by Adam Cesare
“It’s not much farther,” he said, pitching his voice lower, like it was just the two of them in the car. “And sorry we had to drive her.” Cole motioned to the back seat. “I thought it was just going to be you and me. But with Matt driving Ronnie, and then Tucker . . .” He turned to the back seat. “Wait. Why couldn’t you go with Tucker again?”
“I tried! I must have texted twenty times!” Janet said in a tone that made Quinn want to call BS. “I even tried calling. Went straight to voicemail.”
“His mom took his phone, probably.” Cole rolled his eyes and grinded the gearshift down as they entered a turn Quinn could hardly see in the dark. There were no landmarks on either side of the car, nothing but an unending wall of corn.
“When does the corn get, uh”—Quinn looked out the window and searched for the right word—“harvested?”
“Never,” Janet said, smirking. “Not anymore.”
“What she means is,” Cole started, “not these fields. There’s a subsidy for corn farmers. The government pays the rebate when you plant, not when you harvest.”
“And without Baypen and your papa to sell to, clearing the B-fields is probably more trouble than it’s worth, right, Cole?” Janet asked. The question had the air of an accusation. It made Quinn want to ask Janet what her family did, but she kept to herself. She wanted information but didn’t want to be the nosy new girl.
They lapsed into silence when Cole didn’t answer Janet.
With no streetlights, the greens, yellows, and browns of the cornfield seemed to swallow whole the glare of the moon and stars, leaving nothing but a void.
“You drive much back home?” Cole asked, trying his best.
“No,” Quinn said. “I have my license. But nobody has a car in the city.”
“What city was that again?” Janet asked.
“Philadel—”
“We know.” Janet gave a soft kick to her seat. “Jeez, I was kidding.”
Quinn caught herself staring daggers at Janet through the rearview reflection, but the other girl refused to play, return her glare. Why the switch? Why had Janet held Quinn’s arm for most of the parade and now was acting like this? A bad mood from a botched prank? Close quarters?
Quinn didn’t care. She was going to make the best of this: “So what do you guys like to do on—”
“Oh shit!” Janet yelled, the girl kneeing Quinn in the spine, this kick involuntary.
In the middle of their lane, illuminated in the cold stare of Cole’s high beams, stood Frendo. The clown had appeared out of nowhere, it seemed. Dead-eyed. Staring down the speeding car without so much as flinching.
Quinn heard a scream. Not Janet’s, not Cole’s. It was her own voice, her own scream. They were going too fast. Frendo wasn’t getting out of the way, probably couldn’t. They were going to hit him.
They were going to—
Cole slammed on the brakes.
Quinn reached out to the dashboard, wedging herself in place as she gripped the door handle. The rear tires squealed. Cole jerked the wheel, the car spinning. The back end came around perpendicular to the road, putting Frendo directly into the path of the passenger’s side window . . . and Quinn.
She had an unobstructed view as the car slammed straight into the clown, sideswiping him off his feet, sweeping his polka-dot body over the low roof with a padded thud.
The car shuddered to a stop.
“Oh shit oh shit oh shit,” Cole said to himself, not loud but hopeless, broken, some kind of a final straw that Quinn hadn’t witnessed the entire buildup to.
It was that sound of terrible realization that sent her spilling out of the door onto the asphalt, the back of her throat burning with stomach acid.
Hands on the cool ground, beginning to retch, that was when Quinn noticed what was fluttering down around her—
Hay?
She picked up her hand, stared at her palm in the moonlight, her lifeline cut by a sliver of golden hay. She straightened to her knees and plucked another blade out of the air.
Confused, she stood slowly, unsteady, to see Cole exit the driver’s seat, kicking the clown in the head in his rage.
Frendo’s skull exploded in a puff of hay.
“Scarecrow,” Janet said, sliding the front seat forward and then slipping out the passenger’s side door behind Quinn. “Frendo, the scarecrow.”
“Who the fuck did this?” Cole yelled into the night, voice trembling.
Matt came out of the corn, laughing so hard he could barely catch his breath. He wore a chunky sweater and what in the dark looked like corduroy pants. He had the appearance of a clean-cut pro athlete, the kind you’d see clips of on the local news, apologizing about his behavior off the field, sorry to disappoint his fans.
