Road
Trip
It’s summer, I’m twelve, and my friends Amy and Kyle and I
are walking along the railroad tracks on the edge of town.
The three
of us have been hanging around together all summer, waiting for something to
happen, without quite knowing it’s already happening. One thing I do know is
that I like Amy more than I can tell anyone. Not Kyle, and absolutely not Amy.
We’re
balancing on one of the metal rails like tightrope walkers, seeing who can walk
the longest without slipping off, when Kyle shouts hey look, jumps off the track and breaks into a run, down through
the long grass, toward the trees. Amy and I follow, like always. Kyle has a sixth
sense for good stuff, for things our parents don’t want us getting into.
This time
he’s found an abandoned car half-buried in tall grass. It was maybe green once
but now it’s pretty much rust brown all over. I think it looks like a big brown
turd shit by a giant rusty robot, but I don’t say that because it probably
qualifies as stupid or gay in Kyle’s book. Most of the car’s windows are busted
and gone. A couple of the doors too. The tires flat or missing, the seats split
open, the yellow stuffing inside bulging out like giant bug guts.
Kyle gets
to the driver’s door before me, wrenches it open and slides in behind the
wheel.
I hesitate,
annoyed that he’s beaten me to it. Again. That’s how it’s been all summer, and
from the stories Kyle tells us about the things he did in his old town, he’s
beaten me to pretty much everything else. He says he’s driven his dad’s truck
lots of times. He says he’s smoked pot, and he drinks booze all the time at
home and his parents don’t give a shit. He says he did it with a girl once.
That last one he told me when Amy wasn’t there.
So here we are
again, Kyle ahead of me. I’m about to walk away as if I couldn’t care less
about this piece-of-crap car, then Amy jumps in beside Kyle.
I stand
there, then I climb into the back seat.
It smells
funny in the car. Not bad, exactly. Just ... funny. Like cinnamon sprinkled
over musty old clothes.
Amy’s in
the front seat with Kyle.
“We’re the
Mom and Dad and you’re the kid,” Kyle says to me over his shoulder. “So fasten
your seatbelt and shut the fuck up.”
We pretend
we’re on vacation. We bounce up and down on the creaking seats. We point out
the windows and ooh and ahh at imaginary sights like stupid tourists. Really
hamming it up. Gosh, honey, this sure is a fun trip! Holy crap, is that the
Eiffel Tower? I thought I told you to go
before we left!
Then Kyle
pretends he’s driving drunk, slurring his words and lolling his head around,
and Amy pretends to be angry at him.
“Pull over
this instant! Do you hear me?”
“I’m the
boss of this family, woman, and I’ll do whatever I feel like. So shut your stupid
fat ass.”
Kyle sounds
like he really means it, but Amy laughs anyhow. When it’s my turn I make some
whiny annoying little kid noises that make them both chuckle a little, but my
heart isn’t in it and I give up pretty quickly. It’s risky to bail on Kyle’s
ideas before he’s done with them—he calls me a pussy and a faggot whenever I
do, in front of Amy—but this time it’s okay because Kyle is really into playing
the Dad and he doesn’t notice. Now he roars that he’s goddamn sick of this
useless family and he’s going to drive us all off a cliff. We plead and shriek.
Then Amy
shrieks for real.
“A bee!”
There’s a
bee in the car.
“A bee!”
“Shit!”
“Where is
it? Where is it?”
We scream
and duck and laugh. The scared kind of laughter. The bee buzzes around our
heads, bumps against the roof, frantic, then it zips out one of the broken
windows and it’s gone.
“Ohhhh
thank God,” Amy breathes, and she leans her head against Kyle’s arm. She’s
never done that before and I want her to still be playing the Mom, but I know
she isn’t. They’re just sitting there like that, not saying anything.
And now
it’s like I’m not here. I’m somewhere else watching a TV show and in the show,
it’s Kyle and Amy by themselves in the front seat, going somewhere without me. I
sit and watch them like they’re really driving away and leaving me behind, but
I’m the one getting smaller.
“Wait,”
Kyle says, sitting up suddenly. “Listen.”
There’s a
humming from somewhere. It’s muffled, not loud, but I know what it is: that big
angry sound made by a whole swarm.
Kyle and
Amy look around.
“What the
hell is that?” Kyle says.
“Where’s it
coming from?” Amy says.
I know what
Kyle’s going to do even before he reaches in front of Amy to lift the latch of
the glove compartment. There’s enough time to stop him with a shout, then I
remember they’ve already driven away, and I’m not here.
Thomas
Wharton is a Canadian writer of fiction for adults and younger readers. His
first novel, Icefields, won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First
Book, Canada/Caribbean division. A collection of short fiction, The Logogryph,
was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. His most recent
book is a story for children, Rutherford the Time-Travelling Moose. His work
has been published in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and other
countries.
Tags:
Short Fiction