Past Continuous

by K. Ryer Breese

Genres: YA Action & Adventure

Synopsis

Ade Patience has done what he was told he couldn't. He's broken the rules, used his powers to save a life. And no good deed goes unpunished. . . .

Senior year finds Ade and his girlfriend, Vauxhall, deeply in love, indulging themselves with wild dates and exploring their newly strengthened abilities. Only Ade isn't as happy as he should be. He's got an itch that he can't seem to scratch and it has everything to do with his joining the Pandora Crew, a group of radical oracles hell-bent on disturbing the peace, performing Jackass-style stunts, and spreading the mayhem.

When Ade realizes that his involvement with the Pandora Crew is due to his absorbing some of Jimi Ministry's abusive childhood, he discovers that the only way to rid himself of the infectious memories is to erase his past. And it just so happens that the one guy who can do that lives a few blocks down the street.

The procedure works. The "Jimi cancer" is cleared out. But when Ade returns to his life, he finds that changing the past has changed the present. Vauxhall has no idea who he is and he has to woo her all over again. And it won't be easy. There are three other people vying for Vauxhall's attention. Three other guys he has to literally battle to win her back. The worst part: they're all twisted versions of Ade.

Erasing the past has dramatically altered the present and Ade must join forces with his former rival to defeat . . . himself.

