Breakdown (Crash into Me) Read online

  He looked at me like he was trying to decide something. Without his expression changing, the Do-gooder stared back at the road. “I don’t think you’re a moron, Jumper.”

  I crossed my arms over myself and sighed. “Stop calling me that.”

  “Stop calling me Do-gooder.”

  “What then?” Though I tried to keep my tone just as cynical, his perpetual smile told me I had failed. “Should I call you William? Or is Billy short for Lillian? Or are you a Willow?” My eyes looked him up and down like I was buying a new car. And yes, even then, I knew it was a cheap shot—my lame attempt to emasculate him via his name. Still, I was too tired to be more creative than that. Considering I hadn’t had a real verbal sparring partner in a long time, I gave myself a pat on the back.

  “William.” He sighed. “If you really wanna rebel, Jumper, I guess you can call me that.”

  “Rebel? What makes it so bad to call you William?”

  He shrugged back, forcing his muscular shoulders into the leather of his seat. “I just don’t like it is all. To most other racers I’m Billy the Kid.”

  Racing. So that explained the lights and the tricked out cars and even the girls. Silently, I cursed at myself for not thinking of it earlier. Immediately, I went to questioning this new information. When it came to illegal drag racing, the police were cracking down everywhere, had been over the last few months as far as I understood. Regardless, I didn’t think anybody did that sort of thing anymore. What possible profit could there be in drag racing? Sure, legally there were sponsors. But what was the point in doing it illegally? Especially after investing so much money in an impractical car?

  Admittedly, movies and the local newspaper were the only reason I knew what little I did know about illegal racing. Between them, rap music, planning montages and pictures of totaled cars, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what street racing was

  What I had seen and heard, even then, was so different from all of that, that if I had the will or energy to care, I would have gladly asked him. An easier alternative to me seemed better to keep right on teasing him.

  “Do they call you that because you’re small like a kid or because you smell like a goat?”

  Staring ahead, William erupted into a laugh. “Well, it’s not because I’m small.”

  I looked away when I heard him laugh louder. I couldn’t decide if I liked the sound or not. Maybe it would have sounded different if I was happy or sane. Maybe, if I was the flirt I had once been accused of being, I would have said something else clever. As it was, though, I couldn’t.

  “Oh, come on.” William chuckled still. “You walked into that one.”

  “So I did…” I closed my eyes tight. It seemed no matter how badly I wished them away, no matter how much I appreciated the sound of him, the bad memories came back as easily as if it had just happened. I opened my eyes and tried to change the subject. Maybe, I ventured to hope, if I listened to him long enough, I could distract myself to forget again.“Billy the kid, huh?” I made my scoff loud for exaggerated emphasis. “That might be the lamest nickname I’ve ever heard.”

  Again, I watched his smile in the windshield. “Then you need to meet my friends even worse than I thought, Jumper.” Glancing over at me, William exhaled loudly. Was he disappointed with my lack of response, my unwillingness to laugh or even smile? In a way I couldn’t blame him. If I had been in his shoes, I would have lost patience with myself by now.

  “You don’t choose you’re nicknames, Jumper.” The relief that bubbled in my stomach when I realized his reflection still smiled was better than Alka Seltzer. “I got it back home after I got out of a couple of scrapes with some cops. Come to think of it,” he said thoughtfully, “I’ve had it about as long as I can remember…”

  Though the music on Do-gooder’s sound system still played, it was overwhelmed by the base playing from more than one of the vehicles in the convoy. And as I leaned over to look in the side mirror, I could see the inside of an orange Volkswagen, flashing blue lights with every deep note.

  “Street racing then?”

  “Yep.”

  “And that’s a real thing?”

  He took one of his hands off the wheel and wiggled his fingers in the air. “No, Jumper, it’s all an illusion.”

  I frowned at his snarkiness. “I told you to stop calling me that.”

  “Until you tell me your name I don’t have anything else to call you.”

