things weren’t so shitty after all. She had to act like she could care less – because this was Carter, that she was in love with, asking her, and it was so very, very important to her, so she shrugged him off and mumbled, ‘Sure.’

Perfidious Jen smiled that smile and pretend-zipped her mouth as though she and Carter never did Whatever: Nobody will ever know.

Pathetic, her being this excited. God only knows what she was expecting when they headed for Bayfront Drive. It’s been this and that with Carter for so long that Steffy needs it to get serious, even though she’s scared. It’s way past time.

When was that, around midnight? Forever ago. She was excited to be in the convertible, which Carter’s dad loans him even though his license got suspended last month. She wished he’d put the top down so all Central Avenue could see the two of them going along together in that cool car: her and Carter Bellinger, Carter and her. Probably he wanted privacy, given what they were just about to do.

When they left the Cineplex she thought tonight was the night, they were finally going to do the scary, private thing that would bond them forever, body and body, heart and heart. Naturally Carter would want to keep the top up, so nothing could interrupt and no fool cruising on Bayfront Drive that late would accidentally see in. When they finally Did It, she thought, it would be a relief. Then Carter would be hers and Jen and every Tiffany and Britney in Fort Jude could go the f*ck to hell.

Now she’s not so sure.

They didn’t park on the bay they just drove on, past the usual place where she and Carter almost got started once. He kept going even though the makeout spot was deserted and the moon was making one of those paths of light on the water that your heart follows to the stars. They didn’t park, at least not then. Carter just kept going along the waterfront to the two big old cement sphinxes guarding the bridge to Coral Shores. It was so late that all the houses on Coral Boulevard were dark; they were all safe in bed while she and Carter . . . She doesn’t know.

They sneaked into the Tills’ house on Coral Circle, they were there for hours and she still doesn’t know!

Carter had her breaking into somebody’s house in the dead of night and messing with their belongings, and the weird thing? She never gave it a thought.

She would have followed him anywhere.

Never mind that everyone knew the Tills were in Europe and the house was alarmed, never mind that or that Shoresafe Security could put them in jail. Carter walked her up to the side door just like they’d been invited. He found the key under the cement hoptoad and let her in! How did he know what numbers to tap into the alarm? The Tills have a deal where when you walk into a room the whole ceiling lights up – awesome, right? It was like walking into a private club with the floors waxed and everything set up and waiting, just for them.

‘This is the place.’

‘What about the Tills?’

‘F*ck ’em.’

The minute the lights went up on the humongous playroom, Steffy freaked. ‘They’ll see us!’

Laughing, Carter pointed. ‘No they won’t.’

She saw stainless steel Rolos locked over the windows like armor on a tank. If the Tills ever had kids it was a long, long time ago, but somebody spent a lot of money on this paneled rec room with fake stuffed grouper and swordfish on plaques, a pool table and a pinball machine complete with flashing lights and a bucket full of quarters so anybody could play. They had an old-timey soda fountain left over from Early America – Mr Till’s bar. Champagne glasses and Gators mugs stood on glass shelves under a barroom mirror with an alligator at the top in frosted glass.

‘There’s beer in the fridge.’

‘How do you know?’

His voice got raw. ‘He has parties here.’

‘What . . .’

‘You don’t want to know.’

There were squashy sofas and fat chairs at the far end of the room so Steffy thought probably this was the place where she and Carter were finally going to get down to it; he’d picked here because it was private, she just hoped to God they didn’t get caught. It was exciting and scary and weird.

Instead they played pool for, like, a hundred hours. She didn’t think it was because she kept winning, but the longer they played the madder Carter got and the more she won, the more he wouldn’t let her quit.

Her boy was pissed at something; he started out pissed tonight. He was pissed before they broke into the house. Then he was pissed because all he found in the minibar was Diet Coke, like Mr Till hid all the liquor because Carter was coming, or Mrs Till had put Mr Till into rehab and poured his booze down the sink. In fact, Carter was pissed about a lot of things, which was odd since Mr Till nicely left the key for him, and Carter tapped in the alarm code like it wasn’t the first time.

Maybe if she’d let him win the trouble wouldn’t have started, but Steffy wouldn’t lose. The more games she won, the madder Carter got. What was his problem? Losing at something as stupid as pool wasn’t that big of a deal but he got a little crazy, like he’d dropped something nasty into his Diet Coke. Then it got worse. When Steffy broke down and pretend-lost so they could get the hell out of there, he jerked her around so sharply that he hurt her arm.

‘Don’t pull that shit on me,’ he yelled. ‘Do this fair and square and I promise, we’re done in one game.’ Of course they weren’t. The more they played, the more bent Carter became, turning the game into pool hell. He made them play until Steffy felt tears running, and Carter was furious and out of control. Thank God the fury ended it, but not like you’d think. Steffy was winning for, like, the hundredth time and Carter freaked. He ripped the crap out of the pink felt top of Mr Till’s pool table trying to kill her last ball.

