Authors: Kevin Leffingwell
Barstowe’s face turned red like a slow-roasted
lobster. “One week, Mr. Seymour. You’ve got one week in the
cafeteria washing dishes or doing double-homework in detention hall.”
Darren wasn’t listening. He walked out of Barstowe’s
office and smiled. “Maybe your secretary will be nice with you and let you
‘skin it’ sometime. See ya, Chuck.”
*
Darren flung his locker door open so hard it nearly came off
the hinges. The metallic clank echoed down the empty hallway, and one of
the teachers stepped out to identify the bothersome source of the tumult before
returning to his classroom.
He threw his books and papers in and removed his valuables:
pictures of various rock bands, bikini babes, and a blue 1970 Mustang Boss 429
he tore out of a
Car and Driver
. He shoved them in his notebook
and slammed the locker shut. Leaning up against the next locker stood a
small, red-haired punk.
“Marcus Lutze beat the piss out of you again, didn’t he?” he
asked.
“Go play with a pit bull, Geils.”
Geils Woodbury knew when to push the right buttons and
hammer down on them. He had the annoying habit of dropping in on someone
unexpectedly. Like a stomach ache.
“You know Todd Lutze just started going out with Vanessa
Vasquez?” Geils asked. He also knew Darren had a thing for Vanessa.
Hell, every other guy in school had a thing for her.
“So what?” Darren couldn’t stop looking at her.
The thought of her with Todd Lutze, who, unlike his asshole younger brother,
was actually an okay guy, turned his stomach inside out.
He spun on his heels and walked away, but Geils
followed. “Vanessa’s a babe,” he said, tossing his bathroom pass up in
the air. “I’d love to——”
”Shut up, Geils!” Darren shot back, wishing the runt didn’t
live next door to him. Listening to Geils’s How-I-screwed-Lori-Thompson
lies everyday on the way home drove Darren schizo. No matter how much
someone cut Geils down, he would easily bounce back from every retort, always
chuckling and assuming the guy was just kidding.
Geils scratched the dandruff on his scalp. “Bill
Seaver told me he saw Todd and Vanessa in his Vet in the Wal-Mart parking lot
the other night, going at it like——”
Geils never finished. Darren turned and shoved the
little puke backwards, so hard that Geils’s head and arms jerked forward before
he fell on his ass ten feet away. Just like Marcus had done to him.
Geils’s bathroom pass slid down the hall along with a calculator and a couple
of pens.
Darren stood over him and said through his teeth, “Say
another word to me, and I swear to God, I’ll break your legs.”
Geils didn’t smile like he usually would have. He
actually looked hurt, shocked. Darren turned and walked away.
What Geils had said about Todd and Vanessa had to be
untrue. Geils was just relaying what his friend Bill Seaver said, a major
bullshitter in a school full of bullshit. However, the thought of Vanessa
and Todd. . . .
*
He stood outside Mr. Morgan’s algebra class, peering in
through the door window from a spot where he couldn’t be seen. Vanessa
Vasquez sat on the other side of the room, listening to Mr. Morgan spout on
about Y- and X-axis’s. Darren had seen plenty of gorgeous girls before,
and listened to guys divulge stories of how the hottie they saw the night
before was the greatest piece of eye-candy ever beheld, but when Darren finally
saw that babe, she just wasn’t
his
idea of “hot.”
However, Darren was sure that after God made Vanessa Vasquez——like
he had overheard his dad once say about an attractive actress during a manly
poker game——the Almighty not only broke the mold “but dipped the pieces in
chocolate and swallowed them all.” Fathers always held the right truths.
Vanessa was eighteen like Darren, and her gorgeous Latino
lineage dazzled him: long, wavy black hair, soft auburn eyes, olive-skin, and a
smile that could end war. Today, she was wearing blue-jeans and an
aquamarine blouse with a heart-shaped necklace. Darren thought Vanessa
could wear dirty blue-jeans and a puke-green shirt that said
“Choose Death”
and still look good.
One time he actually bumped up against her in the hall when
his friend Tony Simmons deliberately pushed him into her. It was just a
slight bump, so she didn’t turn around to offer a retort or an “excuse
me.” Vanessa’s arm was soft, he remembered. The rest was probably
soft, too.
