Chapter Text
Michael wasn’t avoiding the Lost Boys shows exactly, but he . . . kept his distance. He wouldn’t stay away from the boardwalk for love or money but the band – but David, really – made him leery.
Michael let himself go that first night. He should have just taken Sam home and gone inside with his brother. He shouldn’t have ridden to the beach with David, shouldn’t have kissed him, shouldn’t have –
Shouldn’t be –
It was fine for Sam to be gay, because he was their mother’s son. Michael couldn’t be – like that. He was too much his father’s.
What had happened with David was a fluke. Michael had been overwhelmed by the lights and the newness and the music – by the knowledge that Dad wasn’t waiting at home. He’d felt reckless and untouchable.
And untouched.
Then David had appeared. He’d wrapped his arm around Michael’s shoulders like it belonged there, inserted himself into Michael’s space so casually and confidently that Michael had forgotten it didn’t.
And Michael was weak. He tried not to be. He endured the shouting, took the hits, pushed back when he could –
But his father had always been right about that.
Michael had given into David too easily, let him get too close, let his own heart want too much.
He still wanted.
So he stayed away from David. He stayed away from the band, the amphitheatre, the lights and the smoke machines, the music, and the feeling that he was flying.
Riding his bike used to feel like flying.
Michael took to midnight rides, when the streets were empty and he could ignore the speed limit. He drove around the backroads in the woods on the edge of town, the old parts of Santa Carla that had more abandoned buildings than people, and along the train tracks. He liked to think about following the train to the end of its route when it came through. He wondered where he would end up, if it would be better than where he was, or if it would just lead him to a different kind of emptiness.
It never felt like standing in front of the Lost Boys, letting David’s voice work its way into Michael’s blood, but it was the closest he came to feeling that kind of release, so he kept going out, and going out, and going out, trying to forget that there was any other way to fly. It hadn’t worked so far, but there was always the next night, Michael told himself.
He slowed down when he came to the old bridge. It looked halfway abandoned. He wondered how much longer it could be used before it collapsed.
He parked his bike by the trees and walked onto the bridge, counting the wooden slats. It was quiet here, far from the noise of the boardwalk and the bubbling frenzy of his house. Michael felt like he could breathe without letting anything in.
He sat down at the bridge’s halfway point, letting his legs dangle off the edge. He’d read about some French concept in one of his classes, l’appel du vide, the call of the void. The urge to throw yourself into danger for no real reason.
Michael wasn’t going to jump off the bridge, and he didn’t want to get hit by the train, but he didn’t think he would be very scared if he suddenly heard it coming.
“You’ve been avoiding me, Michael.”
Fuck. Michael closed his eyes. He didn’t open them again until he felt David’s shoulder brushing his. He looked past David, at where his motorcycle was parked beside Michael’s. How had he not heard that monster approach?
“I haven’t,” Michael said. “I don’t know you well enough to avoid you.”
David hummed. He propped himself up on his arms, sliding one behind Michael’s back.
Michael should have pushed him away.
He didn’t.
Weak, he could hear his father shouting.
Yes.
“You could,” David offered. “Do you want to?”
Do you want to? David had asked him the same thing under the pier, just before Michael kissed him. Michael felt that same urge to grab him, to pull him close and keep him there.
He stood up. He started to walk away, his shaking hands balled into fists, but he turned back. David was exactly where Michael had left him. His expression was attentive and intent. “Why do you keep asking me that?” Michael barked. He knew it wasn’t fair; he knew David was only being . . . friendly. But Michael was angry, suddenly, irrationally, the kind of anger that’s just fear cowering behind rage.
“Because I want to know,” David answered simply, as if honesty was the easiest thing in the world.
“Do you want to?” asked Michael. He wasn’t sure what he was doing – trying to flip the script? Catch David off guard? Force some vulnerability out of him, the way he did to Michael?
It was starting to rain. Michael could feel a sprinkling of tiny droplets hitting his nose and catching in his hair.
“Do I want to what, Michael?”
“Know me.” It came out too soft. Too desperate. Too obvious. He might as well have gotten down on his knees and begged. Please, please, kiss me again and take me home and come back for me.
“More than life,” David answered.
Michael’s breath caught in his throat. He knew, in a distant part of his mind, that he should leave, now, before –
Before what?
“Come here,” David murmured, as soft as the rain falling on their shoulders.
