“Crap,” he said with a sigh.
A horn blared at his back, and Jonathan jumped as a massive Ram pickup pulled to the curb ahead of him. He recognized the red truck immediately; it was Cade’s pride and joy. Through the back window, he saw two heads in silhouette. An oncoming pair of headlights spread milky glare over the glass, making the heads look like they’d been cut from black cardboard.
“Oh, great,” Jonathan said under his breath. The Roid Patrol. Or rather, what was left of them.
He dropped his head and kept walking, pretending not to notice the ginormous vehicle idling beside him. When Ox spoke to him, Jonathan looked up slowly.
“You need a ride or something?” Ox asked. His thick stubble looked even fuller out here, his broad face darker, but he seemed sincere enough. There was no mocking in his eyes, no playful spark that always accompanied his participation in Jonathan’s humiliation.
“That’s cool,” Jonathan said. “I just live down the street.”
“Cool,” Ox said. “Cade and I were headed out to the hospital to visit Emma. You want to tag? I mean, did you know her?”
“A little,” Jonathan said, his stomach knotting at the sound of her name.
“Well, we all want to show our support, right?” Cade asked. “And there’s a party after. We’re going to have some beers. You should come with. I mean, to show there’s no hard feelings or anything.”
Jonathan looked into the truck. Ox and Cade had been sitting with a couple of girls at Perky’s, but they weren’t with them now. Maybe they were already on their way to the party Cade mentioned, or maybe they were at the hospital.
The thought of seeing Emma, of not having to walk into the hospital room alone, excited him. He could see she was okay, maybe bring her something. He still had plenty of money in his pocket. He could buy her flowers in the hospital shop and give them to her. Just a friend thing. If he weren’t alone, it wouldn’t seem too weird.
The only problem was Ox and Cade. He didn’t “Come on,” Cade called from the driver’s seat. “Emma will be glad to see you, and the party is gonna rock. There’ll be a ton of brew.”
“Yeah man,” Ox said. “Come on. Toby gave you so much crap, the least we can do is buy you a beer. I mean what else are you gonna do? It’s Friday night, and it’s just getting started.”
“Hells, yeah,” Cade called. “You can’t go home this early.”
Truth was, Jonathan didn’t want to go home. At home he’d just sit around thinking about Emma or David and Kirsty. He’d hear his mom bitching to his aunt or yelling at his father, if his father had actually stayed home. Still, he wasn’t sure about getting in the truck.
“Maybe I could meet you over there,” he said.
“Oh, man,” Cade said. “That won’t work. The hospital’s like an hour’s walk from here.”
“Look, we gotta roll,” Ox said. “I don’t know how late visiting hours are. You in?”
“Okay,” Jonathan replied, taking a step toward the pickup.
“Yes!” Cade shouted, happily. “Barnes is moving on up.”
Ox grinned and pushed the door open for him.
“What are we doing here?” Jonathan asked.
Cade made a left off the main road onto a dirt trail running through the center of a narrow wooded area north of town. The evergreens were lush, and heavy limbs reached down to sweep the top of the pickup like the brushes of a car wash. The ground was hard-packed dirt, filled with pits. Even with the expensive truck’s suspension, Jonathan felt every hole and bump beneath the tires.
“We’re drinking a beer for Toby,” Ox said. “We’re going to toast his memory, man. It’s like the thing to do. To show our respects? Then we’ll hit the hospital to visit Emma.”
“It’s like bad news first, then good, right?” Cade added.
Great, Jonathan thought. An alarm sounded in the back of his mind, warning him that being out in the woods with his two remaining tormentors was a less than brilliant situation. But Ox and Cade were being cool. They seemed genuinely changed by the fate of their friend.
The Ram made a final lurch, and Cade killed the engine. Next to him, Ox nodded his head earnestly like they were about to view Toby’s body in the funeral home or something. The headlights remained on. Tree trunks, pale in the halogen beams, stood like columns holding up the night. At the farthest reach of the light, the edge of the lake lapped gently against the shore.
“In a few days, they’ll have those stupid white crosses and all kinds of crap,” Cade said, sounding solemn and angry. “They’ll build a lame little shrine for him. They’ll nail pictures and poems and shit on a tree trunk out here, and some brain-dead cheerleader will leave a stuffed animal, like it means something to him. But that’s not Toby, man. Toby wasn’t about that stuff. He lived, you know? He surfed it fast and nasty. A blunt. A beer. Jacked up on caf and barreling through the night. He wasn’t about flowers or poems.”
“Totally,” Ox shouted.
“Yeah!” Cade yelled.
Jonathan leaned back, startled by this display. The guys in front of him threw out their fists, connecting with each others’ knuckles. Punch it in.
“For Toby,” Ox said, throwing open the door of the pickup.
Cade also climbed out of the truck, but Jonathan remained in his seat, unsure of what to do. This seemed like a private moment between a couple of triple-cappuccino-wired first-stringers. He quickly calculated the distance back to his house and figured they were two miles from Crossroads. It would take him at least forty minutes to walk home.
That might not be so bad. Suddenly the idea of attending a party filled with cut-and-paste replicas of Ox and Cade didn’t sound terribly fun. And he wondered if visiting Emma was ever really part of the plan. How late were visiting hours?
Before he could make up his mind, Ox leaned into the truck and said, “Come on, Barnes. You’re with us now.”
“Cool,” Jonathan said, and he almost smiled.
He slid toward the door. The phrase “You’re with us now” went right to the center of him. At school on Monday, Ox and Cade might pretend he wasn’t a part of this night, but right now he was with them, and despite all of the alarms ringing in his head, Jonathan wanted that more than he’d ever admit to himself.
The air outside was icy. A bitter wind blew over the lake. It gained speed as it pushed its way through the tree trunks.
Ox slapped him on the back. The giant was smiling.
Cade met them at the nose of the truck, holding a six-pack of Budweiser. The headlights were still on, projecting their shadows over the woods. Cade’s rose up a thick tree trunk on the left, and Ox’s flattened out over a low nest of bushes. Jonathan’s ran forward, over the dirt trail, a dark facsimile of his shape, stretching out toward the water lapping at the lake’s edge.
“It’s freezing,” Ox said.
“Antifreeze,” Cade replied, hefting the six-pack.
“Well, hand one over.”
A minute later, they all stood on the shore, looking out at the plum-colored lake. This was the only part of the lakeside that hadn’t been developed. Lights ran a ring around its edges, except for a dark patch on the far shore. That was the city park. Two tiny pinpricks of light broke that patch of darkness as a car pulled into the park’s drive.
Probably a couple of kids looking for a place to make out, Jonathan thought. Maybe David and Kirsty. Then the distant lights went out.
“They found him over there,” Ox said, lifting his beer and gesturing to their left. “They said somebody dropped him from high up, like out of a helicopter.”