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The air hangs hot and heavy like a damp afghan over the small town. Even the cars up on the highway, the cars that never stop moving, seem to move sluggishly, the bloodflow stilled by the languor of the afternoon. Alex usually takes shelter in the basement on days like these, but his stupid baby brother is dead asleep on the couch, his chest rising and falling under a Blood On The Dance Floor tee.
“Hey. Dumbass,” he says, close to Tristan’s large pallid face. For good measure, he blows into his ear. But his slug-like eyelids don’t even flutter. The emo-esque fringe that covers Tristan’s forehead flips to the side as Alex blows at his face for good measure.
“Dammit.”
He’d been looking forward to this afternoon: Diablo III was all loaded up into his gaming console, and he’d managed to find some freezer pops knocking around in the back of the freezer, beside his stepdad’s stupid bougie goatmilk icecream. Now, he needed his throne.
But his half brother was sprawled on the sofa, breathing deeply, with all the charisma of a wet bag of cement. If you dropped a fucking anvil on him, he wouldn’t wake up, not at this point. He hates changing his plans, but Tristan is pretty much stuck there: there’s no moving him. Alex digs into the green, just-starting-to-pill cushions of the couch, and finds a fat black sharpie. He looks from the sharpie to Tristan, hoping it isn’t dry. Careful not to stir him, he inks a fat L onto his forehead, and steps back to admire his work.
Nice.
He walks up the stairs, headed for the cool mist of the refrigerator. It’s hot up there. The airconditioner sucks slowly at the air, struggling for a moment or two, before resuming its heavy panting. For all its noise, it’s not getting much done. When he gets the fridge open, he sticks his head in, closing his eyes as he lets the cold air slap him right in the face.
His stepdad is still at work, so he feels no qualms about reaching into the very back of the fridge to sneak a Bud Light out of the fridge and into the pocket of his sweatshirt, crossing his arms over it to hide the bulk. Pressing his nose against the screen door, he stares out at the cars racing past on the highway. His house is just far enough to see the highway, but not close enough to hear the cars going past. He leaves the shelter of the screen-door, to stand on the porch with the cold beer chilling the palm of his hand as he cracks it open, and sits barefoot on the steps of the porch, watching the cars go by.
The cloying scent of dying, sun-baked roses reaches his nose. His mother always had a penchant for starting up half-thought-out projects: there’s still a pile of scrapbooking scissors and old pictures in the basement cupboards from when she decided she was going to become a scrapbooker, a sewing kit in the cupboard right next to it, and beside that, a pair of beekeeping gloves, which was thankfully as far as she’d gotten on that little venture.This summer, it was a rose garden, right next to the porch. No one’s watered the sprawling rose bush since she left on her business trip, and now the roses are baking dry in the sun, going brown.
His long, blue-dyed hair is lank and hot on the back of his neck, straggling down into the collar of his sweatshirt. It’s been too long since it’s been washed, but he isn’t in the mood to do much moving, let alone scrub his hair. He digs a hair tie from his jeans pockets and wraps his hair into a loose ponytail, sipping from his beer when the deed is done. His stepdad won’t be too happy about the missing beer, but there’s no way to prove it’s Alex that took it.
The afternoon light slides into a daydream, bright greens and yellows giving way to deep blues and purples, his view of his mom’s rose garden blurring, turning into a moonlit beach, with a silver moon tracing an equally silver path on the water. He starts to walk out into the tide, the water sucking at his legs. Then the ground starts to shake.
A sudden jolt shakes him awake. His stepdad is standing over him, a look of faint disapproval on his face.
Oh shit. Oh shit, he fell asleep. And the Bud Light is still by his hand, though he apparently knocked it over in his sleep: a stream of leftover beer runs across the steps and down into the grass, a miniature waterfall.
His blood pulses in his ears, so that he can barely hear his stepdad’s voice.
“Alex? I was wondering who stole the third beer in my pack.”
“Fuck,” he bites out, standing up and crushing the beer can under his boot. It’s harder than he thought, to crunch it down into a flat little disc of aluminum, but cathartic all the same.
“What the hell- you weren’t supposed to come home until later-”
“It is later, Alex.” Only then does he realize that the sun sinks into the horizon, the sunset tracing reds and oranges across the sky.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He stomps the beer can even flatter.
“Language.” His stepdad gives a deep sigh. The look of disappointment on his face is like a slap: Alex wishes he’d just yell at him or something, this is like water torture. The sweat beading his brow and nose supply the water droplets.
“I’m going to have you call your mother. She’ll figure out a punishment for you. Conference call- I’ll be on the other line.”