Before that.
Michael went. He sat down again, where he had been when David found him. He felt David’s eyes on him, scorching like the sun in Arizona, with no clouds to shield the Michael from it.
Michael didn’t look at him. If he looked at him, he’d kiss him, and if he kissed him –
David laid his hand over Michael’s, gently prying it up from the edge of the wooden slat. Michael sucked in a breath. His fingers ached where they’d been holding onto the wood. He looked anywhere but at David.
David smoothed Michael’s hand out, pressing at the hurts, forcing them out. Then he curled Michael’s fingers over his hand and brought Michael’s knuckles to his lips. His breath ghosted over Michael’s knuckles – giving Michael a chance to pull away – before he pressed his lips to them.
Michael choked back a sob. The gesture was so tender, so kind. It was a closed circuit, content with itself. David wasn’t asking anything of him. This was enough: Michael’s hand in his, the reassuring press of their bodies against each other, David’s steadiness in the cool night air.
David brought their joined hands to rest on his thigh. Michael felt his palm trembling in David’s cool, steady grip.
“Look at me, Michael.”
“I can’t.” His voice was little more than a whisper, a breath stolen by the wind. Michael hardly heard himself, but David caught the sound and held it close to his heart.
“You can. You just have to let yourself.”
David made it sound so easy. As if Michael could touch him, could be touched by David, and there didn’t have to be anything more to it.
Michael huffed, frustrated and despairing. There was always more. There were always consequences. David couldn’t make them go away, even if it felt like he could.
David shifted next to him. Their knees bumped and Michael flinched. He closed his eyes, embarrassed for reasons he couldn’t quite explain. He felt pressure under his chin, the pads of David’s index and middle finger pressing against the last vestiges of baby fat. Then David turned Michael’s face towards his. Michael was desperately grateful that his eyes were already closed.
“Michael,” David murmured.
Michael’s lips were cold. So were David’s.
He kissed Michael gently, almost chastely. Nothing at all like the way Michael had kissed him under the pier. Just the gentle press of David’s mouth against Michael’s, there and then gone.
David pulled away. Michael opened his eyes. Their hands were still resting on David’s leg.
Michael hadn’t initiated that time, at least. But he hadn’t pulled away, either.
Weak, so fucking weak.
Michael took a deep, shuddering breath and looked at the tall pines swaying in the breeze. He thought of a postcard Mom used to keep on their refrigerator in Arizona. It had a picture of redwood trees in one of the state parks in northern California on the front. “One day,” she used to whisper to Michael, “one day, you and me and Sammy are going to go see those trees. And we’ll love them so much that we’ll stay there.”
One night, when Dad had come home angry and drank until he got really angry, he found a half packed suitcase in his and Mom’s room. Michael held Sam, rocking him back and forth, as they sat at the top of the stairs and listened to their parents fight. Michael didn’t remember what they said or who shoved who first, but he remembered Dad stumbling into the kitchen and ripping that postcard off of the fridge. He tore it into shreds and shoved them down the garbage disposal. He was too drunk to find the right switch to turn it on, but the damage had been done.
And now here Michael, Sam, and Mom were, in southern California, hundreds of miles away from any redwood trees. Some things changed, but others were set in stone.
Michael disentangled his fingers from David’s and stood up. He didn’t look at him as he walked back to his bike, told himself that he didn’t care that David didn’t follow him, and that it was just rain making his cheeks wet.
Letting a strange girl pierce his ear probably wasn’t Michael’s brightest idea, but goddamnit, he deserved to be an idiot sometimes. Maybe it was genetic. His mom certainly hadn’t fallen for his dad’s non-existent charms, so it must have been his face that got her in trouble. Star, Michael could at least say, was funny and bright and a good singer, in addition to being pretty. Absurdly pretty. Softer than David in some ways and just as sharp in others.
No, Michael told himself firmly, do not go there.
He had been trying not to go there for a week and failing for the most part.
And now he was back under the pier, with another pretty person that he wanted to kiss, letting her stick a hot needle through his ear lobe.
“Ow!” Michael hissed when the pin pricked him. He felt something warm drip down his ear and for a single second he thought his skin had melted off.
“You’re bleeding,” Star said. She sounded almost frightened, but there was a tenor of desire in her voice that made Michael’s hair stand on end. She backed away from him, then came close again. Her eyes were trained on his ear with unnerving focus.
