Fucking Brewer.
But it was Bucket who leaned out the passenger window. “Hey!”
“ ‘Hey’ back, dude.”
“My phone’s barely working, so I thought we’d drop by. We’re going out to East Bear. You want to come?”
“Oh… no. It’s not really a great…”
Brewer rolled down his window and leaned out. “Hey, Lucy. What up?”
“Nothing. Just finishing up dinner with my family.”
“Oh. Are you, like, in the middle of it right now?” He seemed genuinely concerned he was interrupting. One of his eyes was hidden by his hair, but the other was looking right at her. His face was relaxed and friendly. Not concerned, or worried, or trying to fix her. “It’s going to be awesome out at the caves tonight. You wouldn’t believe how much of the Milky Way you can see out there when it’s like this.”
Did he catch me stargazing? And of course it’s going to look awesome to him—he’s probably high already.
Lucy looked at the boys, the excitement plain on their faces, and she imagined the rumble of Brewer’s truck against her body, and the cool air that would rush in through the windows, and the long drive through the night.
She looked back at her house. It had never looked so small or heavy to her before. She felt the warm light from the windows on her skin like heat from an oven. She felt the Hendersons’ need stretching out to her, wrapping around her chest.
She could barely lean in through the front door to let Bill and Carol know she was going out.
They told her they loved her. She rushed into the night before that truth could cause them any more pain.
* * *
Only after Lucy brushed aside the empty tallboy cans and found a belt that would actually latch was she able to settle into her seat in the extended cab and realize the consequences of her split-second decision.
I’m letting Brewer drive me somewhere.
Not just somewhere—to a party. In the woods.
Probably half the school attending. Everyone knowing I was in Mr. Chambers’s room the day it happened.
Jason Ward missing.
The whole town’s phones barely working—what if somebody falls into the fire? Josh Keener is out of juvie. What if he starts a fight and crushes somebody’s throat again? Or worse? It could always be worse.
What if those cop cars I heard zoom by were already on their way out to the party?
There’s no way this old beater of a truck has any kind of airbags.
Fuck.
By the time Lucy started to unbuckle and racked her panicked brain to conjure some excuse to exit, she’d found that the truck was already in motion. Right away, she felt a strange calm—she didn’t know whether it was from leaving behind the pressure of her family home, or some vestige of the peace she’d felt as a little girl lying across the back seat of her parents’ car with the sweet smell of the cherimoya groves drifting in through the window—and she decided that she would at least go along for the ride. She had a few books saved on her phone. If the party was too much to handle, she’d retreat to Brewer’s rig and read until it was time to leave.
There was one thing she had to check on first. Lucy picked up an empty tallboy from the floor of the truck and tapped Brewer on the shoulder with the can.
“You drink these tonight? If you’re drunk, then Bucket has to drive.”
“Yeah, I drank all those tonight. Sat at the park with my music blasting and knocked ’em back. But then it was dusk and I saw a bat and I got scared.”
“Seriously?”
“No. There were no bats.”
“Dude, come on… You drank all these? You have to pull over.”
Brewer laughed. “You need to stop. First, those are from a camping trip three weeks ago. Second, they’re Bill Stanton’s. I don’t drink that fuckin’ piss beer. Gives me bad headaches the next day. Third, I’m not sure Bucket can drive stick. And fourth, I’m not even drinking tonight.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. You can cool your jets. I got these fuckin’ rad mushrooms instead. Like all purple around the gills. Blue on the stems. They’re crazy. But I can’t drink with them or it stings my stomach something awful. Like, Aaaaaah! Oooooh! My tummy!” Brewer hunched forward and clung to his gut, then laughed. Despite being mildly terrified by Brewer’s potential madness, Lucy laughed too.
Bucket leaned back in his seat and rotated his head toward Lucy. “I can drive stick, Lucy. I’ll get us all home.”
“No shit, bro?” asked Brewer. “Oh, that’s great! I was only going to have a few stems and one cap, but now I can eat the whole fucking bag. That’s awesome. You’re my D and D, Buckminster.”
“Designated and driver?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s dumb. Whatever. Point is, I’m fucking stoked. Gonna see some galaxies tonight, dude.” He held a fist out to Bucket. Bucket looked at the fist. Brewer said, “You don’t bump this in the next five seconds, I’m going to slug you with it.”
Bucket complied, and Brewer made an exaggerated series of explosive noises with his mouth. “That turned into a super-bomb, Buckwild. You can’t let it build like that.”
Lucy laughed again, and it felt like something lifting from her chest. She wasn’t sure if Brewer was dumb or bugging out for kicks, but she liked the way he didn’t seem to care about anything too much. He seemed free in a way she wished she could be.
Lucy noticed that Bucket was wearing the cologne his parents got him last Christmas. How much had he put on? The smell filled the cab of the truck, mixing with the odor of stale beer and that locker room musk she noticed whenever a couple of boys were in a closed space together. She had yet to decide if that was a good or bad smell, though sometimes it stirred something in her. She cracked the small tinted window to her right and leaned toward the cool desert air.
Then she caught Brewer looking at her in his rearview. She could see both of his eyes for once, with the wind blowing his hair out of his face. They held eye contact for longer than she thought appropriate, given that he was on the highway now and it felt like they were going way above the speed limit.
Brewer said, “Fresh air, huh? Is it Bucket’s kitty-cat cologne or my nuts?”
“What?”
“I helped my cousin work on the pond at the Brubakers’ farm, and I wore jeans like a dummy. Felt like I had swamp crotch all day, but when I got home I was so tired I napped instead of taking a shower. Honestly, I didn’t think you’d come out, you know? Thought it’d only be me and Bucket and my mushies.”
“So?”
“I don’t know. I feel fine being filthy around dudes, but now that you’re here I feel kind of weird. I mean, I can smell my junk from here. It ain’t pretty.”
“No. It’s not that.” She was going to say it was Bucket’s cologne—the way it smelled a little like the spray they use to cover up the smell of pee at an old folks’ home—but she stayed true to their friend code: they ribbed each other mercilessly when it was only the two of them, but never when there was a third person around. She wouldn’t sell him out. “I like the fresh air, that’s all.”
“Oh, cool. Me too. Sometimes I even crack my bedroom window during the winter.”