Release date: November 8, 2011

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 304

Sample

CHAPTER ONE


ONE
Hey, Heinz—
Awesome seeing you at the swim meet this past weekend. Can't believe I almost came in third. No doubt that was due to some of the astral plane stuff you've been doing. Keep it up, brother! At this rate, what with all the lesser demon saliva and minor devil bones, I'll make the city B finals this spring.
Anyways, I'm writing to get your advice. I'm in a major bind here.
Let me try and explain it up front, just give you the background, before I get to the actual problem. I'm hoping you'll be sympathetic. Can't imagine that most folks who become Satanists didn't mess around with other forms of antisocial behavior as kids.
There's this crew. They call themselves the Pandora Crew and really it's just two dudes. Both of them are total morons. Both of them are like me, gifted, and yet neither of them does anything more than "foment revolution." That's their deal: chaos for the sake of chaos. Anyhow, I somehow wound up in Gordon's and Jeremiah's orbits. Actually, that's not true. It wasn't somehow. These guys used to hang with the LoDo Diviners. They were part of the scene like two years ago. Clean-cut and productive, though I still don't know what abilities they actually have. Both were kicked out by Gilberto and that's when I met them at a show at the Blue Bird. We got to talking. One thing led to another. Now I'm a part of the crew. Now I'm doing the most unbelievable stuff and it's only getting worse. It has only slightly been illegal so far. No one's gotten hurt, I mean.
But soon it's going to cross a line. That line.
I can just tell.
Here's the thing: The stuff we're doing, it makes no sense. It's just destructive and wild and fearless and, honestly, I'm loving every minute of it. It's liberating and I don't know why. This isn't me, Heinz. I'm not this guy. Sure, when I was knocking myself out every other day, crashing cars and diving off roofs, that wasn't the sanest business either. But I don't do that anymore. I'm not that person. I'm stable. I'm sophisticated. And when I did that concussion stuff it was for a reason. It was for the future. This? This is just nihilism.
And I kind of like it. My abilities, now they're boring in a way. Just touch someone and see their future, it sounds totally exciting. It sounds incredible. But it isn't. Think about the people you know. The guy who checks your bags at the grocery store or the chick who drives your bus. The mall security guard. The ticket guy at the movie theater. None of these people have surprising futures. Bumping into them, the future you see is like spending a weekend watching the Home Shopping Network. Predictable. Dull. I'm longing, really, for a concussion. To see myself back in action and not everyone else.
Thing is: I've promised myself I wouldn't. I promised Vauxhall.
The Buzz is gone so what's the point, right?
That's why there's something about being out with the Pandora Crew that kick-starts my demon. A new Buzz. Something I'm calling the Delirium 'cause that's honestly the way it feels. You know me; I'm not religious. But the feeling I'm getting when I do something so out of control that it hurts to even think about it is like nothing I've felt before.
I think I'm possessed, Heinz.
Seriously.
I need you to help me exorcize myself.
Your pal,
Ade
TWO
I'm having a great evening.
And by great, I mean I'm with Vauxhall.
We have dinner at a steak place downtown.
Nice place. Nicer than kids our age, kids like us, should be allowed in.
That's because it's the first of the month.
Date Night.
Tonight, the steak house dinner scene, is Foolish Romance.
We're both dressed up. Over-dressed up.
Vaux's wearing this prom gown that she found at a yard sale. Orange and frilled and gaudy and all bejeweled. The story we made up is that this monstrosity was from the late '70s and was worn by a faded starlet. Maybe her name was Marjorie. Or Babette. To fit the dress, Vaux has her hair curled. She's also got makeup caked on.
Me, I'm wearing a sky-blue suit. Have my hair all slicked back. Also alligator-skin boots just to knock the look out of the ballpark.
Last Date Night we went to the art museum on a moped. Raced through traffic, screaming and hollering. We decided this particular Date Night should be called Head Over High Heels.
Me in a tux and her in a slinky red dress.
At the museum, on the third floor, we sipped from a flask I snuck in and sat and talked in front of a sculpture of an enormous duck that had a swastika on its side. Modern art, right? More people took cell pictures of the two of us than of the duck.
Month before it was the race to the airport.
We called it Heart of the Party.
Vaux was at the airport, sunglasses on and suitcases packed, and she was in line, ready to buy a ticket, when I came barreling down the concourse in one of those golf carts. I acted all panicked and the guy who was driving it, the employee, he jumped right out and just let me drive. He shouted after me, "Go get her!" And I did.