“So, how about that stud?” Michael asked, trying not to sound freaked out.
“Uh,” Star reached into her pocket, but her mind seemed elsewhere. She was still staring at his ear. “It’s – you should go. Now, Michael.”
Drops of blood kept spilling from the new hole in Michael’s ear. He cupped his hand under it to keep it from falling onto his jacket.
“Why?” He asked. He didn’t think he’d done anything to offend her or creep her out. “You’re not scared of a little blood, are you?” He tried to sound teasing, to lighten the mood, but Star only started breathing rapidly and pacing. “Are you okay?” Obviously not, idiot! “What’s wrong?”
“Michael – ” Star’s tone was nearly pleading. She made a choked sound, and then faster than Michael could comprehend, she had grabbed his wrist and pulled it to her face, licking the small pool of blood out of his hand.
“What the fuck!” Michael struggled. He tried to pry her hand off, but her grip was ironclad, stronger than his dad’s had ever been. He thought of the time he’d poured some of Dad’s beer down the kitchen sink and he’d snapped Michael’s wrist. He had gripped it so hard that Michael had heard his bones creaking, felt them move as his dad wrenched his hand away from the bottles. Michael was pretty sure if Star held onto him like that for much longer, he’d be getting a matching scar on his other hand.
God, how would he explain that to Mom? Or Sam, for that matter? He’d been so paranoid about Santa Carla since that first night on the boardwalk that even Mom was getting fed up. Michael pictured it: Mom reading on the couch, Sam fiddling with the radio, and Michael walking in, cradling his limp wrist against his chest and saying, Hey guys, I met a pretty girl and asked her to pierce my ear as an excuse to talk to her and then she drank my blood and broke my wrist. Can we order pizza?
Mom would never let him go out by himself ever again – first driving off with a stranger in the middle of the night and now this. She’d sic Sam on him and that would be the end of Michael’s fledgling social life.
Maybe he just wouldn’t tell them. Mom probably wouldn’t notice and Sam could be bribed into silence. Probably. Maybe. With enough comics, almost certainly.
No friends or no money, Michael thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Star, come on,” Michael grunted. How was she so strong? She was thin, nearly gaunt, and Michael was no muscle man, but he should have been able to shake her off easily. “Get off!”
Star made a sound in the back of her throat. It reminded Michael of the coyotes that sometimes wandered into his neighbourhood back in Phoenix, the low growls he could hear through his bedroom window before they pounced on one of the neighbours’ pets.
Star panted, open mouthed and beautiful, when she’d licked all of the blood out of Michael’s palm. Her eyes were gold and Michael thought of the coyotes again. Predator, something in his brain whispered to him.
“Star?” He asked softly. He tested her grip again and winced. He was going to have a hell of a bruise there soon.
Her breathing calmed and she let him go. Michael took an instinctive step back. Star’s gaze followed him, at once hollow and despairing. “Michael – I’m so sorry.”
“Are you okay?” That was weird as fuck, but Star looked so distraught that Michael couldn’t bring himself to leave her.
Tears welled in Star’s eyes. They were brown again – it must have been a trick of the light that made them look gold. “No,” she whispered, choking down a sob.
Michael’s arms opened without a thought and Star rushed into them, burying her face in his neck as she suppressed little hiccups and tears. Michael rubbed her back and pet her hair, the way his mom used to do when he was upset.
Star pressed her lips against Michael’s neck. He shivered and felt guilty about it immediately. This clearly wasn’t the time for that kind of thing, but Michael didn’t push her away. He told himself it was because she needed support right now, something strong and steady to hold onto (but when had Michael ever been either of those things?).
She bit down on the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Michael barely felt it at first, but then she kept doing it, again and again, a little bit harder each time. It was like she was gnawing on him.
Maybe Star was on drugs. Or off drugs. Going through withdrawal? Michael had no idea what was making her act like this.
He cradled her head in both hands and tried to guide her head away from his neck but she held on, clamping his skin between her teeth hard enough to draw blood. Michael cried out, half in pain and half in pleasure when she licked the wound, like she’d licked the blood out of his hand.
Michael was pretty sure he should run, potential romance be damned, but he didn’t. Whatever Star was doing, whatever she was going through, he wanted to help her. And he wanted to kiss her. She was the only person who Michael had met that made him feel even a tenth of what David did. If he could just make himself content with that –
Star bit down, hard, and started sucking. Michael felt his blood moving. It was being dragged up, siphoned, and it hurt.
