“Homo say what?” Caidin said, uneasy.
“Just for someone to make fun of, you know.”
On the way to the water park Milo kept making eyes with Caidin as if he knew the truth. Caidin adjusted the mirror so Milo couldn’t see, but then he couldn’t see Milo either and he put it back. At one point Milo announced that he’d lied to his parents about where he was; they believed he was taking the SAT. “It’s weird someone like you has parents,” Caidin said.
Jeff and Adam giggled. Encouraged by their laughter, Caidin picked at Milo all day — holding his head below water more than once, tossing his ice cream into the lazy river, even telling some jocks that Milo had a crush on them.
Over and over his friends cracked up. It seemed like even Milo was stifling laughter, until he said, “You treat me like a dog.”
“Hey, we were just having fun,” Jeff said.
“Yeah, think of it like an initiation,” Adam said.
“Except I’m nicer than this to dogs,” said Caidin, afraid his friends were wussing out. When everyone around you was gifted, it was hard to excel. Even in Caidin’s percentile he intended to be best at two things: driving fast and making fun of gay boys. “I won’t brake till you cry uncle,” he said on the drive home, weaving through traffic at ninety miles an hour. On the shoulder he zoomed past a slow bus. Veering back into his lane, a glance in the rearview presented Milo, tranquil as a monk, gazing serenely west.
Caidin observed Milo’s strange sublimity, waiting for eye contact again, until Jeff shouted his name. They were hurtling toward a semi.
He stomped on the brake, skidded, regained control. “Why didn’t you cry uncle?” he said as they all caught their breath.
“I suppose I wasn’t paying attention,” Milo said dreamily, as if he didn’t quite know where he was.
In July Caidin’s mother looked up from another newsletter and asked, “Do you know a Milo Hux?” It seemed that a Milo Hux had flipped his car on the Gulf Freeway and died.
“He was doing ninety-five. Tell me you know it’s idiocy, going that fast.”
“Mom, on the Autobahn in Germany—”
“It’s idiocy there, too! You’d throw your life away for a fast car ride?”
“I promise I won’t die,” Caidin said, which upset her more until he revised his words to say, “I promise I won’t drive like what’s-his-name.”
Without asking Jeff and Adam along, he sped toward the coast. He knew his friends would blame him for Milo. No one understands me, he thought, almost happy in the idea, touching himself while he drove. He bet Caleb was jerking off in his Strike Eagle. Almost to Surfside Beach, his phone rang. It was Jeff. “Hey, faggot,” he answered, relieved.
“I bought Poisoned Wasteland. Can you be here in half an hour?”
Jeff’s house was sixty miles away. In places the speed limit would dip as low as thirty, and there were traffic lights. “Don’t see why not.”
“Bring those games I lent you.”
“I’ll try,” he said, jerking the wheel hard left across the center line. He set a new course. Feeling sorry for people who’d died before there were cars, he floored it. He hoped his body would never run out of adrenaline.
“Took you long enough,” Jeff said forty-eight minutes later.
“Yeah, I was south of Freeport when you called.”
“Caidin, shut up.”
“Porsches are faster than Chevrolets,” he said with a shrug, sitting down to play Jeff’s new game. Their characters, deformed mutants who’d survived a nuclear war, wandered a dead zone in search of elixir. The fastest they could walk was four miles an hour. To circumnavigate the game world would take a thousand game hours, ten real hours. Caidin didn’t see why his dumb, trudging avatar couldn’t at least ride a bike.
“Let’s go driving,” he said, over the game’s screaming metalcore theme music.
“You know, cars are okay, but they’re not my life.”
“You know, you used to be fun to hang out with.”
“Doesn’t Milo get you to thinking?”
Caidin’s blood went leaden. “What is your life, then? Video games?”
“My life’s bigger than one thing, Caidin.”
“Why would speedometers go to 120 if we shouldn’t drive 120?”
Jeff didn’t seem to have an answer. Whatever, thought Caidin, pushing himself upright. His mutant stood still. He swung his foot. The death growls and guitar riffs ceased. NO INPUT, said a blue screen after the Xbox had hit the wall, and then he was flying west on the Katy Freeway.
He bought an eighth of weed from his brother’s dealer. To cruise around smoking it felt way better than sitting in Jeff’s bedroom. Tousling his bangs, he looked in the rearview. He would grow his hair out, install new subwoofers, and buy a whole ounce when the eighth was gone. He did all three. High on the first day of school, he sat in back with crossed arms like some regular middle-quartile kid. When teachers called his name, he waited a few seconds before saying “Here.” People liked it. There was a blond girl named Astrid who reminded him of a seahorse. Every day he would catch her glancing at him. After a week he was holding her hand. She was friends with some jocks who’d turned to drugs. At the Galleria after school they all ate sugar-cube acid together. Hank, the second-string quarterback, climbed the Water Wall with his girlfriend Izzy, laughing as the police pulled them down. That was the trick — not to care. They piled into the Porsche, whose wheel felt alive: Caidin had only to think of steering, and the car sped onto I-610.
“Beach?” he asked, thinking he’d get them there faster than ever. Here was his chance to show how little he cared.
“It’s too hot for shirts,” said Izzy, pulling hers off. “Astrid, hold the wheel.”
When Caidin took his shirt off too, they cheered as if he’d shed his training wheels. Half-naked they played Twenty Questions, Izzy going first. An animal, in Texas, bigger than the car, and there was only one.
“Your mom,” he said. Izzy laughed. On his new friends’ wavelength, he could set the cruise control at seventy and restrain the urge to prove what he was made of.
“Shamu,” said Hank, and Izzy said yes. They kissed.
“Every SeaWorld has a Shamu,” Caidin said. “When one dies, they capture another one and name it Shamu.”
“There’s other SeaWorlds?” said Astrid, who had stopped looking like a seahorse to him. It didn’t matter. He stole glimpses of Hank in the mirror, stole more of them at the beach, sitting on sand in their underwear as derricks swayed.
“There’s a hurricane out there,” Izzy said, which Caidin took to be a metaphor.
“Did you know Juaco Luna?” he asked her.
“Yeah, he kissed me, and it was amazing. Hank, if Juaco Luna comes back from El Salvador, I’m dumping you.”
“He’s from Honduras,” Caidin said, wishing he hadn’t asked. They stared out to sea, Astrid’s hand feeling like warm dough in his. “Storm’s coming,” Izzy said again. Say what you mean, Caidin thought, but it turned out to be real. Back at Hank’s they watched it assault the Gulf Coast. New Orleans was five hours east, three if you drove like Caidin, and he suggested going to see it. Instead they smoked pot and lay on Astrid’s bed. When she touched him, pretending to like it was easy; he just touched her back in the same places. After two days of that, he asked when they would be returning to school.