I cared for Mike and I desperately wanted to pull him off of the path he was on. My conviction to do this became even stronger after the Richie Fairview incident. He had jumped in, without the slightest hesitation and grabbed hold of the hulking asshole, pulling him off of me. He had done that despite the fact that he'd been terrified of Fairview and that Fairview was holding a knife at the time. He had cast aside his self-protection instinct to come to my assistance and I could not forget that. Maybe if he hadn't done that, maybe if he'd simply stood there during the attack unable to move, I could have simply let the friendship die and let him go about his life. But he hadn't. He'd jumped in there without a second thought. Goddamit I owed him something. I had to try!
As was his nature, he offered me no apology for his outburst. He simply showed up at my door for the walk to school the following Monday and acted as if nothing had happened. He pulled out a joint as we went along but did not offer any to me. I suppose that was as close to saying sorry as he could come.
So I continued to walk to school with him each day even though I didn't really have to. Cindy, who had her own car and who took Tracy to school each day, had offered to give me a ride if I wanted. Her invitation did not include Mike, who she couldn't stand, and so I declined it.
After school I would go over to Mike's sometimes or he would come over to my house and then, if I'd finished my homework, I would smoke some pot with him. I learned to drop myself down to the level of a sixteen-year-old during these times and even managed to have a good time. I did not, however, go out on weekends with him anymore, always pleading other plans, which was usually true. I'd found some interesting ways to spend my weekends that did not involve putting my life at risk with intoxicated drivers. Anita figured heavily in these plans most of the time. So did Cindy.
Mike always seemed upset that I wouldn't go out with him on the weekends but didn't make a big deal of it. A status quo developed in our relationship, one that was due to break before long.
In April of that year Mike's Dad, a mechanic, fixed up a two hundred dollar Volkswagen Bug and gave it to Mike to drive full-time. I remembered the car well. It was a 68, the heater didn't work, the upholstery was ripped and shredded, and the engine would constantly require attention from his Dad. Mike and I had had some good times in that car during my first trip through.
We would go to keggers, to parties, just out cruising. We would use the car to cut school with, driving to the river to go fishing.
Though I had no plans to do most of the stuff we USED to do in the car, I figured that simply driving a few miles to school would be safe enough. I was wrong.
Mike's driving in that Bug used to scare me even before being recycled. It absolutely terrified me afterwards. It only took me one trip with him to realize that I was never going to set foot in it again. He picked me up for school the first day he had it and as soon as we were out of sight of my house, he pulled out a joint and lit it up.
"You sure you should be doing that while you're driving?" I asked nervously.
"Doing what?" He replied with genuine confusion.
I pulled my seatbelt tighter and braced myself.
In the course of the short drive to school he weaved recklessly in and out of the morning traffic. He rode up on the rear of vehicles when he had no room to weave, getting so close to them that, had they stopped, he would not have had time to even apply his brakes, let alone stop in time. He ran through one red light and three stop signs, giving only a careless glance as he did so. He smoked on his joint the entire time. By the time we pulled into the school parking lot I was trembling with fear.
"You okay dude?" He asked, looking at me with his stoned expression.
"Yeah." I said, feeling like I should kiss the ground.
"Hey," He said, "How about we cut out after my lunch? We now have freedom."
"Uh… no." I said, shaking my head. "I got a test today in English."
He gave me a sour expression, one that I was getting used to from him.
"All right." He said indignantly. "But you might have to walk home. I'm not gonna stay here all day just because you wanna go to your classes."
"That's cool." I told him levelly. "I can get a ride home from Cindy and Tracy."
"Oh." He said weakly. "Whatever." He went storming off.
I sighed, watching him go. I could not, would not get in that car with him again. So what was I going to do now?
As he'd promised, Mike and his car were long gone when school ended that day. I found Tracy and Cindy without much searching and they gave me a ride. Cindy elected to stay for a while once we got home. She asked me if I'd acquired any new albums since her last visit.
Since our first encounter I'd screwed Cindy ten or so times, always to our mutual satisfaction. We were never publicly seen together and both of us knew the rules of the relationship. It was a sexual relationship only. Our euphemism for it was 'looking at albums' in honor of our first time.
Even though I'd purchased nothing new since my return, I told Cindy I had bought something the other day.
"Well let's go take a look at it." She smiled, standing up.
"Sure." I smiled back, following her.
Tracy watched us go, shaking her head and grinning.
Cindy and Tracy drove off to the mall later that day. After they were gone I picked up the phone and gave Mike a call. I wanted to get together with him and have a talk, to try to get him to see my point of view a little. I had a speech all set up in my mind.
"What's up?" He asked bluntly when he came to the phone. I could already hear hostility in his tone.
"I was wondering if you wanted to come over for a little bit?" I asked. "Or maybe I could come over to your place."
"I got things to do." He said. "Did you get a ride home today?"
"Yeah." I answered. "Cindy gave me…"
"Cool." He interrupted. "Do you want a ride tomorrow, or is she going to take you then too?"
"That's kind of what I wanted to talk to…"
"You want a ride or not dude?" He demanded, an unmistakable ultimatum in his tone. "It don't matter to me."
"No," I said. "Cindy'll give me a ride. But…"
"Whatever." He said. A second later the phone clicked in my ear.
I debated calling him back but didn't. I knew it would do no good. Though I still maintained some hope for Mike, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd failed.
The school year continued to roll on. I caught rides in the morning and in the afternoon with Cindy and Tracy in Cindy's Chevy Caprice that her Daddy had bought for her when she'd got her driver's license. Two or three times a week Cindy would develop a burning desire to go check out some of my albums. I never turned down the opportunity to show them to her.
Mike kept his distance from me. He didn't call me anymore, he didn't come over. Before two weeks went by I would see him driving around a couple of freshmen in his Bug; kids he'd always made fun of before. Whenever I saw him he wouldn't even wave at me, wouldn't acknowledge my presence in any way. I would feel sadness whenever I saw him.
I began making a habit of eating lunch with Nina Blackmore through that year. It was less than a week before I stopped doing it out of simple pity or simple repentance for past sins or for simple attempts to change the future personality of a future bitch. I began eating lunch with her because I really enjoyed talking to her. I began to look forward to lunch each day so we could have another stimulating conversation on literature, life views, or some other topic. She was intelligent and pleasant once you broke through the years of torment she'd endured. I guess Life has a way of forcing certain people to grow up faster than nature intended. The way her eyes lit up when she saw me approaching her in the lunchroom always let me know that she was glad to see me too.