“Ah!” Michael hissed, somehow trapped by this tiny girl. She was holding onto his forearms, keeping them pinned to his side. Michael tried to use his feet as leverage to get away, but all he ended up doing was kicking some sand around.
It struck him, with alarming clarity, that he was going to die here, on this beach, in Star’s arms. This wasn’t withdrawal or a breakdown or insanity – this was a predator eating its prey.
Better to be caught by Star than David, he thought deliriously, but I wish it was David.
Michael felt himself growing lightheaded. He went limp in Star’s grip, no more animated than a ragdoll. Exhaustion, sudden and overwhelming, enveloped him. His eyes slipped shut. He barely registered it when Star let go of him.
He dropped. Someone caught him and laid him out on the sand. Michael was asleep before he could see who it was.
Michael woke up on his porch, slumped against a support beam. Something round and blunt was poking him. He opened his bleary eyes and blinked the sleep out of them. Mom and Sam were standing in the doorway. Sam was holding a broom. He went to poke Michael with it again, but Michael batted it away and stood. He wobbled a little; he was still bone tired. Mom reached out for him, but he caught himself on the railing and steadied himself. He felt – hungover? Not good. He was sweaty and he had a headache. But he didn’t remember drinking last night. Just finding Star moping on the boardwalk, winning the stuffed bear to make her smile, and going under the pier with her.
And – oh. Yeah. She tried to kill him.
“Are you alright, Michael?” Mom asked.
Michael answered the same way he always did. “Yeah, Mom. I’m fine.”
He wondered if he would ever mean it.
Michael looked for Star after . . . whatever that was. Michael had never known when to stay well enough away, never been any good at letting go. He wanted to make sure Star was alright, ask what the hell she had happened, and just hold her. She looked like she wanted to be held as badly as Michael did, when she wasn’t looking at him. When she didn’t think anyone was looking at her.
Michael wondered, in the stupid part of his brain that was closer to the forefront than he would have liked, if David held Star when she needed it. He hoped he did.
Michael waited until after the Lost Boys’ show to look for Star. The boys usually disappeared together, but Star stayed on the boardwalk, wandering around like a ghost looking for a home that had long since been torn down. He found her leaning against a rail, twirling a corndog stick between her elegant fingers and staring out at the beach. Her eyes were far away, her expression clouded.
Mom had given Michael a lecture on proper etiquette before his first date, years ago: don’t sneak up on her, don’t touch her unexpectedly or if she says no, and pick up the bill. This wasn’t a date, not by any stretch of the imagination, but Michael thought of Mom’s advice all the same. He cleared his throat as he came up behind Star. She twitched but didn’t turn, so Michael stood beside her. They were quiet for a few minutes. Star fiddled with her rings and twisted her fingers, letting the little stick fall onto the sand below. Michael watched. It was hard to equate the girl beside him with the one who had drunk his blood like water.
“Are you . . . ” Michael began. He didn’t know how to continue. Sick? Crazy? “ . . . okay now?”
That startled a laugh out of Star. It was a dry, bitter thing, as brittle as cracked glass. She shook her head like she couldn’t believe Michael would ask such a ridiculous question and then dropped it into her hands. Her shoulders jerked once, expelling a final, painful laugh, or maybe a sob.
Star turned to look at him. Her eyes were shiny; tiny tears were caught in her lashes. They looked like diamonds in the moonlight, ready to fall into the velvet bags under her eyes. Up close, it was obvious that Star wasn’t well. It was easy to miss, blinded as Michael had been by her wit and beauty, and then his fear. Her cheeks were hollow, her ribs too prominent above her bodice. Her hands shook a little. Michael wanted to wrap her in a warm blanket and give her some of his mom’s homemade pasta and a glass of sweet tea.
Sam would like Star. The thought came out of nowhere, but the truth of it warmed Michael nonetheless. It was easy to imagine Star with his family. Harder to imagine how she fit into that picture. Or maybe Michael just didn’t want to.
“We should talk,” Star said at last. “But not here. Where’s your bike?”
Star directed Michael to a derelict street on the edge of town. It was flat and surprisingly well paved. Michael had flown down it countless times, trying to work out the restlessness in his body and mind. It was no wonder he hadn’t seen her there, but he wished he had. He would have liked to have talked with her. He thinks she might’ve liked talking to him.
