Writing Exercise #2- Jessica Ste. Croix

He’s doing that thing again. Not giving up, as he says. I’m not sure why but I’ve come to the point where I don’t ask questions. I just tell him to get over it. I’m that kind of friend. Tucker understands this, I guess, because he just drives on when I say, “You need help my friend.” He swings the wheel to the right and the tires skid in the dirt as we fly around yet another corner. He ignores my groaning and I’m sure he sees me roll my eyes out of the corner of his, and he ignores this too. At the next corner, he turns the wheel again to the right, one arm crossing over the other. His chin is almost touching the leather arc of it. Then the two red lights come into view and he pushes the gas down even harder and shoves his chest up even closer to the dashboard. I reach over and turn the radio knob to “on” and try to find a nice classical station. The best I can do is jazz. “Would you stop?” he says, not letting his eyes leave the road or the two red eyes he’s following. “Calm down.” “I am calm,” he snaps, which makes me laugh and turn the radio up a little louder. “No, you’re fucking insane.” He’s quiet for a few seconds and then says, “This won’t take long.” “I’m hungry.” We had been on our way to Cheers to eat potato skins and chicken fingers with honey mustard. It was my choice- a celebration of my finishing three years of college. And then there she was. He saw her car in the parking lot of Archie’s Ice Cream- a common hang out for those in our town who had finished high school and not gone on to college, but had rather gone on to keep the same jobs they had before and drive around town at night for the sake of driving around. It was what they did, and apparently, now she was one of them. Needless to say, our dinner was temporarily postponed, and he began following her, sure that he knew what she was up to. Like it was any of his business. Something in the back seat falls over and I look back but can’t see what it was, and as I turn my head back I glance at the speedometer. Almost seventy on a dirt road. “You’re going to kill us,” I say. “I love you, you know. You should know that before we die or you end up in prison.” “What?” “Nothing.” “You love me how? Like, love love? Like you’re in love with me?” “No, you dumbass.” Because I’ve been Tucker’s friend since before his puppy love phase with Michelle, then through it, then after when she got slightly bored of him, then even after that when she left him, and even now when he can’t seem to let it go, I come along. I sit in the passenger seat with my feet on the dashboard and my sweatshirt hood covering my head and pretend like I support this. He gets closer to her tail and she taps the breaks, the red lights pulsing three times, but he doesn’t slow down. I think she must know it’s him. Us. Our own headlights are reflecting bright white off the silver bumper. “Do you have your fucking high beams on?” I yell, slapping his arm. He waves me off like he’s swatting a fly. “You know where she’s going right?” he says, as if in response to my question. “Who cares?” “That fuck-head’s house.” “Who cares?” I say again. “He gives her drugs. I’m not letting her mess up again.” “It’s not up to you.” I say, and then add quickly, “Anymore,” even though I never thought it was. He pulls the lever to flash his lights and then lets it go, the high beams still on, a little blue picture of a bulb illuminated on the dash. Michelle slows down and starts pulling over to the side of the road and Tucker slides past her and slams on the breaks. He spins the wheel and the car skids and stops perpendicular to the road. Our front bumper nudges the ferns at the edge of the road just before the bank rises into a hill. My hands planted on the dashboard, I look out at the illuminated grass and weeds that line these back roads. I half-expect to see a crazed look in Tucker’s eyes but when I turn he’s just looking down in to his lap, breathing hard. He’s making two fists and pressing his knuckles together, concentrating on some immaterial thing. “Are you happy now? Are we done?” I say. “Yeah. One second.” He opens the door and steps out onto the dirt. At the same time I hear Michelle’s shrieking, something I can’t say I’ve missed. She doesn’t seem to be yelling any particular words, just making noise. She leaves her car door open and walks to the edge of the road to meet him. I open my door and walk to the side of the road opposite them. Michelle watches me and I stop underneath a streetlight and turn my back to them to look out into the woods. I wonder if she feels safer knowing that I’m there and that, no matter how good a friend Tucker is, I won’t let him hurt her. Whether she thinks this is because I care about her, or because I don’t want my friend to get arrested, it doesn’t matter. I hear them yelling back and forth as I walk down the road a little so as not to interrupt them. When I get to the next streetlight, I bend down and pick up a rock from the road. Still half-bent, I throw it side-arm up at the dim light. It barely nicks the metal framing and continues on into the night. I throw another. It dings the curving arm of the post and falls back down, hitting the dirt with a thud and rolling off into a ditch. It has finally stopped raining for the first time in almost two weeks and the water that’s been running down the roads has left a deposit of larger stones in the middle of the road. I keep picking them up and throwing them, listening to Tucker curse about his ex-girlfriend’s new friends and new habits. I grab a nice round rock with a white strip of quartz in it and hurl it up at the light. It hits the bulb dead center and cracks it, then falls back down to the ground. I duck out of the way and stand watching the light flicker out. The arguing stops for a few moments and then resumes. I leave the dead light and walk back to the two cars, seeing Michelle between them with her arms crossed over her chest. Tucker isn’t in sight, but when I get closer he comes into view at the edge of the road, crouched down in the grass, vomiting. Michelle gets back into her car, and I shrug, walking over and putting a hand on Tucker’s back. Her car dips down into the ditch as she tries to pass his car, grazing and leaving a long silver line in the green paint.