I drove that cart right up to the line she was standing in and jumped off it and ran over to her and we hugged and kissed like we thought we might both die and everyone around us just burst out into applause.
We ran off hand in hand, all the travelers hooting and hollering.
You see, this summer Vauxhall and I have decided that we're going to live Hollywood. We're going to live in a Romantic Comedy World.
She came up with the idea.
She said, "In all those terrible romantic comedies, there's always this one scene, usually right before the big fight that happens at the eighty-minute mark, where the couple has some amazing, jet-setting date. Like they fly to Paris and sip wine beneath the Eiffel Tower or they go to San Francisco and hang glide to a picnic on a hill in the Mission district. They always look amazing, so happy and in love. That's the Hollywood moment and you never, ever see it. Right? I mean, you're never downtown and see one of those couples race past you, all decked out, on a Harley or in a biplane? Well, we're going to be that couple this summer."
So far, so good.
You should see the way people look at us on Date Night. It's like we've flown in from another dimension. Like we've stepped off of the stage for a life among the audience. Demigods among the mortals. We are the story that people go home and tell. The story they try and finish.
For one night, we are the stars. We are the people no one really knows.
The people who, for the most part, don't even exist.
Even better, we are the story they'll tell tomorrow over breakfast.
The one they'll post online.
The one they'll sigh about when they're lonely.
Tonight, Date Night number four, Foolish Romance, is going just swimmingly. Despite the getup, we've decided to keep the drama on the low end. Just us being dressed up and being out. Just us happy being in love. And eating.
We finish our crab wonton appetizers when Vauxhall leans forward and puts her hands on mine, smiles, and says, "You weren't at Jimi's birthday party this morning. I didn't say anything to you but did you forget?"
"Shit!" I smack my forehead. Fake. Totally exaggerated but I do feel bad.
"Yeah, he was bummed." Vauxhall pulls her hands back from mine.
"I forget a lot of things, Vaux. It's kind of like my thing. You can't just expect—"
"He's your brother."
"Yeah, exactly. My half-brother. The same half-brother who I didn't know existed until four months ago. Same exact half-brother who not only stole my childhood but tried to make me kill him so I wouldn't exist anymore."
Vauxhall says nothing. She's so disappointed.
"Look … I'll give him a call later, okay? I'm sure he's not sobbing over it or anything, right?"
Vauxhall shrugs. That means that I don't get it.
I try to change the subject, move us on. "Have you seen Paige this week?"
Vaux nods. "Yeah, of course."
"Well I haven't. I don't know what it is but ever since she started dating, like really dating, it's like she doesn't have time for me anymore. Remember how we used to watch our shows and just—"
"No. I wasn't there, Ade. Remember?"
"Right. Okay."
Then she gets this serious look. Like a cloud passing over the sun.
"What's going on?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know. You, you're different. Ever since you started hanging out with Gordon and Jeremiah. What's funny is that I'm used to you being forgetful, but this is different. This isn't you forgetting things, it's you purposely not remembering."
"How can you purposely not remember something?"
"Ask yourself."
I groan. "Why isn't it okay for me to hang out with other people? I mean—"
"Don't even. Don't even start that. I'm not keeping you in a cage, Ade."
And like that Date Night turns into Fight Night.
This had been happening lately. Neither of us wants to admit it, recognize it, but we're starting to get all crabby. Me, mostly. It's like we're becoming an old married couple. Only in high school. Only when we're not even eighteen yet.
"I know that, Vaux. It's not like I really believe that."
"Then why say it?"
"Ugh. Seriously? Listen, I'm sorry and I won't ever open my mouth again. Can we just get back to having fun here? Whatever happened to having fun? It's just—"
My foot-in-my-mouth, making-it-worse non-apology is interrupted by a goofy fool banging on the window at the front of the restaurant. This guy has a weird beard but he's young. Googly-eyed and probably wasted.
Half the restaurant starts freaking out over the madman.
They drop their forks, make all sorts of kitchen clatter, and whisper and point at the mugging idiot at the window. This isn't supposed to be happening at a fancy steak place like this one. Dudes like the fool at the window aren't supposed to be here.
The riffraff is never invited.
Vauxhall, she just looks at me and shakes her head. "I thought this was Date Night."
I throw my hands up, exasperated.
