by Dan Cummings
With a dead man’s rictus and a verbal prayer of, ‘Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit-shit-shit,’ Sam reversed out of the spot without looking, almost slamming into the front of a parked Citroen. Staubach flew back into the Firebird like a pit bull chasing after a cat, the muscle car roaring between the parking spaces in pursuit of Sam’s flight.
‘What have you done?’ Matt shouted, partially at Neil, partially at Sam. Neil was too scared to answer; clinging to the back of Sam and Matt’s seats, he watched in the wing mirrors as the Firebird sped after them through the parking lot and out of the school gates. ‘We’re not going to lose them,’ Matt stated. ‘What the fuck are we going to do?’
Sam was struck mute along with Neil, taxing his engine and charging down the busy roads. Swinging around a couple of cars obeying the speed limit to a barrage of bleating horns, the doomed quarry were painfully aware of the Firebird’s challenging growl bearing down on them. Sam dared a glimpse at the big black car closing the gap, seeing the cool, calm and collected brawn of Noakes copy their passage like an experienced tracker; beside him, the frenzied Staubach seemed to be gripping the dash like he was riding a rollercoaster.
The busy intersection of Tremont Boulevard and Fountain Street awaited them, the lights clicking from green to red in collusion with their pursuers. Sam knew what he was doing, knew full well the danger of his decision but seemed incapable of stopping.
‘Sam…’ Matt said quietly, leaning back in his seat. ‘Don’t.’
Sam stamped the accelerator to the mat, lurching them through a shrinking gap in the asphalt river before the cross currents of gas-guzzling metal smashed into them. Screaming in terror and futile triumph, Neil and Matt watched the Firebird skid to a halt before the crossing. Sam had left his voice somewhere back in the parking lot with his self-esteem. Quietly, a dew of panic sweat seeping into his t-shirt, he drove his friends home.
Chapter 4
The Firebird cruised to a slow stop outside the house on the hill. A pleasant structure of stone and wood bordered by lush, well-maintained verdant lawns. Despite his appearance, Noakes was a stickler for upkeep on the property. Stepping out of the car was a breath of fresh air from Staubach’s continual tirade.
‘We could have made it,’ Staubach whined poisonously.
The passive-featured pack leader wasn’t going to expend the energy in raising his voice. ‘And I’ve already told you, I’m not trashing my car over some high school nobody.’
Staubach came close to slamming the passenger door but thought better of it. ‘There were witnesses to that shit show. How’s it going to look if word gets around that those cunts got away with laying a hand on me?’
‘It’s a pretty big town. I’m not sure how concerned we should be over high schooler gossip.’
Dodd had slipped out of the car like a wraith, unseen, unheard, unacknowledged by both of them. He quietly tagged behind them up the gravel path to the rich, dark wooden porch.
‘If anything, I should be pissed at you for going overboard. You said they were long-time customers…not anymore.’ Noakes opened the front door and turned the alarm off. ‘If one of them was buying from a different source, we deal with the source as usual, and win them back.’
‘Fuck ’em. I never liked ’em anyway.’
‘They were customers, not friends.’
The house had an almost sterile feel to it. Nice, understated paintings and ornaments, plush furniture, but un-lived in, like a well-cared-for display. Noakes led them down the hall to the dining room and veranda at the back of the house. He removed the Glock semi-automatic from his waistband and placed it on a dining mat to avoid scuffing the wood, then opened a polished oak cabinet. Inside, he placed the brass zippo beside his dad’s old poker set, and crouched down, removing a set of weighing scales and the remainder of an ounce of pungent marijuana.
Staubach sniffed loudly, eyeballing the herb brick remnants. ‘I can shift the rest of that tomorrow, easy. Lloyd is already hassling me for two eighths, and Breck, another dude on the team, wants one too. It’s sweet, Grainger will get a stiffy at the speed we’re sellin’.’ Staubach’s voice was still sneering with his unreleased aggression. ‘See, because I’m a good businessman. I’m fucking polite as fuck when I gotta be. But if some bitch thinks he’s gettin’ one over me then I ain’t gonna let that slide.’