Alex shakes his head. No way. No way is he going to sit there, with Mr. Oatmeal Sweater, listening to him tell his mom all about how badly Alex fucked up.
“No. No, I’m not.”
And before his stepdad can say anything, he’s off, running for the parking area, where his Gremlin is parked.
His little grey car is temperamental at best, and he’s whispering entreaties under his breath as he turns the key in the ignition.
“Come on baby, come on honey, come on, come on, you can do it, get me out of here, c’mon, I know you can-”
The car starts with a shudder and a bang, not smooth at all, but it’s enough. He jumps behind the wheel, slamming the door behind him, and peels out of the driveway, leaving a long strip of lawn torn up when he rounds the corner and pulls out onto the road.
The airconditioning takes a good ten minutes to kick on, so he strips off his sweatshirt, letting the cool air whip at his bare chest and hair, the windows rolled down as he drives. He has no destination in mind, just the thought of getting away from his stepdad.
He drives until the July sun, throbbing like a bloodshot eye, disappears behind the horizon. There’s nothing good on the radio, not even Metallica. His phone buzzes incessantly in the passenger’s seat, until it finally goes quiet. The stars begin to flicker on, and he realizes that he’s low on gas. He pulls off the highway, at a quiet gas station, the light of the connected convenience store and the buzzing flies the only signs of life.
As he gets the gas pumping, he thinks he hears singing, like the faint midsummer chanting of witches, or something.
He peers into the dark behind the convenience store, but all that he sees are the humming fireflies, much too small to be sacrificial candles. Tapping his toe on the ground as though that will get the gas flowing faster, he bites his lip and waits for the tank to fill. The singing was probably just his imagination, he decides.
Then he hears it again: the sound of children singing. God, that’s creepy.
The tank is full, so he hurries to pay, gnawing his lip raw as he waits for the payment to go through. He scrambles into the car after making sure that the gas cap is fastened on, and closes the door. But the singing doesn’t stop. He looks: it’s the radio, turned to some children’s choir. Thank god, for once.
He shuts it off, lets himself settle into the seat as he starts the car, and swerves around, back out onto the highway.
He still doesn’t have a location in mind, but he heads back toward town, on autopilot. It’s only when he takes a few turns into a neighborhood and parks in front of a small house when he realizes where he was headed all of this time: to Mikey’s house. He’s made this drive over and over, throughout high school, almost every time his dad pissed him off or his brothers got into his space.
He doesn’t knock on the door, just waits in the driveway with the engine idling. The light in Mikey’s room illuminates the blinds in a milky glow: he isn’t asleep yet. Part of Alex hopes that Mikey will remember their old routine, that he’ll come down the steps in his basketball shorts and stupid summer camp shirt that he always sleeps in, and get in the car with him, out of the summer heat.
Then the light goes off, and Alex cranes his neck forward, trying to spot any sign of Mikey. Damn it. Damn it.
Maybe it was expecting too much, to hope that Mikey would remember. Mikey doesn’t owe him. Mikey has no reason to… wait, was the front door opening?
Alex turns on his headlights.
“Whoa, buddy,” comes a familiar voice. A bit too loudly for past midnight, but then, that was Mikey.
Alex motions for him to shush. “Hey, get in the car, loser,” he says, leaning out of the open window. “Are you getting in or not?”
Mikey looks him up and down, hesitates. “Another fight with your dad? Man, that’s rough.”
He hasn’t even told him anything. Trust Mikey to steal the words out of his mouth. That’s what happened when you’d known each other since daycare.
“Yeah, get in the car, instead of standing there like a pile of bricks, and maybe I’ll tell you about it.”
Mikey grins, ear-to-ear, and pulls open the passenger door, folding his gangly frame into the Gremlin’s passenger seat. His arm folds naturally around Alex’s shoulders. Almost too easily. Sweat beads at Mikey’s touch, all across Alex’s bare shoulders.
He smells a little like sleep, a little like sweat, and a little like some kind of herbal wash.
Alex reaches over, cranks up the airconditioning. Better flush that hippie shit out of the car, real fast.
“Back with Almond again?”
“No, haven’t seen her since the semester started.” Mikey waves his hand, as though to dismiss the thought completely. “She’s off with her own crowd. Decided we weren’t dating again. I think she’s dating some girl who’s like. Actually landed some dude in the hospital, so that’s cool.”
Despite himself, Alex grins widely. “Good.” Mikey was too good for Almond, anyway. Fucking hippie bitch.
