The Line - Part 2 - May 22, 2008

I went inside and told Chelsea I was leaving. Predictably, she didn't take it well. "What do I do?" She paced back and forth in the kitchen, stopping every now and again to bark "Get the fuck out of here" at some drunk scavenging through the cupboards for a beer glass. "I'm fucked! They shattered the fucking door! My parents are going to kill me!"

"When do they get back?"

"Monday."

"Call a glass store tomorrow. They have emergency services." Getting a plate glass door repaired in seventy-two hours was a tough order, but it could be done. I wasn't sure of that, of course, but I had faith. My folks had gone away a few months before and I'd invited friends over. One of them had sex with a virgin on a white couch in our living room. The aftermath was a red-and-white couch, smeared with Jackson Pollack patterns of blood splatters. When I saw the thing, I was certain I was doomed. How does anyone explain that to his mother? "I had a nosebleed" would never suffice. The stain was too wide, blotchy and smudged, like a small child had gone mad with finger paints or red Magic Markers.

My immediate thought was to scream. Christ, did you fucking stab the girl? Am I going to find 'Helter Skelter' smeared in blood on the dining room mirror?! Then I looked at girl, straining to avoid pouting, watching a pair of drunks arguing over how to wipe the remnants of her innocence out of furniture cushions. I figured it'd be crass to throw a tantrum, and that was probably a blessing. The cooler side of my head guided me to the kitchen, to the phone book in the drawer next to the refrigerator. Is it listed under 'laundromats,' 'laundrymats' or just 'cleaners'? The next morning I peeled off the upholstery covers and ran to the closest dry cleaner. Forty-eight hours and a hundred dollar cleaning bill later the stains were gone, like magic, the couch's dignity restored.

"What about the fight?" Chelsea was running every rotten contingency through her head. "What if those assholes wind up in the hospital? They're going to call my parents!"

I didn't have an answer for her on that. "Look, I'm sorry, but I have to leave. I still have to drop Nolan off at his place before I go home." I felt guilty walking away, leaving her there shell-shocked, with all the drunks running amuck in her place, spilling beer everywhere and screaming back and forth about the lynching that was still taking place outside. But I knew we were already pushing our luck. The noise level emanating from the property was growing. People were hollering, blaring music from their cars and roaming the woods, yelling to one another as they tracked the kid who'd gotten away. It was only a matter of time until the police were at the door.

Nolan caught me in the front yard, dangling a set of car keys wrapped in some sort of toilet paper or tissues. "Look what I found."

"What's that?"

"I think it's a set of one of those college kids' car keys. They were on the deck. He must have dropped them."

The plan hit us immediately, one of those imbecile plots hatched in slurry of adrenaline and alcohol. We'd help Chelsea the only way we could - getting rid of the evidence of the crime (or at least one of the crimes). If the college kids called the cops and claimed they were beaten at her house, their best proof would be the car they came in, parked in her driveway. For one reason or another, mostly beer-logic, Nolan and I figured removing the vehicle from the scene would provide Chelsea with an ironclad alibi. "What people assaulted at my house, officer? I don't recall any college kids coming here and getting into a fight."

The car was an old Pontiac, a rickety bag of bolts, and we were careful never to touch it or the keys with our bare hands. I figured I'd drive it with my jacket over the steering wheel but when we opened the door I noticed a pair of what looked like golf gloves on the dashboard.

"Who uses driving gloves with a car like this?" Nolan laughed.

"The kind of college student who crashes high school parties?" I slipped on the gloves and handed my car keys to Nolan. "Follow me, but don't stay on my ass. And don't run any signs or anything."

I didn't realize I had a problem until I closed the door. Shit. This is a fucking stick. Nolan knew how to drive stick, but it was too late. He'd already run off toward my car, all the way back near the house. Screw it... How hard could it be? I pressed the clutch and slammed the shifter back and forth until the car started to move. The gears locked together and the car bucked, slamming me forward and backward every time I struggled to shift. Luckily, once we got a hundred yards away from the entrance to the house the road pitched downhill and momentum did the rest.

It wasn't until I reached the bottom of the hill, near a stop sign a quarter mile away, that things went out of control. The car was rolling at nice clip and I was totally in control, steering it and letting gravity do the work like we were in a soapbox derby. But as I saw the stop sign coming, a set of high beams turned in my direction at the intersection, blinding me. My first instinct was to tap the brakes, but when I hit the pedal nothing happened. I panicked. For an instant I thought I was going to roll through the sign, into crossing traffic. I swerved quickly toward a rut on the side of the road, thinking it was the fastest way to slow down. That was overkill. The brakes were fine. I'd been confused and hit the wrong pedal, and now I was hung up in a foot deep rivet along the side of the road. We'd aimed to hide evidence of a battery and all we'd done was create a different kind - of car theft. And there I was, sitting in it. If the cops came up the road to bust the party at that moment, Nolan and I would be making some very strange calls to our parents.

"Son of a bitch." I pounded my fist on the dash. We had minutes to get away and I was hoist on a pile of dirt. Watching Nolan park and walk toward me in the rear view mirror I envisioned the police coming around the corner, stopping, offering us help. They'd smell the Milwaukee's Best on us, ask for licenses and registrations and that would be the end. Is grand theft auto a felony or a misdemeanor?

