Part two
He awoke six hours later. The summer sun was already high in the sky and he could hear the dog scratching at his door.
He stumbled out of bed, feeling the full extent of the shoulder injury sustained the night before. He slowly walked to the door and turned the knob. The dog bolted in and moved around the room. Going down the stairs, he realized he couldn’t have slept more than five hours, a record low for the summer. His face felt tight and arid, and the water from the sink replaced that pain with a shock to the system. Suddenly he felt the cut above his eyebrow, a pain that simply didn’t register with the blinding pain that wore on his shoulder. Slowly moving to the other side of the room, he noticed the note.
Michael,
Dad and I are up at Harry’s tournament. Hope you have fun and can’t wait to see you again next week. Remember to call us!
Love, Mom.
All Mike could think was Why does she keep calling me that? as he moved back upstairs. Taking his shirt off as he walks down to the shower, he tries to prioritize what must happen today.
I have to tell them all about it, they’ll freak out. But I can’t tell all of them, or it’ll get too big. Just like TP’ing-doing the Johnson house was an exercise in futility. Same with the fucking Bergsteins. Nah, gotta keep this small. Not that a repeat of the Johnson/Bergstein fiasco would even happen-TPing is one thing, this is totally different. Dave and Kat-they’re the only ones that would have the balls to even try this.
Then he threw his shirt on the floor and he noticed it. Blood. All over. Well, awesome. Mike kicked off his shorts and boxers and jumped in. The pain in his shoulder and forehead were beyond comprehension. Gone were any thoughts about doing anything except jumping out as soon as washed everything off. The Old Spice body wash falls off the ledge as he tries to grab it.
Fuck. This sucks.
Nine minutes later, he looks into the mirror at the Neosporin job on his forehead. He reaches into the bag and gets out the bandages for his shoulder. Three minutes later, he’s dressed. Okay, ready to roll. Now how do I explain this to them? He picks up the phone and pushes in the digits. He twirls the cord with his finger and he waits.
“Hello?”
“Dave?”
“Yeah what’s up? Where were you last night?”
“Oh I was uh, doing something else.”
“Cool cool, well I-“
“Hey you busy right now?”
“No, why?”
“Wanna go get some food or something, I’m starved.”
“Yeah sure, what?”
“Ah it doesn’t matter, I’ll come pick you up.”
“Cool I’ll see you soon.”
“Yep, see ya soon.”
Dave hit the button and stared out the window. Yep was a word usually reserved for “okay, but something is bothering me.” Why’s he been holding out? Why haven’t we hung out since two weekends ago? He closed the Internet Explorer window, minimized the Kazaa downloads and grabbed his wallet.
He looked to his side yard where the driveway was. Beyond it was a soybean field. Beyond that, well, those were the windmills. In less than a year, they became iconic of the entire county. The three of them rotated endlessly, even on a barely gusty day. Birds landed on the mailbox and jumped around, paint chips falling to the ground.
Mike drove a 1993 green Saturn and pulled in full-speed into the driveway. This is how you almost fucking lost your license twice, dumbshit. Dave thought as he walked out of the house.
“Hey Dave!”
“Oh hey Mike! So, where we going?”
—-
It wasn’t the music, it really wasn’t. Blasting truetoned rap artists between underage white girls was normal-it was the American Top 40, it was expected. It wasn’t the shots, either. Those didn’t bother him. It was the sense of abandon, the sense of hopelessness, that just got to him every time he went to one of these. Nobody here gives a shit about anything except achieving a legal state of euphoria and indulging in every worst part of their personality, he thought to himself.
Nothing made sense to him these days. His classes were a joke, sure, but his classmates…what happened? Nobody cared when they were sober, either. And it wasn’t that they were nihilistic, because they weren’t. They weren’t even good at being nihilists. They weren’t even good at making themselves feel good.
The broken bottles on the sidewalk and across the yard just confirmed everything for him. He couldn’t take it anymore. But after last night, there wasn’t anything he could do.
