Wrecked

by Jeannine Colette

  There’s a rectangular keychain hanging from the ring. I lift the rectangle in my hands and read the black block letters.

  KEEP CALM

  AND

  ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT ON.

  On the other side is a picture of Matthew McConaughey wearing a baby-blue button-down and a gorgeous smile.

  I raise a brow at her. “Adam?”

  She grins. “I’ll text Luke and tell him you have your own ride home tonight.”

  chapter TWENTY-ONE

  The Blue Whore is sitting in the parking lot in the same spot I usually park in. She looks brand-new. The front lights have been replaced, and there is a new black guard in front of the bumper. I put my key in the lock and turn. When I open the door, the most ear-splitting sound screams from the car. I fiddle with the keychain and start hitting buttons on the key fob that weren’t there before the accident. I hit each button until, finally, the Whore stops screaming.

  I sit in my car and find it’s been freshly cleaned. I also have a new dashboard, and the radio has been replaced. When I turn the car on, the AC blasts, and the small TV that is now where my radio used to be comes to life. I have a Bluetooth receiver and navigation. A manual on the passenger seat is for a set of airbags, most likely new ones that had to be installed after the accident. The safety upgrades are probably worth more than the car itself.

  I put the car in reverse, and the screen on the dash changes. Through the lens of a camera, I can see if anything is behind me on the ground. I use the camera and my eyes to back up, and then I switch gears and head out of the parking lot. It’s the same car I’ve always had, but it has been upgraded with about every safety feature one could install. It is a colossal waste of money. Hopefully, Rory only charged Adam for parts.

  Sitting idle at a red light, I should turn right to go home. When the light turns green, I head left. Away from the main shopping district of town and onto the residential streets on the north side of town.

  The houses here are larger than the one I grew up in. We had three bedrooms, a modest-sized kitchen, and a brick fireplace. These homes are bigger and more spaced out, the cars in the driveways are more expensive, and the sidewalks aren’t cracked. That’s a shame. Those cracks make for some fun bike riding.

  I pull the Blue Whore up to a red brick home. The lights are all off, and the house looks vacant, but I know it is still occupied by two people who lost their eighteen-year-old son to heroin seven years ago.

  “You must be Leah,” Brad’s mom said with a hurried tone to her voice.

  It was the first time I’d ever been to his house, and she had on an apron with marigolds all over it.

  “Brad, your friend’s here,” she called up to him.

  But he didn’t respond.

  She turned to me. “I have cutlets I don’t want to burn. Just go upstairs. It’s the first door on the right. Tell him dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes.”

  She left me in the two-story foyer, the wooden staircase before me. I called up to Brad, but there was no answer. I walked up the stairs, taking in the family photos on the wall—all of Brad. His kindergarten, fifth, and eighth grade graduation pictures, fishing with his family, with the family dog, on a speedboat in some island setting—it was all up for proud display. As I got to the top of the stairs, I could hear music. Rap music to be precise. And the closer I got, I found the music was accompanied by a teenage boy’s voice.

  I walked to the first door on the right. It was partially closed, about eight inches of the door open for me to look in. And I was so glad it was.

  Through the opening, I saw Brad in his room with a baseball cap on backward. He was standing in front of a mirror, rapping into it like he was Eminem or part of Wu-Tang Clan. His hands were open and flat, pointing toward the mirror. His best gangsta face was set, and he was spitting out the words pretty well—until he wasn’t. He got tongue-tied. He bent down and started scrolling through his computer. Reading the lyrics a few times, he reset the song and started again.

  I covered my mouth to stifle a giggle.

  He was trying to memorize the lyrics. It was quite adorable.

  His mouth pursed, he gave himself a sexy mug and started reciting the lyrics again. My head was bobbing in the hallway, as I got into the song as well. My dance troupe had just done a performance using the same song, so I knew it by heart. Honestly, I was pretty sick of it, but watching Brad was making me love it…a lot.