  “I don’t want to tell you my name.” I went back to watching the lights in the Volkswagen. “There’s no point.”

  “Because you won’t be around much longer?” Without looking, I sensed the frown on his lips. Instantly, I decided it was pretty terrible.

  “Okay, Jumper, if you don’t want to talk about you, let’s talk about me or, more importantly, my car.”

  I doubted it was possible for me to care about his car any less than I already did. Still, if it kept him talking—whether it was about cars or tapeworms—I was willing to listen.

  “This lovely lady right here—” William patted the dashboard lovingly like the car was genuinely his best friend. Vaguely, I wondered if I had ever been shown such affection, quickly dismissed the thought and tuned back into him. “—is a 1969 Chevrolet SS, 5-speed transmission, 454 big block with a 596 pounds worth of foot torque and well over 500 pounds of horsepower. For guts, she’s also got a SCAT crank, Eagle rods, Wisceco 10.0: compression pistons and PRM aluminum heads fed by an Edelbrock Air-Gap intake manifold and a Barry Grant Demon 750 carburetor.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Am I supposed to know what any of that means?”

  He shrugged. “Talking about cars always makes me feel better.”

  “I don’t want to feel better.” The moment I said it, I realized how true it was. Whether it was clinical, or just the result of my circumstances, I had stopped fighting my depression weeks ago. Frankly, I didn’t know how to go back.

  “The hood and the billet emblems are custom designed just for the NOS 400 kit. She’s got a Moroso Trick Spring front and rear 12bolt with 4.30 gear Moser axels and Goodyear 28x11.0-15 slicks—”

  “Gee, does it have air conditioning too?”

  His smiled evolved into a full-blown grin. “She sure does.”

  I had the feeling he would have talked on, but the cars in front of us started pulling off to the side, cruising more slowly until they were almost at a crawl under a stone bridge I didn’t recognize. In the back of my head, I recalled mom’s lesson not to make eye contact with the homeless or, heaven forbid, give them money. I squashed it just as soon as I remembered it, intentionally keeping my eyes wide open as William slowed the speed of his car. Under the bridge, however, all I saw much of were gang tags spray painted on top of one another and the occasional aluminum can shining from a high beam.

  “Where are we?”

  William’s grin was brighter than ever. “We’re at the greatest show on Earth.”

  Unsure of what he meant, I watched while drivers and their passengers began mingling around, talking amongst themselves and drinking, reaching for beers from coolers that seemed to appear from nowhere. Like outside the park, a lot of the girls immediately began leaning over car hoods and checking themselves out in mirrors, pulling themselves up on truck-beds and trying to lure over drivers with whistles and deliberate manipulation of cleavage.

  It was entirely possible that I was the only female there who was more interested in the venue than the available merchandise, cars, or even the competition. Alternatively, I stayed in my seat, trying to see one tag from the other. I guessed some designs were better seen under backlights, and for those first few seconds didn’t try to understand the symbolism, or even read much of it. Instead, I just envied the skill in the work, the determination it must have taken to write upside down on the ceiling of the bridge itself. The cobblestone inside reeked of some kind of mold, and it amazed me that parts of it had not collapsed altogether.

  “You guys race here?”

  �
�Sometimes.” I saw a new concentration on William’s face as he parallel parked between an average looking Kia and a tricked out ice cream truck. I made the deliberate effort to look away and back again. Why anyone would feel the need to glamorize something that was already so awesome was beyond me. “We have to go to different places to avoid the cops, change the locations depending on how many people are gonna show up.”

  I nodded, but still wasn’t so sure, my focus on the changing neon lights of the ice cream truck changing to the speakers on its roof where rap music blasted in place of nursery rhymes.

  The engine coming to a halt startled me back to reality. I shook my head and stared at an obese man who was walking up against the stone side of the bridge, clearly struggling to squeeze his large body between cars parked too closely together. He and two other guys were talking amongst themselves and exchanging money back and forth. I blinked hard when I thought I saw a large stack of hundred dollar bills pass hands. I rubbed my eyes and let my head fall.

