The Fixes

by Owen Matthews

  Haley stares out at her mom’s boutique through Jordan’s Tesla’s windshield. It’s dark, after midnight, and Main Street is deserted. “Whatever,” Haley sighs. “It’s just the last fucking straw.”

  209.

  What Haley doesn’t tell the others:

  She was tempted.

  And that’s probably what pisses her off the most.

  210.

  “So that’s the lengthy preamble.” Haley gestures out the window. The Côte d’Azur, abandoned for the night. “And now we’re here.”

  “Amen,” Jordan says. “So let’s bomb some shit.”

  211.

  They’re dressed in all black, as usual.

  Black shoes.

  Black pants.

  Black shirts.

  Black hats.

  (Bank robber chic.)

  Haley and Paige and Jordan and E sit low in the Tesla, three or four storefronts down from the Côte d’Azur. The bomb’s in the trunk; Haley helped Jordan and E sneak it out of E’s house.

  (It looks like a cartoon bomb, just kitchenware and bare wires. It doesn’t look dangerous at all. But Jordan swears it will seriously fuck up the store.)

  Haley’s heart is pounding. She’s surprised she feels so nervous. She’s pretty much over getting stressed out for Fixes. There’s the adrenaline rush, sure, but there’s never any fear anymore.

  Trashing some shitty tabloid’s office is a lot different than blowing up your mom’s pride and joy, though. And even Allen Headley’s gated driveway seems a lot easier to infiltrate than Main Street Capilano, even if the street is deserted.

  Jordan catches her eye in the rearview mirror. “Yes or no,” he says. “Go or no-go. It’s your call.”

  Haley closes her eyes and sees Milani again. Sees the light in her mom’s eyes as she talked with the doctor.

  (Finally beautiful.)

  (Finally.)

  “Let’s just do this already,” she says, before she pussies out.

  212.

  Jordan stays behind. Aims his phone at the storefront.

  “I’ll keep the engine running,” he tells the others. “Pick up some B-roll. You deliver the package and get out of there quick.”

  “Yeah,” Haley says. “We’re not sticking around.”

  She and Paige follow E out of the Tesla and around to the trunk. E picks up the bomb as Haley reaches for the tire iron Jordan stashed beside it.

  “For the window,” she tells E, who is looking at her funny.

  “Why couldn’t you just steal a key?”

  “Because the police,” Paige says. “They would know who could get their hands on a key, right?”

  Haley nods. “Exactly.”

  E carries the bomb. Haley and Paige walk beside him, three figures in black, one holding a tire iron, another carrying a GoPro, and the third a bulky backpack. Not suspicious at all.

  The store is a couple doors down. Haley stops in front of the picture window. The store is shadows, but Haley can see the silhouettes of racks and displays, stripes and crazy patterns, halter tops and bikini bottoms, straps everywhere. Tiny swaths of fabric with ridiculous price tags. And Tinsley, everywhere, her model pout and perfect body plastered on the wall and the aisle ends, her poster propped in the window.

  Haley studies her sister’s face. Hefts the tire iron and aims square at Tinsley’s pretty button nose.

  (SMASH.)

  No alarm sounds. It could be a silent alarm, or it could be that Haley’s mom just doesn’t think bathing-suit-related crimes occur in Capilano. Either way, Haley doesn’t plan to stick around to find out. She sweeps the tire iron across the remains of the window, clears the broken shards. Then she takes the GoPro from Paige and climbs into the store.

  “Come on,” she tells the others. “We’ll put it by the cash register.”

  E follows Haley into the store. Paige stays outside, playing lookout. The glass crunches under E’s feet. Haley leads him into the gloom, down the aisles to the cash register. She knows this place by heart, but it’s still weird to be in here in darkness.

  Haley steps aside so E can walk past her. He lays the bomb at the base of the sales counter. Haley surveys the store one last time. Films the stillness, the shadows.

  Then she and E book it back outside to Paige and Jordan and the Tesla.

  213.

  E opens the passenger door as Haley and Paige slip into the back seats. The street is still dark and empty. No cars have passed. Nobody’s out walking.

