More people rushed by. A few looked at us warily. Someone in the stoner room turned up ‘Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’. ‘I want this scholarship,’ I whispered.
‘I can’t believe you,’ Kay said quietly. It annoyed me. And it hurt. I didn’t know what to say to her. This was how it happened to plenty of guys around here: they were bound for better things, but then they knocked someone up and did what was honorable. They married her. They got some job, any job, and they raised the kid that neither of them particularly wanted. When I thought about our future together, I had never factored in this. It had never entered my list of possibilities.
Kay turned away then, pressing her back along the wall. The pot smoke formed a thick, blue halo around her. ‘Maybe she’s Mark’s,’ Kay said. She had given the baby a gender already-I never got to tell her, later, that she had guessed right.
Mark came up. ‘What are you two talking about?’ he asked, clapping a hand on my shoulder and the other on Kay’s. He touched Kay’s boob and squeezed. She let him. Her eyes were on me the whole time, as if to say, See, your chance is gone.
Jimi Hendrix came on the stereo. I stormed across the room into the kitchen. After a few minutes, I felt Kay’s hand on my arm. ‘Mark wants to go,’ she said, ‘but he’s…’
We both watched as Mark tripped over the edge of a round braided rug. Beer sloshed over his cup. ‘Give me the keys,’ I said, cruelly sober. I hadn’t even made it to the keg yet.
On the way out to the car, Kay said, ‘Mark? Why don’t we get married this summer?’
‘Your parents would kill us,’ Mark answered sloppily, wrapping his arm around hers. ‘We’re supposed to wait until you’re done with high school.’
‘Not if we had a giant wedding,’ Kay cooed. ‘We could invite everyone. I want to be a married woman my last year of high school. It sounds so romantic.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Mark slurred.
I threw myself into the front seat. The shell around me grew thicker and thicker. Kay got into the passenger seat and looked at me, but I made a big deal out of putting the key in the ignition, shoving the car into drive. Kay looked at me for ten whole seconds, and then blew the air out of her cheeks and turned around to check on Mark, who’d lain down in the back.
I wove around the cars haphazardly parked on Jeff’s lawn. Mark made a gagging noise, as though he might puke, but then rallied. He started talking about fixing up an old dirt bike with Andy Elkerson next weekend. ‘You want to help?’ he asked me.
‘I don’t know,’ I said in monotone, my thoughts sloshing, my emotions tangled. ‘Maybe.’
‘Elkerson’s so lucky, out of school and all that,’ Mark said.
‘We only have a couple more weeks,’ I told him.
‘I don’t know if I can do it, man,’ Mark said. ‘Fucking Mr Tole.’ He turned to Kay. ‘Did I tell you how this guy bought dope off of that guy that works at the gas station? Barney something?’
‘You told me,’ Kay said quietly.
I forked onto Wyndell, which is full of thick woods and blind turns. ‘We should tell the PTA, don’t you think?’ Mark was saying. ‘How can these drugged-up bastards teach at our school and get a paycheck? I mean, at least hire someone who isn’t shit-faced all the time. Like hire me.’
‘You’re not done with school yet,’ Kay pointed out.
‘I will be soon enough.’
‘You wouldn’t want to teach here,’ I said. ‘Teach somewhere else, if you want to teach. Just not here.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with teaching here,’ Kay said.
‘It’s easy for you to say, Rich,’ Mark talked over her. ‘You’re getting out of here. You’ve got it all. Me and Kay, it’s different.’
‘It’s better,’ Kay said, her voice gnarled and abrasive, like steel wool. ‘Real people stay in Cobalt. Honest people. They do what they have to and they stay.’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Mark said. He often thought people were making fun of him when they weren’t.
But I knew better. ‘Shut up,’ I said, too. I met her eyes, finally, right across from me. Then she faced forward, screamed. There was the deer, long legs, wide eyes, erect ears. A thick-antlered buck. He stared at the car, and I stared back at him. His eyes glowed blue. For a moment, right before we collided, the expression on the buck’s face looked almost human, startlingly cognitive. It was like he understood what was happening-not just with the car in front of him, but also with me. He looked straight into me and saw what I’d said to Kay, what I’d given up.
Then there was the crunch, and a long few seconds of nothing.