Dodd was afraid to touch anything and tried his best to meld into the cream painted walls, knowing his place in the unspoken hierarchy. He awkwardly observed Staubach waiting to pop, all the while, the frozen lakes of Noakes’s eyes seemed to have deepened, imagining some serene vista as he bagged the last of the weed.
Staubach pushed away from the table, taking his obnoxious air with him over to a display case. He glanced at a few framed photographs of Noakes’s parents; their wedding, various gatherings and parties, some with Noakes’s uncle Grainger. Staubach picked one of them up, looking blankly at it before returning it. Putting another joint to his lips, he was about to light it.
‘Outside,’ Noakes ordered, putting the scales and tray away. Staubach shook his head irritably and unlocked the patio, leaving smudged fingerprints on the glass. Noakes gathered up the three bags and walked over to the display cabinet, meticulously fixing the position of the photograph Staubach had viewed, then grabbed a clean towel from the kitchen to wipe off the patio doors’ fingerprints.
Dodd watched the obsessive household routine. ‘Want any help?’
Noakes levelled a stare at him. ‘The car needs a wax.’
Dodd was about to shuffle off post haste when Noakes changed his mind with a weary huff. ‘Dodd, forget it. I’ll do it myself later.’ Dodd resumed his position of out of sight, out of mind. Dropping the towel on the table, Noakes walked to the patio threshold, watching Staubach stew in the large garden. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said cryptically.
Staubach seemed to decipher this with great skill, an ugly crack of a smile releasing a trickle of smoke.
‘We’ll wait for them after school. Teach them a hard lesson about respect.’ Noakes squinted at Shit Storm like he was a defective grenade which may or may not erupt into fire and concussive death any second. Staubach was appeased with the boss’s ruling.
‘That’s more like it, brother. Just cuz they’re not in the game doesn’t mean they don’t have to play by the rules.’
Chapter 5
With his stomach cannibalising itself thanks to the unfortunate encounter at lunch, Neil tried his very best to appear copacetic at the dinner table, wanting to expunge the parking lot disaster like so much mental sewage. Quietly and with great concentration he wolfed down his mother’s tuna pasta, wholemeal and without mayo, in honour of his recent stringent deterrence of his secret recreational drug use. It was dry as dead grass but he didn’t mind, even if his dad, Martin, spooned some generous dollops of mayonnaise into his own whilst looking at his son like he was some kind of philistine.
‘Don’t forget to breathe,’ Martin coached. He looked as though he had had a worse day than Neil; the youth didn’t suspect he had been strong-armed by drug dealing delinquents at the insurance company, but still, a shit day is a shit day.
Over the last couple of years Neil had noticed with some concern how his father looked just how he would if he were to hop into a time machine to visit his forty-seven-year-old future self. Thinning brown hair, small paunch curving out from his sparrow chest, a few more wrinkles. Sobering.
‘You breaking the sound barrier yet?’ Martin asked, tiredly spooning up more of the pasta.
Neil scoffed, the muffled noise becoming obscured by another incoming shovel-full of food. ‘Hardly. I beat the rest of the guys in class today but Matt thinks it’s just on account of my height.’ Martin chuckled congenially. ‘It’s fun, it clears my head but I’m not getting delusional over my abilities. The guys on the track team, they’re fast. I’m just beating smokers and lazy guys who don’t want to embarrass themselves on the basketball court or football field.’
Karp Senior t
ried to pick up the nuances of Neil’s body language but didn’t quite grasp the subtleties. ‘You got the Karp height. Have you considered trying out for the basketball team?’
The idea unexpectedly dug a thorn into Neil’s side, ‘A little late in the day for that. Anyway, I couldn’t care less. Most of those guys are pri—’ swearing was unwelcome at the dinner table, quick recovery, ‘—pretty annoying.’
Helen, the matriarch of this little family unit, scolded him with a warning smirk.
‘I just thought it would look good on those college applications. Maybe you’re just a late bloomer,’ Martin encouraged his son’s newfound disciplinary lifestyle after so many years of scraping by, even though he had a perfectly understandable reason.