The moron at the window knocks on the glass, licks it, and laughs.
Problem is, I know the guy.
"You don't think I invited him here, do you?" I ask.
Vauxhall shrugs.
"You gotta be kidding me."
The retard outside yells my name. He yells it over and over. So loud.
Vauxhall's eyes bug out. "Just one night, Ade. Why is that so hard?"
I huff and stand up and throw my napkin on the table all dramatically and walk out of the restaurant. What's funny is that I'm kind of excited to be out of there. The guy at the window, the cretin, is Jeremiah. One half of the Pandora Crew.
Once I get outside he jumps up on me like a dog in heat.
"Holy shit, Ade! Wait til you see what we have planned for tonight!"
I push him off, look back at Vauxhall through the window.
Slowly I say, "Dude. You're interrupting my Date Night with Vaux. This isn't cool. You're getting me in some major trouble here."
Jeremiah waves to Vauxhall. Says, "Look across the street."
Vaux waves back. Disgusted.
Jeremiah says, "Corner of Third and York. Check it, bro."
I check it. There's a gnarly van with smoked windows idling at the corner. This van, it has a pastoral scene airbrushed on the side. Waterfalls and lily pads. A unicorn with a rainbow sprouting from its back. The rainbow was in shades of gray. The unicorn, the thing, has fangs.
Jeremiah says, "The Shriek."
"Nice name," I say. Looking close at the van I notice the dude behind the wheel is none other than Gordon, the better half of the Pandora Crew. Only he's rocking a fake mustache and massive mirrored sunglasses.
Jeremiah says, "Kiss Vaux good-bye for the night, player. Wait til you see what's inside that bad boy."
Still looking at the van, I say, "No can do. She'd kill me."
Jeremiah goes, "Please. Don't be such a pushover. You're not even eighteen."
I look back at Vauxhall. She's paying the check, ignoring me.
Jeremiah says, "Give her a kiss and come out and play."
I dutifully go inside and walk up to Vaux and kiss her on the forehead. She wipes my kiss away and gives me the finger. She says, "I'm beginning to understand why Paige hates you half the time."
"Please, baby. I didn't think this—"
"You never think anymore, Ade. Just forget it and go. Go on."
And I give her a half smile before I bail.
THREE
This whole Pandora Crew thing all started about three weeks ago.
I met them the way I seem to meet a lot of people: by vision.
I was at the Blue Bird after this one show and bumped into Gordon. Literally bumped into him on the sidewalk outside.
This has happened a whole lot.
With these newly enhanced abilities, I find I'm bumping into people all the time and flashing out into their future. Ninety-two percent of the time it's boring as all hell. Ninety-two percent of the time it's just watching someone get old and slow down.
But not Gordon.
Nah, with him I saw … Well, I can't even describe exactly what it was.
I've never dropped acid. Never done shrooms.
But Gordon's future was what I imagine I'd see if I ever did. It was all swirling colors and branching shapes that seemed to push and pull their way out from the background static. Really, can't explain it.
So I stopped him.
No point in beating around the bush, I just came out and said it. "You've got a crazy future. Not like anything I've ever seen."
He didn't look at me like I was drunk.
He didn't freak out.
That was the first sign.
"It's not a future," he said. "It's the other side of reality. Like the flip side of this life. You know how you can kind of see through the pages of an old comic book, stuff printed on newssheet? Well, that's what it is. It's the other life bleeding through."
I didn't know how to take that. Looked at Vaux and she shrugged.
I could tell even then that she didn't like Gordon.
She saw the danger in him.
We exchanged numbers and the next night, we hung out.
That's when the switch was flipped.
I was at Gordon's house and we drank and watched movies and didn't talk about anything. Really. I didn't ask him about his background and he didn't ask mine. We didn't talk school. We didn't talk girlfriends. We didn't talk.
There was just this knowing between us.
This simple understanding.
Kind of like the way little kids, kids who can't talk, play together.
And then, somehow, we wound up in the backyard.
We smoked a few cigarettes. I coughed through all of them. And then Gordon motioned to the garage. He said, "You're not going to believe the idea I just had."
First thing I promised Vauxhall: I won't jump off anything.
There really hasn't been a reason for me to jump off anything because there hasn't been a reason for me to knock myself out. No Buzz. No need.
This, however, was different.
This was about living.
Gordon said, "If ever there was a time to test the old hypothesis that teenagers think they're invincible, it's right now."
We climbed up onto his roof and he pointed to a big fir tree across the yard, like a decent thirty feet away.
Gordon said, "We're going to jump it. Land in the branches."