‘Oh, shit,’ Steffy said. ‘Let’s go!’

‘We can’t have that!’ Carter shouted, loud enough to wake up the neighbors even though the Rolos were down. He kept stabbing the felt with his pool cue as if he hadn’t already done enough, gouging like he could make the table bleed, yowling, ‘We can’t have that!’

It was awful. He was out of control and nothing Steffy said or did could move him away from the table or get him outside, where it was safe.

By the end she was praying to him, ‘Please. We have to go!’

He showed big square robot teeth in a yellow robot grin. ‘Not yet.’

With security off, Carter got into the Tills’ storage no problem by punching a panel to open a secret door. He dragged in a pile of old newspapers and crumpled them on the pool table, grinning. ‘Smart, right?’

He was trying to make it look like it was not a kid with a pool cue who wrecked Mr Till’s special watermelon felt, it was death by accidental fire. Steffy was not about to help him. She stood back while he kicked the slats out of a chair; there was no stopping Carter now. She couldn’t stop him from sticking them underneath the newspaper either, when any a*shole knew you piled the kindling on top. At the end she ran outside because she couldn’t bear to see him light the match.

It’s OK, she told herself, shivering in the dark, and on quiet Coral Shores she could almost believe it. She had to! It’s only a little fire.

By the time Carter came back to the car, she was telling herself that he hadn’t just done that. This was her boyfriend, after all. He might get mad and do stupid things but nobody starts a fire in an empty house. In fact she was sure of it, because he got in the car grinning like nothing had happened, and they both started to laugh. A song they liked came on the radio and Carter was singing which made Steffy feel better, so she sang too.

They ended up on Bayfront Drive after all. He put the top down so if kids saw them together, they’d be impressed. At the curve nearest the bridge, they parked. It was sweet, very sweet, sitting under the palm trees with Carter’s lips going all those nice places. It was sweet and sexy and sad, clinging in the dark. Steffy thought they were just making out, but she knows now that while Carter was doing all those nice things to her, his mind was not on it. It was somewhere else.

God she was scared when the sirens started to howl.

Carter quit doing what he was doing and faced forward.

They watched the sky light up over Coral Shores.

They quit talking, too. It was too weird out; Steffy was too scared. Even Carter was scared; she felt him jittering, pressed close with one leg over the stick shift and Steffy pulled so tight that the ridge on the bucket seat hurt her ass.

Heavy trucks rumbled past. There were so many that the street shook.

When it was all done they just sat. Finally when the glow died and the sky was empty over Palm Shores, a long time after the last city truck rolled past on its way back to town, he grunted and started the car.

Then he said, ‘You know I love you.’

‘I’m so glad.’

The next thing Steffy knew the two of them were way the hell out here on Pierce Point, walking around on crushed shells and dead mangrove leaves in the sand spit at the end, picking up driftwood and bits of shell that might turn out to be pretty or useful which was hard to tell, because it was too dark. Sheltered by the mangroves they wandered, talking only about stuff they found in the sand, hanging out in that nice, nowhere place as if nothing strange had come down, wandering until it got light. When the first trawler rounded the point on its way to the Gulf, Carter bundled her back into the car.

They’ve been riding around ever since.

This is sad, Steffy thinks, looking at the boy she’s loved for so long. Now she’s not so sure. Wait. Didn’t she just get everything she ever wanted? Carter Bellinger all to herself, and for a whole, entire night? Here they were in his car. With the top pulled up over them like covers, they could be lying close in bed, and didn’t he just tell her again that he’s in love with her, which she’s been waiting to hear since fifth grade?

She and Carter are close now, closer than she’s ever been to anyone. They just went through so much. She ought to feel happy, but she doesn’t. She wants to feel excited and loving and totally bonded, like they are the same person under the skin, but she can’t.

She just feels bad. An entire night together and she doesn’t have enough from him, or he doesn’t have enough from her.

Steffy’s not sure what this means, only that where she ought to be feeling all the right things, all she has is a terrible, terrible sense of loss.

‘Oh,’ she murmurs accidentally. This is just so sad.

God forgive her, Carter takes it wrong.

‘Oh Steffy,’ he barks, so abruptly that it startles her. ‘Let’s drive to Valdosta and get married!’

This makes her feel so guilty that she can’t stand to look at him. She does not say the obvious. She doesn’t even say, why should we, we haven’t even had sex? What she does say, and it takes her a while to think of it, is, ‘I can’t, Carter. I’m babysitting Grammy Henderson today. I have to go home.’