I couldn’t think of anywhere I wanted to be less, but I also couldn’t think of anywhere better to be. That was my problem. As my dad said, “Until you can make a decision, we’ll make it for you.”
Apparently, a beach bum in the Polynesian islands wasn’t a lofty enough goal.
Kai tossed the catalog down on the seat next to him. “My father wants me on my own. He thinks we all need space.”
“From all of us, or just Will and me?” Damon asked, humor lacing his tone.
Yeah, Katsu Mori didn’t think much of us. Damon was trouble, and I was… nothing. At least Michael was ambitious. He was a leader, and Kai’s father respected that as a viable influence for his son.
But Kai just joked back. “Don’t be like that,” he cooed to Damon. “He was really flattered you approved of his taste in women when you adjusted yourself right in front of him at the sight of my mother.”
“In a bathing suit, Kai!” Damon pointed out, looking at Kai over his shoulder. “I mean, what the fuck? Jesus.”
I shook with a laugh, remembering that day last summer we were all at Kai’s house.
“And you all think I don’t have any shame,” Damon said. “If she weren’t your mom…”
“My father would still rip your dick up through your stomach and out your mouth?” Kai retorted.
Damon quieted, settling back into his seat and sticking his cigarette into his mouth. “Daddy’s boy.”
Kai shook his head, but I saw the smile fade as he looked out the window.
“Maybe we’ll stay in the area and go to Trinity instead,” Michael said, “so we can all be close to Kai’s mom.”
I snorted, all of us laughing as Kai rolled his eyes.
I took a puff off the cigarette, realization starting to dawn. It was months away, but it was coming. Different schools. Different states.
New people.
And that’s what scared me the most. People change us. Others become important, while others become less, and soon, we’d be gone.
She’d be gone.
I turned my eyes out my window, the inevitable sitting on my shoulders like a house.
“Okay, Devil’s Night…” Michael cleared his throat. “Probably the catacombs, but keep the cemetery in mind,” he told us. “I’m thinking about changing it up this year. There are some tombs, and that Bell Tower through the woods. What are you guys thinking for your pranks?”
I couldn’t think of anything yet. Nothing good anyway.
“I’m kind of thinking about getting out of town,” Kai answered. “Meridian City. The Whitehall district, maybe. Or the opera house? Maybe book a floor at a hotel?”
“The whole point is to be here with our people,” Damon told him. “On our turf.”
Kai was silent, and I saw him open up his course catalog again, mumbling, “Just an idea.”
I watched the both of them, kind of enjoying how they hardly ever got along. Kai was ready for tomorrow. Damon never wanted to leave today.
I had no idea where the hell I was half the time, let alone where I wanted to be.
An idea occurred to me, though. “The Cove,” I said. “After hours.”
Damon nodded. “That might be an idea.”
I looked over at him. “I heard a rumor the place might not be open much longer.”
“Even better.”
“Too much of a liability,” Michael interjected. “Drunk people get stupid, and stupid people on roller coasters will piss me off.”
Come on. It would be fun. Just us and a few others—invitation only.
But as usual, my ideas were tabled.
“I’ll think of something,” Kai told him. “Something that lets us end the night in one piece, and between the sheets with something pretty.”
“Hell yeah,” Damon replied. “That’s all you had to say.”
I shook my head, remembering what our real priorities were. I rounded the bend, climbing toward the cemetery, but just then, blue and red lights flashed in my rearview mirror, and I spotted headlights charging me from behind.
“Ugh, fuck,” I growled. “That son of a bitch.”
Dammit.
Pressing the brakes harder than necessary, I jerked my truck over to the shoulder and halted, hearing the gravel kick up underneath.
“Will…” Kai started.
“I’ll hold my tongue,” I assured him, already knowing what he was going to say. I pulled the weed out of the center console and slipped it to Damon. “Get rid of this.”
“Dude, what the hell?” Kai barked.
But I ignored him. “Get rid of it now,” I told Damon again, turning off the engine. “And don’t toss it out the window. His dash cam…”
“Goddamn it,” he grumbled, stuffing it into the glove compartment and slamming it closed.
“Lock it.” I threw him the keys.
“You think he knows?” Damon looked at me as he quickly locked my glove box.
I peered into my side mirror, seeing Officer Scott walk up to my side with his flashlight beaming.
“I think Em is smarter than that,” I said.
She wouldn’t complain about last night and the lock-in. Tattling would dent her pride. Not sure how I knew that about her, but I did.
“Think he knows what?” Michael pressed. “What did you guys do? Dammit. You’re always pulling shit when I’m not looking.”
“We didn’t hurt her,” Damon assured.
“Just made her pee her pants a little,” Kai added.
I bit back my smile just as Scott tapped on my glass.
I rolled down the window and flicked the butt of my cigarette out onto the highway, missing him by just a hair.
He stopped, turning his eyes toward the cigarette burning its last embers and back to me, flashing his light inside.
“Here to see that picture of me again?” I teased.
But he wasn’t laughing. “License and registration, please.”