  “Those are hustlers,” William said quietly. “They collect bets and try to trip people up before they race to mess with the odds, psych them out and stuff.”

  I kept staring.

  “You can take off your seatbelt now.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to now.” I tried to shoot William down with my glare. It didn’t work, but I figured it might have been worth a try anyway.

  “So what, Jumper, I say ‘black’ you say ‘white’?”

  “Gray.” I crossed my arms over myself and tried counting the empty bottles on a car across from us, only getting to four before William’s laugh interrupted my thought process.

  “Are you at least gonna get out of the car, Jumper?”

  I tightened my grip on my seatbelt. There had been nothing in our agreement about any of that.

  “Okay then.” I heard the driver’s side door open and my heart sank a little. “But you’re going to get awfully bored in here all by yourself.”

  The door closed quietly behind him, and sure enough, I was all alone. I closed my eyes and felt the burn. I hadn’t had a busy day or anything, just a couple hours of bad TV and binge baking, but now that my eyes were closed it was all I wanted to do, all I wanted to be a part of. Is that what death would be like? What would it be like to become part of the dark, to not just touch it, but be submerged in it? I had spent hours contemplating such issues, and if I was required to, I probably could have spent a few hours more, but I was tired of being tired. That, in itself, was the point.

  Notwithstanding my drowsiness, I felt an increased insecurity at William’s words. Sure, he was probably only trying to use reverse psychology on me, but what if he was genuinely fed-up with me like I thought? Assumed I was just a pouting child who needed a time-out? Or one of those girls who used self-harm as a desperate attention grabber?

  I knew I shouldn’t have been, but I was suddenly, completely concerned about what he thought of me. A normal person would have been grateful to have a do-gooding bystander come into their life at the last minute, right? Someone who talked them down and tried to make them laugh? Yet as much as I tried to make myself feel that, I couldn’t, and that realization only made me feel that much worse. But why should I say thank you when I didn’t mean it? I wasn’t a child, and being forced to say thank you for something I wasn’t grateful for was like trying to write my suicide note.

  I didn’t want to apologize when I didn’t feel sorry.

  The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. Why did William even bother to help me if that was what he thought he was doing? There wasn’t a crucifix hanging from his rearview mirror, and I hadn’t seen any Jesus bumper stickers. Then again, maybe he was a Buddhist or something, a believer that what came around would go around. If I could, I thought I would have laughed.

  Then I had a new thought. What if he wanted me to stay in the car so he could be out there and talk himself up? He had already proven how much he too liked the sound of his own voice. Maybe William was bragging to all the girls that he was a hero, going on about how he had saved the tragic life of a nobody out of the kindness of his heart.

  After all, how long could someone be impressed by a fast car anyway?

  I got out and tried to maintain as much dignity as I could. As far as I could see, no one wandering around was looking in my direction, but then again there wasn’t really anyone around to take much notice of me anyway. With the exception of a couple making out in the bed of a truck—and what I thought was a guy peeing behind a large sycamore at the end of the road— bodies were mostly gathered just past the curve of the bridge. I walked toward them, taking in the orange construction cones and signs declaring the road under the bridge unsafe.

  When I had gotten past them and amongst the crowd, the first place I went was to a mold ridden railroad tie on the side of the road—an unintended curb on the broken road. Because I didn’t want to seem anymore awkward than I knew I was, I hopped up on it and used it as a balance beam. After a few minutes of that, I pretended my curb was my ledge and wished I had jumped a few seconds earlier, wondering why I hadn’t.

  “There you are.”

  I stumbled from my ledge at the familiar voice, whether I was glad that my brain instantly recognized it as William’s I wasn’t too sure about. For sure, however, I was glad that, as I regained my footing, seeing him smile at me again made me begin to think the most outrageous thoughts. I, for example, had the epiphany right then and there that if we were in a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel his name would be William Do-gooder.

