Hissers (2 page)

The tire caught and skidded for a second, the handlebars jerking, threatening to dump Connor into the middle of the lane directly under the psychopath’s car. He fought to maintain his balance, focusing on nothing except the stability of the bike frame beneath him.

The driver honked the horn and cackled, causing Connor to damn near shit his pants. The driver honked again and shouted a bully’s battle cry: “Stay outta the road, pussyboy!” Then, with a screech of tires, the car swerved around him and sped away, launching gravel and dirt in Connor’s face. A collection of teenagers, girls and boys, glared back at him through the rear window, every one laughing and flipping him off.

Connor watched the car disappear, unaware he was still pedaling until the adrenaline dissipated and his thigh muscles began burning. Shaking, he pulled his bike off the road and onto the sidewalk. He sat still on the seat, staring down at dandelions growing up through the cracks, and did what he could to steady his breathing. Mostly that consisted of putting his face in his hands and whispering curse words to himself. He could feel his knees still wobbling. “Pieces of shit. Pieces of shit. Asshole pieces of shit.”

He heard Seth pedal up next to him and skid to a stop. Connor looked up. His best friend was sweating and beet red, staring down the road after the car, looking terrified. Passersby would think it was him that just got run off the road and not the other way around. “You okay? Man, those guys were jerks. Lucky I was too far back or I’d have thrown my bike through their windshield or something. Like people have nothing better to do in this craphole town than run people off of bikes.”

Connor appreciated his friend’s concern, but knew the sudden bravado was a hollow gesture. Seth had never been in a fight his whole fourteen years. Sure, he was always
about
to do something to help people, but he never
did
anything. Nor was he in any physical condition to do so, the kid nearly had a heart attack just mowing his parents’ lawn.

A moment of silence passed between them, then Seth picked his underwear out of his crack. “Did you see who it was?”

“I think I saw Jason Drake in the backseat. Can’t be sure.”

“That douche. I bet it was his brother driving. Maynard. You hear he pulled a gun on an undercover cop at the mall?”

Connor found that hard to believe. Maynard Drake was a jerk but he didn’t carry a gun. “That didn’t happen.”

“Yeah it did.”

“I highly doubt it.”

“No, really, it did. But the cop didn’t identify himself so they couldn’t arrest him. It was almost a shoot out. I swear.”

Seth was always full of dubious stories like this. Connor was getting tired of them. Most of Seth’s stories were so outrageous they seemed culled from comics and movies. “So why did he pull the gun?”

“It was a drug deal, and the undercover cop was buying some blow off Maynard, but Maynard got real suspicious and thought the guy was gonna jack him for the Benjis and the blow and whipped his piece out. But they had to let him go because…um…something about a Trap Man.”

Connor rolled his eyes. “First off, it’s called
entrapment
, not a Trap Man. And secondly, are you officially retarded? None of that ever happened. Sounds like a bad TV show plot. You probably saw it on a
CSI
rerun or something.”

“Whatever. Maynard’s bad news and he almost just smeared you across the road so you’d better be careful. He’s batshit psycho.”

Connor kicked his pedal back into position near his knee and looked at his best friend. “Blow? Benjis?”

“You know! Benjamins. Dead presidents. Money. What? Don’t gimme that look. If you’re gonna survive in the streets these days, my friend, you gotta speak the lingo. It may save your life one day.”

“You don’t live on the streets. You live in Castor. The day we get hardened criminals here is the day I acknowledge Greedo shot first.”

“Don’t even go there.”

“C’mon, I’m not gonna let those assholes ruin my day.”

Connor and Seth pedaled up Draper Avenue, letting the summer breeze erase the past few minutes from their minds. Maple trees flanked the sides of the road, occasionally broken up by a house, business, or crumbling strip mall featuring the obligatory Radio Shack or GameStop. It was a fairly well-trafficked street so they rode on the sidewalk now to avoid any more run ins with homicidal drivers. The air still smelled of morning dew and freshly cut grass.