I hesitated a moment for good measure, and then reached into the console, pulling out my registration and insurance card holder, and then my license out of my wallet.
I handed him both. “I promise you, they haven’t changed since last week, Scott.”
He didn’t seem to hear me as he flashed his light on my license like he hadn’t seen it a dozen times in the past three months, and then my registration and insurance as if he didn’t already know that they don’t expire until my next birthday.
“You know how fast you were going?” he asked, studying my insurance card.
“It wasn’t fast.”
“Have you been drinking?” he inquired, unfazed.
“No.”
He paused, still looking over my material. “You on drugs?”
“Sometimes,” I replied.
Damon snorted, and Michael cleared his throat to cover up his laugh.
Scott straightened and took a step back, looking down on me. “Step out. I want to look around the truck.”
And I couldn’t stop myself. “Well, my glove compartment is locked, so is the trunk in the back, And I know my rights, so you go’n need a warrant for that,” I sang.
Everyone started laughing, Damon shaking next to me, and Kai hunching over in my rearview mirror, his head in his hands to cover it up.
I always loved that Jay-Z song. At least I was good for a few laughs.
Officer Scott looked down at me, chewing the inside of his lip like he’d just love to have a reason. This was the kind of guy who would discharge his weapon on someone, claiming the cell phone in their hand looked like a gun.
The laughter calmed down, and I turned my eyes on him again.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m an idiot.”
I bid him to come closer, softening my voice.
“I know how you see me,” I said. “Ignorant, arrogant, frivolous… I want to be good. Honestly. Goal-oriented, a hard worker, honest, righteous…” I paused. “Like Emory. Your sister, right?”
He narrowed his eyes on me, and I could
see his shoulders tense.
“You know,” I continued, “it’s amazing that given the years your family has been in Thunder Bay, I don’t know her as well as I’d like.” I turned to my friends. “You hear that, guys? A girl I don’t know.”
Some laughter went off inside the truck.
I turned back to him, seeing the threat start to register.
We were starting to understand each other.
“All the hours we walk the halls together at school,” I taunted. “All the hours on that bus to away games and back. All the late nights at basketball practice and her at band practice.”
“Plenty of time to get to know someone,” Kai added. “Turner didn’t even need five minutes to get Evie Lind pregnant.”
“Some of us have better longevity,” I joked over my shoulder.
“We know you do.” Michael patted my shoulder.
Hell yes, I do.
I turned my gaze back on Scott, seeing the corners of his eyes start to crinkle in a glare.
I hooded my own. “I promise you…” I growled low, “however much you don’t like me, there is still so much more to come if you don’t…” I pulled my license and card holder out of his hand, whispering, “stop pulling me over.”
I was normally a happy boy, but his hard-on for me was fucking with my patience. He didn’t pull over Michael, Damon, or Kai constantly. He messed with me because he assumed I didn’t have a brain.
They thought that because I liked being nice, that I didn’t know how to be mean.
And believe me, I was capable.
Snatching my keys from Damon’s hand, I started the truck, cast Scott one last look, and took off, pulling back onto the road and cranking up the music as the wind blew through the cab.
“Be careful,” Michael said after a minute. “That was entertaining and all, but men like him are short-sighted. I don’t think he’s going to have the sense to stop. Watch for his next move.”
“Fuck him.” I fisted the steering wheel. “What the hell’s he going to do to me?”
No one said anything more as we pulled up the drive and through the open gates of the cemetery. My interest in Emory Scott had nothing to do with her brother, sadly. I wish it were that easy.
But I wasn’t averse to killing two birds with one stone, either. How much would he lose his mind if he couldn’t find her one night, and then found her with me?
The thought made me smile.
Winding around the avenues, I spotted cars ahead and flashlights and headed toward them, pulling up behind Bryce’s black Camaro.
We hopped out of the truck, Michael and Kai grabbing a cooler out of the back and all of us walking over the grass, past trees and hedges, and up to the rest of the team already gathered around the grave.
“Hey, man,” I greeted Simon and tipped my chin at the others.
More “heys” went off around the circle, and Michael and Kai set down the cooler, some of the team immediately digging in for a beer.
I looked down. “What the hell?”
Marker flags were stuck in the ground, lining the grass-covered gravesite, making a rectangle the width and length of a casket.
“They’re digging him up,” Bryce said, cracking a beer. “They’re actually doing it.”
I glanced over my shoulder, frowning at the newly finished, brand-new, piece of shit McClanahan tomb, complete with the arrogant columns and pompous stained-glass windows.
“He wouldn’t want this,” Damon said.
I looked back down at Edward McClanahan’s grave, the old marble headstone green with age, rain, and snow, the years of his life barely visible anymore. But we knew his age. Nineteen thirty-six to nineteen fifty-four.
Eighteen. Young, just like us.
He’d be eighteen forever.
His surviving relatives wanted his legend to die, and the notoriety of the family name with it, so they built themselves a tomb, thinking they were going to hide him behind stone walls and a gate.
“They’re not moving him anywhere,” I said.