“You should have seen you motherfuckers,” Matt said. “Best prank yet.”
The word motherfucker with a midwestern twang . . . it just didn’t sound right to Quinn.
“W-where’s Ronnie?” Janet asked. Quinn found the anger in Janet’s voice comforting. She was glad that whatever this was, Janet hadn’t been in on it. Janet had enough sense to put a twenty-four-hour hold on the pranks.
“Right here, bitch!” Ronnie Queen said, coming out of the cornrows on the opposite side of the road. The taillights cast the blonde in a demonic red glow.
Janet closed the distance to her friend, looking ready to throttle her. Oh, please do it, Quinn found herself thinking. But then, a half step away, Janet gave Ronnie the finger. “You both suck,” Janet cursed. And then, surprisingly, with a sigh: “Did you at least catch it on camera?”
“Hell yeah we did!” Matt yelled, pulling a beer out from who knows where and popping the top. As he commenced chugging, he tossed another over to Cole, who caught it but didn’t start drinking. Didn’t toast Matt and Ronnie’s “accomplishment.” Instead, he threw the can as far as he could into the cornfields and got in Matt’s face.
“You could have gotten us killed.”
“But I didn’t,” Matt shot back.
“But you could have.”
“But I didn’t,” Matt said again, more forcefully, now bumping chests with Cole. “So chill out. Look around. You’re alive. We’re alive. And we’re at fucking Tillerson’s! Janet worked hard to plan this.” Matt took a long swig, pushed his head back, sprayed beer into the night air, and let out some sort of wolf howl that would have freaked Quinn out if her nerves weren’t already shot.
Quinn watched as the two boys stared each other down. The pain in Cole’s eyes, the game-day ferocity in Matt’s, she could only imagine all the shit that hung, unspoken, between them. Cole was the star. Matt was supporting cast, but he had ambitions, was making moves. Cole set the tone. Matt followed. Ronnie was clearly in love with Cole, even though she was with Matt. Janet, too. And for all the tension in the air, for all Quinn knew, Matt might have also been in love with Cole, just to even out the overlapping love triangles. Wouldn’t surprise her one bit. She could see Cole clenching and unclenching his fists.
Was violence inevitable?
They all flinched as Cole made a sudden move.
He grabbed the beer away from Matt and chugged whatever was left.
“Fucking Frendo,” Cole spat. “I hate that goddamn clown.”
“How can you hate Frendo? Frendo is Kettle Springs,” Ronnie said, and for the life of her, Quinn couldn’t tell if Ronnie was joking.
And Cole didn’t hesitate to add, with a steady finger shutting up Ronnie: “I know what he is, and I know what I said.”
Janet moved next to Quinn. She took a drag on a fresh cigarette and then flicked it, half-smoked, into the cornfields. Definitely a fire hazard. “Well, while we’re making shocking admissions: I hate all of you. Biggest party of the night and we’re standing on the side of the road, arguing about who hates their life more . . . fuck you all.”
“Yeah, fuck y’all,” Ronnie agreed.
“Party!” Matt yelled, belching loudly. “Fuck everyone! Fuckin’ orgy. I love
you, man,” he told Cole, enfolding him in a hug. Cole started tense, then patted the squat boy on the back.
Whatever had just happened, the screaming and the drinking and the hugging: it was a kind of exorcism.
Quinn felt the sudden urge to yell “Mazel tov!” in congratulations. But it didn’t seem like her place. Or that this group of midwesterners from churchgoing families would know what the hell she was trying to say.
“Grab Frendo’s head,” Matt said to Cole, nodding toward the demolished clown. Cole had kicked the side of its head in. The plastic mask was bent out of shape, lips upturned in a smirk, one eye socket collapsed. It looked like Frendo, but a creepier, more warped version, if that was even possible.
“Why?” Quinn asked. “He’s destroyed.”
“Never leave a Frendo behind,” Matt said. “That’s rule number one, two, and three.” He smiled as he staggered into the road, where he grabbed Frendo’s head, the stuffed torso coming along with it. He tossed Ronnie the disemboweled, deflated Frendo, and the girl caught it, one hand gripping its neck.
