Chapter 11

11

Andrew coasted up the winding drive to Sam’s place behind Riley, air-conditioning blowing over silence in the Challenger. After the last drive, he was eager to let the beast off the leash again—to occupy the driver’s seat that Eddie left behind, be closer to the living man than to the terror of his remnant. His school bag sat on the passenger seat; he grabbed the strap and tossed it in the back, out of sight alongside the tote full of books West had been asking after. A handful of other cars lined the drive, two wheels in the grass and two on concrete. One was a blacked-out Supra with a scuffed bumper.

As he mounted the front steps, Riley said, “This should go better than last time.”

“I’d fucking hope so,” Andrew said.

The door was unlocked. The pair wandered into a living room fogged with chatter and green-smelling smoke, the quiet thump of music from another room. Sam called out, “You’re late, boys!”

One couch ran along the wall next to the door. Another sat catty-corner to it on the far side of the room. Ethan and Luca were sprawled on the distant couch, her plump bare feet braced on his thigh. Riley crossed the room to drop himself on them with no regard for elbows or shins, earning two pitches of indignant squawk in response. Sam and two other plain-looking white men were passing a blunt on the other couch. Andrew accepted when the person on the end offered him a hit.

Sam leaned around his friend and waved, then said, “We ordered some pizza, but it takes a dick-year to deliver out here, so settle in. Hope you like supreme.”

Without another option, he planted his ass on the arm of the couch next to the stranger and laid his arm along the backrest. The other man said, “I’m Ben, I think we met for a minute at the party. Your face looks like shit, dude.”

Sam barked a laugh and said, “Hey now, you can’t just tell a man he looks like shit.”

“He’s right though,” Riley said.

“Big tough guy, isn’t he,” Ethan drawled.

Andrew grunted; something about Ethan’s teasing tone wedged itself under his skin. Ethan cackled at his discomfort and Luca kicked him. Riley grabbed her ankle; she wriggled around while Ethan trailed off into a winded giggle, amusing himself. Once the trio righted themselves from their puppyish squirm, Luca tipped her head over the couch arm to look at him upside-down.

She said, “I couldn’t get a straight story out of any of these assholes, which means something happened that none of them wants to admit to me. So, why don’t you tell me what happened?”

The question flew into the wall of Andrew’s privacy like a bird into glass and dropped dead. His stiff shoulders raised another notch. He’d spoken to Luca once, for two minutes, and the room was full of people he didn’t know at all. For Luca, the arrangement was safely domestic, but for him it was lightning-charged.

Sam took over: “A couple of good ol’ boys decided to shit-talk Ed in his earshot, I gather. Andrew here put them to rights, scrappy little thing that he obviously is.”

Ben hummed an approval and Luca murmured, “Huh, all right.” She turned her attention from him back to her couchmates, though he doubted she found that answer sufficient.

Andrew stared at the side of Sam’s face, the small crimp of his lip that he read as liar, liar. Neither Riley nor Ethan contradicted him with the significant detail. No one was saying what had set him off—and he wondered if that was a matter of politeness, or if some of the men in the room might lose their sympathy real quick, given the truth. As he watched, Sam rolled his head back against the couch. The track of love-bites on the side of his throat had disappeared.

“I expected a more animated guy, given Ed’s stories,” the third man on the couch said.

“Shut up, Jacob,” Sam said.

Andrew craned his neck to look at him and said, “Yeah, shut up.”

Ethan chuckled again, as did Riley. He had the sense that they were laughing at him, or Sam, or the general situation. He ran his thumb in circles on the rough weave of the couch and listened to the pack rib each other. Observing them in close quarters would give him a better sense of the threat each of them might’ve posed, but to do that he had to sit and be social. His mouth had gone dry with anxious tension, unsure of how to insert himself into the conversation again without being obvious. His phone buzzed and he fished it out with relief at the distraction.

Thanks for getting coffee,said West.

Yeah,he sent, following up a moment later with thanks for the review.

Are you busy tonight?

He tossed the phone from hand to hand before responding—Yeah—and jammed it into his pocket again. West hadn’t offered him enough information to draw him out from here, the place where Eddie would’ve been. Riley playfully tugged a long, kinked curl of Luca’s hair while she wiggled into a more comfortable position with her legs fully kicked over both his and Ethan’s. An unwelcome sense memory washed under Andrew’s skin: his fingers grappling then tangling with Eddie’s on the slick, smooth handholds of Del’s bony hips, knuckles bruising against knuckles as he gripped tight without acknowledging the heat that spiked through his solar plexus. Mouthing the same places on her that Eddie had, seconds after, still wet from his lips.