Neil cut this off at the knees before it continued. ‘No, honestly, I’m not interested. The occasional run suits me just fine, headphones in, escape from my thoughts for a while, it’s therapeutic.’ He just remembered he no longer had an iPod. Maybe running in silence could be fun too? He grabbed his glass of water, hiding his anger at this little remembrance and washed some of the food down.
Martin gestured with his hands. ‘I understand. Sports never held much interest for me neither. I’m just glad you’re doing something, your generation seems like a ticking time bomb of health complications.’
Helen didn’t want to put a quarter in Marty the Preaching Machine, she knew he meant well but didn’t want Neil getting bogged down with his father’s glum scaremongering so she expertly diverted the course of the conversation. ‘Has Sam decided on what he wants to do after graduation yet?’
‘Yeah, earn crap money and play video games, I think.’
Martin’s eyebrows raised almost comically above his spectacles like he just heard a grand idea. ‘Huh, well, certainly achievable.’
‘He’s too smart to waste that mind of his,’ Helen disapproved. ‘June and Tim must be going nuts.’
Neil shrugged. ‘I don’t think they much care to be honest. You know what they’re like.’
‘Hmm,’ Martin agreed, ‘Classic Type A personalities.’
Helen looked uncomfortable with labelling them but couldn’t really argue about them being borderline sociopathic in their quests to conquer the mountains of their lofty professions.
‘That boy is clearly a Type B. It’s like he’s adopted.’
‘Marty,’ Helen chastised with a guilty laugh, ‘that’s a horrible thing to say.’
Martin borrowed one of his son’s shrugs, hoping it would dispel any sermons from Helen. ‘Well, I suppose Sam still has the best part of a year to make a decision.’
Neil wasn’t going to argue the point, he knew Sam was too much of a slacker to do anything other than take the path of least resistance. But then, maybe the day’s earlier events had soured him on the whole hippy-dippy pot-haze existence. It seemed doubtful he would be suicidal enough to attempt purchasing green from either those maniacs or any other foolish budding entrepreneur. The whole run-in ran through his head in double speed but retained its clarity. Sam had decided to skip the rest of the afternoon — much like the morning — and mumbled an offer of hanging out at his since his parents would be at work until after five o’clock, giving them carte blanche to chill out and process their predicament. Matt was initially tempted but then decided his quota of stress was filled for the day, opting to go to Sanderson’s class and maybe try to understand the brain-numbing formulas of high school math. Neil remembered the hurt behind Sam’s eyes. Shock more than anything. Such abhorrent and undeserved victimisation tended to leave a raw psychic wound which even time could sometimes fail to heal. He tried to talk Sam into going somewhere to cool off before returning to the next period but he might as well have been talking to the dashboard.
‘He views college as a waste of time and effort now. Says there’s a lack of prospects after graduation. That everybody but the lucky one percent will waste away doing monkey work for peanuts.’
‘He said that?’ Helen asked.
‘I paraphrased.’ Neil shrugged again, ‘I’ll talk to him about it, maybe he’ll come around.’ Looking down at his half-full plate he noticed how Noakes and Staubach had stolen his appetite as well as his iPod, money and self-respect. Pushing it aside, he said, ‘I’ll finish this later, I think I ate too fast. I’m going to do some work, thanks, Ma.’
Martin glanced at him. ‘You don’t finish that, I will. Fair warning.’
‘Fair warning,’ Neil humoured him, taking his plate out to the kitchen.
*****
Lying on his bed, Neil stared hypnotically at the ceiling, watching the odd car’s headlights shine through the blinds, dividing his dark room into slices of white light. The Cars Magic accompanied him in his private suburban darkness. Unlike Sam’s inflexible fixation on classic rock and metal, Neil had recently been flirting more and more with new wave bands and even synth. Synth, such a dirty word for many head-bangers, but ever since stumbling across The Cars, Blondie and a plethora of his old man’s favourite groups, he had delved deeper and deeper, even becoming immersed, somehow, in the contemporary sub-culture of 80s movie-inspired electro such as Dance with the Dead, Jordan F and College to name a few. Deep breaths, he commanded, relying on one of his old techniques, needing to gain control of the anxiety pressing itself down on his chest like a brutish, tattooed hand. Inhaling through his nose, he held the intake before slowly, smoothly exhaling it back out. After half a minute of this exercise, his cluttered mind regained some semblance of order and he sat up, refusing to let his fear push him under.