Throttling Frendo like a mic stand, Ronnie smiled and sang, “A lit-tel drop of Baypen makes everything bet-ter.”
It took Quinn a minute, but had that slogan been on the side of the factory?
Everything. She remembered the one legible word.
“Wait, Cole,” Matt said, turning back, already in the ditch, presumably headed back to his own car. “Why don’t you just pull your car in here? We’re close enough to the meeting place, we can walk the rest of the way.”
Janet answered for him. “No. You want to wander around in the dark, be my guest.”
“Was I talking to you?” Matt asked.
“Forget them, baby,” Ronnie said.
They rounded the car, Janet climbing into the back first, then Quinn sliding in.
“Does it really make everything better?” Quinn asked, still in the afterglow of the adrenaline, nausea, and fear. “A little drop of Baypen?”
Cole pulled shut the driver’s side door, the three of them watching Ronnie and Matt disappear into the corn.
“Corn syrup’s just sugar. So at least it makes everything taste better,” Cole told her, but then he paused to think about it. “But it sure as hell isn’t better for you.”
And before Quinn could ask what he meant, Matt pulled his car out onto the road, half a donut on the pavement as it narrowly missed Cole’s side mirror.
Matt gunned the engine and screamed out the window, “Party!” And then he peeled off into the night and they had no choice but to follow into the gloom.
Ten
Quinn pushed open the passenger’s side door and stepped out into the field. The soil under her feet was spongy and uneven; fallen cornstalks crisscrossed beneath her Chuck Taylors.
Cole had turned off the highway and driven straight into the standing cornfield, stalks pushed down under his bumper like he was playing a video game or building a crop circle. High beams on, they entered a small clearing after a few dozen yards, near several other cars and trucks. Cole explained that they were hiding the cars from the road in case a highway patrol officer cruised past and was in the mood to break up a high school party.
Ronnie and Matt had already parked, and Matt, for some reason, was climbing out of his car through the driver’s side window. Cole’s muscle car had been cramped, but Matt’s cherry-red two-seater was almost ludicrously small and impractical. It felt more like a rich kid’s car than Cole’s, which actually was a rich kid’s car.
Standing in the trampled corn, Matt reached back through the window, behind the front seat, and pulled out two Frendo costumes on hangers and in clear plastic laundry bags. He tossed one to Ronnie.
“Why?” Quinn asked Janet, nodding over to where the couple was tearing into the plastic. Janet shrugged, as if she had no idea why any of her dumbass friends did the dumbass things they did.
Matt pulled the jumpsuit on over his corduroy pants and loosely tied Timberlands. He cinched the sleeves together, then tied them around his waist in a crude belt. The baggy Frendo pants looked ridiculous. To finish the ensemble, he put the elastic strap of the mask around his ears, Frendo’s plastic face turned into a hat.
Across from him, Ronnie found a way to make polyester clown coveralls pornographic. She was wearing the outfit off her shoulders, leaving the front of the jumpsuit unbuttoned down to her navel. Without dropping the costume to her waist, she’d managed to wiggle her way out of her shirt. It was a lot of skin to be showing off all night. On a cool night.
Stop it, you’re not her mother. Not that you had a great role model for that anyway . . .
“All right. Let’s get going. Someone help me with the beer,” Matt said, popping open his trunk.
Quinn grabbed a twelve-pack of lukewarm Bud Light. Matt reached over, looking ready to help, then pulled a single can from the case.
Cole joined them, forced a smile. He hefted a half keg onto the bumper. “Don’t worry. You won’t have to hang with these dopes all night.”
Cole got a better grip, hoisted the keg to his waist, and led the way.
Once they were out of the clearing of flattened plants and parked cars, the cornfield was pitch-dark around them. Quinn could see faces, hands floating in the reflected starlight, but they all seemed to exist in a stretch of nothingness. The only hints of form around them were moonbeams and starlight reflecting off leaves, their topsides glossy, the bottoms matte.
“How do you know where to go?” she asked.
“You just know,” Cole started. “The road is back there, and the barn and the party is up ahead there somewhere,” he added, gesturing with his chin as he strained.
