The Weapon of Young Gods #42: Don’t Carry Dead Weight

I start with her hair because I’ve always loved when Frankie’s let it go all long and wavy. She’s in that, like, weird head-space right before sleep, which is of course a huge turn-on right now, so I try to keep my hands from shaking too much as I softly run my fingers through her curly ends. I should really try and pass out too, because there’s so much that I’d really love to forget about for a few hours, but the adrenaline is taking way too long to drain away, so I might as well, like, use it, right? I mean, hell, it’s four in the morning-and there are only so many things a guy can do to amuse himself at this ugly hour-but whenever I close my eyes I flash right back to the hilltop, with city lights flickering in the distance, and I cannot fucking think about the horribly insane shit that happened there. Not right now.

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I trace the fine strands of hair on her upper arms, and then just keep going down to the fingers of her right hand, totally relaxed above the sheets. Frankie takes a long, heavy breath and I listen to it crest and crash because it’s the only sound in the room. She wasn’t super-thrilled to see me, which I’d expected, but it was still surprising at how much that seemed to dissipate when she got a good look at me. I’d walked right in when the door was opened far enough, and luckily her roommate was somewhere else-I didn’t know, ask, or care where-so I dropped the green bag with someone else’s change of clothes in it on the ground and tried to decide in what order I should answer her eight million freaked-out questions. They’d come so fast, erupting out of her like uzi fire, but it had always been easy to get around that shit-if you don’t answer awkward questions, they don’t usually get repeated. I wouldn’t have known how to really answer her anyway.

I go back up her arm again, barely touching the skin. Her whatthefuck? attitude was totally expected, sure, but my improvisational skills were at, like, a pretty low ebb at that point. I mean, how would I describe the way Justin’s voice had sounded when he said “uh, I think he’s dead,” or the way Kyle panicked, whimpering and pissing himself like a beaten dog? We hadn’t realized the, uh, finality of things until it was way past too late. I’d knelt down in the dust to make sure, but unlike J, I couldn’t say it out loud. I didn’t know what to think-it wasn’t supposed to happen like that, you know? Anyway, her skin is so smooth that I fixate on that for a while, but when she turns in her sleep to face away, the shadow of her faint jawline is faint enough to see life pulsing through it, and I get stuck on the idea of bodies as fragile things, which kind of fucks me up again since it reminds me of his frame on the ground, sprawled at weird angles and too still and silent.

The other one had gone as limp as death too, but his raspy breathing rang loud and clear through the dry air, so while J’d tried to get Kyle to calm the fuck down, I’d dragged the live one back to the car and struggled to get him in the back seat while ignoring the racket in my skull. Her mouth falls open and she begins to breathe through it, but clear and steady enough to mellow me out again a little. I take two fingers and draw the line down her chin and neck to her jagged collarbone. I move slightly since certain spaces are getting cramped, but otherwise I don’t carry dead weight, and she’s down too deep to notice, so I take a second to unbutton and loosen up, which doesn’t need to be such a delicate operation. I’d been too used to the, like, grab-and-heave drills back there on the hill, with Justin barking out orders and I hadn’t heard everything because I’d been kind of tense, you know?

The other thing had been bad, but it was still sort of unreal, because I also had no idea if the body I’d been hurriedly cramming into the car would suddenly come alive again to destroy me. It had been like carrying a whole bag of M80s or something-the exhilaration of immediately explosive danger, which we’d already seen too much of by then anyway. The pain had begun creeping into my hands and my stomach felt weird and the little shit must have clocked me in the ear, cause it had really fucking hurt, but J’s voice still came through well enough for me to pay attention when he’d said “Ss-strap him in, Chris. Seat belts. Use as many as you can.” I let my fingers glide the thin strap down over her shoulders. “Um…um right, dude,” I’d said, but hadn’t moved.

“Come on, faster. Hurry up, man.” Justin had turned back to Kyle, who’d gone fetal, mumbling to himself and crying. J whispered something in his ear, and like, Kyle looked up at him, stunned, and J said “it’s gonna have to be this way, okay?” He rubbed Kyle’s left shoulder and after a few minutes my little brother nodded and was able to stand up. Then he suddenly spun around and trotted back onsite, disappearing into the dark. It’s not a cold night outside, but the goose bumps are already popping up on her skin, so hey, she can’t be that unconscious, can she? Maybe she’s into that thing now-who knows. If she hadn’t tried to end it before then I would know, that’s who, bitch. “If you hadn’t pushed him, this wouldn’t be happening.” J’d said that as we both twisted legs to fit them in the car, but when he’d tried to shut the door, it wouldn’t go.

“Fucking freak,” he’d said, about to, like, slam the door on a dangling foot, but stood in the way to take care of it so he held back. I was closing the door carefully when he’d said it. “You need to take care of this shit, bro.” I am taking care of it, dude-but she’s looking completely, um, irresistible and, like, it’s kind of distracting. More than kind of-her tits are softer than I remember, but then again I started it. “Yeah, you started it, Chris, so you’re gonna have to finish it.” I know, I know. I, um, realize I wasn’t getting it a few hours ago-and I’m still not really following the, uh, logic or whatever-when he’d said “don’t worry about the other one. Kyle and I will deal with it.” I mean, okay, but how? “Dude, just get in the fucking car and take care of your problem.”