  He got past the part he had messed up, and I couldn’t help but clap, causing him to spin around, his back hitting the mirror.

  I danced my way in and laughed as he covered his face with two hands. His bright red cheeks shone behind his fingers. Not having any of this embarrassment, I grabbed his hands and pulled them from his face. He tilted his head in shyness, but he had a broad smile on his face.

  The music was still playing, the chorus coming up. And, now, it was my turn to embarrass myself.

  “There she goes with the bom, bom, bom,” I sang as I did the steps to my dance routine. “Her hips, they sway with the bom, bom, bom.”

  Brad’s brows rose.

  We’d just started dating, and he hadn’t come to my last dance competition to know what we had been working on.

  “It’s guerrilla warfare with her bom, bom, bom!” I hopped up on the bed, and instead of doing the routine, I busted out with some freestyle dance moves. “Get nasty! I get loose! I get crazy! She’s so loose! It’s Master Craze, and the girl’s in a daze. I just can’t help myself.”

  Brad’s face lit up in amazement. His embarrassment was long gone. In its place was elation. He climbed up on the bed and started jumping and dancing with me.

  “She’s freaky! She’s so fine! I want to make her all mine! With that sleek red hair and a devilish stare, I’m about to lose myself.”

  We crashed onto the bed, and Brad mercilessly tickled me. His fingers moved up and down my sides, igniting laughter from me. I curled in to protect myself from his roaming fingers, laughing and trying to catch my breath. He wouldn’t let me up, so I did the only thing I knew that would make him stop.

  I kissed him.

  It wasn’t our first kiss. That had been after school in the park behind the building. It had been quick and awkward, but it was my first, so it was special. He had just asked me to be his girlfriend, and the kiss was some sort of commemorative marking of the occasion.

  Not this kiss. This time, I caught him by surprise. When my lips brushed his, his fingers stopped. His eyes were wide open. So were mine. We stared at each other for a moment.

  I had never been alone with a boy on a bed, and I was pretty sure it was his first time, too. I didn’t know if he was as scared as I was, but I was so nervous that my body went completely stiff.

  A small breath escaped his lips as he leaned further in. My body melted into the mattress as he deepened that kiss. It was my first true kiss, and it was beautiful.

  “I’m going to draw you.” He looked down at me, his eyes roving over my face.

  I raised my brows. Brad was an excellent artist. I knew from seeing the drawings all over his binder.

  “I’m going to draw you every day until I get it right.”

  “Get what right?” I asked.

  “How pretty your face looks right now. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to erase it from my memory.”

  “Then, don’t.”

  I open my mouth to breathe in the burn radiating in my throat. My jaw trembles, and my mouth curves down in a frown. My foot pushes on the gas, and I pull away from the curb.

  “You are not going to eat that?”

  My jaw hung low in mock horror.

  Brad leaned forward and took the last slice of pizza, held it in the air with the tip of the triangle pointing down, and bit the end.

  I groaned in disgust. We’d ordered a whole pie, and I’d only eaten one slice. He was now devouring his seventh.

  “You are such a boy!” I took the long white paper that had been removed from my straw ear
lier, rolled it up, and threw it at him.

  He grinned with a mouthful of cheese. “Lucky for you.”

  I rolled my eyes and put my feet up next to him on the plastic booth.

  I watched as he ate, that cropped black hair cut close to his head. He had these perfectly arched eyebrows that highlighted his blue eyes. He was a genetic anomaly—the kind of guy I had taped on my walls. And he was mine.

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin, his lips quirking into a smile.

  “What?” I asked, touching my face to see if there was something on it.

  He leaned back, took my feet, and placed them on his lap. “I love you. That’s all.”

  I blushed ten shades darker than the booth in the pizzeria. “You should.”

  “I should?” He laughed.

  “You should.”

  “I should.”

