Pray To Stay Dead (2 page)

“
Hello, Daniel,” she said, and his face grew hot. The dismissive tone of her voice said it all, and as he stepped past her and toward the back of the van, he wondered if she’d rolled her eyes. He was used to it. The manner with which she treated him was dependent upon how many of her friends were around. If it was just the two of them, she treated him like a person, an equal. If the whole gang was in tow, well, he merited only condescension and distance or outright indifference.

He’d known Kimberly since he was five, when she’d sleep over along with Colleen’s other friends. Most of them came and went, but she remained, year after year. She was only a year older than he, and their bodies had begun to mature at roughly the same time. He’d watched her fill out her pajamas over the course of countless sleepovers, and on two flushed occasions he’d seen her naked.

When he was eleven, he’d awakened in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. His business complete, he’d opened the bathroom door and stepped into the hall, and there she was, wearing only her cotton undies and a sleepy-eyed look of surprise, her hair a mess. She’d covered her small breasts, and eased past him into the bathroom, shutting the door and locking it. Three years later, déjà vu: middle of the night, same hall, same bathroom. Only her breasts were larger, and she wore nothing at all. She didn’t cover herself that time. A Mona Lisa smile on her lips, she had allowed his eyes to take in every inch.

Though both incidents had seemed accidental, he came to believe otherwise. For whatever reason, either to throw him a bone or simply to tease and torment or possibly to stroke her own ego, she’d elected to provide him with years of masturbatory fuel.

Making matters worse, they’d kissed once, not even a year ago. The party had been dim and loud, and they’d been drunk and high and rubbing against one another while, on the stereo, Arthur Brown bade them to burn. He was sure that the kiss had meant nothing to her, that it had been no different from the time she’d allowed him to stare at her tits, just as serendipitous, just as empty, but that was fine. When it came to Kimberly, he’d apparently take what he could get.

“
How’s Sunny?” Kimberly asked him as he pressed his duffel bag into the back of the van, atop everyone else’s luggage.

“
She’s doing fine.” It was a load. His girlfriend for the past seven months was drinking too much, and when she wasn’t drinking she was dropping acid and screaming at the spiders on her arms or some shit, and the wall that had always existed between them was growing a little thicker each day.

He saw no reason to tell Kimberly any of that.

“
She still coming?”

“
She’s meeting us sometime tomorrow, I think.”

“
All right.”

“
Yeah.”

“
Listen,” she began, and he knew what was coming. It had to, they both knew it, but it was fine—at least she was talking to him with the spurs off. “You doing okay?”

“
What, you mean because of my mom?”

“
Yeah, you know...”

“
Yeah, I’m doing just fine, thanks.”

“
Okay, that’s good.” She shuffled her feet, looking down, to the left, to the right—pretty much anywhere if it meant she didn’t have to hold his gaze for more than three seconds.

“
What?” He asked.

“
What?” She answered.

“
You want to tell me something,” Daniel said. “So tell me.”

“
You smell like grass.”

“
I know,” he said.

“
You got any more?”

“
A little, but it’s shit. I got it from Greg.”

“
Shit.”

“
That’s all he sells. Doesn’t matter. We can get some more. You were saying?”

She looked over at Guy and Colleen, who stood talking, their faces close. Guy’s hand was on Colleen’s ass, pressing her to him.

“
Richard is coming,” She said. “We’re going to pick him up.”

“
I know.”

“
I know you know, it’s just that…”

“
What?”

“
I don’t, you know…?”

“
No,” he said. His face was still hot, though for different reasons. “I don’t think I do.”

“
Richard and I are pretty serious, okay?”

“
That’s great. Sunny and I are pretty serious, too. It happens sometimes when you put boys and girls together.”

“
I just didn’t want you to get jealous. I know how you feel and—”

“
I don’t think you do, Kim, but everything’s fine,” he said. “Okay?”

“
Okay.”

He left her standing at the rear of the van and slid himself across the back seat. Crap or not, he was feeling Greg’s cheap grass. He leaned back and closed his eyes. The van rocked as the others climbed into it.

“
Look at this,” Guy said. “You didn’t save any for me, you dickhead?”

“
I got a little more,” Daniel said, indicating the back of the van with his thumb.

“
But it’s shit,” Kimberly said. Daniel didn’t open his eyes, but he could tell from the sound of her voice that she was sitting on the seat in front of him.

“
He get it from Greg?” Guy asked.

“
You know it,” Kimberly said.

By the time they picked up Richard, Daniel was having trouble staying awake. He nodded off, opened his eyes. Guy drove, laughing about something with Colleen. Bowie was on the radio, and Kimberly was making out with Richard. “Diamond Dogs” gave way to “Sweet Thing”—one of guy’s 8-track tapes, then, not the radio, and when the tape was over, Colleen popped it out and pressed in Alice Cooper.

They drove north, exchanging civilization for dense redwood forest, laughing and talking and listening to one tape after another, never tuning in to the radio to hear the weather or to listen to the Top 40 or to check in on the general state of world affairs.

Daniel woke up at some point and rolled a fat one from the dwindling stash of Greg’s shitty grass in his bag, which they passed around. Only the front seat—Colleen and Guy—didn’t partake, until the joint was mostly spent, anyway. Colleen took it from Kimberly and, closing her eyes, filled her lungs. She coughed, of course, and everyone laughed.

Less than an hour later they arrived at their first stop on the road to three snow- and sex-filled days in Tahoe, a campsite in Sutter Creek, not far from Sacramento. Kimberly had talked it up, and it was as nice as she’d promised, and empty. Not a soul in sight.

