Twisted (14 page)

work the dishwasher again.”

She runs off to the kitchen. Billy and I share a laugh. Then he

hands me the hundred-dollar bill. “Slip this into the register when your mom’s not looking, okay?”

It’s tough when you get to the point in your life—like we

have—when you’re able to help the parentals financially, but they’re too stubborn to accept.

“Sure thing.”

he taps the counter. “Okay, four o’clock, I’ll pick you up. Be

ready. And don’t wear any power suit or shit like that—this is a

strictly jeans and sneaks kind of mission.”

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That’s what I’d planned on. But still I have to ask, “Why? What

are we gonna to do?”

he shakes his head at me. “You’ve been gone too long, Katie-

girl. What else would we do? We’re goin’ womping.”

Right. Silly me. Of course we are.

Billy leans over the counter and kisses my cheek quickly.

“Later.”

Then he grabs his take-out and walks out the door.

have you ever gone for a ride in your car, after your last final exam or the beginning of a long weekend from work? And the road’s

wide open, your sunglasses are on, and your favorite song is blaring out of the speakers?

Good. Then you know just what this feels like.

Womping.

how to explain it? I’m sure there’re various names for it,

depending on where you live, but here, that’s what we call it. It’s like mountain climbing . . . only . . . with a car. Or a truck. Or any other automobile with four-wheel drive.

The goal is to scale a hill, the steepest you can find, and get

as vertical as you can, as fast as you can,
without
flipping car. It’s fun—in a stupid, dangerous, adrenaline-junkie kind of way.

Don’t worry about my delicate condition. Billy’s truck is an

off-road vehicle with safety harnesses instead of seatbelts. So even if we flip? I’m not going anywhere.

We’re riding out to the hills right now, full speed ahead. Ohio

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isn’t exactly known for its hilly terrain, but there are a few spots where these abound. Lucky for us, Greenville is near them.

The windows are open, the sun is bright, and it’s a comfort-

able seventy degrees. I yell above the sound of the stereo, “So . . .

another new car?”

Billy smiles and rubs his hand lovingly across the dash. “Yep.

And this baby’s unpolluted by my cousin’s evil handiwork.”

I roll my eyes. I definitely need to check out Billy’s financial

portfolio. The wind whips my hair around my face. I push it back

and yell again, “Don’t be that guy.”

“What guy?’

“The guy that has a different car for every day of the month.

Spend your money on more practical things.”

he shrugs. “I told Amelia I’d buy her a house. As long as she

doesn’t tell Delores where it is.”

Billy and Delores love to rag on each other.

The song on the radio changes, and Billy turns it up to maxi-

mum volume. he looks at me. And he’s smiling.

We both are.

Because, once upon a time, it was our song. Not in a romantic

way. In a teenager, rebel-without-a-cause kind of way. It was our

anthem; our
Thunder Road
.

Alabama sings about getting out of a small town, beating the

odds, living for love. We belt out the lyrics together.

It’s great. It’s perfect.

Billy pushes the gas pedal to the floor, leaving a cloud of dust

behind us, and I remember how it feels to be sixteen again. When

life was easy, and the most pressing matter was where we could

hang out on a Friday night.

They say youth is wasted on the young—and they’re right.

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But it’s not the youths’ fault. No matter how often they’re told to appreciate the days they’re living, they just can’t.

Because they have nothing to compare it to. It’s only later,

when it’s too late—when there’re bills to pay and deadlines to

make—that they realize how sweet, how innocent and precious,

those moments were.

The singer croons about Thunderbirds, and driving all night,

and living your own life. Billy’s first car was a Thunderbird. You got a glimpse of it in New York, remember? It was a junker when he

bought it, but he fixed it up himself on weekends and during the

many days he blew off school.

I lost my virginity in its backseat. Prom weekend. Yes—I’m a

statistic. At the time, I thought it was the epitome of romance, the peak of perfection.

But—again—I didn’t have anything else to compare it to.

Billy loved that car. And I’d bet my business degree he’s still got it in his garage in LA.

Still singing, I hold on to the harness straps with both hands as

Billy spins the car into a 360-degree turn. It’s a terrific maneuver.

You floor the gas pedal, jerk the steering wheel, and pull up on the emergency break. It’s the best way to do a donut—as long as the

transmission doesn’t drop out the bottom of your car or anything.

Dust billows up from the ground, and dirt scatters across

the windshield. It’s always been this way with us. Comfortable.

Uncomplicated. Well—at least when we were here in Greenville,

it was.

As I went through college and business school, we drifted.

Became less Bonnie and Clyde and more Wendy and Peter Pan.

But out here, when it was just the two of us and the rest of the

world didn’t exist, we could be those kids again. Kids who wanted

the same things, who dreamed the same dreams.

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The wheels spin and Billy peels out across an unpaved, flat

piece of land. And it feels like we’re flying. Like I’m free. Not a care in the world.

And the best part? For the first time in almost four days, I don’t think about Drew Evans at all.

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By the time we make it back to Billy’s motel room, it’s dark.

We stumble through the door—tired and dusty and laugh-

ing. I plop down on the couch while Billy picks up a piece of paper from the kitchenette counter.

“Where’s Evay?”

he holds up the note. “She took a car back to LA. She said the

unprocessed air was invading her pores.”

“You don’t look too broken up about it.”

he gets two beers from the fridge and shrugs. “There’s more

where she came from. No shit off my shoe.”