“Enough about Almond. Tell me the shit, dog!” Mikey says as he checks to make sure that the door is shut. He’s ditched the summer camp tee he always used to wear. Instead, he’s wearing a misprinted sports jersey. If it wasn't for the flipflops he’s wearing, he would look like he’s ready to go run some laps at the gym.
“Let me get out of your parents’ parking lot first,” Alex says, already beginning to back out. “I don’t wanna scare your family or anything.”
He’s out of the parking lot, headed down the road when he speaks again.
“So I raided my old man’s booze.”
Mikey laughs, his customary head-thrown back, molars-exposed laugh, his brown curls shaking with the force of it. Alex realizes he missed it. What kind of gay shit.
Between his college applications and Mikey’s evening practices, it had maybe been, what, three or four months since they’d hung out?
“Sorry, it’s just that you raid his booze all the time, dude. Or what do you call it- ‘resettlement of enemy supplies?’.”
“Yeah, but I don’t usually get caught. I went out on the porch. Summer day put me to sleep. That’s what I’m blaming it on.”
“Oh shit, dude.” Mikey looks concerned. The sober expression looks somehow alien on his cheery, wide-cheeked features.
“What did he do, chew ya out? If I'm telling the truth, I didn't think that the guy had the guts.”
Alex smiles humorlessly.
“Nah, he didn't chew me out right there, even though the Bud Light was right by my hand and everything.”
Grips the wheel harder as he thinks about it.
“No, he didn't chew me out. He just said he wanted me to call my mom, with him on the other line. A conference call.”
Mikey looks from his hands, which are now whiteknuckled, to his face. He avoids making eye contact.
“Dude.”
Mikey sounds worried, and not in the fake way, so that's something. If he’s honest, it’s other people at their school who play the fake game, not Mikey. Never Mikey.
“That’s not cool.”
At least someone understands, even if it's dumb jock Mikey.
“Damn right it's not cool,” Alex agrees, whirling the wheel to take a hard right.
They're not too far from the high school now, in sight of the running track and the other athletic facilities. Moonlight glints against the chainlink fences, and the batting cages. In the light of the moon, Alex makes out a small, humped shape near the road.
It looks like an animal, some kind of roadkill, and his heart sinks because he knows that by the way Mikey sits upright in his seat, craning his neck out the window, that he’s seen it too.
“Bro, there's something out there, some kind of dog or cat or something. We have to help it.”
Dogs, cats, they all melted Mikey’s giant heart. He’d never forget the time Mikey almost hit a dog on the highway, and Mikey had made them go back through three exits before he’d been convinced it had just run off.
“It might attack us,” Alex says, but the effort is half hearted: Mikey is already grabbing for the door handle, as though he’s going to hurl himself from the car on an instant’s provocation.
He pulls over to the side of the road, and parks, so that Mikey can’t turn himself into an ink splatter on the pavement. He unlocks the doors, and manages to get his door open first. Mikey is still faster than him, though, and is already hurrying down the side of the road by the time he manages to get out of the car on both feet.
“Hey, little guy,” Mikey says to the lump, and Alex’s heart sinks: he doesn’t want a sad, crying Mikey on his hands. Mikey reaches out, about to flip the thing over.
“Look, Mikey, I think it’s dead,” he’s about to say, when the furry shape leaps in the air, a small white tail flashing upward at him as the shadows finally resolve: he blinks as the rabbit dives into the underbrush, vanishing from sight.
“It was just sleeping, Alex,” Mikey says, grinning ear to ear. “Just a little rabbit taking a rest by the side of the road.”
Alex nods. “I guess.”
For Mikey’s sake, he’s glad the rabbit was only sleeping. The wind is kicking up, blowing away at the muggy night air.
“Let’s get back in the car,” Alex says, and this time Mikey listens, buckling himself in without complaint.
They drive past the school, the football arena, the batting cages, leaving them all behind, along with the rabbit.
Mikey’s still thinking about it, Alex can tell by the way he’s got his knees folded up like bleacher stairs, feet tucked against the seat. “I hope it wasn’t scared,” he mumbles, barely audible over the sound of the Gremlin’s fucked-up engine.
“Rabbits have tiny little brains. Like the size of your pinky. It probably doesn’t even remember.”
Alex doesn’t know much about rabbits, or the size of their brains, if his science scores are anything to go by. But by the way Mikey relaxes, he knows he’s said the right thing, even if it’s a full-on lie. He sends a silent prayer of thanks, up to whatever’s listening, for the fact that Mikey skips most classes in favor of varsity sports.
“That’s good,” Mikey says, a little louder, a little closer to his regular bombastic volume.