“Bathroom?” Andrew asked with a slight tremble to his tone.

“Let me show you,” Sam said, pushing free of the couch.

The bathroom was the first room on the right. Sam led him past it to the end of the carpeted hall, then opened the last door, waving Andrew inside. The pile of clothes at the foot of the unmade bed, the faint smell of gasoline and oil, and the overflowing ashtray on the side table coasted a careful line between lived-in and dirty. On the windowsill a series of colorful model cars sat frozen in an unending chase.

“Sit,” Sam said and pointed at the end of the bed.

“Why?”

“Because you’re giving off some weird fucking vibes tonight, man.” The setting sun, obscured by the trees surrounding the house, cast the whole room in strange lines of orange and taupe. Sam shut the door and leaned against it. “If you’re going out with us, I’ve got to be sure you’re good for it.”

Andrew spread his feet and leaned forward. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Jacob was right, I can’t get a read on you. You’re not the guy I was expecting to get to know, from Eddie and shit, and I protect my own. Among which you do not currently number,” he finished with a pointedly raised eyebrow.

“Good of you to remember that,” Andrew said.

“Answer the question,” Sam said. “I get that you’re fucked up right now, okay? Fine, great, that’s your business. But if you’re planning to lose your shit on someone else, this time on the road, that’s not going to fly with me.”

Andrew said in Eddie’s drawl, “Anybody here tonight asking for an ass-whipping?”

Sam said, “No, kid, none of them are going to mess with you like that.”

Before he could respond to the unexpected gentleness in Sam’s voice, the doorbell rang. Sam opened the door and jerked his thumb toward the hall. He took the hint and ambled to the bathroom for a mostly unnecessary piss, appreciating the brief solitude, then zipped his jeans and returned to the pack. In his absence, a stack of pizza boxes and a chair from the kitchen had appeared. He took the extra seat without a word.

Jacob put a slice of pizza in his hand and said, “No offense meant.”

The curious comfort faded as night descended, their meal reduced to an empty set of greasy cardboard boxes. Sam bounced his leg. Jacob whistled tunelessly under his breath. Ben sprawled on his corner of the couch like an indolent big cat. A soft roll of stomach peeked from underneath the high hem of his T-shirt. The trio on the other couch had drifted apart, no longer crowding the same square foot of space—and all of them had their eyes on him, the stranger in their midst.

“Dibs on the fresh meat,” Luca said.

Ethan said, “Oh, that’s unfair. I’m the best suited, our cars match.”

“You match the Supra, and he’s not driving the Supra,” Riley said.

“We’ll do this quick,” Sam said. The group turned to him as one. “Set the pairs here, block the street, get it done before someone notices.”

“Basic setup for his first time?” Ben asked.

“Far from my first time,” Andrew said. He stood and stretched, back cracking, arms over his head. The lengthening of his chest masked the strain in his voice as he continued, “Between me and Eddie I’m the better driver.”

“Let’s put him through his paces, then,” Sam said, slapping his stomach hard enough to crumple him. He thumped a loose fist on Sam’s arm in response. The wolf-grin made a reappearance as Sam, knees spread in his kingly position on the couch, dragged his eyes up the length of Andrew, as hot and stinging as the four faint lines his fingers had left behind. “Keep up, princess.”

The pack stood and gathered shoes, hats, ducked out for a last-minute piss. Andrew scrubbed the heel of his hand against the sting through his shirt, and Riley threw an arm over his shoulder, pulling him down to murmur next to his ear, “Welcome home.”

Andrew flinched. The arm slipped off his shoulders, palm glancing off the small of his back as Riley turned to his girlfriend and his—and Ethan. The trio were first out the door. Andrew hung at the tail end of the group with Sam, who stood on the top step of the porch to survey his crew. Andrew hopped off onto the lawn, and Sam tousled his hair from above. He stumbled two steps out of reach.

“You’re still wound too tight,” Sam observed.