  E slides into the passenger seat and closes the door with a thud. The sound seems to echo off the storefronts. Haley peers over his shoulder at the front of the Côte d’Azur.

  (She can hardly tell the window’s broken, from here. The store is dark. It looks like normal. It looks like they could just drive away and nothing would have changed.)

  (It’s all going to change, though. Very soon.)

  Jordan glances at Haley in the rearview. Haley meets his eyes. “Let’s do this.” Jordan nods and shifts the car into gear, pulls out halfway into the street. Hands his phone back to Haley.

  “On my signal,” he says. “E, you’re on camera duty.”

  E points the GoPro at the Côte d’Azur as Jordan pulls out into the driving lane and stays there, the car aimed toward the boutique, a few storefronts down. Haley takes the phone, her heart pounding, aims it toward her mom’s store like a remote.

  “You don’t have to point it like that—” E starts to tell her. But Jordan cuts him off.

  “Go,” he tells Haley.

  Haley presses the send button. There’s a brief pause, while the signal transmits. Then the entire front of the Côte d’Azur disappears in a burst of light.

  214.

  The blast is LOUD.

  The explosion breaks the window in the Côte d’Azur’s door and the windows in the neighboring storefronts.

  The Tesla rocks from the force of it. Car alarms go off immediately, a whole chorus. Smoke billows out through the empty picture window, and brightly colored bathing suits drift through the air and land on the pavement, strappy one-pieces and skimpy bikini tops, some of them torn ragged, but most of them whole, blown out of the boutique like shrapnel.

  Haley searches the smoke as Jordan steps on the go pedal, but she can’t see Tinsley’s face anywhere.

  215.

  Jordan reverses down the street, away from the smoke and the storefront and the bathing suit carnage. Executes a quick three-point turn so the Tesla is facing west, toward Marine Drive and Jordan’s dad’s mansion. Haley twists in her seat to watch the Côte d’Azur disappear in the distance, just a thick cloud of gray smoke against the black sky. She can hear the sirens now. Jordan’s driving too slow.

  Faster, she thinks. Drive this freaking car faster.

  But of course Jordan has this all thought out, and if he drives like a maniac, they’ll probably get pulled over. So Jordan drives normal, just four kids on their way home from something totally innocent.

  (Just don’t ask why they’re wearing all black.)

  Jordan drives away from the town center. The road loops into the forest and along the shoreline, and the lights of the first mansions appear between the trees. A police car screams past, red and blue lights piercing the darkness, and Haley doesn’t breathe until it’s around the next corner.

  Jordan finds her eyes in the rearview mirror again, and Paige and E turn to look at each other too, and they all kind of exhale and laugh a bit, and Haley is glad the others were as freaked out as she was.

  They keep driving until they reach Jordan’s house. They pass more police cars, but none of them slow down. Jordan reaches his driveway, hits the clicker to open the gate. The gate slides open, and then it slides closed behind the Tesla, and Haley follows E and Paige and Jordan out onto Jordan’s driveway, and it’s so quiet out here that they can still hear the explosion, ringing in their ears.

  216.

  CAPILANO POLICE RULE FOUL PLAY IN CÔTE D’AZUR EXPLOSION

  The
explosion that ripped through the popular swimwear boutique Côte d’Azur two nights ago was caused by a bomb, a Capilano Police detective announced this morning.

  “This was a professionally constructed bomb,” Detective Tom Dawson told the Herald. “A textbook IED, designed for destruction. Whoever did this knew what they were doing.”

  Dawson would not comment when asked if the department has any leads in the case, nor would he speculate as to whether the bombing bears any connection to other seemingly random acts of destruction that have occurred in Capilano this summer.

  “We’re exploring all possibilities,” Detective Dawson told the Herald. “The department won’t rest until these cases are solved and the perpetrators brought to justice.”

  217.

  “‘Professionally constructed,’” Jordan reads from his phone. “‘Whoever did this knew what they were doing.’” He grins across the Tesla at E. “What do you know, E? We’re bona fide terrorists.”

  E sips from his Fiji water and reaches for Jordan’s phone. “Eyes on the road,” he says. “You may be a terrorist, but you can’t text and drive.”