The tides rise and fall, the sun rises and sets, and Mikey speaks loudly. Order is returned to the universe, at least for the little world that’s enclosed by the walls of the Gremlin.
At least, until the engine begins to sputter and cough again, and Alex takes a look at the speedometer. The little green numbers are ticking up well past the fifty miles per hour speed limit the Gremlin is capable of achieving, and he’s going to pay for it.
“Fuck,” he says, so loud that Mikey jumps and drops his feet back down to the floor with a thud.
“What’s wrong?” Mikey asks, looking around, as he expects though the wheels to disconnect, the car to split neatly down the middle like one of those science textbook
illustrations with halved frogs and bisected humans.
“Gremlin’s being a bitch,” Alex says, gripping the wheel until his fingers cramp. “Come on, you piece of shit. Piece of crap car. Come on, you can make it.”
The Gremlin’s engine jumps and stutters up the hill, all the way to the top.
“What now?”
Mikey’s eyes are bugging out of his head like a frog’s.
“I gotta stop, let her cool off. I gotta go offroad to do that, though. You with me?”
Mikey nods emphatically, gripping onto the armrests of his seat. Alex pulls off the road, letting the Gremlin’s mass carry them down into a grove of willows. Their long branches shush against the Gremlin, as he puts the car into park.
Mikey grabs his hand as he goes to open the car door. His hand, along with the rest of him, is shaking. “Look, are we gonna die? Have we played our last round?”
“What are you talking about?” Alex asks, looking Mikey square in the face. In Alex’s rush to get the car off the road, he hasn’t really had the chance to check in with Mikey, make sure he’s okay. Now, in the faint light from the half-sickle moon, Mikey’s mouth is trembling, as though he’s staving off tears.
“We aren’t gonna die. The Gremlin just needs a rest.” He laughs. It comes out more shaky than he’d like.
“Tell me the truth,” Mikey says, his voice soft-edged again. His eyes are looking everywhere but at Alex.
“I’m not fucking lying to you, okay? I only lie to stupid people. Like my stupid baby brother, or my dad.”
If there was a way to reach up and twist Mikey’s face around without making him more upset, Alex would do that. But there’s not. He pulls away, but Mikey won’t let go of his hand, not an inch.
“You think I’m stupid though,” Mikey says, his voice even softer. Alarm bells are going off in Alex’s head, even louder than the sounds that the Gremlin’s making as it cools off.
“Everybody does. I don’t really mind, though. It’s kinda the truth, anyway. I’m just sort of good at sports and that’s it. Everybody has stuff they’re good at. I just wish people wouldn’t lie to me, is all.”
Alex smacks his free hand down into the steering wheel, with a muffled thump. Mikey jumps all the same.
“I’m not lying to you,” he says, trying to keep his voice from sounding too angry.
It still sounds rough-edged, twisted up in his mouth, upset. He can’t stop from sounding upset, no matter how much he wants to sound abstract and cool. He wouldn’t be surprised if the Gremlin’s engine was cooler than he was right now.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, not about something important like the car. We aren’t gonna die, but if we were, I’d tell you.”
Mikey isn’t looking directly at him, but his head is angled toward him, as though he’s hearing him out. At least he isn’t still looking around as though he expects the Gremlin to blow at any moment.
The words hurry their way out of Alex’s mouth.
Look at me, Mikey. Come on.
“And I wouldn’t really mind it, dying. Not if I was with you. That would be worth it, I think.”
Mikey’s looking at him now, grinning, a smile that reaches his eyes.
“You really mean that, Alex? You really mean all that?”
He throws his arms around Alex, pulling him close.
“Whoa,” Alex says, before he realizes Mikey’s snuffling into his shoulder, rubbing his back with his hands.
He lets him, wrapping his own arms around Mikey’s shoulders, ducks his head down.
When Mikey pulls his head out of his shoulder, still grinning, Alex makes a decision. He pecks him softly on the lips, barely emphatic enough to be a kiss. It’s maybe the most tentative thing he’s ever done, and the moment he’s finished, he wishes he’d drawn it out.
Mikey’s lips are a lot softer than he thought they’d be.
“Whoa,” Mikey says, still grinning. “Dude, nice.”
“Are you mad at me?” Alex asks, afraid to look him in the eyes.
Mikey’s hand is on his cheek, almost before he knows it’s there, and he’s returning the kiss. His lips are even softer the second time, like mint and cream soda, sweet but burning his lips at the same time, and he kisses back, and Mikey kisses back again.
He doesn’t even care if the Gremlin never starts up again, it would be worth it for this, this line of returned kisses, and his hand in Mikey’s hair, and the moonlight on their skin, turning everything to silver.