  The strip mall we used to hang out in is still standing strong. The pizzeria is there, but the arcade is long gone. In its place is a pottery studio, the type of place where you pick out premade items and paint them. Brad would have liked that.

  “Do you think there’s really a heaven?” Laying on the wooden floor of the tree house in my parents’ backyard, I turned to Brad, who was drawing on a large white pad. A piece of charcoal was in his hand, the dust all over his fingers.

  He paused, his light eyes roving over his work. “No.”

  I lean up. “That’s morbid.”

  “You asked.” His face was pinched in, and the deep lines by his brows were thick.

  Rolling over, I crawled over to him and took the sketchpad from his hands. It was a drawing of me. He drew me often but was never satisfied. He captured the almond shape of my eyes, the lashes bending at the ends. My heart-shaped face was shadowed beautifully, making me look prettier on paper than I was in real life.

  “This is gorgeous,” I praised.

  He looked annoyed, his grimace unavoidable. “I can never get your lips right.”

  I looked back at the picture. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “You have this Cupid’s bow at the top of your mouth. That dimple, I can’t get right. Never. I mess it up every damn time.” Brad was agitated, and it was unlike him. He never got upset with the world. Just himself.

  “You’re obsessing.”

  “If I can’t draw a simple picture of my girlfriend, how am I going to make it through art school?”

  “I have a solution!” I declared. I grabbed his hands and put them on the sides of my head. “You’re just going to have to kiss these lips more.”

  He tried to move his hands, but I pulled them back onto my face.

  “You have charcoal all over you now.”

  “Good. I like getting dirty.”

  “Your dad’s gonna know I had my hands on you,” he said.

  “Then, you’d better make it worth the week’s worth of grounding I’m gonna get.”

  I take the boulevard that runs along the outside of town and drive toward the high school. The large brown building looks the same as it did when I went there. The same as when my parents had been there, too. I drive around toward the park where Brad and I had our first kiss and further to the basketball courts where I spent many nights with Adam.

  “You mind if Adam and Nina come with us tonight?” Brad asked.

  “More, the merrier.”

  Adam had just started dating a college girl. It was the first girlfriend he’d had, as far as I knew. Brad and I had been together for ten months, and this was the first time we ever had a double date with Adam.

  They met us outside the candy shop on Main Street. Nina had curly blonde hair and was wearing skinny jeans with a red long-sleeved shirt and a Coach bag in her hand.

  Adam was holding a white bag in his. He was wearing jeans and a button-down, his copper hair long and styled perfectly. He looked good with a girl by his side. Usually, he was the third wheel.

  I introduced myself to Nina and complimented her on her patent leather heels. She told me she liked my top. It was Matthew McConaughey pop art.

  We started walking to the Chinese restaurant. We were going to dinner and then a movie. As we walked and talked, Adam handed the white bag to me. I opened it and saw an assortment of my favorite chocolates. I took out a caramel-filled candy that I loved and handed the bag back.

  He put his hand up. “They’re for you,” he said. I smiled in surprise, and then he added, “Nina doesn’t eat chocolate.”

  I opened the bag and offered him a piece. He took out two pieces.

  Brad tried to put his hand in, but I snatched the bag back.

  “Adam bought them for me; therefore, he gets one.”

  Adam laughed at Brad’s grimace. “Dude, you found the only girl who eats candy for dinner.”

  Brad started to laugh. “And a friend who enables her crazy.”

  It was a fun and easy time, as high school should be. I had dance class and a regular babysitting job on the weekends. Brad worked at a CVS and worked on his art portfolio when he was off. We went to keg parties and house parties, school dances and clubs. We watched movies in his basement and parked his car in the woods when we said we were at the arcade. He drew pictures on all of my notebooks, and I doodled his name and mine to the point of obsession. It was typical high school love.

  I can’t remember exactly when it started to go downhill. It was subtle. Looking back, I wonder how many signs I ignored.