"That tree is on the other side of the yard, dude."
"That's what makes it challenging. Yes."
And he backed up, all the way across the roof to the far side, counted to fifteen, and then he booked, like he was running track, going for the freaking gold, and hit the gutter and, wham, he flew. Flew clear across the gap between the roof and the tree like in some slowed-down scene from an action movie.
He flew right into the fir tree.
It wasn't pretty but he made it.
After he'd climbed down, his face all scratched up from fir needles, he stood on the lawn below me and said, "Show me what you got."
"Nah, I think I'll pass."
"What?"
"Looks stupid."
"Oh no you didn't. You didn't just call it stupid. Stupid is you not doing this because you're afraid or you're worried about … I don't know. What's your problem, Ade?"
"I'm recovering."
"Worst word in the English language. Recovering. Ade, you jump onto that tree and then we'll talk. There's something I need you to understand."
I shook my head. "You're an idiot."
"Am I? Jump and find out."
So I backed up, dug my heels in, and … paused.
Here's the crazy part: It'd been five months since I jumped off anything higher than a sidewalk. And, as expected, I got this nutty kind of thrill just thinking about jumping. I was only seconds away from sending myself into the air and my heart was pounding in my chest like I was going to kiss Vauxhall for the first time in months. The Delirium. This feeling, the Buzz reaching back out from whatever dark recess I'd stuffed it down into. It was calling me. Pulling me back. What made it different, though, was that it felt different. This rush, honestly, it made me feel guilty.
Worse, I liked it.
And I ran, jumped, cleared the edge of the roof and crashed into the fir tree. The impact made the tree sway hard to the right. It cracked and threatened to break. I hung on, my skin being pinched by a thousand needles, and then climbed down.
Gordon gave me a pat on the back and then he pulled out a penlight and put it in my face, stared hard and long at my eyes. Then he laughed.
"You've got the bug."
"Bug?"
"How does it make you feel? When your pupils get all blasted out like that? When your heart is rushing and your skin is crawling with pleasure? It's a high, isn't it?"
"I don't have a—"
"No. I can tell. Have a look, brother."
And Gordon turned the light on himself. His eyes like blown-open craters in his head. The dude had the Buzz, hard. I'd never seen my pupils as big as his were. Thing is, he wasn't shaking from it. He wasn't sleepy. He didn't seem doped up.
Not like me.
Not like how crazy and crackheaded I felt.
"You and me are cut from the same cloth," Gordon said. "We're freaks of the same brood, dude. You've got the bug. Tell me what happens with you, how it works."
And so I told him. I told him how it used to work. I told him how I stopped. I said, "Nowadays, the Buzz is gone. I can touch someone and see. It's simple."
"But you miss the glory days, right?"
I didn't want to tell him about this new sensation.
I didn't want to tell him that the Buzz was back and a hundred times heavier.
Standing there, his penlight lighting up his jack-o'-lantern face, Gordon nodded knowingly. Sagely. It was obvious that he'd been waiting for this moment, his big reveal, for a very long time.
I pushed him on it. "How long have you known about me?"
"Couple months."
"How's it work for you?"
Gordon smiled. "Exactly the same."
Back on the roof, with a bottle of Gordon's mother's wine, he lit up a cigarette and leaned back and laid it all out in a word. "Chaos. You see, for me it's the amount of chaos present in the system at any given time. You up the chaos and the Thrill grows."
"How? I don't get—"
"I'm not like a physicist or anything but I've read some books. Talked to a few people. But the deal is simple: If everything's chill, then I'm getting nothing. But the more I shake things up, the more revolutionary, more rebellious, I get, then the Thrill just goes through the roof. Especially if I'm the one creating the chaos. And lately, I've realized something massive. My whole show, it's leading to one super big realization. The Ultimate Thrill."
"And what's that? What do you see?"
"You'll find out later. But nah, I don't see."
"Then what?"
Gordon snickered. "I'm not like you, Ade. Not like the others, those Diviner idiots. I'm just in this for the kicks, there is nothing else. Thrill or be Thrilled, amigo."
"The Thrill? That's what you call the high?"
"Yeah."
"I called it the Buzz."
I don't mention the new sensation. The Delirium. The Buzz turned up to eleven.
"Why'd you quit? What happened?"
"I changed. My abilities, they got stronger. More powerful."
Gordon chewed on that. "What'cha doing Tuesday?"
Second thing I promised Vaux was that I wouldn't crash anything again.
Not a car, not a bike, not a skateboard, not even a toy car.
And that was cool. I didn't miss it. Didn't miss that destructive impulse, that was, until the next Tuesday at two in the morning when I met up again with Gordon at a construction site in Westminster behind the old mall.
