My face feels hot enough to smelt iron by the time I’m done speaking, and a pregnant silence fills the Jeep. The more the empty space drags out, the more I dread hearing what Sebastian is going to say in response, but at last he turns a familiar, wry smile at me and remarks, “It’s cool. I mean, we’re just gonna look for a drug-dealing motorcycle gang at a dirty strip mall behind an abandoned gas station in the middle of the night. What’s the big deal?”
I actually laugh out loud.
The strip mall turns out to be pretty easy to find. I had a vague impression stamped in my mind of a grubby asphalt lot serving an L of run-down, single-story businesses—one with a massive sign reading DOLLAR BIN in violent neon capitals—that’s darted past the window on the occasions when my mom and I have been headed to the airport. My memory is confirmed, in all its depressing glory, when we pull off the highway and glide up the wide boulevard toward our destination.
The fog isn’t as thick this far from the water, and the shabby storefronts and light-up plastic signs suffer for lack of the dramatic, soft-focus effect that a little nighttime haze could have provided. There’s some sort of construction going on in the lot, a freestanding structure rising from piles of rubble in a corner of the asphalt plaza—and a perimeter of plastic fencing spreads so wide around it that it blocks off the main entrance to the parking area.
Driving past, Sebastian pulls instead into the empty service station that looms on the corner—a weedy expanse of oil-stained paving, defunct pumps, and a couple of boxy, concrete edifices begging for demolition. Graffiti covers any surface wide enough for the writing to be legible, and the ground is littered with cigarette butts, used condoms, and broken glass. Sebastian turns off the engine, his headlights dying out, and I make a noise in the back of my throat. “You take me to the nicest places.”
“Wait’ll you see the Dollar Bin,” he quips, and I giggle again. But even the easy humor hurts just a little bit.
“Are we leaving the Jeep here?” I ask, just to say something. “There’s got to be another way into the lot.”
Ahead of us is a small outbuilding—the gas station’s restrooms—its painted metal doors padlocked shut; beyond that lies a short expanse of rocky undergrowth, which ends at the shore of the strip mall’s asphalt sea, where the plastic construction fence forms a lattice against the glowing lights of what few businesses remain open. Among them are Suzy’s American Diner, and, in what I hope is not some sort of omen, an establishment called the Smoking Gun.
“To be honest? I think I’ll feel better with my car over here.” Sebastian shoots me an uncomfortable look. “You said Hayden would probably come looking for Lyle, right? Well, dude knows my car, and it doesn’t seem like he’s in the mood to let bygones be bygones tonight. If we decide to make a quick retreat, I don’t want to be running to the parking lot to find out that all my tires have been slashed and your bro is waiting there to finish what we started at the police station.” Embarrassed, he gestures through the windscreen. “It looks like the diner’s right there, anyway. Let’s just cut across.”
He gets out of the Jeep, and I follow, stepping over plants that shoot nearly ten inches high through fissures in the pavement. The building housing the restrooms reeks as though it has never been cleaned, and the cloying odor of a long-dead animal drifts on the thick air that fills the shadows behind it.
The undergrowth separating the service station from the parking lot turns out to be not just rocky but also filled with trash that lurks unseen in the swampy shadows, glass and metal scattering at our feet. Emerging at last before a length of the plastic fencing, which is anchored by upright supports every ten or fifteen feet along, we follow it toward the frontage of the strip mall. Less than half the businesses look like they’re still operational, and every other window is cracked and clouded, the residue of signage lingering like tan lines.
Nearing the corner of the fenced-off work site, as we negotiate around a dented oil drum—half-full of dusty rebar and broken cinder block—we hear the sound of a voice raised in anger, and our feet stutter to an instinctive halt. Peering around the edge of the last upright in the row, gazing out on the darkened expanse of the parking lot and the dispiriting, electric bleakness of the storefronts, we see four people gathered together outside of Suzy’s American Diner.
Lyle Shetland leans against a broad-shouldered motorcycle, arms folded across his chest. He’s put on some weight since last I saw him—and grown some scraggly beard-like stuff that looks like something my mom once dredged from her shower drain with a wire coat hanger—but otherwise he’s much the same: leather jacket, thick eyebrows, and a skull shaved to the quick. He’s flanked by two other guys, one with a greasy-looking ponytail and the other with a black bandana tied across his forehead, both of whom radiate an aura of agitated subservience detectable a mile away; Lyle is clearly in charge.