Michael parked the Honda and followed Star up the billboard’s support beams. She hoisted herself up onto the catwalk like – well, like a cat, sleek in her movements and wary of sharing her space. Michael pulled himself up like a boy with bruised ribs and average core strength. Star watched him, her expression patronizing in a fond way, and she huffed, amused.
Michael shuffled closer to her. The points of their elbows touched where they rested on the railing and their feet knocked together when they swung them, but otherwise they weren’t touching. Star was quiet again, but she looked more at ease than she had on the boardwalk. She started fiddling with her rings again.
“You know, some of those stars up there are already dead by the time we see them,” said Star.
Michael nodded, confused. What did dead stars have to do with anything?
“I feel dead,” Star confessed.
Oh. Well. Okay. Michael opened his mouth to say something – thought about pulling her away from the edge of the catwalk – thought better of it – and closed his mouth. He didn’t know what to say to that.
“But not dead enough,” she continued. “It’s like I’m only half here. Not alive enough to die, but too dead to live. Does that make any sense?”
It did. It made so much sense it hurt. The feeling of being caught, stuck, unable to go forward into acceptance or back into ignorance, trapped in some sort of hateful purgatory – Michael understood that.
“Yeah,” Michael replied. His voice was rough. “Yeah, it does.”
Star looked at him. Her eyes shone with grief for the living, for them, for the innocence they could barely remember losing. She laid her head on Michael’s shoulder carefully. Michael brought his arms up around her gingerly. He was afraid that she would scatter like dust, or like a final burst of light from one of her dead stars, if he held her too tightly.
Michael lost count of how many minutes they stayed like that. He rested his cheek on her hair, and she let him. She held onto his jacket, rubbing the soft leather with her thumb in a self-soothing motion.
“Oh, how sweet!”
Star jerked out of Michael’s arms so quickly that Michael flinched. She peered around him, half frightened, half glaring at David, who was climbing up the support beams. His head popped up above the catwalk, and it was so comical that, under any other circumstances, Michael would have laughed. But there was a strange glint in David’s eyes and trouble written in the pull of his lips over his teeth.
“What are you doing here, David?” Star growled.
“Just passing by,” he replied mildly. “I thought I’d offer two of my favorite people a ride home.” David smiled genially, maybe even a little suggestively, at Michael. He tried not to think about David calling him one of his favorite people. It was clearly a joke. They’d only met a handful of times, but –
Michael shook his head, as if his brain was an Etch-a-Sketch, his thoughts a child’s paltry drawing. He wished it was that easy to shake David off. “I’ve got my own ride,” he said, nodding towards his Honda.
David looked down at the bike and then back at him, incredulous. “That thing still runs? I thought it had been abandoned here.”
“You saw it – ”
David’s brows lifted. His lips were caught between a smirk and a real smile. It was a good look on him. Michael shut his mouth. There was no way in hell he was going to bring up their interlude on the bridge the other night.
“You’ve seen it before,” he muttered, ignoring Star’s questioning look.
“And it looked pitiful then, too.”
Michael frowned. A few days ago, David had been tender, very nearly sweet, and now he was being a jerk and clearly enjoying it. And when they had first met, he was charming and magnetic. Which one was the real David? Were they all? I don’t care, Michael told himself firmly. I do not care.
David hoisted himself up onto the catwalk, slotting himself into place between Michael and the rusty metal railing. Beside Michael, Star stiffened.
“I’m glad to see you two getting along,” David said conversationally. He kicked his legs idly, like a lonely child on an old swingset. Michael felt a rush of fondness for no real reason.
“Why?” Star asked. It sounded more like an accusation than a question.
Michael was beginning to think that between-Star-and-David was probably not the best place to be, and also that he had gotten himself into something he would regret later, though he couldn’t make out what that was yet.
“Because I care about you both,” David answered easily, “and I want the people I care about to get along. Speaking of – the boys will be here in a few minutes. Why don’t you ride home with us, Michael? Come see where we live. I’ll give you a lift.”
Michael bristled. “I told you, I’ve got a ride.”
“I’m not hearing a no.”
“No,” Michael and Star said in unison. Her eyes were hard, her mouth pursed. Any hint of softness was gone. Michael had thought her eyes were wise from the moment he first saw her, but he’d never really thought about where that wisdom came from. He was beginning to figure it out.
