“Beer bong,” Nick said, elbowing Blake to draw his eyes away from the attractive guy toking across the room. He had sleeves of tattoos and a perfect mouth, attributes that intrigued Blake enough that he promised himself he’d go talk to him after he got more shitty.
Tilting his head, he placed the hose in his mouth, swallowing quickly as a deluge of warm Natty Light poured down his throat. Once he’d taken it all in, Blake stood up straight and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Pretty good form, Mitchell,” Nick grinned, patting Blake’s bicep. “But watch how an expert handles it.”
Of all the things Blake could become an aficionado at, he was sure ingesting beer was at the bottom of his list, but he indulged his friend, who in all honesty, didn’t have much more to strive toward.
Blake glanced at the hot tattooed guy again. He was decked out in red, from the Reds flat bill on his head, to the Jordans on his feet. Though it was an unconventional look for a white kid in Kentucky, Blake liked it. He probably would’ve approved of anything the guy was wearing, considering how good-looking he was. When their eyes locked, the guy held up the pipe as if offering to share, and Blake wasted no time in heading over to join him.
“I saw you looking over here. I figured you wanted to hit it,” he smirked, handing the bowl over to Blake.
“You have no idea,” Blake replied, returning the grin.
After his third drag, Blake was following the guy to the dark corner of a bedroom crowded with kids from another school who he didn’t recognize. They snuck touches, turned on by the potential danger of being caught. Groping led to kissing, which somehow segued into Blake pulling a baggie of crushed Adderall out of his back pocket to share with his new friend. He’d never snorted the stuff socially, but in his already smashed state, he didn’t give a damn.
The drugs managed to make Blake hornier than he had already been, which was a feat on its own.
“We should get outta here,” the guy whispered against Blake’s lips. “Do you have a car?”
“Yeah, but where could we go?” Blake asked. “Just park somewhere?”
“We could,” he said, “or we could go back to my place. My dad’s an alcoholic. He passed out for the night before I left, and he’ll be out cold until at least noon tomorrow.”
“Where do you live?”
“Millville.”
Blake nodded. The town was a few miles past Unionville, but that worked out fine because he would be able to drop Nick off before he and the tattooed kid continued their fun. “Let’s go.”
They made their way into the living room where Blake located Nick, who appeared to be rounding the corner to the stupor stage of inebriation.
“We’re leaving,” Blake stated, nudging Nick’s knee with his own. “Get up.”
“Where are we going?” Nick slurred, standing up on visibly shaky legs.
“You’re going home,” Blake answered.
“Who’re you?” Nick asked the tattooed guy.
Blake tuned in to hear the guy say, “Trent.”
Trent.
“You’re coming with us?” Nick asked, confused.
“Yeah,” Trent nodded, smiling at Blake.
“Oh!” Nick exclaimed as if the switch to his brain had been flicked up. “Ohh.”
Blake closed his eyes and shook his head, continuously astounded by how obtuse his friend could be.
“Well, then, lead the way,” Nick said, gesturing for them to head out. “Shotgun.”
“Are you good to drive?” Trent asked as he climbed in the back of the car and settled into the seat behind the passenger’s.
“He’s always good to drive,” Nick interjected, buckling his seatbelt. “He’s the best non-licensed driver on the road.”
“That’s reassuring,” Trent chuckled.
“I’m alright,” Blake promised, smiling back at him in the rearview mirror. That was probably a lie—what with the beer, weed, and Adderall—but he knew that on the continuum of being messed up, he’d been worse. It wasn’t as if he was falling over or puking. That had to count for something.
“So, did your license get taken away or something?” Trent asked as Blake concentrated on the dark two-lane road. “DUI or whatever?”
“No, nothing like that,” Blake answered. “I just haven’t gotten it yet. Haven’t gotten around to it, I guess.”
“It’s better to not have it than to lose it,” Trent reasoned. “At least you still have a chance. I can’t apply for one again until I’m twenty-one.”
“No shit,” Blake sighed. “What did they get you on?”
“Hotboxing.”
“Stupid,” Nick laughed.
Blake rolled his eyes and scoffed at his friend. “Like you wouldn’t if you had a car.”
“Well, it turns out I’m currently in a car and—" he finagled a pipe and lighter out of his pocket, “I have weed. Opportunity is knocking. Let’s see if you’re right, if I’ll actually do it.”
“Let’s not, because I never doubted it,” Blake retorted. His eyes were bleary and the last thing he needed was to have a cloud of smoke to contend with.
“No fun,” Nick tsked, turning back to regard Trent. “What do you think?”
“I think I’m not driving so I’m gonna shut the fuck up,” Trent replied, garnering a grin from Blake.
Trent was cool, more so than anyone he’d met recently, and Blake couldn’t have been more excited to get to know him better. As he drove, he thought of how the rest of the night was going to go, hoping the fire they’d found at the party would continue to burn when it was just the two of them.
They were nearly to Unionville when Blake let out a yawn that assured him it was good they were close to their destination. All of a sudden, his hope for chemistry with Trent was a wish that he wouldn’t fall asleep as soon as he hit the guy’s bed. He was revving to go earlier, but now he thought he’d much rather go to sleep, as a wave of wooziness and fatigue washed over him.