Standing opposite them, red in the face with fury, is my older brother.
“—don’t like getting ripped off!” Hayden is practically shouting, his voice reverberating off the glass front of the strip mall and bouncing in all directions. “You owe me a fucking grand, and I’m not leaving till I get it!”
“You need to calm the hell down,” Lyle warns tonelessly.
“Don’t tell me to calm down! You ripped me off, asshole, and I promise you I’m not an enemy you want to have.”
Lyle barely moves, but his whole body seems to tighten somehow, a fireball contracting right before it blows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you better watch your damn mouth when you speak to me.”
“You. Ripped. Me. Off.” Hayden repeats ferociously, jabbing a finger at the guy like he’s hoping it’ll hurt him from a distance. “I paid your boy a shitload of money for pills tonight, and they were fuckin’ fucked up!”
My brother’s loudmouthed aggression has an adverse effect on the ponytailed guy, who starts shifting and fidgeting, glancing around the empty lot to see if they’re being overheard. I shrink back a little as Lyle answers, with deliberate caution, “I don’t have ‘boys,’ okay? And if I did, they wouldn’t be selling no pills.”
“Don’t fuck with me, man!” Hayden hisses. Reaching into the pocket of his shorts, he hauls loose a plastic bag that’s filled with small, white tablets. “I got these off one of your guys tonight, and they’re bullshit!”
He throws the bag at Lyle, who lets them bounce off his shoulder and drop to the ground. “I never seen those before in my life.”
“Don’t give me that!” Hayden spits. “I bought them off Fox Whitney about six hours ago. They’re your shit, and everybody who took one got sick. One of the girls started flopping around on the floor, foaming at the mouth—we had to dump her outside the ER!”
Lyle seems to freeze, and his two henchmen exchange an agitated glance over the top of his shaved head. Ponytail does another survey of the parking lot then, his fingers twitching nervously, while Lyle eyes the bag of white rabbits with a dark expression. Finally, he growls, “I don’t think I know a Fox Whitney. If you say he sold you some bad stuff, maybe you oughta take it up with him instead of fucking up my night.”
“Yeah, I tried that already,” Hayden replies smoothly, baring his teeth in a grin, “only I was a little too late. By the time I got to him, old Fox was fucking dead, and somebody had taken my money.”
This time, Lyle straightens up, his back going rigid. “What did you say?”
“He’s on a slab at the morgue, Lyle. Actually, both your boys are.” Hayden squares his shoulders, finding security at last in his opponent’s discomposure. “See, I figured Arlo must’ve iced Fox and swiped the cash, but when I went to see Arlo about it, it turned out he was fucking dead, too. So, way I see it now, either they both pissed off the wrong customer, or they both pissed off their boss.” He plants his hands on his hips. “And, you know, I don’t really give a shit either way, except that my money’s still missing. So right now I’m thinking that since it was your boy who sold me bad product,
and it was you who gave it to him, then you’re the cocksucker who owes me a thousand fucking dollars. Right. Now.”
Lyle finally picks up the bag, examining it with a deep frown etched across his face. Wordlessly, he tosses the pills to Bandana Guy, who takes one out, studies it under the light, and then shakes his head definitively. “These ain’t ours.”
“What?” Hayden’s face practically turns purple.
“The color’s funny and the stamp ain’t right.” Bandana sounds deadly serious. Dropping the tablet into the bag again, he seals it up and tosses the cache back to Lyle. “I don’t know where Whitney got these, but it wasn’t our shipment.”
“You heard the man.” Lyle chucks the Ziploc at Hayden, who swats it away like a nuisance insect. “That junk didn’t come from us, so I guess I don’t owe you squat. Now, get the fuck outta here.”
Hayden’s chest starts to heave, his lips curling, and I can practically see the waves of heat distortion pouring from his eyes as he glares murderously at the complacent biker. “No, no, no—you do not play me like that! This is your merchandise, I got ripped off by your boys, and I want my damn money!”
“Go home to mommy and daddy, you little bitch,” Lyle snaps. “We’re done here.”