  “I didn’t feel comfortable… out there.” I shrugged with my lie. In the dark it was difficult to tell if he believed me or not.

  He was smiling when I turned to him, making my next outrageous thought that smiling was his default expression. An epiphany, I quickly came to realize, that wasn’t so outrageous.

  Unfortunately for me, we weren’t alone. Instead, William had brought with him Cosmo and a guy I hadn’t met yet. This new stranger was tall like William, but other than that, the most impressive thing about him was the gauges in his ears, making the earlobes wide enough to impress certain tribes in Africa.

  William nodded like he was pleased with my answer, his thumbs emerging just enough from his pocket to point in my direction. “Glad to hear you’re feeling some concern for yourself, Jumper.”

  I sneered, unsure of what else to say.

  “Okay,” said the guy with the gauged ears. “I see why you missed inspection, but Fletcher really won’t let you race tonight?”

  “Nope.” William stretched out the syllables until his lips popped out the sound and my stomach flipped. I pushed my thumbs into my belly-button and cursed at myself. After reading all those horror stories about what happens when you die on the pro-suicide websites, I had taken specific care not to eat all day. That’s what I was feeling now, right? Just nothing then more than average hunger?

  “It’s fine.” William took his hands out of his pockets completely. “Let’s me bide my time, plan out some strategy.”

  “Nah.” Gauged Ears shook his head until the excessive skin around the lobes jiggled just a little. I thought it was sort of funny looking, but neither of the other guys seemed to notice, so I didn’t say anything. “That’s such bullshit. Everyone knows Bloody Mary is the fastest lady around.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to focus. “Who now?”

  “Billy didn’t introduce you to the love of his life?” Gauged Ears chuckled through every other word. “No way.”

  “Jumper already got introduced to Mary,” William said.

  “Now I really feel left out.” Gauged Ears pretended to pout, and Cosmo and William rolled their eyes almost at the same time.

  “Jumper, this is Mickey. Mickey, Jumper.”

  Without actually speaking, Mickey nodded at me. His attempt at direct eye contact however was refused as I tried to decipher his tattoos. Only when it occurred to me that I was staring did I make myself speak.

  “Is that your actu
al name or another ridiculous nickname?”

  William looked at me and chucked. “What do you think, Jumper?”

  I looked around me and tried not to feel too uncomfortable by guessing the names of the songs people blasted from their sound systems. Cars randomly raced themselves up and down the strip with little organization from what I could see—doing short runs down the street farther than my eye could see and back again. More than racers though, there seemed to be people taking pictures of engines and talking on their walkie-talkies.

  “Could be either one,” I said after a second. “Mickey could be his literal name, or maybe he’s just a big Toni Basil fan.”

  William’s chuckle met Cosmo’s cackle then. The inside joke between the young men gave me the opportunity to study them then, comparing and contrasting them against their obvious friendship. For example, while Cosmo’s laugh was high-pitched—not unlike that of a jackal or drunk, Mickey’s was just about the opposite—his laugh was as forced as a laugh track.

  William’s laugh, on the other hand, had a certain glucose quality to it; thick and rich, I felt it stick to me, and the sweetness of it filled my bloodstream, making my sugar levels spike. The spike felt so good that, for the first time in over a year, it didn’t even feel so bad to be left out of the joke.

  William managed to stop laughing long enough to answer me. “It has more to do with his resemblance to Mickey Mouse.” Then, as if he was just trying to mess with me, he winked. “Good guess though.”

  “Hey, people,” A voice said behind us. “Rhatt and Eggs are up!”

  “More nicknames.”

  I thought I had mumbled it quietly enough to myself, but I guess I hadn’t, because William reached for my elbow. Before he even touched me, his eyes started looking for mine, and I was barely even aware that that the guys had run off with the remainder of the crowds.

  “Rhatt is Rhatt because he looks like a rat, and Eggs is short for Benedict.”

  I gawked at the hand touching my arm. Was he just trying to be nice or was it something else?