“School’s out of the question.”
“We’re in the ninety-fifth percentile,” he said.
Hank and the girls looked at each other and giggled.
“My parents got me in,” Hank said, “just like yours got you in.”
“No, I’m in the ninety-eight-point-fourth percentile,” said Caidin, feeling a sudden urge to see his mother.
He made up an excuse to leave. But when he arrived home, he found a note for him and the maid that the Maddoxes were in Dallas.
Smoking a joint, he searched Diaryland for boys named Juaco — nothing — and then Milo — dozens, all alive. He searched for ones who wanted to kill themselves, and these were easy to find. Every other boy on Diaryland wished to die. Their heroes were Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, the kid who’d perished on a bus in Alaska. Most wrote with indistinguishable dreamy fatalism, but one called Timescale aspired to a wholly original death: floating in a balloon into a wildfire; sailing to Antarctica to walk nude into its tundra; coating himself with sugar and lying down among fire ants. Caidin tried to concoct some outlandish methods of his own to post in a comment. He couldn’t come up with any, and besides, Timescale would ask why he wanted to die, when he wanted only to talk. He dialed his brother’s number. Busy bombing Ramadi, Caleb didn’t answer, not like Caleb was any fun anyway. If he were home, he would only be drinking vodka with his stupid girlfriend. He’d never even taken Caidin out in the Porsche.
For first period the next day, the principal called an assembly. Refugees were pouring into Houston, she said, and some would be enrolling at their school. A few had arrived already. At lunch they hung out in the parking lot by their souped-up cars. These didn’t seem like people to be trifled with, but Caidin was lonely enough to saunter over. “How fast will that thing go?” he asked about a Charger.
“You are?”
“Caidin Maddox.”
“And you drive?”
“A Porsche Carrera.”
Their glances at each other seemed to say, People are the same everywhere you go. “You want to race?”
“Sure, that sounds fun,” Caidin said.
“When I go fast, the cops stop me.”
“So you don’t want to?”
“What rules do you propose?”
“Forget it,” he said, and headed to Astrid’s, where she and Izzy lay on her bed packing a bong. “How was school,” mocked Izzy; “what did you learn?”
“There’s these refugees from Katrina.”
“God knows what percentile.”
When they laughed, he couldn’t tell if it was at the refugees or at him. “They can have our textbooks,” Astrid said. “We’re joining the Rainbow Gathering.”
“Then they can have mine too.”
She sat up and kissed him. “We didn’t think you’d come.”
“Why not,” he said, knowing none of them would be joining a thing.
His mood improved when Hank showed up with some ecstasy. Soon he could feel an intense, beautiful love for Astrid and everyone rolling across his shoulders. He apologized for going to school. “Let’s bet on when my folks realize I’ve dropped out,” he said, and Izzy bet next week and Hank October and Astrid never. The less you cared, the better you looked and the better you felt. He stared in the mirror at the bones lurking under his skin, trying to watch the concern dissolve away.
“I bet my eighteenth birthday,” he said, “when they learn that I’ve become ineligible for the Air Force.”
“I want go on a drive,” Izzy said, which sounded great, but Hank and Astrid only stared up from the bed.
“Get in,” he told Izzy, and aimed the two of them fast as ever toward the distant thunderheads. “You don’t love Astrid,” Izzy said while they raced across endless ranchland, “and I don’t love Hank. Let’s go to Bozeman.”
Afraid she was about to profess her love for him, Caidin said, “Bozeman?”
“Milo’s parents moved there when he died. I can’t find their number, so I figured we’ll just show up.”
Recalling her report of Juaco’s kiss — it had been amazing — he said, “How would you know who I don’t love?”
“Chill out; let’s have fun. Have you done salvia?”
She got a pipe out and packed it with what looked like parsley. “It’s legal,” she said; “it makes you high for thirty seconds.”
With a finger she covered the carb. He pulled smoke in and inhaled. The highway narrowed and then faded away. It was dark now, and he was climbing the outer wall of a skyscraper, high above an abyss. He’d nearly reached the top, but his fingers didn’t have much glue left. Soon he was gripping for dear life in that frigid wind. Across the glass, inside, stood his parents and all the people he’d ever called his friends. Cozily warm, they chatted together by a fire. “Let me in,” he cried, but only a few even turned to watch him run out of glue and fall.
He came to in a world upside down: water for grass, dirt for sky, a herd of cattle dangling. Izzy’s vomit fell up, and then he got it; he had flipped the Porsche.
They crawled out through the windows and phoned Hank. While they waited, Caidin scraped off the vehicle ID. “Do you think God saved us?” Izzy asked.
He couldn’t tell if the question was sarcastic. “I think God was trying to kill us,” he said, except somehow neither he nor Izzy had suffered a scratch.
The next day he borrowed Astrid’s Volvo and went to school to find there weren’t seats for him in his classes. Some teachers didn’t know him. Worse was when the teachers who did asked no questions about where he’d been.
“Hey,” said Jeff in the lunch line.
“Sorry for skipping so much school.”
“You think it harmed me?”
“Jeff, come on.”
“Come on what, be your friend so I can die in a wreck?”
“How’d you hear about my wreck?”
“You had a wreck?”
“You said you’d heard.”
“Was it the Porsche?”
“I didn’t wreck. Screw you.”
After school, instead of returning the Volvo to Astrid’s, he took it home. “Where’s your brother’s car?” said his father, back from Dallas.
“My girlfriend’s got it. This is her car.”
“That’s who you’ve been spending so much time with?”
“Yeah, I think I really like her.”
“Good for you, kiddo. Good for you.”
He erased Astrid’s voicemail without listening to it. The next day, hoping to put things back on track, he drove to school in her car again. It was too late for the Ivy League, but in Texas the top ten percent of each class got into UT. Probably too late for that too, but he could try. On a precalculus test he scored a ninety.
“You skipped that unit, cheater,” Adam said afterward.
“I’d never cheat,” Caidin said, his feelings hurt. You’re jealous of how hot girls like me, he thought, running a hand through his long hair.
“There’s a new hurricane.”
“Hadn’t heard.”
“I doubt your new friends watch the news.”
At home that afternoon his parents had the weather on. The storm was a category three, named Rita. “This isn’t some Ninth Ward shack,” his mom said, but the next morning Rita had strengthened to four and it was time to leave. By midday, as school closed early, the roads were gridlocked. Ten minutes and Caidin hadn’t gone half a mile. The drivers seemed like a parade of idiots for moving so slowly. He tried something new: at every intersection, if traffic was bumper-to-bumper in one direction, he chose the empty way. Soon he was far from his house, on a street he realized led past Milo Hux’s neighborhood.
Knowing that they had gone, Caidin could allow a conversation with the Huxes to play out in his mind. He could even turn onto their street and drive to their gate. It was all my fault, he was telling Mr. and Mrs. Hux when he saw a man — no, a boy, tall and slender, with toffee-colored arms — standing in their front yard.