“Spending the night probably isn’t a good idea,” Star said to him. Her voice was cautious but firm. “Your mom and brother will worry.”
“Do you really want to go home to them, Michael?” David asked. His tone had changed: no longer playful, he looked at Michael earnestly, like he really wanted to know. It was the same way he’d looked under the pier when he asked if he could kiss him; the same way he’d looked on the bridge when he said he wanted to know Michael more than life.
Do you want to go home to them, Michael?
Did he?
No. He didn’t. That was the honest answer, the real answer – the painful answer. Michael had fallen so far from the tree he couldn’t even see the orchard anymore. Mom didn’t understand him and Sam didn’t understand anything at all. What had he been doing that first night on the boardwalk, when he met David, but trying to escape them? To escape who he was when he was with them?
Michael was silent for too long. He wanted to say, Show me what it’s like to live your life, show me how I could fit into it, but he knew going down that road would lead to disaster. So he didn’t say anything at all.
David smirked, alluring and infuriating, and said, “You’re going to make me fight for you, aren’t you, Michael?”
“I’m not making you do anything,” Michael refuted, but it was weak. He was frustrated with himself, with his family, with David and Star and everything else in his life. His cheeks were growing warm with indignation and embarrassment.
“I’ll make you a deal. Let’s have a little race. If you win, I’ll pierce your ear. If I win, you come home with me,” said David.
“I can’t keep up with your bike,” Michael replied. It stung his pride to admit, but there was an undeniable strain of relief, too. An easy out that wasn’t cowardice — just cold, hard facts.
“You don’t have to beat me,” David offered, “you just have to stay on my wheel.”
Michael should have hesitated. He should have done a lot of things.
“I can do that.”
He could. He could beat David, could stand up to him, and he could walk away from him after. He would walk away, and he’d stay away. No more kisses, no more questions, no more –
No more. Just no more.
Michael heard the rumble of engines rapidly approaching and raucous laughter. The other three members of the band. Star stood up and walked over Michael and David, then climbed down and waited at the base of the billboard for the boys. Michael gave himself a minute to breathe in the clean night air before it filled with exhaust and the scent of engine grease, and then clambered back down to the ground and slung himself onto his Honda.
“You riding with me?” He asked Star.
“No,” she said, arms crossed over her chest. “You’re going to try and beat David even though you know you can’t. I’m not going to be caught in the crossfire.” Her tone was frustrated but resigned. Mom sounded like that a lot, Michael thought belatedly. He wondered what she and Sammy were doing.
“STAAAAAAR!”
The band came to a stop not far from Michael, Star, and David, who had climbed down much more gracefully than Michael.
Star smiled, helplessly charmed, and waved at Dwayne. He sounded thrilled to see her, like she was a favorite cousin he only saw once a year instead of one of his best friends.
“Hey, Michael,” said Paul.
“Hey, Paul.”
“Ooh, Mikey boy, is that your bike?” Marko crowed. He half-stood and leaned over his handlebars to get a better look at the Honda. He was wearing a ridiculous hat, titled at an angle that obscured half his face. He looked like a bad imitation of a Musketeer.
“It is indeed,” David interrupted. “He’s going to try to keep up with us on the way to the Coronado. We’ve made a small wager.”
“Oh?” Said Paul.
“What are the stakes?” Dwayne asked eagerly.
“Michael is going to join us tonight,” David answered. Michael shivered. There was something about the way David had said join us . . . .
“If I lose,” Michael clarified. “David’s going to pierce my ear if I win.”
The boys were unsettlingly quiet for a moment. They looked back and forth between Michael and David, confused, apprehensive, and startled. But then Dwayne hooted and Paul’s expression turned eerily neutral. Marko turned his gaze solely on David. There was a question there, deep and meaningful. David inclined his head and smirked, his answer unhelpfully ambiguous to Michael, but clear to Marko, who settled back onto his bike with wary eyes. Michael wondered how long they had known each other, to be able to communicate like that.
Star slid onto the back of Marko’s bike and wrapped her thin arms around his narrow waist. She didn’t look at anyone.
David mounted his bike. He was in front, Michael and Marko on either side of him, Dwayne in the middle, and Paul at the rear. “Ready?” He called to them. He looked at Michael, radiating arrogance and calm assurance. “Have you ever driven over the Coronado Bluff, Michael?” He asked.