The headlights of a passing truck blinded Blake for a moment, leaving floating, black blotches in his vision long after the vehicle was out of sight. Squeezing his eyes shut, Blake felt his body being tossed to the right and then to the left as everything grew quiet, vacuous, like the air was sucked out of the car completely. He was spinning in a clothes dryer, hot and discombobulated, head smacking the side with each revolution.
And then came the crash.
12
Blake wasn’t sure he’d passed out until he came to with a skull-splitting headache and aching neck. In front of him was the thick trunk of a tree, slightly cracked by the now smashed hood of his car. Turning slowly to his left, he saw that he’d ended up in an embankment surrounded by sod and rocks. He wondered how it happened, one moment he was squinting and the next he could barely open his eyes.
“Fuck,” he grunted.
“We got in an accident. You took the curve too quickly,” Trent said from back, “We spun out. It’s bad, man.”
It wasn’t as though Blake hadn’t realized he’d crashed the car, it was more that he struggled to understand if it had really happened or if he was sleeping and existing within a nightmare. Trent’s voice made it real, and his words had Blake snapping his head around to check on Nick.
“Holy shit!” Blake cried, staring at his friend’s lifeless body. Nick was folded in on himself, head hanging low and shoulders rolled forward, with shards of glass covering his lap. “He’s dead! What the fuck? He’s dead!”
Reaching over, Blake pressed his fingers against the dip of Nick’s neck, trying to find his pulse, praying that he would.
“I don’t know—" Blake began, shaking his head vehemently in disbelief from what had occurred. He couldn’t feel his friend’s heartbeat. “I don’t know if I’m doing this right or if he’s dead. I don’t know.” All he knew was that he was panicking. Nick was dead, the car was totaled, and it was his fault.
“Get the fuck off me,” Nick grumbled, knocking Blake’s hand away. “I’m no
t dead.”
“You looked dead,” Blake said tentatively. He could hear the way his voice was warbling and wavering with anxiety. “I could’ve sworn you were dead.”
“Well consider this the second second-coming,” Nick snarked, pressing the heels of his hands against his eye-sockets. “You fucked your car up.”
“You’re not dead,” Blake uttered, still flabbergasted by the development. “I thought you were done.”
“Got it,” Nick nodded, pushing on the airbag that was encroaching on his space. “I’m not though.”
“He’s in shock,” Trent stated.
Blake wanted to disagree, to repeat that he really believed Nick was dead, but he didn’t, because maybe Trent was right. He was sitting in the car he’d stolen and then crashed into a ditch, in the middle of the night, and he was probably in shock.
“I can’t get out,” Nick groused, attempting to unlock the door and push it open. “Try yours.”
Blake did as he was told, relieved for the directions that helped him function in his state. “I can’t either.”
The sound of a tired power window inching down drew Blake’s attention to the backseat where he saw Trent’s face was full of blood.
“Jesus Christ, you’re bleeding; your face is covered in blood,” Blake stammered, unable to see Trent’s expression clearly beyond the crimson splatter.
“It’s my nose,” Trent informed, using his already blood-soaked red t-shirt to wipe the substance off his skin. “It’s broken.”
“Shit,” Blake whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever,” Trent said easily, “it’s not the first time and probably won’t be the last.” He gestured to the open window. “We can get out this way. Are you hurt or anything? Can you do that?”
“I don’t think I’m hurt,” Blake replied, unbuckling his seatbelt. “You go first.”
Blake watched as Trent maneuvered his lithe body out of the window. He hit the ground with a thud, and called, “I’m okay.”
“Roll over or I’m going to land on you,” Nick ordered as he made his way through the window. “Come on, Mitchell.”
The act of climbing out of a car window would have typically been easy for Blake, but he found it difficult to focus on the task at hand. After a bit of a struggle, he was lying in the cool soil, staring up at the pitch-black sky, wishing what happened hadn’t. Silently, he compelled the universe to reverse time.
“Shit,” Nick sighed, assessing the car’s damage. “It’s fucking wrecked.”
Sitting up so he no longer had to peer at his friend through his peripheral vision, Blake took his first look at the vehicle, awed by the level of destruction. His mom was going to kill him, and then after she did, his brother would end him again. He had no business driving the car to begin with, and there was no doubt they would both remind him of that, exponentially.
“We have to leave it here,” Blake decided. “They’ll think it was stolen or something and the person wrecked it.”
“I mean, technically that’s the truth,” Nick said, “but, I think they’ll know it was your dumbass who did it.”
Blake shook his head. “No, I’ll sneak back into the house before they wake up, get in bed, and when they notice it’s gone I’ll act shocked.”
“I don’t know anything about anything, but I don’t think that’s going to work,” Trent interjected.
“It’s not like I have a lot of fucking options here,” Blake snapped, rubbing the back of his neck to calm himself down. “Do you guys have anyone we can call to pick us up?”
“At three thirty?” Nick scoffed. “Yeah, right.”
“You know a shit ton of people,” Blake exclaimed. “You don’t know one that would come get us?”