"What the hell happened?"

"The high beams... I don't know. I just-- lost it."

We didn't argue long. The moment Nolan refused to take the wheel I did the only thing I could - slam the car into gear, turn the wheel toward the road and stand on the gas.

Jesus, that can't be good. I heard all sorts of rattling in the drive train once I got the car back on the road. Things were ruptured, cracked, no doubt of that. All the more reason to get out of the thing, away from it as soon as possible. A mile or so down the road we finally spotted salvation - a parking lot for a deli next door to a highway entrance ramp. I rolled the vehicle into the lot, threw the keys on the seat and closed the door.

"Here. Hold these." I handed the driving gloves to Nolan as I jumped in the truck.

"Did you grab that tape?"

"Are you serious?"

"It's a great fucking record."

"You don't have a copy of Listen Like Thieves? Who the fuck doesn't own that?"

"I want to listen to it on the ride home." He started slipping on the driving gloves. "You know how you hear a little bit of a song somewhere and you immediately have to listen to it?"

"Yeah, but--"

"You didn't lock the keys inside the guy's car, did you?"

"Do I look like an asshole?"

"Do you want me to answer that?"

"That would be a huge dick move."

"Right..." He opened the door and jumped out. "We wouldn't want to be dicks."

The last I remember of the scene was pulling out of the parking lot and turning onto the highway, Nolan cranking "What You Need" on the car stereo.

"Wait." I turned down the volume knob.

"What?"

"You hear that? You hear those sirens in the distance?"

"That's the saxophone."

"That's no saxophone. Those are sirens. The cops are busting Chelsea's place."

"You're fucking paranoid." He turned the music back up and started playing drums on the dashboard as I stepped on the gas. "Everybody thinks this is dance music, but these guys play some heavy shit."

The next morning I ran into my father in the garage, on his way out. "So I got a call from Bill Reynolds, the local magistrate. He says Chelsea Norris's house was raided last night. The police cited a bunch of your classmates for underage drinking."

"I'm glad I left early."

"I hear there was a fight, and two people were hospitalized."

"God, that's awful."

"You weren't there for that?" He threw a golf bag in the trunk and slammed it shut. "I thought you were dating that girl."

"I wouldn't call it 'dating.'"

"Well, whatever you call her, her party got out of hand. One kid wound up with a skull fracture... A skull fracture."

"Damn."

"And they're looking to charge somebody with auto theft."

"Auto theft... really?"

"You kids get drunk, break someone's skull and steal their car?" He shook his head. "Who does things like that?"

"I don't know. Like I said, I left early."

To Be Continued...

Posted by PhilaLawyer at 10:40 AM

Print Friendly · Digg it · del.icio.us · StumbleUpon · Netscape

Comment Policy:

Anonymous comments are allowed. All anonymous comments and comments from those not registered with TypeKey are moderated. They WILL NOT appear until they are read and approved by a moderator.

It is strongly encouraged that you sign up and login with a TypeKey account. Once you do that, your comments will be immediately posted.

Comments

deep down, you are a good guy. the removal of the car, and not locking the keys IN the car. bravo.

PL: Deep down I'm a dumbass. Rather than letting her throw a party, I should have just hung out at her place and had sex, porning it up in the yard with her like a pair of wild dogs.

But thanks.

Posted by: c-rah at May 22, 2008 11:24 AM

Skull fractures are really quite overrated as far as injuries go. I mean it's just a freaking bone... Like an arm or leg. Why does everyone get so uptight about skull fractures? Pizza! Pizza!

PL: Just like glory holes. Who cares what's behind the wall...

Posted by: Rosie Palmer at May 22, 2008 11:53 AM

That sounds exactly like my high school days, just replace Pennsylvania with backwoods Michigan. And instead of a golf bag, my dad would have been throwing fishing gear in his boat. He would have said the exact same thing though.

High school was the closes I have ever and will ever come to living as a pygmy savage in the depths of the Amazon.

Posted by: Kevin at May 22, 2008 12:43 PM

Christ that's intense.

Posted by: CaptainCanada at May 22, 2008 07:43 PM

Waiting for the next part with baited breath, shaping into a great tale.

Posted by: jk at May 22, 2008 09:08 PM

You've really successfully captured the essence of going through high school in rural PA. It's a pretty simple formula: teenagers + boredom + booze => raging stupidity + angry state police officers.

Posted by: zfg at May 23, 2008 06:28 PM

As a veteran of the backwoods PA high school parties, I say bravo. This story could have just as easily happened to me or any of my friends (well short of the grand theft auto). Makes me miss high school.

PL: "Grand theft auto" is such a heavy term, isn't it? We really just borrowed the car. Uninvited valets, so to say.

Posted by: Ryan at May 25, 2008 10:24 PM

"Well, whatever you call her, her party got out of hand." I think you meant, "Well, whatever you call it, her party got out of hand."

PL: No, I didn't. Thanks, though. One can never have enough proofreading. Good call on the "universe" mistake in the other piece.

Posted by: John at May 31, 2008 11:34 AM

I've always said a good guide to your success as an internet writer is how much productivity you kill at the office. My whole office reads this now, and ironically we're engineers, so if anything goes wrong we'll probably call guys just like you to fix our shit.

Posted by: Colin at June 2, 2008 05:54 AM