The Rocky Road Pact

Chapter 35: Looks that Kill

I barely pulled into Aunt Bee's driveway when Moose jumped out of the shadows, nearly giving me a heart attack. That's all I needed was to hit my best friend with a car; add another attempted murder charge to the list.

"Where have you been, man? Everything's gone to shit around here."

"Yeah well, that's why I came back. To set it right," I said, slamming the truck door and grabbing my bag from the back. "Where's Cassie?"

"Never mind your chick - you got bigger problems right now. That prick, Bobby, said you fucked him up. It's serious - they're charging you with assault with a deadly weapon."

"He was the one who got the bat, the stupid moron. I never hit him with it; we all scattered — you saw."

"That's what I told the cops, but they don't believe me. We gotta find old man Rutherford and get him to tell the truth. He must have got up and whaled on Bobby with the bat when he came to. The one bright spot in all this is the fucker will think twice before he goes after another old man," he said, with a smirk. "That guy's tough as shit. Bobby's arm is gnarly, dude. The bone was poking out!"

"Grody," I said with a grimace. "I should have shoved that bat up his ass while I had the chance."

"Never mind that now. What are you gonna do? We're here for you man. We can go to the cop shop with you; tell them the whole story."

"Duh. As if that'll do anything. You think the cops are going to listen to a bunch of worthless metal heads?"

Moose looked insulted. "Excuse you, butt head. Not worthless. That's high school graduate metal heads."

"Yeah. Well, Bobby spread a rumour that Cassie slept with one or all of us and the grades are bogus. They might take our marks away and make us repeat grade 12 again."

"What?!" That seemed to knock the wind out of the big man. "No, no man. I studied hard. She helped me with Shakespeare — I even figured out all that bullshit and understood it for the first time. It was like learning a new language. I worked hard all summer. WE worked hard!"

I put my hand on his shoulder and sat next to him on the grass. "Man, Bobby deserved that ass kicking. Wish I'd done it myself," he said, shaking his head. 

"Yeah, well. He thought he was tough, till that old man got up off the ground. Got what he deserved. But this is one unholy mess." I ran my hands through my hair, tried to think. All my life I was blamed for shit I didn't do, or punished for standing up to those who were bigger, meaner, cruel. I was always catching shit for standing up for the underdog, and they always threw the book at me. I had no faith in the cops, the courts, or systems in general who saw what they wanted to see, bought the prevailing narrative of the day and didn't care about the kids trapped within their spiderwebs. 

But maybe telling the whole story was the right thing to do. For the first time in my life, after being so sure of myself from day 1, I had no idea what the fuck to do about any of it.

"Listen, thanks man but you've done enough. Go home and try to forget about all the shit for awhile. Call that girl you've been talking about nonstop."

"Marcy? She works at Mel's diner tonight, I think," he said, his eyes suddenly soft. "She sure does look cute in her pink waitress uniform."

"Then go round up some guys and go get a cheeseburger on me." I handed him a twenty. I knew he was always broke; his old man was an alcoholic and his mom split years ago. Most of the time, I gave him money for food. He tried not to take it but I did everything short of slapping him upside the head till he took it. It wasn't a big deal; I had more than enough, he didn't have enough. So you shared. Big whoop.