“I know partiers,” he replied, “not the kinda guys who are gonna do me a solid in the middle of the night.”
“I guess we’re walking then,” Blake sighed. A four-mile trek was the last thing he wanted to do, but he knew there weren’t any other options.
As they started their journey, Blake half-wondered where Trent was going to go, but he mostly didn’t care. He had enough on his mind. With every step he took, he dreaded the next, knowing he was drawing closer to the inevitable at home, while moving further from the car and the responsibilities he’d abandoned in the embankment.
It was nearly four thirty by the time he unlocked the front door to his house. Blake had expected everyone to be sound asleep, and was unpleasantly surprised to find his mother, brother and Dominic sitting in the living room, watching him as he crept in.
“Where were you?” Grace demanded, her jaw clenched as she glared at him. His mother had made it clear that she was sick and tired of his poor behavior, and Blake had no doubt that his antics that evening would push her over the edge.
“Out,” he answered vaguely. There was no good answer to where he’d been and what he’d done.
“I got that much,” she tsked. “Where were you? Where are your glasses?”
Blake brought his hand to his face, surprised to find his specs weren’t on. He thought things were blurry, but he was in too much of a haze to realize why.
“Where’s my car?” Logan interrupted, arms crossed over his chest.
“Our car,” Blake corrected, earning sighs and head shakes from everyone, including Dominic, which was a fucking joke.
“You don’t have a license. Until you do, it’s mine,” Logan shot back. “Where’s my car?”
“In a ditch somewhere,” Blake admitted, barely able to croak out the words. “I got into an accident.”
“You have to be fucking kidding me!” Logan growled, looking like a tiger about to lunge at his prey.
“Are you hurt?” Grace cried, her “mom-reflex” flexing as she jumped up from the couch to examine him.
“He’s about to be,” Logan grunted, pacing the room and punching his fist against his thigh. Blake would’ve told him to calm down if he’d been able to muster the balls.
“Uh, no,” Blake mumbled, hating that he’d caused his mom to worry when she already had so much on her plate.
“I can’t believe you,” she growled, shaking her head in disgust. If he didn’t have whiplash from the wreck, he surely had it from the rapid change in his mother’s disposition. “When does it end with you? When is enough, enough?”
“I don’t know how to answer that,” Blake whispered, avoiding eye contact with his mother. When he risked a glance, he saw that her water lines were pooling with tears. She’d survived cancer, and now she had to survive him.
“Well maybe you should think about it,” Dominic suggested.
If Blake hadn’t been so exhausted he would’ve told Dom off for being a hypocrite. Instead, he listened to his mother and Logan go off about all the things he needed to do at daybreak while he tried not to pass out. By the time he did tuck himself into bed, he made a mental note never to leave again.
That worked well for approximately an hour, until his mother was banging on his bedroom door, ordering him to get up so they could go look for the car. Because of how grueling the walk home had been, Blake had thought the car was further outside of Unionville than it actually was.
While they assessed the damage, Grace chanted a medley of “I can’t believe this” and “what the hell, Blake,” while Blake searched the wreckage for his glasses, a task that would have been much easier if he had his glasses on. When he did locate his frames, he was happy to see they weren’t broken, but disappointed to find that the lenses had popped out. Running his hand over the patchy grass in the general vicinity of where he’d found his glasses, he came across the lenses—unscratched.
Blake finagled the lenses back into the frames thinking how, sometimes, he was too lucky for his own good.
13
The months following the accident were full of contrition. Blake knew he’d lost his mother’s trust, and regardless of how uphill the battle was, he wanted to make shit right as best he could. Seeing as how he couldn’t afford to repl
ace the car, or turn back time, Blake decided that his best course of action moving forward was to clean up his act. So, he did. Rather than spend the majority of his time with Nick, he was back to party-free weekdays and afternoons with Greg, who thankfully forgave him for his attitude and didn’t say “I told you so,” even though he probably wanted to.
To make matters more interesting, Blake had managed to reconnect with Claire in some capacity. They weren’t exactly heading quickly toward coupledom, but they were talking, and Blake was back to working on his “master plan.” So far, the plan consisted of walking her to her locker after class each day while stealing glances and touches that he knew turned her on. She wasn’t putty in his hands, but she was softening, which was progress.
“What are you doing after school today?” Blake asked on their daily post-military history walk.
“Studying,” she replied, hugging her notebook to her chest. “Just like you should be.”
“I’m planning on studying,” he smirked, adding, “with you.”
“Oh, is that right?” Claire laughed.
Blake loved how she threw her head back when she giggled at his jokes, as if he was worthy of more than just the noise.
“Is it?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “It sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Hitting the books for old times’ sake.”
“Are you pretending that we studied?” Claire questioned, with a grin. “I tried to study, and you tried to make-out.”
“You never complained.”
“Never,” she confirmed, her cheeks flushing at the admission.
“So, do you want to?” Blake pressed.
“Want to what?”
He smiled the smile he knew drove her crazy. “Study with me.”
Claire looked around the hallway as if an answer was written somewhere on the walls. “Okay,” she said, her eyes finally locked on Blake’s. “We can study.”
His Own Way Out Page 7