“No.”
David smiled. Michael knew that didn’t bode well for him, but the knots his stomach twisted itself into weren’t the unpleasant kind.
“Let’s go!”
David revved his engine and took off, Marko on his heels. Michael pushed the Honda to keep up, but he ended up closer to Dwayne than Marko. Dwayne hollered exuberantly. Michael punched it, pushed his bike so hard he could feel it rattling underneath him. As much as he’d wanted to drive it to Santa Carla, he knew it wouldn’t have made it out of Phoenix. It had been on its last leg since he bought it, and only constant maintenance had made it last as long as it had.
Michael didn’t have a job yet, or money for repairs or the supplies he needed to do them himself. He’d been gentle with his bike up to now. He knew she wouldn’t make it any other way.
The Honda was going to die tonight, probably a gruesome, fiery death. Michael would hate himself for it tomorrow, maybe even in a few minutes, when he had to accept a ride from one of the guys back to his house, but right now, he didn’t care. Right now, he only saw David, his white-blond hair silver in the moonlight, whipping around his face and neck as they raced onto the bluff.
Dwayne and Marko fell away as they approached the curve. It was sharp, but nothing Michael couldn’t handle. They were being overly cautious (or probably just a normal level of cautious, but Michael had more riding on this final curve than they did). Even David slowed down some, enough for Michael to catch up to him. It was exhilarating, riding side by side, going faster than Michael ever had before with someone who made him feel like he never had before.
“Tell me how you feel, Michael!” David shouted over the wind. He was grinning fiercely, fire dancing in his eyes and the promise of something extraordinary on his tongue.
“I feel alive!” Michael shouted back. He was smiling so hard it hurt. His heart felt ready to beat out of his chest and onto the road, but he knew that even if it did, the boys wouldn’t run over it. There was something in all of their souls that connected them. He wanted to be a part of them. He wanted them to want him. It was a startling, sudden reversal of what he’d felt not twenty minutes ago, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. Michael craved their camaraderie, their easy rapport, their affection and admiration. Repression could only go so far when it was faced with possibility, so close and so real that Michael could reach out and touch it. “For the first time, I feel alive!”
Michael had taken his eyes off of the road for only a brief second, but a brief second was all it took. The apex of the curve appeared in front of him, too close, too close, and Michael overcorrected –
He was on the pavement before he knew what had happened. The breath had been knocked out of him and he’d hit his head so hard that his vision whited out. He’d wiped out.
He’d lost.
David was crouching over him. He didn’t look triumphant or condescending or anything that Michael would have been able to stomach. He looked concerned. He reached a hand out to Michael’s head, running his hands over Michael’s skull, looking for blood. His hand came back clean – a minor miracle – but his expression stayed fixed in place.
Star hovered over his shoulder, worrying at her lip. The boys were arrayed in a loose semicircle behind them.
Michael pushed himself into a sitting position. The ringing in his ears was fading. He didn’t look at the Honda. He couldn’t, right now. It would be like looking at his own corpse, splayed open and ruined. He’d thrown away his escape, his freedom, and for what? Just his godforsaken pride. Another curse his father had passed down to him.
David stood and extended his hand to Michael. Michael looked at it, then at David, then his hand again. Pride, yes, pride had been a factor in this fatality, but this had, too. What would become of Michael if he gave into this kindness? What would he do when he lost it?
What would become of him if he didn’t accept David’s hand?
He thought of his father, alone in their house in Phoenix. He’d never appreciated Mom’s overtures of peace, her olive branches, so carefully tended and so cruelly rejected. He was alone, bitter, a pathetic drunk with no family and no future.
That wasn’t going to be Michael. David was offering him something and Michael wanted it badly. He’d wanted it before he had a name for it. This desire to be loved, understood, cherished – it had felt poisonous. Michael was sure it would kill him one day because he knew it could never be cured.
David was no antidote, but maybe there was more than poison in Michael’s veins.
He took David’s hand and let himself be helped to his feet. David didn’t let go once Michael was standing. Michael didn’t want him to.
“How far are you willing to go, Michael?” David asked. His voice was low and soft, the question just for Michael. They were standing so close that Michael could feel David’s cold breath ghosting over his lips.
“To the end,” Michael replied, the answer just for David.