author's note: I love, love, loved Boulder, Co. Like a newer San Luis or Santa Cruz but surrounded by mountains.
“You mean metaphorically right? Because of the altitude?” I had heard all the lame jokes about the mile-high city, but I wasn’t sure Devyn joked. He teased, he picked on and he bullied but I was pretty certain that was where his social skills ended. Like Andrew, he was limited in how he could interact with people.
Devyn looked at me with this confused look on his face as he pulled off the main road and started going towards the mountains. “Metaphorically mean—”
“I know what metaphorically means, pretty girl. Do you think I’m stupid?” he asked it honestly, not in a way where is was rhetorical. Which was hard because that meant I was expected to answer… but, logically, if Devyn didn’t always answer my questions then I didn’t always have to answer his. Which was good because the truth was I didn’t think he was very smart, he didn’t try very hard in school, he never turned in homework from what I saw. He only did enough to pass the class and get on to the next one.
“So,” I attempted to change the subject, “when you say high what do you mean?”
“Intoxicated, lit, stoned, wrecked, doped up,” he rattled off a few words with the swoosh of his hands.
“Oh,” it came out weak and terrified, probably because I was weak and terrified. I had smoked a cigarette, that was a big step for me but in six years that would also be legal for me. Smoking I was okay with, something harder… “What, uhm, are we smoking?”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head, “Pretty girl you need to learn to relax, chill out a little bit, go with the flow.”
Go with the flow? I bit down on my lip and watched the trees fly by. I tried to get glimpses of the signs at they went by but between the the car going faster than the speed limit and my nervouseness I wasn’t able to process the clumps of letters.
“Shouldn’t— shouldn’t you slow down? You don’t want to be pulled over. I mean, that would really suck,” I tried to suggest it calmly, like it was just a thought and not a plea so that I didn’t go insane.
“You scared we’re gonna get pulled over, PG?” The new name startled me—PG, pretty girl—but not enough to get me off track. I had been meaning to ask him since he took us to the parking lot off of school campus.
“Well, it’s just you’re fifteen,” I pointed out, “I don’t want you to get pulled over because I’m pretty sure we’ll both be arrested and calling my parents from the police station is not the kind of attention that I was looking for.
Devyn laughed. I realized that so far everytime he had laughed in my presence he had been laughing at me. It didn’t make me feel inferior like it should have, I just felt like that was the only way Devyn laughed. He had been the sixth grader beating up kids on the playground, laughing. If he ever ate a popsicle he probably didn’t even read the joke on the stick.
“I’m sixteen,” he said, running a hand through the greasy curls that were usually hidden underneath the ugly grey beanie.
“Sixteen… but you’re a sophomore.” It dawned on me… Devyn had been held back. This wasn’t such an epiphany, it was no eureka moment.
“Why are you so shocked?” he asked.
I didn’t really want to say it. I knew it was rude and that it meant I was thinking less of him and we were in the middle of nowhere somewhere near Boulder but he could very easily take me out of the car injure or kill me and have a million different choices on where to hide the body.
“I just figured that you would drop out once you were sixteen,” I said quickly, knowing he would pester the answer out of me. If I was lucky he would kill me and hide the body, if he injured and ditched me it would be a much more painful death, one that I wasn’t looking forward too.
What I had said seemed to have taken him aback just a little, not enough to get much of a reaction beyond a small flinch in his face and white knuckles but it was some reaction.
“Why’s that?”
“You just… you just don’t seem to care,” I said heefully.
“So you just think I’m a lazy jackass?”
“No, I mean—” I stopped myself, because that was exactly what I meant.
“Look, I have to stay in school. I’ll get in to more trouble than I already do and then no foster family will take me in.” Foster family? Things were starting to make more sense. It was probably predjudice of me or something to think that Devyn’s rebeliousness made more sense because of his family background but… wasn’t I doing the same thing? Not calling home when Lyle took me out for frozen yogurt, the cigarette, whatever was about to happen when we reached or destination, which was probably Utah or Wyoming.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it to be mean, I just assumed.”
He smiled snidely, “Don’t assume anything about me.” He made a sharp turn that caused me to crash in to the window, the flesh of my shoulder dug painfully into the raised lock mechanism. I looked at his face set in a grim line, he had probably done it on purpose. I didn’t say anything, once again using the fact that were in the middle of nowhere to strengthen my self-control. I rubbed the pain out of my shoulder, it was probably going to be a pretty ugly bruise by tomorrow morning.
We were on a dirt road now and the springs in his car weren’t great, with every jostle of the road we moved. I bit my tongue more then once and tasted blood before he pulled up to a small leveled off piece of road. It looked kind of like a cul-de-sac except instead of lined with houses it was lined with trees.
word count: 1034
total: 21, 808
I got all caught up. It's great! Post more please.
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