I grinned and shook my head, letting out some of my frayed nerves. “No Gus, it’s no good.”
We drove around the city of Monterrey, a huge, sprawling mess that grew darker and quieter as we went on. Gus told me the entire city had a sort of unofficial curfew, which made our car with its fake Cali plates stand out. Even though the city was still one of the largest cosmopolises in all of Mexico, it was very much under a different sort of law and whether we were looking for the Los Zetas or not didn’t matter when we were two white dudes in a cool car. Prime kidnapping material.
Soon, we were pulling up to a small house in a nearby town that seemed to consist of a gas station and a post office. It didn’t look like much of anything but it seemed to be an unofficial hotel and the plump woman who answered the door with two children at her heels, up way past their bedtime, was more than happy to let us stay.
She led us through to the back of the house where we had our own room and a tiny bathroom. American magazines sat on a bedside table.
“I stayed here once, a long time ago,” he said as he stretched out on one of the tiny twin beds. “She was thin back then, if you can believe it.”
“Two jokes in one day,” I said. “A record.”
He smiled, then covered it up by turning off the light. There was a chance he was finally warming up to me.
I didn’t bother getting under the sheets, the oppressive heat filled up our tiny room in minutes and the rickety fan overhead did nothing disperse it. I closed my eyes and thought of Ellie.
There was a moment back in high school that Ellie never knew about. I never wanted to tell her, what would be the point? We were both sixteen and hadn’t talked properly for years. It was after I’d done the photography project on her and frankly I knew she hated my guts. She considered me a freak, thinking I was creepy and obsessive and a bit of a stalker. Sadly, I was all of those things. That was just me and it couldn’t be helped.
There had been a school dance, the “Spring Fling” or something lame like that. Ellie didn’t go. I never expected her to. But I did. Just to be a pain in the ass, really. I wanted to show up and have people whisper to each other, “oh The Queen is here.” The attention, no matter how fucked up, was better than staying at home listening to my dad scream at my stepmother. He always would scream at me after.
I went, dressed in a tux, like a normal person, except my tux was pastel blue. Yeah, I was trying to do an homage to Dumb and Dumber and it was lost on most of the school. So, of course I was already shoved by a few dickheads by the time I’d arrived.
But there was this one dick, Curran Simpson, a real fucking jackass with big fists and a bigger mouth, who came barrelling up to me and spilled all of his punch down the front of my tux.
The anger was already threatening to come out. I did what I could to keep it inside, to do what I had always done, which was to take it, take it, take it.
Then he says to me, his voice low, as if he didn’t want to be heard, “Where’s your retarded girlfriend? The one you’re stalking all the time. Have you ever stolen her fake leg yet? Do you jack off to it?”
None of what he was saying really made any sense. He was a fucking idiot through and through. But it didn’t matter. This was the first time I’d lost it, when I let the blackness out and I was high above my body, pummeling the shit out of the guy. I don’t know how I did it. Suddenly he was knocked to the ground and I was on top of him, punching him like a man possessed. I got maybe three good hits before one of his friends pulled me off and held me there while he retaliated. And of course he retaliated worse.
I had a broken nose from it and Curran was suspended for a week. Even though I threw the first punch, even though I actually knocked the big fucker down, no one ever mentioned it. The teachers were so used to me getting beat up, that they were more than happy to put him out of school for a while. I wasn’t his only victim. As for me, it got twisted into an urban legend, that Camden finally went crazy and we better make sure he doesn’t bring homemade bombs to school. The kids definitely stayed away from me if they hadn’t already.
That was probably my first shining moment, that feeling of actually winning for once. The adrenaline coupled with the fear of myself and what I could do, what I might do, was addicting. But I never acted out like that again. I wouldn’t do it for just anyone.
Only for her. Only for Ellie.
I must have fallen asleep soon after those thoughts because before I knew it, the morning sun was streaming in through the window and I thought I was going to choke on the humidity. I sat up, feeling disgusting. The bed was soaked from my sweat and when I put my glasses on, they fogged up in seconds.
I got up and pulled off my sticky shirt just as Gus came out from the bathroom, completely dressed and looking ready to go.