Midnight
Josh and Zach were hanging at Josh’s house. They were both seventeen-year-old citizens of this little Wyoming town, this backwater, single-high-schooled, drug-riddled, hick-festering, dreg-producing Cody. How could you not love this place? There’s just so much to do here, Josh had thought sourly and sarcastically many a time.
He had moved to Cody fairly recently. The move was almost a year ago now, but there were still aspects of this new town that felt foreign to him—this, and the fact that he couldn’t get the hang of local girls.
He had had a few stints with some cute girls here, but it mostly amounted to lots of kissing and a routine absence of conversation. Kissing’s great. Kissing’s fun. Stuff is the shit. But it meant nothing to Josh if his lips were devoted entirely to sucking face. Lips are for many things in a good relationship. Most obviously for kissing. Also for smiling; good relationships will include a fair deal of smiling. But lips also help to form words. Words—not fancy European tongue maneuvers—are what make up a conversation. Sure, the tongue-wrestling can communicate something meaningful, but only when coupled with words. The sluts in this town didn’t seem to understand that.
No matter. Girls can’t be the only things on a guy’s mind. If they were, the guys would be a very dull, excessively horny type of person. An argument can be made to that claim’s favor, but Josh is too real for that. Get your mind out of the gutter and into the game. Beautiful motto.
Like tonight, Josh and Zach are outside playing some late-night soccer. There’s a nice tribute in this game to Josh’s old home. Pick-up games under streetlights. Classic East Coast. Whereas back east it would’ve been hockey or basketball, here it was much more likely to be soccer. Soccer was big back east too, it just had lacrosse and football and the aforementioned sports to contend with. The high school here didn’t even have a lacrosse team.
But enough about what’s not happening.
Josh and Zach were playing one-on-one. Josh wasn’t terrible, but Zach was the Varsity player here, so it was half-legit game/half-Zach showing off. The game bit was fun. Josh scored a few goals in the upper ninety, because while Zach was always a beast on offense, he pretty much sucked when it came to defending. The showing-off bit wasn’t as fun. Zach would tease Josh, dribbling the ball up close and real slow. When Josh reached for it, Zach had rainbowed it over his head before Josh knew what was going on.
“Come on,” taunted Zach. “This is why you aren’t worth last pick in PE.”
“Shut up; I’m picked like fifth every time.”
“Yeah. And I’m third and Cash is first. So your fifth can suck it.”
“Cash can suck it. That bastard seriously gets on my nerves.”
“Really? You know when he says stuff, he’s just talking shit.”
“Yeah, except it’s all true and he rubs it in.”
“Yeah. I guess he is kind of a dick,” conceded Zach.
They went on with soccer for a while, as the way early morning hours ticked away. Josh and Zach, kicking the ball around in the street.
12:53
Bird flew around the corner too fast for the fairly durable, but crap-quality Impala. Bird could take turns like this. She liked going fast, thinking on her toes, all that jazz. Real sporty, Bird was. A hell of a lot sportier than the Impala. Don’t think I didn’t notice those wheels coming off the road an inch, you silly, hand-me-down bitch of a geezer, Bird thought lovingly at her old car. Her passenger had about the same tolerance for curves as the car. Evidence: “Holy fuck, Bird!” Nicole shouted. “Swear you’re gonna kill me one of these days.”