Billy picks up the guitar lying across the coffee table and strums a few chords. Then he reaches under the cushion and takes out a

clear plastic baggie. he tosses it to me. “You still roll the best joints this side of the Mississippi—or has the establishment completely

assimilated you into the collective?”

I smirk and pick up the bag. Rolling a good joint takes concen-

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tration. Use too much weed and it’s just wasteful—too little and

you defeat the purpose.

It’s a relaxing process. Like knitting.

I lick the edge of the paper and smooth it down. Then I pass

it to Billy.

he looks at it admiringly. “You’re an artist.”

he puts the joint between his lips and flips open his Zippo.

But before the flame touches the tip, I snap the metal cap closed.

“Don’t. I could get a contact high.”

“So?”

I sigh. And look Billy straight in the face. “I’m pregnant.”

his eyes go wide. And the joint falls from his lips.

“No shit?”

I shake my head. “No shit, Billy.”

his turns forward, staring at the table. he doesn’t say anything

for several moments, so I fill the dead air.

“Drew doesn’t want it. he told me to have an abortion.”

The words come out detached. Flat. Because I still can’t believe

they’re true.

Billy turns back to me and hisses, “What?”

I nod. And fill him in on the more sordid details of my depar-

ture from New York. By the time I’m finished, he’s on his feet,

pissed off and pacing. he mumbles, “That motherfucker owes me

a gun.”

“What?”

he waves me off. “Nothing.” Then he sits down and pushes a

hand through his hair. “I knew he was an asshole—I fucking
knew
it. I really didn’t take him for a Garrett Buckler, though.”

Every town has two sides of the tracks—the good side and

the not-so-good side. Garrett Buckler came from the good side of

Greenville, with its automatic sprinklers and stucco-sided McMan-

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sions. he was a senior, our sophomore year in high school. And

from the first day of school that year, Garrett was focused on one thing: Dee Dee Warren.

Billy hated him on sight. he’s always been distrustful of people

with money—money they didn’t earn themselves. And Garrett was

no exception. But Delores blew Billy off. Told him he was being

ridiculous. Paranoid. Said she wanted to give Garrett a chance.

So she did. She also gave him her virginity.

And four weeks later, behind the bleachers at school, Delores

told Garrett she was pregnant. Apparently we Greenville women

are quite the Fertile Myrtles.

Don’t spit on us—you might knock us up.

And yes, despite all the sex education Amelia gave us, it still

happened. Because—here’s the thing a lot of people forget about

teenagers—sometimes they just do stupid things. Not because

they don’t have the education or resources, but because they’re too damn young to really understand that actions have consequences.

Life-changing ones.

Anyway, as you can imagine, Delores was terrified. But like any

moon-eyed, romantic, adolescent girl, she figured Garrett would

be there for her. That they’d get through whatever was coming

together.

She was wrong. he told her to fuck off. he accused her of try-

ing to trap him—said he didn’t believe that the kid was even his.

history’s a lot like shampoo that way—rinse, repeat, and

repeat again.

Delores was crushed. And Billy . . . Billy was fucking furi-

ous. I was with him the day he stole a white Camaro from the

Walgreen’s parking lot. I followed him in the Thunderbird to a

chop shop in Cleveland, where he got paid three hundred dol-

lars for it.

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Just enough to pay for the abortion.

We could’ve gone to Amelia, but Delores was just too ashamed.

So we went to the clinic ourselves. And I held Delores’s hand the

whole time.

Afterward, Billy dropped us off at my house. Then he went

looking for Garrett Buckler. When he found him, Billy broke his

arm and fractured his jaw. And he told him if he ever breathed a

word about Delores to anyone, he’d come back and break his other

four appendages—including the one between his legs.

To this day, it’s the best-kept secret in Greenville.

“You know what? Fuck him. You make good cash, so you sure

as shit don’t need his money. And as for the whole dad thing? Overrated. You had a father for like, five minutes . . . me and my cousin never did. And the three of us turned out great.”

he rethinks that statement.

“Okay—maybe not Delores. But still—two out of three ain’t

bad. We could—”

I cut him off. “I think I’m gonna get an abortion, Billy.”

he goes silent. Totally. Utterly.

Completely.

But his shock and disappointment pound loudly—like a big

bass drum.

Or maybe that’s just my own guilt.

Remember about twenty years ago, when that Susan Smith

lady drowned her two children, because her boyfriend didn’t want

a woman with kids? Like the rest of the country, I thought she

should’ve been strung up by her fingertips and had the skin scraped off her body with a cheese grater.

I mean, what kind of woman does that? What kind of woman

chooses a man over her own flesh and blood?

A weak one.

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And that’s a characteristic I’ve already admitted to, remember?

It’s been in my mind for a while now—like a cobweb that’s

clinging to a corner but you walk on past because you just don’t

have the time to deal with it.

I’m a businesswoman, first and foremost. I’m analytical.

Practical.

If one of my investments isn’t turning out the way I thought it

would? I get rid of it. Cut my losses. Simple mathematics—if you

take the emotion out of it, it’s a no brainer.

I know. I know what you’re thinking.
But what about that little
boy you pictured? That beautiful, perfect boy with dark hair and the
smile you love?

The truth is, there is no little boy. Not yet. Right now, it’s nothing more than a cluster of dividing cells. A mistake that’s standing in the way of me and the life I was supposed to have.

I don’t know if Drew and I can ever get back to where we

were—but I know giving birth to a child he obviously wants noth-

ing to do with isn’t going to win me any points. And it would make everything so much easier.

Like getting my eyebrows waxed. A simple procedure for a life-