No one had touched him so much in—weeks, months. Eddie had visited him at the end of the spring term and spent the whole five days manhandling him: scratching his scalp, digging thumbs into the knots of his trapezius muscles, rolling on top of him during naps, once gnawing absently on the knob of his wrist for a full five seconds during a movie. Eddie’s touch was a careless claim that meant home, home, home. These knockoffs hadn’t earned the right to handle him.

“You set the pairs?” Andrew asked.

“Consensus, I guess,” he said. “Luca called your dibs, though. That’s her car.”

He pointed to the fox-body Mustang Andrew had noted at the gas station. Andrew almost hadn’t expected her to mean it. Del hadn’t been much for their sport.

“She had a bone to pick with Eddie about his attitude toward girls, and I’m sure she’d love to pick it with you too,” Sam said.

“Shouldn’t be hard to beat that car, unless she’s packing something real impressive under the hood,” he said.

“Cocky little shit,” Sam said.

“What are you two gossiping about?” Riley shouted at them from the open window of his Mazda. “Hurry up, goddamn.”

“All he does is bitch,” Sam said with affection as he strode toward his WRX.

The roar of their motley crew careened off the hills. Andrew rode middle of the pack, the bulk of the Hellcat digging at the pavement. He pulled Eddie’s hat onto his head and kept a thumb on the brim, elbow on the edge of the open window. The dying light tinged the evening gold. He ran his tongue over his teeth. A dog bayed once, distant and eerie.

The passenger seat pricked at the corner of his right eye—the same straw paper and discarded shirt from the first afternoon remained, nothing remarkable on second and third glance—but there was a tug. Ethan’s taillights ahead guided him out of the hills alongside the rest of the pack, to an outlying suburb, then an unlit stretch of street leading into an industrial park. The grungy rumble of someone’s muffled electronic loops ahead of him bounced against his eardrums. The road through the boxy nondescript buildings was deserted and straight and nakedly public. Eddie would’ve said, kiss your plausible deniability goodbye. But he’d have been smiling when he said it.

Andrew had missed this too, no matter his other reasons for being in the pack tonight.

Practiced as choreography, Ben pulled onto the shoulder a stretch down the road while the rest idled in wait. Music throbbed through open windows, guitar and percussion and electronic fog clashing from all sides. Streetlights cast shadows behind Ben’s heels as he climbed out of his car with an actual orange cone in hand, like from high school gym class. He slapped it on the yellow line and bowed performatively at the group before hopping back in his Focus and reversing to meet them.

Sam hollered, “Let’s get this done before we have company!”

The Mazda rolled ahead of the rest and purred in the lamplight. Andrew was unsurprised to see Ethan match Riley, goosing the engine once their noses were even. It reminded him of his own habitual match with Eddie, first and last no matter what happened between—until now. Ben jogged to stand between the cars with a hand raised. Desire flamed in Andrew as both cars shot off the mark to Ben’s hand chopping the night air. The Supra’s whine shrieked over the Mazda’s lower register, plowing ahead first. Riley caught Ethan, though, at a too-abrupt shift. The Supra’s tail end went loose, a brief but unsalvageable slip that let the Mazda skate past the cone. Brake lights spilled bloody red over the road.

The Mustang rolled up next to Andrew, and Luca shouted to him, “Ben and Jacob have it next, then it’s us.”

“Clear,” he said.

The tattoo itched, a ring of tender prickling pain. Andrew rubbed his wrist on his jeans. Floater-specks danced at the edge of his vision while his nerves throbbed in asymmetrical tempo. The gunmetal WRX idled at the edge of the pack. Sam boosted himself to sit on the rim of his window, ass tucked into the notch of the door and one arm on the roof. Andrew was peripherally aware of the other pair squaring up with Ethan as their flagger.

The rest of him settled, attuned to the cigarette hanging from the corner of Sam’s mouth. His sunburned neck led to the swell of his paler, naked shoulders, where a hint of black ink slipped loose at the collar of his tank top. It was shapeless but bold in the gloaming light, too distant to guess at. Sam noticed his attention and flicked his cigarette onto the ground. Andrew’s hand lifted without his permission. He pointed a finger to his own chest and then at Sam. The bark of Sam’s laugh carried over the noise of the other cars bursting from their stop.

On the other side, Luca said, “Keep it in your pants, Jesus.”