But Darren would never find out. He was going to ask
his mom to transfer him to La Canada-Flintridge or maybe Glendale. He promised
himself he would visit this hole again, just to catch a glimpse of Vanessa, any
glimpse. Of the few people he knew here, the person he would miss the
most hadn’t even looked at him or knew he breathed the same air she did.
“Hey, Seymour.”
Darren turned around, recognizing that deep voice.
Todd Lutze, six foot four, neck thicker than Darren’s thigh, stood behind
him. “Whatcha doin’?”
Staring up your girlfriend.
“Trying to get Jay
Rogers attention,” he lied. “He owes me ten bucks.”
Todd nodded, looked off into space. His mouth opened
slightly, like he was about to speak, but nothing came out. Then an odd
look came over his face. Like he had to piss.
What does Vanessa see in this guy?
“Oh yeah, I’m glad I caught you,” Todd said, his memory
reignited. He pointed a finger at Darren. “You told me a couple
weeks ago you have the Cliffs Notes to
The Catcher in the Rye
? I
need to borrow it.”
“Yeah, right. I’ll bring it Monday morning.”
“How about I come around tomorrow and pick it up?
Report’s due Monday. You live in the foothills right? Sutton Cannon
Drive?
Darren nodded.
“Yeah, I know where your crib is. You just live two
houses up from Carl Spencer. I’ve been there before. We see your
mom drives a kick-ass Jaguar, right?”
Darren nodded.
“Hey, don’t sweat Marcus. I heard what happened in
Weatherbee’s class. I know he’s an ass hat, but what can you do?”
Darren shrugged.
“Okay, I’ll be seein’ you tomorrow morning. You gonna
be home then?”
Darren nodded.
Todd looked into Mr. Morgan’s class and pointed a
finger. Vanessa had been watching. She winked and gave Todd a smile
that had silent words attached, Darren wondering what they could be. For
just the slightest moment, Darren could have sworn that she had been looking at
him for the Wink and Smile, but then realized he was standing pretty close to
Todd and she was sitting on the far side of the room from the door.
Nope. Put that wish in the waste basket.
Darren turned around and headed for the exit.
“Later, Seymour,” Todd whispered after him.
Darren’s throat tightened and he felt angry, out of place
again, wishing we were back in Michigan, where he’d been fairly popular in
school. He suddenly thought about Geils and wanted to track him down and
apologize for pushing him. That look of hurt in Geils’s eyes was
real. But Darren knew he never would, though. This place did crazy
to a person. One day you’re swapping dirty jokes with a guy and the next
day you’ re pounding the merry hell out of him to the delight of your new jock
friends. Darren was no different than the other animals here that stalked
the halls and preyed on the weak. Maybe it was in the air.
He gave the place one last look and then put his back to
Verdugo Valley High School.
*
Two minutes later, he had his back to Marcus Lutze and Greg
Shaw behind him in hot pursuit. Typical school bully——had to bring
friends. Tom Nichols, another Lutze crony, was following everyone in his
pickup truck on the street next to the school tennis courts.
Darren sprinted across the court and hurtled the tennis net,
aiming for the opposite entrance in the tall fence. He stole a look
behind him, and saw Marcus and Greg less than twenty feet away. He would
never be able to outrun them. Two football linebackers? With his short
ass legs? His brain scrambled for a solution. Marcus and Greg
easily cleared the tennis net, their arms pumping madly.
Off the school grounds, Darren burst through a stand of
trees, dashed across someone’s back yard and jumped onto the patio. He
slid the glass door open with a slam and glided into the house.
“Hey!” a women doing dishes called to him from the kitchen.
“Pardon me, pardon me!” Darren shouted as he tore through
the house.
“Hey you!” the woman cried out. “Hey you!”
“Where you keep your car keys, lady? I gotta borrow
your wheels!” Darren looked and saw that Marcus and Greg had stopped on
the patio, deciding whether to storm in after him or not.
“You get the hell outta my house!”
Darren spotted a key holder on the wall next to the front
door. “Thank you!” He ripped it off the wall and took the keys out
the door. Five little kids stood in the front yard watching him burst out
of the house. Tom Nichols’s pickup truck squealed to a spinning halt, Tom
honking his horn.
The family who lived here had a two-door Pontiac
Sunbird. Just as Darren piled into the front seat, the lady suddenly gave
her screen door a manly kick and aimed a .38 Snub in his direction, both feet
spread.
“Oh shit!” Darren fumbled with all of the keys on
their holder, trying to find the square one with “GM” on it.