He switched his bedside lamp on and texted Sam on WhatsApp; not the group one for them and Matt, just a personal one-to-one, not wanting to throw any further attention on Sam if he was still feeling down.
Yo, u feelin ok?
The reply was typically swift, Sam’s phone never straying too far from his nimble, emoticon-loving fingers. Getting over it. Just pwned some lip-flappin tool who put a hit out on me on GTA. A moment’s pause. I think the lil shit was like 10 or sumthin.
Neil smiled for Sam’s big moment but knew he was just hiding behind these trivial, unreal victories to mask his unhappiness. That shit at school no doubt did wonders to help with this problem.
Perhaps Sam was part psychic as he clearly knew why Neil was messaging him. Still can’t believe what happened b4. Buyin off him for years and he flips like pancake cuz of 1 side order.
Neil was equally perplexed; even with Staubach’s well-documented volatility, it did seem an excessive reaction to such a minor act.
Maybe losing bizness or sumthin. They’ve fucking lost mine anyway. And with ur lil detox kick that’s another. I doubt Matt will be calling him up either. WHAT A COCK!! Sam added an emoji of a cartoon rooster head.
Looks like you’ll be joining me on this detox now, lol. Neil tried to keep it light. He knew this was a sharp subject but needed to get it off his chest and in his opinion, it was a perfectly legitimate one. Might do you some good.
A surprisingly long pause followed and Neil attributed it to either Sam being too engrossed in slaying more online gangsters and hitmen in some virtual faux Californian battlefield or fighting off the troubling notion of life without marijuana.
Finally, the buzz of conversation. I’ll stick with Sticky. Fuck — Sam added the turd emoji followed by a storm cloud. A clear sign if there ever was one that Sam seriously needed to take stock of his little hobby.
You joking? Neil stared at Sam’s WhatsApp status, watching the Sam’s Typing… message and waiting for his rationalisation.
Not gonna stop cuz of those pricks. I’ll keep it chill.
Neil tried to compose himself, not wanting to rile Sam up. Best friend or not, he knew that if he tried calling now it would be full of strained concern and barely concealed agitation from the pair of them. It was a matter better discussed in person, and maybe with Matt to back him up. U going in tomorrow?
Probs. Gonna be watching my ass between classes though.
Neil proc
essed the anxiety in that message, imagining the hallways and parking lot, the gym and the cafeteria, stairwells and hiding places, all the potential areas where a surprise attack could happen. We’ll be fine. Not like that asshole spends much time in school anyway. Neil tried to find some comfort in this safety net but found it lacking.
Then Sam inadvertently scuppered any lingering vestiges of security. U must be the one that’s high. Most the school buy off him. And what bout Lloyd and Dodd?
Neil started to feel queasy. His mind ran away with awful possibilities. He didn’t know if it was a good thing or bad, but if Shit Storm or one of his lackeys caught hold of him within the school premises there would be no ill-advised high speed chase to save him. It felt like the walls were closing in again. Nothing will happen. It’s over now. I’m gonna get an early night. C u tmrw.
Dropping his phone next to the lamp, he sank back into his depressed outline on the mattress and desperately tried to shun the imagined possibilities of violent meetings during interclass transit. Then, like a beautiful dove skirting through a stormy night, an image of Lindsey swept into his thoughts, delivering him from the worried knot in his chest. Lindsey who walked a tightrope high above easy class distinction, who had a great sense of humour and a distinct lack of the pretentious airs which hung from some of the other band geeks and brains. Still, they travelled in vastly different circles, he a former burnout trying to salvage his mediocre academia, she, largely a mystery who he had infrequently admired from afar. But he liked how she had started to dress lately, alternative but without trying too hard to rebel against popular fashion, like she was slowly, inexplicably morphing into one of the dress down burnouts. But her smile… that was impossible to dress down. Too bad he was most likely going to get his face and limbs rearranged in the none too distant future, otherwise he might have taken a gamble and asked her out. If he was lucky he might at least be able to talk to her again before he had his teeth knocked out. Maybe this time he wouldn’t say something fucking stupid.