  “Who’s texting?” Jordan hands the phone over. “I’m just reading the news.”

  “Whatever,” E says. “I still think you overdid it with that Vine.”

  It’s Monday morning, and E has a killer hangover. He and Jordan saw Calvin Harris at the Roxy on Saturday night, and then Jordan knew a guy who was throwing a warehouse party somewhere by the docks. E can’t remember much about what happened after, except that he drank a lot and wound up tangled in Jordan’s sheets this morning.

  (Haley skipped the party. She went home the morning after the bomb—

  “Went to be with her family,” Jordan said. “It would look pretty damn suspicious if she just disappeared right now, don’t you think?”

  —and Paige begged off after the Calvin Harris show. She said she had to get up early to work on ’s movie, but she’s been kind of weird since the bomb went off, anyway.)

  Now E and Jordan are heading to E’s house. E needs fresh clothes, and probably a shower. He’s already running late for his volunteering thing. And he’s worried about the Pack’s latest Vine. The Côte d’Azur bombing.

  Jordan made Haley post it. As far as E’s concerned, it’s borderline incriminating. It’s sure as hell not fun and games. A close shot of the bomb. GoPro footage of the Côte d’Azur. Close-up on Tinsley Keefer’s face.

  And then the blast.

  Haley’s laughter.

  The Pack logo.

  The tagline: “Beauty is in the eye of the bomb holder.”

  218.

  “It’s too obvious,” E tells Jordan as they drive. “They’re going to suspect Haley. If the cops see that Vine, they’ll know for sure. It’s her mom’s store, after all.”

  Jordan speeds through a yellow light. “What kind of crazy person would blow up her own mother’s store?”

  “Well, Haley, apparently.”

  “Yeah, but the police don’t know that. Haley’s been the perfect daughter all week. Right now she’s probably, like, agreeing to get a boob job just to cheer her mom up. No one’s going to suspect her.”

  Jordan rounds a corner too fast, and E winces from the g-forces. His head throbs. “So who do you think they’ll investigate, then?” he says. “They have to have some kind of theory.”

  Jordan shrugs. “They’ll probably pin it on some crackpot. Some nut they’ve been looking for an excuse to arrest—but not us.”

  E thinks about it, and he decides Jordan’s right. Still, it’s hard not to worry. A bomb is a pretty big deal.

  Jordan slows for a stop sign. “You have to stop worrying so much,” he says, reaching over to rest his hand on E’s upper thigh.

  (His fingers trace circles, and E leans over to kiss him, but Jordan draws back a little bit, teasing.)

  “You just have to trust me,” Jordan says. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  (There is a voice in E’s brain that doesn’t completely believe Jordan.)

  (But E’s getting pretty good at ignoring that voice.)

  219.

  Jordan parks the Tesla at the curb across from E’s driveway, and E leads him into the house. Down the stairs to his bedroom.

  It’s dark down there. It’s a lot smaller than Jordan’s bedroom. E’s self-conscious of everything as Jordan stands in the doorway, looking around.

  “Wow,” Jordan says, studying the dusty trophy shelf, the bookcase, the one piece of art on E’s walls—

  (a framed print of his grandfather’s campaign poster his dad gave him for Christmas one year).

  “So this is where the Connelly Man prepares for a life of greatness.”

  E looks around, trying to see the room the way Jordan sees it. His academic achievement medals and trophies on the shelf. A couple of old rugby awards, because his dad lettered in rugby at Stanford. A collection of cast-off legal textbooks on the bookshelf, a couple of old comic books and the odd novel E’s never had time to read. His cluttered desk, his messy closet. The twin bed he’s had since he was, like, eight.

  (Jordan has a walk-in closet, a private bathroom, and a private sunroom. He has a king-size bed, and his walls are decorated with framed, limited-edition Japanese language posters for his dad’s movies, and fliers and art by big-name artists who Jordan knows personally.

  Jordan’s room is a castle.)

  “I’m sorry you have to see this place like this,” E says, digging through his closet for a clean shirt. “My dad thinks a Connelly Man should know hardship, apparently.”