Bang!
Darren jerked from the noise, and the windshield
spider-webbed from the bullet.
Bang!
Another spider web.
“Jesus Christ, lady!” Darren roared in terror. He
found the key and shoved it into the ignition, pulled the stick down into
Reverse, stood on the gas and peeled out of the driveway with a smoking squeal.
Bang!
Darren heard a lead bumblebee zip through the open window
and pierce the dashboard in front of the passenger seat. “You’ll get your
car back, lady, so quit——”
Bang!
“——shooting at me, you damn——”
Bang!
Darren jammed the Sunbird into Drive and stomped on the gas.
Bang!
The rear window disappeared in a shower of glass. In
the rearview mirror, Marcus and Greg were leaping into the pickup’s bed.
Two blocks up the street, Darren came to Foothill Boulevard,
the main drag through La Crescenta. The light went yellow, and Darren
sped up to beat the red light coming. He turned east onto Foothill
Boulevard and nearly swapped paint with a black Ford Escape turning in the same
direction. The Escape’s wide-eyed driver blew his horn.
Not only was he worried about Marcus and his guys but the
police as well. If that gun-toting bird kept her promise, then the 911
dispatcher had already broadcasted an All-Points Bulletin on a burgundy Pontiac
Sunbird with six bullet holes. Darren had to ditch this car and do it
quick.
“There are three kinds of speed drivers in the world,”
Mr. Hardy, his driver’s training instructor, had said once.
“‘Old Lady
Drivers,’ ‘Normal Drivers,’ and ‘California Drivers.’”
Darren had
already surpassed those groups and had now achieved
“Get-My-Pregnant-Wife-To-The-Hospital,” pushing
“Dead-Crossing-Guard-Stuck-In-The-Grill-During-The-Getaway.”
A quick peek in the rearview mirror revealed Tom’s pickup
truck growing smaller and smaller. Nice. Now he had to worry about
police. His eyes shifted between the rearview and side mirrors, scanning
for flashing blues and reds behind him.
Looking forward again, he spotted what he had feared——a black
and white LAPD squad car, maybe a block ahead, heading west in his
direction. The cop didn’t have his lights and siren going, but that
didn’t give Darren any comfort. He tensed up in the seat, gripping the
steering wheel tighter, ready to put forth every driving trick his dad and
uncles, avid muscle car racers, had taught him. The cop passed him for
what seemed like forever, and Darren looked in the rearview mirror to watch him
go. “Oh please God, oh please, oh please——”
The flashers came on, and the cop made a hard, reckless
U-turn into traffic.
“Shit!” Darren mashed the accelerator and wove into
the other lane to pass the cars ahead. He spotted a red traffic light up
ahead and a row of five cars waiting to turn. Darren inhaled sharply, the
car barreling at sixty, and turned into the southbound lanes, relieved there
was no traffic coming at him yet.
He clenched every butt muscle as hard as he could and rushed
into the intersection against the cross-traffic. A northbound Corvette
clipped the back-end of the Sunbird, and Darren thought for a moment that he
had lost the race but managed to straighten the car before he could plow into a
couple of pedestrians standing on the corner. He looked in his rearview
mirror. The cop wasn’t about to execute the same maneuver and locked up
his brakes.
Heading south, Darren passed over the Foothill Freeway and
approached another busy intersection, Montrose and Ocean View.
The light for the southbound traffic turned green, but the
cars turning left were moving too slow for Darren. He pulled onto the
northbound lanes, made a pick-up truck swerve and another car hop the curb, and
whipped the wheel to the left, locking up the brakes in a tire-peeling squeal,
every horn at the intersection blaring at him.
A block or two down the street——flashing reds and blues
coming straight on. Darren leaned on the accelerator, heard the Sunbird’s
engine roar, and jumped the curb onto the sidewalk. Then he rammed a
Cyclone fence at a sharp angle so that he could hurdle the two-foot concrete
barrier on the other side. The right front tire rode up the barrier, and
the whole car let out a violent shout of rending metal, the front bumper
exploded, the windshield spider-webbed further, and for a moment Darren thought
he had snapped the rear axle. The car’s momentum, however, shoved it
right over the concrete barrier, hard enough to go airborne, and Darren was
peeling across a large parking lot to a warehouse of some kind. He
appeared to be in a small industrial park.