Michael caught my eye, a knowing smile curling his lips. Pulling the cell phone out of my pocket, I turned it on and started recording, documenting our annual pilgrimage to McClanahan’s grave every year since freshman year.
Damon threw me a beer, and the rest of us cracked ours open.
“To McClanahan,” Michael called out.
“McClanahan,” everyone joined in, raising our cans in the air.
“The first Horseman,” Damon chimed in.
“Give us the season,” another said.
Michael, our team’s captain, looked around. “Offerings?” he teased.
Jeremy Owens reached behind him on the ground and whipped out a pink tulle dress with a cheap silky bodice. It looked like a ballet costume.
“Close enough.” He tossed a replica of McClanahan’s girlfriend’s Homecoming dress on the grave.
Simon took a swig of his beer. “All I want to know is what that bitch looked like splattered all over the rocks.”
“We’ll never know,” Michael told him. “Only that when push came to shove, he did what he had to do. He sacrificed for the good of the team. For the family. When it comes down to it, would any of us do the same? He was a king.”
Not was a fucking king. Is a fucking king, because to us, he was a living, breathing part of this town.
“Give us the season,” Kai chanted, raising his beer.
“Remind us what’s necessary,” someone added.
And then everyone chimed in.
“For the team.”
“For the family.”
I moved the camera around the circle, taking everyone in.
“Give us the season,” they called out.
“Give us the season.”
And again.
And again.
Some poured a beer onto the grave, and all over her dress, the candles spread out in devotion flickering in the light breeze.
We didn’t explain this to anyone ever. It was kind of like the people who didn’t really believe in God but still went to church.
There was something to be said for tradition. Ritual.
It was good for the team.
The basketball team had been coming here for decades at the beginning of every season. We would never not come.
An hour later, a small bonfire burned inside the ruins of St. Killian’s, the keg already half-empty and laughter and shouting coming from down in the catacombs.
Damon sat in some dilapidated lawn chair, staring at the flames as two girls talked and kept an eye on him from near the sanctuary.
Waiting.
“I wish he’d gotten to grow up,” I said, tossing a stick into the fire. “I wonder what he’d be like now.”
“McClanahan?” Damon asked.
“Yeah.”
He waited, the flames glowing in his eyes. “He wouldn’t be special if he didn’t die.”
“He was special before that.” He was a captain, like Michael. He was a leader, selfless, a fighter…
No one really knew what happened that night.
“He wouldn’t be special,” Damon repeated. “Everyone changes. We all grow up.”
“Not me.”
He breathed out a laugh. “You’re going to have to be someone someday.”
“I’m going to be Indiana Jones.”
He just smiled, but kept his eyes on the fire. He never tried to drag me into reality as hard as Michael and Kai did. I had no clue what I wanted or who I wanted to be. I just wanted my people, and I wanted the girl of my dreams.
The girls giggled again, and Damon’s eyes flashed up, seeing them.
“Are you coming?” he sighed.
I followed his gaze, eyeing the legs and hair and how easy it would be to have some fun and get off, but…
“I don’t know,” I told him. “You ever think of doing this shit in the comfort of your bed?”
I was tired of playing in the catacombs, but Damon didn’t like to play alone.
He needed me.
I liked someone needing me.
“Why does no one ever get to go into your room?” I asked. “Not me. Not Michael. Not Kai. Definitely no girls. Can’t we all go somewhere comfortable?”
“You wanna see my bed?” Damon teased.
“I’d like to make sure it’s not a coffin.”
He snorted, but still…he didn’t answer the question. What was he hiding in there anyway?
I looked up at the girls again, but my gaze went right through them like they weren’t even there.
I didn’t want that tonight. I didn’t want to play here.
I’d rather relive last night, even though all that girl and I did was fight.
I smiled to myself. She’d fallen asleep with her glasses on last night. I took them off. I loved the way her tie was always tightened half-assed, her cuffs were too long and never buttoned, and her skin was my fucking religion lately. Especially the skin on her neck.
I hated school, but I was dying for Monday. She was gone when I woke up this morning, and I wanted to see her look at me after last night.
Would anything have changed? Would the sharpness in her eyes have softened at all?
“You’re not good enough for her,” Damon said, breaking the silence.
I stared at him. How did he know what I was thinking?
“You’ll never be good enough for her,” he pointed out. “Best you hear it now.”
“A friend would help me get what I wanted,” I told him.
He fell silent, and I studied him.
“You don’t want me to have what I want, though,” I said. “You don’t want Michael or Kai to have what they want.”
“I shouldn’t have everything I want, either,” he argued. “Getting what you want risks losing what you already have, and nothing can come between us.” He looked up, meeting my eyes. “Nothing will be as perfect as this. I don’t like change.”
He turned away again, gazing into the fire.
“Michael is always in so much control,” he continued, his voice growing harder. “I’d love to show him what he really needs. I’d love to see Kai troubled and confused. Really fucking unhinged, so nothing I have can ever escape me. They act like they don’t need us. I wish they knew that they did.”
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