I found Gordon leaning back on his car like some action-movie star. He was seriously wearing leather pants and a vest. Really. A vest. He was smoking again and he slicked his hair back when he saw me.
"What's on tap tonight?" I asked, getting out of my car. "More jumping?"
I couldn't tell why I was psyched to be there but I was. The adrenaline was starting to flow. I was practically salivating at the thought of doing something crazy. Something wrong.
Gordon slapped a hand down on my shoulder. Pointed at a bulldozer.
"Joyride."
"What? In that?!"
"Of course."
"Dude, that's stupid. What're we going to do? Dig a ditch? Roll some crops?"
Gordon was disappointed. "You have a lot to learn, Ade. Thankfully I'm here to teach you a few things. Come on."
I didn't know you could hot-wire a bulldozer but Gordon could and did.
As I watched I could feel the Delirium soaring in my bloodstream.
Started to twitch like a damn junkie.
When the thing was running, chugging along so loud I was sure it would wake up the entire city, Gordon motioned for me to climb aboard. He turned on the lights and jerked the bulldozer into motion.
I had to yell over the rumbling of the engine. Loud. "What are we doing?"
Gordon, all grins, was like, "We're liberating some toads."
"What?"
"Toads. Liberating."
I just went with it and we took the bulldozer down a small neighborhood street, lights flicking on inside the houses as we went as though the bulldozer were magic. It was a bumpy ride. I'm guessing driving a bulldozer is difficult and Gordon wasn't very good. He was spirited however. He was beaming, time-of-his-life smile plastered on his face.
Took almost fifteen minutes to get to the end of the street.
This is mostly because the bulldozer was going a top speed of six miles an hour.
The street dead-ended at a fence. Rickety old wooden fence. And beyond it was darkness. Just straight up matte-black darkness. A few pinholes of light in the sky from stars and a few passing cars on the interstate like a mile to the east.
Gordon pushed the dozer as fast as it would go though I didn't notice any significant change in the speed. He shouted, "You might want to buckle up, dude!"
Of course there were no seat belts.
I just grabbed on to what I could. Pushed my ass as far back in the seat as it would go and I also half closed my eyelids, bracing for what I saw coming.
Gordon was going to take the fence.
It wasn't like in an action movie where there's some ridiculous chase scene and the main character drives a wonky construction truck through a wall and all sorts of shit goes flying into the air, atomized instantaneously. No, going through the fence in the bulldozer was like pushing over a clay wall. No drama. No action. The fence sort of buckled at first and then it just gave. Went down flat. No even a sound over the roar of the engine.
Halfway over the fence and Gordon shuts off the headlights.
"Seriously?!" I yelled in his ear.
Gordon said, "Prepare to dive!"
The Delirium sang like something out of Wagner.
And we dove. Actually, the bulldozer dove. Straight off what felt like a fifty-foot cliff but turned out to be a four-foot drop onto the slope of a hill. The bulldozer kicked up a ton of dust and I had thorny weeds springing up at me along with clods of beady dirt. The shock of the fall shook the dozer's cab so heavily that I bit through my bottom lip. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth as the dozer started to plow down the slope. Gordon turned the lights back on just in time for me to see the shovel front end of the bulldozer collide with a small retaining wall around a pond.
The impact sent me flying out of the cab.
Actually it was more like gliding for the few seconds I was airborne.
Behind me, somehow still in the cab, Gordon was cheering. Shouting.
Those few seconds in the air were blissful. The night was warm and there were crickets just going nuts in the bushes and I even recall the hum of dragonfly wings over the water. Also the moon was as full as I'd ever seen it. Just squatting there over the earth like the biggest, brightest smile you'd ever seen.
Incredible.
And then I landed in about two feet of pond water atop two feet of pond muck.
I skidded to a stop in a wicked stand of cattails. The smell, a summer's worth of leaves rotting underwater, was the first thing I noticed. And then the silence. The bulldozer was finished. Engine kaput. I could see it wedged up against the retaining wall and Gordon was sitting, smoking inside the wreck of it.
He had a gash on his forehead, blood running down to his mouth, and he was just taking in the full extent of the destruction he'd caused. I couldn't see it, but I was sure his pupils were dilated out the size of hubcaps.
I pulled myself up from the grime and stepped out of the weeds.