  “Babe, I don’t want to be gross, but are you okay in there?” I had gotten to Brad’s house fifteen minutes before. Lying on my stomach, flipping through a magazine, I waited for him to come out.

  “My stomach is acting up. I’ll be right out,” he said through the bathroom door.

  I went back to reading an article about how to dismember a bomb. Men’s magazines were silly. A faint flicking sound caught my attention.

  “Are you using a lighter in there?” I called out.

  “Lighting a candle.”

  I gagged. “Sorry I asked.”

  Closing the magazine, I walked over to his desk. His portfolio was spread out—a masterpiece of hard work and dedication. He was a master at drawing people. His mom’s kind smile lit up one page, and Adam’s pensive look whenever he was trying to figure something out was on another.

  Brad would draw random people he saw around town. He didn’t like to draw kids but had a penchant for old people, capturing their spirits with a brush of charcoal. I lifted one in my hands of an elderly woman. She was sitting at the diner with a coffee cup and a smile. She was holding on to a Keno card, the winning numbers on a television screen in front of her.

  When the bathroom door opened, Brad stepped out, looking as handsome as ever. He walked over to me and kissed me. I pulled him in, soaking him in. He smelled like leather even though he wasn’t wearing a jacket. It was kind of manly.

  “You want to go to my basement?” he asked.

  I winked at him. “To watch a movie or get handsy? Because I am totally open to both.”

  He kissed me. “Both.”

  We walked down to his basement and turned on a movie. Around ten o’clock, I passed out and around two, I woke up in a frenzy.

  “My parents are going to kill me,” I said as I popped up and looked at the time.

  The television was on, and an infomercial was playing. Brad wasn’t in the room.

  The house was dark, closed down for the night. I looked around for him on the first floor, but he wasn’t there. I walked upstairs, careful not to wake his parents.

  Brad’s bedroom light was on. I pushed open the door to find him sitting at his desk, his hands covered in black dust. He was drawing.

  “You let me sleep past curfew.” I was annoyed.

  It wasn’t like he’d passed out, too. It was the middle of the night, and he was sitting there, feverishly working like it was two in the afternoon.

  He turned to me, a cool calm on his face. “I’m so sorry. I was staring at your mouth, so I came up here to get it on paper.”

&
nbsp; There was a ton of paper with half-started pictures of me. Even the worst was magnificent.

  “You have to drive me home,” I demanded.

  He didn’t have the same sense of urgency as I did, but he understood enough to get his ass up and drive me home.

  “I can’t believe you let me sleep,” I said as we drove through the streets.

  I had a ton of missed calls from my mom. I called her to let her know I’d overslept. It must not have calmed her because she was waiting on the front steps when I got home, her hand clenched on her necklace.

  “I’m sorry. I just…I got in my head. I’ll make it up to you,” Brad pleaded.

  I shook off my annoyance. He was a really good guy. The fact that letting me sleep in was the worst thing he had done as a boyfriend was pretty remarkable. We never even fought.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.” I leaned in and gave him a quick kiss.

  I was grounded for a week. It wasn’t so bad because my grandma stayed over, and she provided some much-needed entertainment.

  “When I was sixteen, I used to sneak out to listen to rock-’n’-roll with my friends. That Elvis knew how to shake his hips,” my grandmother said as we sat on my front porch.

  I was unimpressed. “That doesn’t sound very rebellious.”

  She lowered her eyes at me. “Neither does falling asleep on a couch.”

  “I do plenty of things. My friends and I sneak onto the golf course to have keg parties. And we once broke into the school to—wait, are you goading me, so I’ll tell you all the bad stuff I do?” I said.

  She casually glanced away.

  My mouth fell open. “You traitor!”

  With a shrug, she rested her hands on the top of her cane in front of her bent knees. “If you’re nice, I’ll show you how to make moonshine.”

  I practically shot out of my chair. “Really?”

  She shook her head. “Heavens no. You are so gullible. We need to work on that.”