The warm September sun glinted off their tire spokes, casting white starbursts beneath them. Both boys stood on the pedals, mouths tight, knuckles white around their handlebars, pumping their feet to compensate for the road’s slight incline. Connor, in the lead, glanced back once to make sure his friend was still close behind. Seth was portly for a fourteen year old, and it wasn’t uncommon for Connor to have to stop and wait for the putz to catch up. He really didn’t want to lose his momentum on this hill; starting up again would be a bitch.

When Connor crested the top of the hill he eased up on his speed. Seth fell in beside him, beads of sweat dotting his forehead, and they continued on. Neither boy spoke as they raced to their destination—-the only 7-Eleven in town. It was their summer ritual to come here, buy a couple of cans of Redbull and some hotdogs, nick some batteries by sticking them down their socks, and then go hang out in the fort in the woods looking at porno mags and playing with Seth’s PSP until the batteries in the external charger ran out.

“You still alive?” Connor asked. The convenience store was close. “You look like you might pass out.”

Seth was flushed and not amused. All summer riding up this hill and the boy was still overweight. Connor’s ribbing did not lighten his mood. “Man, eat the skid marks in my shorts.”

“Depends what’s in them. What did you have for breakfast?”

“Your mom’s crotch.”

“Oh, yum. I’ll have two helpings, please.”

The 7-Eleven on Draper Avenue used to be a mom and pop convenience store called The Draper Deli and Soda Mart. It had been owned by an old married couple, the Frenches, who died before Connor was born, back in ‘92 or something. Connor’s dad had told him you could get a fresh sandwich, can of Coke, the newspaper, bread and milk and maybe even a toy for about five bucks back then, which in those days was a steal.

Said Mr. French would always ask when he, Connor’s dad, was gonna have kids and what he and the new wife were doing on Saturday because there was a community picnic at the park near the school, and they should come by. Connor’s dad always followed up this tired tale with some lame nostalgic lament like, “You don’t get that kind of neighbor these days. These days kids take guns to school and Starbucks runs the small business owner out of town.”

All Connor ever replied was, “Why would you buy a newspaper when you can read it for free online?”

They cut across the parking lot and leaned their bikes up against the ice machine beside the front entrance. The interior of the store was air conditioned and had that 7-Eleven smell—floor cleaner, stale coffee, hot dogs, and sweat. Jared Higgins was behind the counter. He was a senior at the high school, one of the stars of the wrestling team and the kind of guy who was allegedly always getting girls pregnant but never actually dated anyone. He was muscular enough to bring down a rhino with one arm but dumb enough that multisyllabic words made him go cross-eyed.

His innate oblivion to anything that didn’t have tits or an Anheuser-Busch logo on it was one of the reasons Connor and Seth could steal the batteries so easily. If he did happen to catch them it wasn’t like a simple lie couldn’t convince the idiot that the batteries
had
just fallen into their socks.

Neither Connor nor Seth were very friendly with Jared, but word traveled fast in their quaint town and even Connor’s mom knew that Jared was being held back as a senior this year. That made him the only twenty-year-old in the high school.

And then it hit him, the knowledge that in just three days he and Seth would be walking the same halls as Jared. In just three days, come Monday morning, the summer would be officially over and they’d be starting on the path to adulthood. The thought filled him with absolute dread. It was worse than how he’d felt entering into the two-year junior high school. At least there you knew you only had to suffer as an underclassman for a year before you were king of the school, but this was different. This was a whole new game. Kids drove cars in high school, kids drank and fought and fucked. There were people like Jared in the school with you—big, muscled-headed idiots who could kill you with a finger.

And worse, there were people like Maynard Drake, who would run you over with his jalopy just to get a laugh.

There were girls there as well, girls like Reyna Heatherly and Paula Wheeler., legends in the boys’ locker rooms. Sure, Connor and Seth had no chance of ever getting with them but they could at least look. And where there was one Reyna or Paula, there would be others coming up the ranks.