So many times the Buzz had me woozy but this, the Delirium, it made me feel like I'd downed a whole Costco-size bag of Peeps. Or I'd mainlined some Sour Patch candies. Crazy. Sickeningly good.
Gordon extricated himself from the wreckage, tossed his smoke, and then walked over to me, holding something fat and flabby in his hands. It was a toad. Big, brown, warty, with googly eyes and a grin. He put it down in the water in front of me and it just sat there, staring up glassy-eyed at the moon.
The water in the pond was going down. Every second another inch of it disappeared. And I noticed more toads. Tons more toads. They were everywhere, hopping all over my feet. Hopping all over the wrecked treads of the bulldozer.
"Liberated," Gordon said, all bloody faced.
"What was the point of that?" I asked.
"Of which? Freeing the toads from their cement cells or wrecking the dozer?"
"Both."
Gordon tapped the side of his head, universal sign for thinking incredibly deep thoughts, and said, "There is no point. It was purely action and reaction. It was a thrill."
"So, that's it? We're going to just wreck things? Break stuff?"
The thought of it had me quivering with anticipation.
Such a junkie.
"For starters," Gordon said.
"And then?"
Gordon winked. "Remember I told you I was going to teach you a few things?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I'm almost done. Soon we'll bring in the big guns."
"Big guns?"
"My partner in crime, of course. He doesn't just meet with anybody."
Enter Jeremiah.
We met him at a rock concert, some jam band, in Boulder.
My ears were still ringing when Gordon brought him over to me. Guy was sweaty and stank of pot. His eyes were the reddest I'd ever seen. We went to a Village Inn and I had coffee while Jeremiah ate chicken-fried steak and eggs over easy and pancakes.
I assumed Jeremiah was the ringleader.
But when he ate like a wild man it was clear he wasn't. Gordon was just setting me up again. Creating expectations that couldn't be met. Twisting reality. His game. The same way a dictator says the people really rule.
Jeremiah belched and leaned back.
"Gordon tells me you're like us," he said.
"Yeah, I guess."
"You are. I can see it in you."
"What can you see?"
"You crave the insanity of living for the moment. Of throwing everything out."
"Okay."
And that was it. He nodded to Gordon. They got up, threw down three dollars, and walked out of the restaurant. Left me with the bill.
I was super pissed but let it go.
See, already I was hooked.
The Delirium in my soul.
Bitten.
FOUR
Tonight, on the way from the steak house, Gordon takes the highway south to Centennial and he swerves between cars, crosses lanes, like he's on some European racetrack.
I'm in the back of the van and, well, it's freaking incredible.
Gordon and Jeremiah have a couch in here. A black leather couch. Also there's a disco ball and the whole thing is lit up by like fifteen black-light strips and on the blacked-out windows are old-school rock 'n' roll psychedelic posters. Oh and there's a bubble machine churning out a steady stream of bubbles that catch the purple light. Makes the whole tableau look like something in the deep ocean.
Jeremiah and I are sharing a joint.
He's telling me about our plans for the evening. They sound complicated.
"… is when we hit the ramp at Lincoln and the shit will go flying."
"You mean literally flying, right?" I ask.
Jeremiah takes this long drag, the burning red tip of the joint contrasting crazily with the purple light playing over his furry face. He says, being surprisingly serious, "I always mean it literally, bro. All these things we're doing, it's not like they're just games for the sake of killing time. We're a crew, dog. Pandora Crew. We're opening up the lid of something that can't never be closed."
He hands me back the joint. Nods.
He says, "When I say flying, I mean flying."
Gordon whips the van back and forth and back and forth. Up front he's banging his head to something by Black Sabbath and then AC/DC. He hits the padded ceiling of the van with his fist. He barks like a drill sergeant.
In between drags of the joint I see Vauxhall's disappointed face.
I imagine her driving home cursing my name. I imagine her lying in bed listening to really depressing music and writing and then crossing out my name in a journal like a thousand times.
I can't get her out of my head.
Jeremiah cashes the joint and right when he drops the blackened stub into a half-finished can of Sprite, the van stops.
Gordon jumps out with a big pack on his back and swings open the doors.
He grins and shouts like he's gone deaf, "Tiger's in the bush, boys!"
Jeremiah throws me a black ski mask. I look at it in my hands, confused. He laughs and Gordon laughs and then Jeremiah says, "Dude, that whole plan I just told you about was all code. Don't you ever read the texts we send you?"
"Uh…"
"Well." Jeremiah looks to Gordon. "This'll be twice as thrilling then."
I scoot myself out of the van and pull the hood down over my face and have a look at where we