Andrew twitched. She laughed when he turned from Sam, but it was good-natured, lighting her face. Her laugh gave him permission to look, but her seeing made him feel naked. High cheekbones, plump cheeks, the cloud of her hair wrangled free of her face with a toothed headband; the orange lipstick matched her short orange fingernails. He tried to imagine Del behind the wheel of her own car, doing her own work under the hood, and came up blank. Riley said Luca didn’t care for most of Sam’s friends, and neither did Ethan, but here they were: the core of the crew, the ones he should talk to more.

Thinking about that, he called back, “Next?”

“Yeah, I figure I’ve got a point to prove for our first head-to-head,” she said.

“What’s that?” Andrew asked.

“Got to demolish the new boy to keep him in his right place, like the rest of ’em,” she said with a wink as she worked her left arm to roll her window up between them. The tint concealed her one mechanical inch at a time, smirking at him all the while. That was a brand of showmanship Andrew appreciated.

His spark of pleasure was unexpected, momentarily unbalancing. The outing he’d intended as an investigation kept distracting him with something close to fun. He thumbed the button for his windows and coasted to the line. The Hellcat rumbled under him. The interior hush, tinted windows cutting him off from the light, sparked at his fingers on the gearshift. The digital display changed as he shifted to sport drive, the 0.00 timer mode active. All tech, Eddie’s car, compared to the classic machine Luca had chosen for her own, or his Supra, waiting at the house on Capitol for his next outing.

Sam strolled past the hood of the car, one proprietary hand trailing over the sleek, glossy paint. He nodded to Luca first, but then his whole focus shifted to Andrew, eyes on his, hand raised. Andrew held the clutch and eased onto the gas, pushing revs while the digital readout reminded him to hold it, wait for the right moment to explode. Sam’s fingers touched the rim of the moon hanging in the sky. A shudder ripped across the bones of Andrew’s forearms, terror and delight and the promise of risk bringing him to life.

Smashing forward into motion was as natural as breathing when Sam’s bicep bunched and he chopped his hand at the ground. He felt his own heartbeat and the car’s lurch off the line, pinning his stomach to his spine with sweet vertigo. At that precise moment, his pulse bit between his teeth, the flick of shadow yanking at the corner of his eye from the passenger seat distracted him—and he dropped the bridge of his foot too fast. Tires shrieked in the fractional second before his traction bit. Luca zipped ahead smooth as a shot, white smoke wafting in his trail as he fought to shift to catch her. Disorganized noise and adrenaline and the image of Halse’s inked shoulder blade fought inside his head with the desire to push himself. No time to think; only time to react. The tach jumped to match his punishing acceleration. He shifted to second, then third almost instantaneously to boost his speed, a buzzing roar to fourth, but her taillights had barely begun to approach his grill and the orange cone was closing fast—

Zero to sixty in the Challenger was advertised below 3.0 seconds, but Andrew had fucked that up. The timer feature read 4.7 when Luca snapped over the line, a full car length ahead of him. The startling reality of his failure rattled him as he downshifted sloppily, while she blazed ahead to top out her speed in the distance before her brake lights flared, her horn blaring a cheery note as she rolled to a stop. The Challenger shook miserably at his rough handling. He dropped his head onto the wheel, panting from adrenaline and the increasing pressure around his wrists, behind his eyes. A hiss, too sibilant and muffled to understand, rattled from the gravity well of the passenger seat that had been sucking at his head all night. Oh fuck, he had time to think, before the blackness crawled up from the footwell in a hallucinatory blur, over the center console and across his legs.

He pawed at his seat belt and jerked it loose. His hands vibrated with fear, embarrassment, and guilt—he’d lost track of his purpose for a selfish moment in the excitement of the race, and the haunt had fucking noticed. He had to get the door open. The handle stuck. His revenant reared in patchy rotting fragments of oxidized light, pinned between him and the steering wheel in a manner impossible for a real living body, stinking with malevolence. He groaned in the base of his throat and shoved against the hard planes of the door, fingernails squeaking at the window glass. Eddie kept on breaking the rules in death, his shade manifesting without regard for witnesses, as unpredictable as he’d ever been—and growing stronger the more blood and desire and attention Andrew paid him. The static whisper rolling from between its unhinged jawbones sank into his ears like hot nails, jealous and unwilling to be forgotten. He caught the possibilities of words in the scratch of sound inside his skull—can’t or can or this or you—and tore at the handle again. It opened with a click. Andrew tripped himself out of the car, crashed to his knees, and puked.