“What problem? Why is it my problem?” Why did I give in and do it? Oh, you know why. Dropping a pill in a cup is too fucking easy, that’s why. I’ve told Kyle again and again there’s no risk that way, no danger, but he’s always been too chickenshit to work without a net. And dude, I could totally put on a clinic for that right now. The delicate art of disrobing the semi-conscious? Getting her hands into position? Situating everything just right? These things take time, take a patience that frankly Kyle’s not capable of, um, deploying. Sure, some plans don’t play out how you think they should, but when that happens, you, like, roll with it or whatever. That’s why the drive made sense at the time, I guess. That’s why I accepted “my problem” and took the right action to solve it, okay? That’s why I drove someone else’s shitty car for three heinous hours through L.A. at three a fucking m, okay? That’s why I’m about ready for some pussy at this point. She knows this. She has to, or else I wouldn’t be here right now.

It had to end eventually, though-a miraculous goddamn display of stamina and no small helping of luck-and amazingly there were no cops and I absolutely floored it through so many near-empty lanes of freeway that by the time the city lights had faded away, somewhere in Calabasas, the paranoia had dissolved, but then the endurance test began, you know? Yeah, how much can she take before betraying how awake she really is? This is all too weird-tonight has been one massive fuckup, and if I sleep then tomorrow will be the first day of shit-rain and worrying and clamping down or getting stories straight or whatever the fuck Justin says it will be, cause he always has a plan. I just wish I knew what the hell it was sometimes, dude.

“Weren’t you going to see Frankie sometime soon anyway?” Yeah, I was. “Didn’t you two have some shit to hash out?” You know we did. I told you that. Well something like that. “No time like the present, then, dude. It’s got to be like this. It’s the only way to fix it. It’s the only way to make sure we’ll all get out of this with no records and both balls, Chris.” I know, but-“Chris, focus, okay? Shut the fuck up and think about the ocean of shit that is opening up beneath us right now-not just us, but the whole family, cause they will be involved at some point. I know you know that.”

I know that. Fucking Justin. He could always lay the pressure on hard, that guy-but I can do it too, in an instant, on a fucking dime, and the pressure is pushing at the wall of my skull, pushing right out of me toward her, and now she knows it. Frankie’s eyes pop wide open but she looks fucking scared, so I try to close them but end up pawing at her face and turning it away and then I’m in her and holding both her arms up against the wall, above her head and she’s helpless, her breath gurgling out at first but pretty soon she’s moaning and crying and convulsing with ecstasy and I am too, ramming it home and grateful as I can be for any kind of glorious release from tonight’s horrible reality, because I just wish it would go away. I have to make it go away.

She gulps and sputters and squirms and nuh nuh nas and it’s so close and no one else knows what’s going on but us. “They don’t know!” It’s glorious and better than ever and in the moment I’m thinking that we’ve definitely, like, seen the worst, but she doesn’t really get that. “No! Fuck no you don’t! You have no clue, bitch!” She tries to move-she’s getting there, maybe? She gets it? No, she can’t-I squeeze everything tighter with all I have and have no breath left but am almost yelling it now, “you have no clue what happened tonight! You have no fucking idea!!” and the pain is gone, fucking gone gone gone gah ga gash shes she’s still crying and what the fuck? What the fuc-

Oh. Oh. You get it now. Y-yeah, I get it now. Get it, get it get up and get out, get out out go go Go GO GO GO NOW. Her voice is doing something over there but you’re already up and halfway back to the door, backwards SMACK that’s the head, dude. Where you going? Where? Who can you…later! Later-think up all that shit later, in four or five minutes when you’re reeling down the hall that’s too bright, way too bright why do they keep the fucking lights on in here? Out the door but maybe the wrong door-where’s the parking lot? Need the Civ-ow fuck wet grass stains will those come out? Will it come off? Is it perm-there’s the fucking car! Ahahaha there it is, you bastards.

And the door’s open but who cares-the back door, the back seat’s totally empty, completely vacant like most everything else right now and it doesn’t fucking matter, right? This is your out, dude. This is your ticket-you broke it, you bought it, you took the fucking ride-in every goddamn sense of the phrase, yeah. Get in, just get in. J will really love this, yo. Oh, he’ll just be tickled fucking crimson, dude. That’s the sustaining thought as the car starts and you slowly, carefully, soberly cruise off campus and maybe to Jake’s on Pasado or Kim’s in Ellwood or hell maybe all the way out to Refugio and just park and sleep and sleep off what’s done is done and sleep some more. Oh Jesus, what we’ve done. What have we done? What have I done?

Dude, you really don’t want to know that right now. Trust me.