Chapter 3: (v.2) Crashing the Formula

3. Crashing the Formula

The next night the moon came up nearly full and very white, awakening the peepers in the cool freshly mowed smell of grass. Since I was grounded I had to sneak out through my bedroom window and then race across the backyard to meet up with Brianna and the two boys. At school we had arranged our whispered conspiracy, that they would pick me up down at the end of the block so that Allison’s parents wouldn’t hear the car, Davy’s 1992 Pontiac Formula.

As we came around the corner it was hard not to notice the rumble of that big old V-8, a sound that just screamed excitement, infecting me deep into my gut. We rode in the back seat with Brianna, the cool night air through the windows accentuating the warmth of having a body close, our thighs brushing in the cramped space.

At the river we parked, got out and leaned against the car, listening to crickets and the ticking of the engine as it cooled while passing around the bottle of whiskey Brianna had gotten through some nefarious means. Allison’s sole experience with alcohol up to that point had been a single beer at a party the summer before, so the alcohol wasted us into a fog quickly. But the boys, always greedy mother-fuckers, were drinking even more of it than Brianna and us.

A few yards away, the river was a dark presence, moving silently, always taking something somewhere. Allison remembered its muddy swirl from having seen it in the daytime, but now it was a smell of water, fishy, and that sense of a monster moving, even though it wasn’t that big of a river. For some reason, it made me think of the smell of saltwater, even though this was an entirely different smell. Maybe that was because of my awareness that this water, here so near, was going to find its way to the sea. And I wasn’t sure why that felt significant, or if that sensation was coming from the spider me, or the Allison me. Maybe both. And maybe the sea was somehow the source of the wildness that seemed to surge through our blood that night.

Of course we were kissing the boys, long and hard, igniting a longing for something more deep inside me. As I was pulling back for a breath, extracting my tongue from the boy mouth pressed against my lips, I realized that we were kissing Michael. The boys had somehow switched places. Brianna was making out with Davie, who was supposed to be Allison’s boyfriend, and part of us was mad, and part of us didn’t give a fuck. It was the sensation of kissing we wanted, regardless of whose lips they were, and I was wondering what Brianna’s would have tasted like right then.

Somewhere nearby I could hear a lone bird persistently complaining, a whip-poor-will. “Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will.” It was probably upset about our presence, even though we were being quiet, just the subtle clicking of the engine cooling and the soft smacking of teens making out.

“Hey guys,” one of the boys said, his voice sounding louder than it really was, carrying out across the water, “let’s cruise.”

We pulled back from another kiss and looked over at Davie. “You’re shit-faced. You shouldn’t be driving nowhere. You shouldn’t even be near that damn steering wheel.”

Surprisingly Davie didn’t argue. Instead he said, “Okay. You sit in the driver’s seat. Here are the keys. Brianna and me are gonna to get in the back.”

We grabbed the keys eagerly, went around to that side of the car and got into the driver’s seat. We had to pull the seat up because Allison was so much shorter than Davie, and I was proud of myself for figuring out how to do that so quickly. I shoved the keys into the ignition, turned the car on enough to roll all the windows down, and the kissing started again, me with Michael in the front and Davie with Brianna in the back. //*?*R

But now I was getting bored with Michael’s kissing. Something in my clouded brain had concluded that Davie was definitely the better kisser, and I couldn’t get out of my head the idea of making out with Brianna. I pulled back from Michael and adjusted the rear-view mirror so that I could see Davie and Bri in the back seat. I wanted to watch.

And when I looked I saw that Brianna’s shirt and bra, - maybe she hadn’t even been wearing a bra, were completely off. The white of her naked breasts was clear in the moonlight through the windows, with the darker skin of Davie’s hand massaging them. His other hand was between her legs, pressing her private parts through her jeans, while she humped herself against him.

I was mad, but then I realized that it wasn’t so much jealousy as wanting. I wanted that. I wanted to feel that and right then. But of course Allison-me was not going to ask for it – a guaranteed path to being labeled a slut.

Instead I announced, “Let’s see what this beast can do,” all hard-ass like I knew what I was doing. The truth was that I had never driven a car and Allison didn’t even have my permit yet. But we wanted that rush, something to compare to what we were sure Brianna was feeling in that backseat, with the boy who was supposed to be my boyfriend.

The Formula roared to life in response to the key, rumbling and vibrating all of us. Michael looked worried. Davie and Brianna were too much into petting to give a shit, even though it was Davie’s car, even though he knew Allison was too young, even though he knew we had no business driving.

But I had seen other people driving cars enough to figure out how to back it up, and turn it around in that wide space near the river. The windows were down, the night air cool and moist, the crickets drowned out by the roar of the engine. As I put it in Drive and kicked the pedal there was the sound of gravel spitting out from under the tires. Davie and Brianna were still going at it in the back seat. A glance at Michael, confirmed that he was afraid. But shit, who cared? We were getting ready to kick some serious ass.

When we hit the top of the hill, where the gravel drive dumped into the paved River Road, the car went airborne for a few seconds. Flying felt magical, but the smack definitely bumped all of us up out of our seats. I was the only one wearing a seat belt, so it was less with me.

We continued to cruise an easy forty-five or fifty down the dark country road, bordered by scrub trees, locust and red bud on either side, the river below us to the left. I could smell its wetness, and with each passing furlong Allison’s confidence in driving grew.

Then they came. The darkness. I felt them before I saw them, swooping up behind the car, in all of the rear view mirrors, and then right beside my open driver-side window, only a few feet from my shoulder. Surely the mighty beast in my hands, at my foot, could outrun these creatures. They were thousands of years old. What did they know of speed? I stomped the accelerator and within a few seconds watched the needle on the dash climb to eighty.

Now the wind swooshed through the windows, cold and wicked, while the phantoms stayed right there with us. It was a race we couldn’t win after all. Perhaps I would have stood a better chance confronting them with my spider roar, as I had in James’s room the night before. But I couldn’t stop. There was something wonderfully sensual about going this fast, faster than I had ever traveled in a car, and it sent pleasure pulses down through my body. Perhaps the demons had become merely an excuse. Perhaps what I really wanted more than anything was just the speed.

Then there was a sudden corner. We pulled hard on the wheel with no time to the brake. The car was sideways as we went up into the air, and rolling. Then the ground and more rolling – upside down, bounce, right-side up, upside down and finally stopped by the trees less than five feet from the riverbank, nearly upright again. I was conscious, and more as a reflex than anything else I unbuckled my seat belt and fell out of the door. Michael was nowhere to be seen. Davie and Brianna still in the back seat, but they weren’t moving. I slid the seat forward, reached in, and pulled Brianna out to the ground. There was no sign of her shirt or her bra. They must have been somewhere in the back seat. Davie seemed to be wedged in, his body all twisted and his leg under the front seat.

When I put the heel of my hand to my forehead it came away bloody, and the sight of our own blood made me even more woozy than I already was. Still, there was something about Brianna’s nakedness, sprawled on the ground at my feet, stirring slowly, that made me want her. I wanted her more than I had ever wanted any boy, more than I had ever wanted anything. And I laid down on top of her after pulling my shirt up a little to feel her skin touching the skin of my belly. I brought my lips to her face, but couldn’t find her lips. And then the blackness came. The darkness which had been pursuing us left us there on the riverbank, battered and unconscious.