They cooked hot dogs over an open fire, tried to skinny dip in the river but quit at about ankle level due to the cold (Daniel sat it out, opting to remain at the campsite and read a dog-eared Frederik Pohl paperback), and when the sky darkened they fed the fire, hastily pitched three small tents, and retired.

Mercifully, Colleen had not yet started her period, so there was love, slow and steady and ever so quiet. Kimberly and Richard went at it like animals, grunting and panting and, in the end, laughing like maniacs. Daniel popped a few downers, even though he didn’t really need them, and passed out.

They slept in and spent the next day lazing about. Kimberly and Richard walked into the woods and did not return for several hours. Colleen and Daniel argued while Guy silently watched, opening and closing his mouth at certain intervals, as if he’d had something to add but figured it just wasn’t worth it. Daniel stomped away before long, and Colleen lay in Guy’s arms staring up at the sky through the trees.

That night, they laughed around the campfire, and when the sound of gunfire popped in the distance, Kimberly asked when deer season opened. None of them knew. Later, pressed close to one another in their tent, Colleen and Guy tried to have sex.

“
What?” Guy asked, his cock hard, pressed to her stomach.

“
I can’t sop thinking about her tonight,” Colleen said, feeling around for the flashlight.

“
Oh, jeeze,” Guy said, and Colleen wasn’t sure if he sounded sympathetic or annoyed. His dick certainly felt pissed off.

“
I was fine last night,” she said, finding the flashlight and clicking it on, illuminating the red interior of the tent. “Tonight I just keep seeing her face.”

“
Oh, hon,” he said, holding her close, any trace of annoyance gone from his voice, his cock softening between them.

They talked for a little while and she fell asleep with the flashlight on.

The following morning, they were on the road by nine. Daniel was in a groggy daze, and by nine-thirty he was asleep again. They didn’t tune in to the radio for several hours, by which point the world was already falling apart.

Two

They came upon a half-red heap on the roadside. Colleen realized it was a deer, saw the glistening red knot bulging from its mouth, and looked away.

“
Oh, God!” Kimberly said.

“
Poor thing,” Colleen replied.

“
It’s
alive,
” Kimberly said, twisting in her seat. Still asleep, Daniel slumped against the window, his head tipped forward, his face entirely obscured by his hair.

“
That’s not possible,” Richard said.

“
He’s right,” Colleen said. “Its guts were hanging out of its mouth.”

“
Uh, not its guts,” Daniel said, looking up and clearing his throat. He sounded amused. “That’s not really possible. Maybe its stomach or something, but not its guts.”

“
Oh, who cares?” Colleen said. “You know what I mean.”

“
Guts are probably hanging out of its ass,” he added, as if he hadn’t heard her. He looked at Kimberly. She covered her mouth with her hand and watched as the deer disappeared from sight. “Kim, forget about it.”

“
I saw its legs moving. I’m telling you, I did,” Kimberly said, looking at Colleen. “Come on, Brock, we have to do something.”

Daniel shrugged. “Whatever.”

Richard put his arm around her. “It looked dead to me,” he said.

Kimberly looked like she was about to cry.

Guy moved the van onto the side of the road and brought it to a halt. “It was pretty messed up,” he said, looking back at Kimberly. “I think it’s dead, too, but if you think you saw it moving, I’ll check it out, okay?”

Kimberly nodded.

Guy hopped out . He went to the back of the van, opened the doors, and, after a few seconds of rummaging, removed the tire iron from the spare tire well. They watched him walk in the direction of the fallen deer. Daniel grunted something, stirred, and went right back to sleeping.

“
Damn.” The deer was alive. God help him, he had no idea how the hell it could be, but it was.

The large doe had surely been struck, and by something big; its midsection was crushed and twisted almost entirely around, its hindquarters mashed flat. A dozen angles of pink ribs splayed open its torso. Its guts were indeed hanging from its ass. They were strewn across the ground behind the animal’s broken hind legs, speckled with dirt. Pine needles clung to them, flies buzzed, and the air reeked of scat. The creature’s front legs worked, the hooves digging into the dirt. Its head lolled. Its jaw worked as if it were trying to swallow whatever it was that bulged from its mouth. Its eyes slowly rolled in their sockets.

“
Ugh,” he said, slamming the tire-iron into its skull until its forelegs stopped moving.

Back at the van’s open rear, he wiped the tire-iron clean with an oil-stained rag.

“
It was alive?” Kimberly asked.

He nodded once and tossed the rag into the ditch. “Poor thing was damned tough.”

Kimberly watched him put the tire iron away. “Thank you,” she said.

Guy closed the doors.

As he slid into the van, Richard opened the side door and hopped out. “I gotta go,” he said, and walked toward the edge of the road.

Daniel sat up, jerked his hair from his face, and blinked. “Piss break?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“
Sure,” Guy said. They got out.

Richard peed onto the crumbling base of a fallen redwood, making a paste of the dust. He wanted to be someplace else. He didn’t like Kimberly’s friends and they didn’t like him. They thought he was an idiot and he guessed they weren’t totally unjustified in this opinion. They talked politics and literature and movies, things about which he knew little and cared less, so there Richard sat like a sack of potatoes waiting for it to break.

Sometimes when they were all around, Kim would ask him for his two cents, trying to make him a part of things, and if he was lucky he’d be able to parrot something she’d said to him earlier. It always seemed like they could tell. They made him feel dumb. And things weren’t much different when it was just the two of them. He tried to keep up, tried to pretend to care about the things that turned Kimberly on, statistics and movements, but he couldn’t—he just wasn’t wired that way.

It was all made more rough by the recent realization that he didn’t love her. He loved fucking her, for sure, and he liked her company when they were just hanging out, getting high or talking small. He didn’t like having to fake it, having to play the quiet type, but he did it if he had to, and he didn’t want to do it anymore.