  Jordan scoffs. “Like your dad knows anything about hardship. He probably had a team of personal servants growing up.”

  “A maid,” E says. “That’s all I need.”

  Jordan grins that wicked grin. Puts down the Student of the Year plaque he’s holding and comes across the room to E.

  “I’ll send mine right over,” he says, his hand on E’s chest. “Or maybe you should just move in with me.”

  He has that look in his eye, the mischievous sexy look that more or less guarantees trouble. He pushes E back onto the bed, straddles him. The frame groans, and E opens his mouth to protest, fend Jordan off. “I’m going to be so late for work.”

  “Forget work,” Jordan says, pressing his mouth against E’s. “Liam’s not like those pricks at HH&B. He won’t care.”

  E’s about to protest, thinking, Liam might very well care, and anyway, I don’t want to be a dick to him, but then Jordan’s pushing his tongue into his mouth, and E realizes he doesn’t possess the power to tell Jordan to stop, so he shuts up and kisses Jordan back instead.

  220.

  Jordan has E’s shirt off when the floorboards creak upstairs. E freezes. Shit.

  (Nobody’s supposed to be home right now.)

  Jordan catches the look in E’s eye. Lets him sit up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Someone’s here,” E says, looking around for his shirt.

  “Yeah, I heard that. So?” Jordan arches an eyebrow. “You’re almost eighteen, E. You’re not twelve.”

  “As if that matters.” Footsteps upstairs, but E can’t tell if they’re his dad’s or his mom’s. “They don’t know about us. They don’t know I’m, you know . . .”

  “Gay?” Jordan laughs. “You’re such a dumbass. We’re adults. We use condoms. Why should it matter who we’re fucking?”

  Footsteps on the stairs now, coming down to the bedroom, coming in hot.

  (E can’t find his shirt anywhere.)

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “Roger Dodger,” E tells Jordan. “My dad freaking beat up that gay guy in San Francisco. What do you think he’ll do to us?”

  “He isn’t going to do shit. Calm down.”

  “I can’t calm down.” E exhales. “Where in the hell is my shirt?”

  The footsteps stop outside E’s door. The house goes quiet. Jordan reaches behind himself and fishes out E’s T-shirt. Hands it over, but E’s barely paying
attention.

  (It’s like the whole house is listening, now.)

  Three knocks at the door, loud, sharp, authoritative. Then E’s dad’s voice booms from outside. “Eric,” he says. “Are you in there?”

  221.

  Jordan’s still smiling like this is the funniest thing in the world.

  Shit.

  E can feel his dad waiting for an answer. “I’m here,” he calls back. “Just give me a second.”

  E pulls his shirt over his head. Stands and crosses to the door. Collects himself.

  “Dad, hey,” he says as he pulls the door open.

  “Senator Connelly,” Jordan says from the bed. “How’s it going?”

  E’s dad looks past E and into the bedroom. Takes in the mess, the rumpled bed, Jordan.

  (His dad is dressed for travel, holding an overnight bag.)

  “Going on another trip?”

  E’s dad frowns. “Honolulu,” he says. “I’m speaking at a convention. Just stopped by to pick up my luggage.” He pauses, and his brow turns into canyons again. “What are you doing home? Shouldn’t you be at your internship?”

  E fakes a cough. “I’m not feeling so good.”

  (This isn’t exactly a lie, but E knows a hangover isn’t going to get him any sympathy points.)

  “I’m going to make up the missed time tomorrow.”

  (This isn’t technically a lie either. E could stay late.)

  “I’m working on stats problem sets instead. Jordan just dropped by to make sure I’m not, you know, dying.”

  (Okay, now this is a lie.)

  “Honolulu, huh?” Jordan says. “That’s rad. Do you think you’ll have any time for, like, surfing?”

  “Surfing.” E’s dad looks at him like he’s insane. “No, I won’t be doing any surfing. This isn’t in any way a vacation.”

  “Oh,” Eric says. “Too bad.”

  E’s dad studies him. Disapproving, like anyone who stays home sick is the same kind of monster who would go to the beach in Hawaii—