“We’re done when I say we’re done!” Hayden shouts, and in one swift motion, he reaches behind his back, yanks something free from the waistband of his shorts, and draws it level with Lyle’s head. “And we’re not done until I’ve got my money!”
It’s a gun. It is a fucking gun. And a half second later it has company when Ponytail draws a piece of his own—something enormous and nickel-plated—and thrusts it into the air at Hayden as though it were a sword. The armed biker shifts from foot to foot, so wired up that even his face starts twitching as he barks, “Watch it, motherfucker!”
“No, no, no.” Sebastian breathes frantically into my ear, his fingers digging into my arm. “Oh, hell no. Oh fuck, dude, this is our cue to fucking leave!”
He starts backward across the pavement, stepping as quickly as possible … and then he turns around and crashes directly into the oil drum behind him. The rebar scrapes and clangs in the belly of the metal bin, rattled by the impact, and the noise rumbles out with the deafening resonance of church bells in a graveyard. Sebastian glances up at me, eyes like the fat zeroes on a time bomb, and I feel the atmosphere drop.
“The fuck was that?” Bandana yelps.
“Is it the cops?” Ponytail demands, his voice pitched almost to a shriek. “Did you set us up, you rich-ass punk? Did you bring the cops here?”
And that’s when the first gunshot rips a hole in the night.
19
The report is loud and heart-stopping—a miniature thunderclap—and a burst of cold, primal adrenaline stokes my body. Simultaneous with the shocking bang, a hole erupts mysteriously in the thick plastic fencing to my left, and a fleshy, tearing sound sizzles through the vegetation to my right. I blink. He’s shooting at us.
It takes a fraction of a second to happen, and as much time again for us to process the fact that Ponytail is shooting at us, and then we’re off and running. Our feet pounding the asphalt, we sprint back up the length of the perimeter fence as more gunshots pop behind us. Glass shatters, people scream, bullets thump against metal, and my lungs burn as I veer after Sebastian, crashing through undergrowth and debris in a panicked retreat back to the abandoned service station.
I make it as far as the restroom outbuilding when another shot sounds, and the corner edge of the wall two feet in front of me explodes; concrete dust blasts from the fresh crater like a plume of volcanic ash, spraying into my eyes, blinding me. At the same moment, something sharp strikes my temple and I reel sideways, tumbling to the ground like a felled oak as the universe somersaults around me.
“Rufus!” Sebastian’s voice has to navigate entire solar systems to reach my ears, but I feel his hands almost immediately as he hauls me to my feet. My eyes are gritty and raw, and I try to force them open, but they won’t cooperate. Stumbling and gasping, I cling to Sebastian as we race crookedly across the gas station’s tiny lot back to the Jeep, chaos filling the air like feedback.
He shoves me up into the passenger seat as I blink hard, trying to squeeze the dust from my watering eyes. They sting, my lids like sandpaper, and the world around me is barely distinguishable—a reflection in a fogged mirror. There are more gunshots, a motorcycle engine growls furiously somewhere, and then the Jeep rocks side to side as Sebastian vaults into position behind the wheel and slams the door. “Buckle up!”
He floors the pedal, and the motor gives a congested cough before roaring abruptly to life. Lurching forward, we jump the curb and crash-land on the street, rising up onto two wheels as Sebastian swings the vehicle around, steering back the way we came.
He shoots across lanes, the strip mall streaking past like a lit-up space station crashing to earth, and we make a beeline for the highway. We’re almost there when another car overtakes us, flying so fast we might just as well be standing still; I recognize Hayden’s BMW a second before its rear bumper smashes out one of the Jeep’s headlights, my older brother careening in front of us and fishtailing up the on-ramp to Route 2. Startled, Sebastian swerves, missing the turn; instead, he punches the gas and shoots beneath the overpass just as sirens began to squall in the distance. A sweaty mile later, he corners sharply into a residential neighborhood, jerking to a stop beneath a streetlamp. The night is almost deafeningly quiet now; no one seems to have followed us.
“Rufus?” Sebastian is staring at me, eyes wild, the gold flecks in his irises burning like caution lights. “Rufe, are you okay?”
I manage a dazed nod. My eyes feel like they’ve been scrubbed with a wire brush, but I can see again. My left ear is ringing, my temple throbbing hotly like a drumbeat, but I’m pretty sure none of the damage is permanent. “I’m … I’m okay.”
