“I’ll squash you like a watermelon!” Big Jason yells.
In the rearview mirror, Marion’s face is growing red. He turns around, looking dangerous. “If you’re going to sit there and pretend this doesn’t always fucking happen then I will crush your skulls.”
“Control,” shrieks Miss Rosa. Her shoulders are hunched. She’s anticipating mayhem. “We push. Like always.” She adjusts her glasses. “Together. Banzai, you press pedals.”
I look past Marion at the controls. “But I don’t know stick shift. Why don’t I help push? I’m like a foot taller than you anyway.”
Miss Rosa rolls the sleeve of her turtleneck up over her bicep, then flexes—her flabby arm popping into a veiny muscle. It’s amazing. “You are delicate and dainty, Banzai.” She winks at me. “The way you help is for to turn the ignition. You are not a fighter.”
“But I’m in NVCG—”
“I know why you are here really.” Miss Rosa nods seriously. “And it is for Davey.”
I blush.
“Jayse.” Miss Rosa makes that gurgling sound. “Delicate flower.” She reaches for me, then slaps her own hand. “No touching.”
I laugh. No one’s ever called me delicate before. Most of the time I go around feeling like an old man on roller skates. I guess it comes from being the clumsy, food-on-the-face sidekick of the most beautiful girl in school. Or from having a dad who’s got aprons more feminine looking than anything in my own closet.
“Fine,” I say, unable to hide the sound of my smile. “I’ll stay put.” Delicate. I wonder if Davey thinks I’m delicate. The rest of them shuffle off and I lower myself delicately into the driver’s seat, just to see how it feels. My feet are dangling in front.
“We’ll get her to pick up speed and once you’re moving, you turn the ignition,” Marion says, popping his head back in. “Go ahead and put it into neutral.”
“What about you guys?”
“We got a system.”
The emergency door at the back of the bus is all Plexiglas, with a handle near it. In the rearview mirror, I can see them pack in side by side to brace against the bumper. Davey is right up front—pushing with his shoulder, holding his bad hand to his chest. Miss Rosa has disappeared. She’s so small she must have her hands on the backs of someone’s knees.
Davey’s face is serious and strained, and I can feel the bus start to move. He’s probably helping just as much as any of them. He’s probably just as strong, just as powerful and dangerous. He could fight any of these guys, not that he’d ever want to. And once again, there’s something romantic about that. The fact that he’s gentle and careful, even though he could be lots of things.
BLOOD
Usually Dom’s idea of “personal space” entails texting me every five seconds and sitting very close to me on the couch but not so close that our bodies are touching (“What! I’ve given you a whole cushion. It’s not like your tushy is very large, Pickle, you don’t need a whole love seat, don’tcha know.”) So it’s surprising he hasn’t bombarded me once over the course of Miss Rosa’s entire field trip. Or really even tried to talk to me since our fight, come to think of it.
Anyway, I’m starting to feel sort of guilty about giving him the silent treatment. So on the way back from Maze of Terror, I text him saying I’m out with NVCG, finding closure “on my own terms” (he’ll like that)—and also, I’m sorry for not telling him sooner about NVCG, but I was mad at him about our fight because I’m a teenager and “sometimes I have hormones” (he’ll understand that, too)—and can I please stay out past eight o’clock tonight—please? Maybe even ten thirty?
To: Dom. (Mobile):
Ice cream+emotional debrief with my SUPPORT GROUP 2 discuss healthier coping strategies!! J
Really I just want to hang out with Davey.
Dom (Mobile) Received @ 5:30 PM :
THANKYOUFORTELLINGMEIHAVEBEENSOWORR
Dom (Mobile) txt cont.
IEDBUTWANTEDTOGIVEYOUSPACEYESTOICEC
Dom (Mobile) txt cont.
REAMITRUSTYOUSWEETHEARTTAKEYOURTIME
Dom (Mobile) txt cont.
XOXOXOXDOMMY
After “conquering” the maze, Davey and I head back to his place to debrief about what we’ve learned. We pull onto the gravel and jump out, and sure enough, there’s Marco Baseball, basking in the fading sun. He hears us trudging over and lifts his head off his paws—his top lip stuck behind his crooked bottom teeth—then raises his eyebrows at my phone, which has started buzzing again. Apparently Dom has not finished what he set out to say.
Dom (Mobile) Received @ 5:40 PM
ALSOIMADEUSBRATWURST!!!SOIWILLPUTYO
Dom (Mobile) txt cont.
URSINTHEFRIDGE?L
“Did your dad just send you six texts in a row?” Davey asks, handing me a beer.
“No spaces still, but he’s learning to use punctuation.” I tell Dom “yes please” about the brat, then turn off my phone and stuff it in my backpack.
“That’s progress.” He wraps a scarf around my neck. “My mom refuses to text at all.”
“Cheers,” I say, and our full beer cans make the dull sound of bumping fists. I take a sip and wonder how many mouthfuls will make me drunk—and will I be able to notice? I’m not exactly an experienced party animal. The only other alcohol I’ve ever had was a couple of those tiny rum bottles, which I split with Ruth one night after we discovered them in the cabinet next to where her mom keeps the board games. I threw up after the first sip but that probably would have happened anyway because earlier I’d eaten a whole thing of cookie dough.
“So why don’t you tell me about your hand now?” I ask. I’ve been staring at his stitches for the past fifteen minutes, trying to think of a smooth, conspiratorial way to put this. But like all my questions, it comes out vomitous.
Davey sort of laughs—at my tone maybe, or at the very idea of telling me, I don’t know. “It’s not a very good story.”
“I don’t care.” I imagine him waving his men over some kind of mountain and catching sloppy sniper fire like a touchdown pass—or meeting some sadistic Afghanistani colonel and having to sacrifice his finger as ransom for a prisoner of war. “I won’t tell,” I add. I pinch my thumb and pointer finger together and run them across my lips. “Zzzzp!”
Davey squints at me. “What was that?”
“I was, uh, making a zipping noise.” I take a sip of Beast. “You know, like ‘zip the lips’ . . . or,‘I promise I won’t tell’?” I reach for his good hand and try to finagle a pinkie swear through our mittens.
He smiles, breathes. “Okay. So, we were in the mountains, right? I’d just found out about Ruth and they weren’t going to let me come back. They said we had a war on our hands. ‘Sorry for your loss, son.’ There were probably other steps I could have taken, I don’t know, but I’d heard of other guys doing it.”
I put down my beer and pull my arms into my coat for warmth. It’s getting colder by the second. “Doing what?”
Davey blinks at me. “Shooting yourself, taking off a part of yourself. Hanging up your hat, or whatever . . . Punching out permanently.” He rubs his palms on his knees. “I’m not going back to the army because they won’t take me, okay? I got dishonorably discharged. I shot off my own finger. My parents both think I’m a lunatic fuckup.” He takes a long sip. “The end.”
I try to picture Davey taking aim at his own hand. Did he use a pistol or a shotgun-type thing? A bayonet? How did he protect the other fingers? Did he flatten his hand against a rock? Did pieces of the rock fly up and kill somebody? Did the finger only come off halfway, hanging from some skin and flesh, forcing him to yank it off like a Band-Aid? I have so many inappropriate questions.