Yes, high school was where the golden treasure could be found. The elusive forbidden fruit. The power that made a boy’s world go round: sex.

Connor tapped Seth on the shoulder. “Go get the Redbulls, I’ll get the batteries.”

Seth invoked Yoda. “Yes, master. Redbulls purchase, I will.”

The batteries were down an aisle directly in front of Jared, but the goon was bent over a nudie magazine and playing with a Bic lighter. Connor grabbed a package of four double As, split the plastic cover off the top and slipped the loose batteries down his socks. A summer’s worth of nicking batteries had made him a pro at this, and he was done in less than two seconds. He put the empty packaging behind a jug of motor oil.

“You get them?” Seth hefted the Redbulls to show he’d done his part.

“Yeah. Got ‘em. Let’s get the hot dogs.”

They made their way over to the hotdog unit to make sure there were normal beef dogs rolling about. Sometimes the store had nothing but chicken taquitos and giant sausage dogs, which were good but cost twice as much as the regular dogs. Today they had an allotment of shriveled, sweaty links the EPA would probably confiscate in biohazard drums. They put their drinks on the counter and waited for Jared to notice them.

He did not. His eyes remained glued to the magazine.

“We’re ready,” Connor said.

Jared tapped the magazine. “Hold on,
Cochise
, I’m almost done.”

Seth leaned over and whispered in Connor’s ear. “Even if I believed he could string words together to form sentences, I don’t think there are any on that page.”

Both boys leaned slyly over the counter to get a look at the woman on the page. She was dressed as a baseball player if you counted the hat and bat. Beyond that she wore nothing but high heels. The pink wetness between her legs was entirely alien to Connor and Seth. Not that they hadn’t seen pictures of naked women (they did have the Internet) but it still amazed them when they saw a vagina at such a close up angle.

Seth’s jaw dropped open ever so slightly. Connor felt a bulge in his pants. Neither was concerned with the hotdogs anymore.

The bell over the front door rang. Jared didn’t seem to care who’d come in, but he looked up nevertheless. For a second he just stared, then in what could only be described as a belated moment of decorum he closed the magazine just as two young girls walked to the counter.

Connor felt a tap on his shoulder. He spun around and found himself face to face with Nicole Fitzgerald. “Hi, Connor.”

“Hey, Nicole.”

She was dressed in tan pants and a white tank top, a bikini top visible underneath it. Her hair was tied back in a pony tail. Behind Nicole was her best friend Amanita Miller. As usual she was exposing as much of her skin as possible, walking around in shorts too small for her and just a bikini top. A pair of oversized sunglasses covered most of her face. What was visible was smeared in so much makeup she may as well have been in the magazine Jared was looking at. Connor could smell cigarette smoke on her.

Involuntarily Nicole glanced down at Connor’s crotch and then looked away embarrassed.

Oh great!
Connor stepped behind Seth and tried to hide his situation. “Um…what are you doing here?” he asked, as he pushed down on himself.

Nicole giggled. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine, just—you startled me.”

“Looks like you’re startling yourself,” Amanita added.

“No, it’s…my fly, it’s…stuck.”

Both girls looked at each other and shared a laugh. Connor cursed. If only girls knew how hard it was for men to deal with this thing between their legs that had a mind of its own. It wasn’t fair!

“We’re getting hotdogs,” Seth said. His eyes were locked tightly on Amanita’s budding chest and tanned stomach. The girl noticed but didn’t mind, such was Amanita’s MO.

“Am wanted a Vitamin Water,” Nicole replied. “We were walking to the park to lay out for a bit.”

“Cool,” said Seth, lacking anything actually cool to say.

With the help of some forceful bending, Connor’s situation had returned to normal, so he stepped back out in front of Nicole. “So, um, how’s it going? You psyched for Monday?”