“You’re bleeding.” He sounds scared.
I flip down the visor and looked at myself in the mirror. My face is pale, and dark blood oozes from an ugly gash above my left ear. “A chunk of cement got me, I think. When the bullet hit the wall—”
“No,” he cuts me off urgently, pointing to my side. “Here! You’re bleeding here!”
I follow the line of his finger and my eyes bulge, my stomach flopping over. My tank top is torn open on the left side, stained a deep crimson with blood that gushes from a jagged laceration just beneath my ribs. My brain feels like it’s suspended in a jar somewhere, and I lick my lips. “I don’t … It doesn’t hurt.”
In a flash, Sebastian drags the tank top off me, yanking it over my head and chucking it into the footwell so he can get a better look, his face gray and serious. The wound is ugly, the amount of blood nauseating, but it’s clearly not an entrance wound. “It’s not from a bullet,” Sebastian declares, his voice actually wobbling with relief. “It looks like you cut yourself on something.”
“Maybe a piece of glass, when I fell,” I mumble distantly. The incised flesh looks puffy and grotesque, swollen lips drooling my life out.
“We need to clean it, like, now.” Sebastian fixes me with a look. “I cut my hand on old glass once, and it got, like, zombie-movie infected. I was on antibiotics for weeks.” He punches open the glove box, digs inside it, and comes up with a bunch of McDonald’s napkins and a small tube of hand sanitizer. “No lie, Rufe, this is gonna suck, so … you know. Try to think happy thoughts, okay?”
“Okay,” I say weakly, staring in horror as he squirts a thick glob of jelly onto his fingers and the close air in the Jeep fills with the stinging aroma of pure alcohol.
Imagine someone tickling your ribs with a blowtorch, and you’ll have the edited-for-TV version of my experience in having an open wound cleansed with hand sanitizer. I’m ready to hand over state secrets by the time Sebastian is finishing up, stuffing the gory napkins in a leftover Subway bag and capping the empty bottle of disinfectant. Peering down at his handiwork, I see a hot pink zigzag carved i
nto my skin—a grotesque laceration that’s embarrassingly small for how much drama it’s caused. Still, every breath feels like a knife between my ribs, and it’s an effort to remain stoic.
“You okay?” Sebastian arches a concerned eyebrow.
“I should have picked the zombie infection,” I manage, blowing out through tight lips. “Is there going to be a round two, or have you finally run out of sulfuric acid?”
“All done. And I’m real proud of you, Rufe,” he adds, with warmth. “You only called for your mommy twice.”
“Oh, ha ha, fuck you.” I can’t help laughing a little bit, though. “How come I’m the only one who fell on dirty hobo glass? Life isn’t fair.” Taking one of the few remaining clean napkins, I wipe the blood off my temple. “At least I didn’t take a bullet or anything. I guess I should just be glad I’m still alive.”
“Don’t even joke about that.” Sebastian shudders, his eyes darkening. “When that wall blew up and you went down, I thought … I just thought—” He blinks, hard, and looks away. “Don’t make jokes.”
“You’re right.” The memory of actual bullets whizzing through the air, inches from my actual head, makes my palms slippery. “You have to admit, though: It’ll make a great story to tell our therapists someday.”
Sebastian looks back at me with an odd expression, like someone trying to smile for the first time in his life. Then, after a weirdly full silence, he leans across the center console and lightly touches my sensitized flesh, bending closer to have another look at the cleaned-up injury. “It’s stopped bleeding, I think. And it actually doesn’t look as deep as I figured. You better wash it again at home, though—like, with actual soap and stuff—and go see a doctor. You’ll probably need stitches.”
“Better than needing a coffin,” I rejoin before I can stop myself.
He doesn’t say anything, just looks up at me, and I become suddenly aware of how close he is—of how his hand is resting on my bare skin. Sebastian’s eyes are deep and lonely, the air between us redolent of citrus and vetiver, warm from his body. The silence stretches out, and the longer he looks at me, the faster my pulse starts to beat. He leans up, his face moving in, and his other hand touches my chest—fingers hot against smooth muscle—and my flesh starts firming up everywhere, everywhere, goose bumps taking me like a plague. Softly, he murmurs, “Rufus, I…”
White Rabbit Page 18