From across the long open lawn by the administration building, through a tangle of overgrown crape myrtle limbs, Mack’s headlights flash once and die. A signal. Time’s up. My first friend, my last friend, reminding me to stick to the plan.
I rise from the curb, wave at the flashbulb residue of his signal. My arm falls, heavy and useless. Rowing Meredith upstream on Hoskins Creek seems like a fairy tale. The small suitcase rolls along the sidewalk in a gravelly anthem that sinks into the night around me. I force myself to walk to the truck without another stop. Mack’s out before I get there, hustling the suitcase away from me, laying it in the back of the little pickup as if it were made of glass. He boosts me by the elbow into the cab, shuts the door like I’m his grandmother, and jogs back to the driver’s side. As he rolls the truck down Water Lane and out onto a deserted Route 360 slowly, carefully, as if he has just learned how to drive, I take one backward glance. The bridge rises smoky and indistinct in the early morning mist. And then at the corner where 360 meets Route 17 the blaring open-all-night lights of the Texaco station blast me back to reality.
“How’d it go with Meredith?” he asks.
“She had homework.”
“You left without saying goodbye?”
“She’d never understand. She’d think it had something to do with her.”
“Fuck, you’re a cold bastard.”
“Yeah, well, dying does that to you.” That shuts him up.
He flips on the radio and keeps his eyes on the road. Past the churches, past the Gold Coast, Woodside Golf Course, Horne’s at Port Royal with its 1950s striped awning, into Spotsylvania County and the single-lane stretch.
“You falling asleep?” I ask him, but the words stick in my mouth and I’m breathing hard to just get them out.
“I’m fine. I just don’t want the cops to stop us. I mean with Holden waiting for you in New York and all.”
I have to look at him twice to be sure he’s teasing. “Uh, Mack, don’t you think if you drive the speed limit like all the other cars the troopers will be less likely to notice us in the first place?”
“Sorry.” He guns it and the little truck shoots forward on the unlit blacktop, sending my hip bones into my intestines.
“Jeez. I didn’t mean to piss you off.”
“No piss intended. No piss taken.”
He slows to the speed limit, flips the radio knob to a rap station, gives me a wide grin, and starts to slap the steering wheel with one hand. “She’s great, don’t you think?”
“Who?”
“The truck. Who else?” His eyes are glittery, his hands jumping off the wheel with the radio bass. It’s making me nervous, despite his insistence during our last phone conversation that he’s not using anymore.
“Juliann maybe? Your girlfriend Juliann, remember her?”
“That’s over. Been over.” But his tone is tight and too high as if he’s just admitted cheating on a test.
“What happened?”
“Not everyone hits it off like you and Meredith. Juliann’s too tall for me anyway.”
“Since when is height a reason to back off from the perfect woman?”
“I wouldn’t say she’s the perfect woman. She’s a little too straitlaced for me.”
I think about that for a while. Here’s Mack, the Mack I know, pretty much an honor roll student, a suck-up to the teachers, still goes to church with his family, and has a regular job to pay for his car insurance. A nice, steady type of guy, and he’s dissing a girl for being too tall? Something’s screwy about that. Plus Meredith hasn’t said a thing to me about Mack dumping Juliann. Why would he think that? Why would he say it?
He’s a good driver, even upset about Juliann, even streaming along the curves and shadows on Route 17 at sixty miles an hour on a starless night. Because 17 is a killer road for curves, I stop talking and let him concentrate. The truck stays inside the lines and there are no sudden swerves or unexpected braking. It reassures me a little. He can’t be high if he’s driving so well. But I’ve said my piece about the drugs and tonight’s not the night to reopen that discussion.
What if Mom wakes up and discovers I’m not in bed? She’ll listen to see if I flush the head. She’ll come and stand outside, knock on the door, maybe twice before she opens it when I don’t answer. Once she sees I’m not there, she’ll rush around the deck and up to the roof. She’ll call my name, whispering at first so as not to wake Nick until she remembers he’s at a friend’s. When she can’t find me, she’ll start to yell. Dad, his breath raspy at being startled from sleep, will pad outside about the time she realizes the dinghy is gone. She’ll be halfway to the dock in the skiff before he interprets what she’s yelling about. He’ll know right away that I’ve left for good, but he’ll let her go and search because it’s the only way she can cope. Action and argument, proof that she’s still trying to save her son from something stronger than she is.
“Thanks for driving,” I say to Mack, careful not to bring up the twins again.
“No problem. I hope the train isn’t late. If your mom calls the police, they might think to check trains.”
“She won’t call the police. They’ve been the bad guys since the trial.”
“Last year did you ever think you’d be headed to New York on your own?”
“Never crossed my mind. You ever think you’d be driving a blue Nissan with your name on the title?”
We’ve played this game for years. Hollywood fantasies on an Essex County budget. It’s always been fun because our imaginations could take us anywhere even when we were stuck in small-town Virginia.
He turns down the radio, seriously into the game now. And I figure it’ll distract him from the end of the trip, the train station, and a goodbye neither of us wants. A goodbye I’m way more ready for than he is.
He says, “How about…ever imagine you would be the first Essex County High student to leap off the Rappahannock River Bridge?”
“Ever think you’d have the highest grade in algebra?”
“Ever dream that a beautiful girl like Meredith would fall for you big-time?”
“I still don’t believe it. But Meredith’s better than a dream. She’s like solid rock.” I lean back against the headrest and think about how she looked in the half-lit cabin, her eyes, her smile. “How come some people are that way and—”
Mack snorts. “And others are all hot air and shadows like Yowell?”
“What’s with you and Yowell?”
“Nothing. You’re the one who thought he was a traitor.”
“I’ve forgiven him.”
“Because of the senator?”
“I guess. He did put his reputation on the line to get the law changed. Got my parents off the hook. But slicko Leonard? Mostly because he’s nice to my mom.” Probably the wrong thing to be thinking about at this point.
Mack shoots a quick look at me, then back to the road. Does he think I don’t know he worries about me? No way that you can drive your best friend to the train where he will ride off into the sunset never to be seen again without worrying. Truly impossible if you know he’s probably going to choke to death on his own vomit in a deserted alley.
Somewhere between Port Royal and the Fredericksburg golfing range, we lose the Richmond radio station. I twist the dial, force myself to settle on something loud. If Holden can do this, I can. Anyway, I’m tired of talking. Tired of thinking.