It was unclear if Matt would take a turn carrying the keg, even if asked.
There were no landmarks. No signs. They were going to find the party on instinct. Quinn didn’t like the idea of relying on anyone to find her way home, but there was no going back. She was here.
“Most of these kids, they’ve got relatives who’re farmers. Some help out on these farms themselves. They’ve all done this a few times.” He smiled mischievously. “Or they’ll get lost in the corn—”
“—and die!” Matt yelled, jumping onto Cole’s back like a crazy person. Cole fell forward, bottom of the keg stamping cornstalks flat under him. “I’ll protect you, new girl. If you need someone a little less low-T.”
Cole shook him off, stood, and shot Matt a look that Quinn couldn’t quite decipher in the moonlight.
“Hurry up, losers. Party’s this way.”
“Idiot,” Cole muttered, but his tone seemed to be lightening.
“And he’s proud of it,” Ronnie said, smiling. She caught up with Matt and wrapped an arm around him, their twin Frendo costumes making them the most visible kids in the corn.
“I need a drink,” Janet said. “Want help carrying that?”
Quinn told her no and the three of them walked on, Matt and Ronnie eventually disappearing into the corn in front of them.
They marched deeper into the oceans of corn, their way illuminated by the stars and passing the occasional lost kid holding out an iPhone, flashlight on. Eventually, the atonal buzz in Quinn’s ears resolved itself into music. Ahead, speakers were blasting a familiar, if still muffled, Kid Cudi song. Above the tops of the corn, she could see a warm orange firelight, the flicker of the flames punctuated with strobe flashes that were either timed to the music or near enough to the beat that it didn’t matter.
They were getting close.
Whoops and screams popped off around them. More partygoers arriving. Cornstalks rustled, bent, and broke.
Quinn caught glimpses of hands and feet as teenagers skittered past. Some of their arms pinwheeled, swimming through the leaves; some of them carried six-packs, plastic looped around wrists; some had tiki torches resting over their shoulders.
And then, when it didn’t seem like the firelight could get any brighter or the pulse of the hip-hop could get any louder: they broke through.
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Quinn, Cole, and Janet stood shoulder to shoulder at the edge of a clearing. The expanse of dirt and grass was about the diameter of a high school’s running track, maybe a little bigger. On the far side of the clearing was a barn, its doors pushed open, front and back. Quinn could see straight through to the night-darkened rows of corn out the other end.
Next to the barn was a silo, its sparse red paint cracking with age. The cylinder was maybe five feet taller than the two-story barn. Quinn had no idea what the point of a silo was, didn’t even know if they were solid or hollow, but she could tell from where she stood that the structure was disused. The silo had a visible lean and the barn’s roof was sagging in the middle. Without some serious rehabbing, neither building looked like it’d still be standing by the time KSH’s current freshmen were seniors.
“It . . . is . . . perfect!” Janet squealed into Cole’s face, then raced ahead, continuing on into the party. Quinn and Cole stayed at the fringes, taking in details, the case of beer no longer feeling heavy in her arms.
“I mean, doesn’t seem like she helped set anything up, but . . . I think she’s proud of herself?” Cole asked.
Quinn smiled.
Set at a remove from the barn, still close enough that rogue embers probably should have been a concern, were two firepits. One was set in a large corrugated metal brazier, while the other was simply a hole dug a few feet down into the dirt. Above one, tilted at an angle so the flames could lick his feet but not catch, was a life-size effigy of Frendo.
Someone had stolen some of the red, white, and blue bunting from Main Street and hung it around the edge of the DJ booth set inside the barn doors. The effect was that this party was a pulsing, living inverse of Founder’s Day.
Next to the firepits, but far enough away so the plastic wouldn’t melt, were a fleet of baby pools. Kegs jutted up from these pools like buoys, while loose cans of beer, spiked lemonades, and hard iced teas floated idly beneath the surface. Quinn had never cared much for beer. She’d learned long ago that her party drink of choice was the screwdriver. Mixed right, it was like drinking orange juice, and it was easy to mix in a way that kept her buzzed without getting out of control. And so Quinn and Cole dropped the beer at one of the pools, and then she headed inside the barn alone in search of a “real drink.”