Stranger Than Fanfiction

  Once his hunch had been validated, Cash gazed at the car like King Arthur observing the Holy Grail.

  “Does the engine still run?” he asked.

  “Everything but reverse and uphill,” the owner said. “Are you interested in buying this piece of junk? Because I’ve got much better options in the—”

  “I’ll give you a thousand bucks if you let me take it for a test-drive.”

  The next thing the others knew, the junkyard owner led Cash through the fence and up close to the car of his dreams. The actor petted the hood of the Porsche like it was an animal and whispered sweet nothings into its side-view mirror.

  “He’s not actually going to drive that thing, is he?” Topher asked.

  “Is he even okay to drive?” Sam pointed out.

  Cash slid into the driver’s seat and gripped the steering wheel like a ship captain clutching the helm on his maiden voyage. A cloud of dust erupted from the back of the Porsche as its engine roared to life for the first time in a very long while. It was a shaky start and the engine didn’t seem like it would last long, but Cash willed it to work. He drove the Porsche out of the junkyard and pulled up alongside the station wagon.

  “I’m going to take this thing out for a quick spin,” he announced. “You guys stay here—I’m using you as collateral.”

  “Cash, we’re all really anxious to get to Amarillo and take a shower,” Topher said.

  “I’ll only be a couple minutes. Sorry, but I have to do this or I’ll regret it forever. It’s on my bucket list.”

  The actor hit the accelerator and zoomed down highway 83, leaving a trail of smog behind him like a snail. The others could hear him cheering all the way down the road until he disappeared in the distance. Twenty minutes later, Cash returned with an enormous smile stretched across his rosy, wind-beaten cheeks.

  “You guys gotta try this!” he said. “There’s only room for one passenger but you can take turns. Somebody hop in!”

  “We’re not getting in that thing,” Joey said.

  “It looks like it’s one speed bump away from imploding,” Sam said.

  “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Cash said. “Cars were built to last in the old days. You gotta hear the engine when it gets going—it purrs like a kitten.”

  Mo raised an eyebrow. “A kitten with bronchitis, maybe.”

  “Come hear it for yourself, Mo!” Cash egged her on. “I promise when the wind hits your hair you’ll feel just like a Bond girl!”

  Mo had the strongest reservations out of all her friends—but Cash knew the exact button to push. Her hesitation crumbled at the thought of feeling like a Hollywood starlet.

  “Weeeeeeeell, I suppose just a mile or two wouldn’t hurt,” she said, to her friends’ amazement. “Don’t look at me like that—you all smoked pot last night!”

  Mo sat in the passenger seat beside Cash and they rocketed down the highway. The Porsche rattled more and more as it gained speed. The open air hit Mo’s face and her dark hair flickered behind her ears like a flag in a tropical storm. The ride felt like a roller coaster compared to the station wagon they’d grown accustomed to.

  “Isn’t this great?” Cash called out—but it was hard to hear each other with all the wind in their faces.

  “It’s fantastic!” Mo said. “I feel like Marilyn Monroe!”

  “What?” Cash asked. “You want to see how fast this thing can go?”

  “No!” Mo said. “I said I feel like Marilyn Monroe!”

  “Okay, let’s see how fast this baby can go!” he said.

  Cash punched the gas even harder and the Porsche flew down the highway at a reckless pace. They were moving so fast Mo could barely breathe let alone tell him to slow down.

  “Cash, that’s fast enough!” she said.

  The actor tapped the brake but nothing happened. He turned to his concerned passenger with unmistakable terror in his eyes.

  “The brakes aren’t working!” he said.

  “WHAT?” she said. “What about the emergency brake?”

  “There is no emergency brake!” Cash said. “The accelerator is stuck, too! I can’t get the car to slow down!”

  Mo couldn’t believe she had been so easily lured into a death trap. She had a panic attack and images of everything she held dear—her cat, her father, her friends, the positive comments on her fanfiction—flashed before her eyes.

  “Do something!”she yelled. “I can’t die in a car crash with you! I don’t want my death to get second billing!”

  “Don’t worry—I promise you’ll live to see the halls of Stanford!”

  “Fuck Stanford!” she cried, and the truth spilled out of her like lava from a volcano. “I’m only going there because my dad is making me! I don’t want to study economics, I want to study creative writing! But none of that matters now because I’m about to be roadkill!”

  Cash abruptly hit the brakes and the Porsche came to a stop. Mo’s crying turned into laughter once she realized they were safe. She hugged the actor in celebration.

  “The brakes worked!” she said. “It’s a miracle!”

  “Of course the brakes worked, I was just fucking with you,” Cash said.

  “YOU WHAT?” Mo yelled, and punched him in the shoulder as hard as she could. “You son of a bitch! I thought we were about to die! What’s wrong with you? How could you do that to someone?”

  “Doesn’t seem like it would have mattered that much if I wasn’t,” Cash said. “Clearly I would have just saved you from a life you don’t want. Why the hell are you going to Stanford if it’s not where you want to go?”

  “I would never have said that if I didn’t think I was about to die!” she said. “Please don’t tell the others about this—I don’t want them to know.”

  “Why not?” Cash asked. “They’d only encourage you to follow your passion.”

  “I know—and that would make it worse!” Mo said. “It’s hard enough knowing I’ll be stuck going to a school I don’t want to go to and forced to study a subject I have no interest in. Having my friends encouraging me and making me feel like I have a say in the matter would only make it more painful.”

  Cash sighed and shook his head. “What is wrong with you kids?” he said. “Of course you have a say in the matter! The only reason you’re letting your parents control you is because you’re too scared to take responsibility for yourself.”

  “Says the rich and famous actor,” Mo said. “No offense, but I don’t think you’re exactly the voice of reason on this matter. I don’t have a bottomless bank account like you—my dad is in control of my college fund. He thinks writing isn’t a real profession and won’t pay for me to pursue it. I don’t want to be paying off student loans my whole life so I’ve got no choice!”

  “Oh, boo fucking hoo,” Cash said. “Is that really worse than being miserable for the rest of your life?”

  Mo looked away and crossed her arms. There wasn’t a single thing he could say that she hadn’t thought of a million times.

  “Look, you’re right, I don’t know what it’s like to be in your shoes,” he said. “I’ve had people telling me what to do my whole life, too, so I sympathize with you. But you aren’t under a studio contract! You don’t have legal obligations to a network! No one is going to sue you for everything you have if you don’t follow their orders! Your world is as open and free as this road—you just don’t see it!”

  It was a convenient perspective given their location, but Mo didn’t know what he expected from her.

  “So what should I do?”

  “You need to claim the driver’s seat,” Cash said. “Never take a backseat to your own life! You gotta take that bitch by the steering wheel with all your might—even if the road is bumpy, even if there’s blood under your fingernails, even if you lose passengers along the way. Only you can steer your life in the direction that’s best for you.”

  “That’s a nice metaphor—but real life isn’t always that simple.”

  “You want
something real?” Cash asked. “Fine, I’ll give you something real. Your lesson starts right now—come on, Chinese fire drill!”

  “I’m Japanese!”

  “That means we’re switching places!”

  Cash ran around the car, slid into the passenger seat, and pushed Mo in front of the steering wheel.

  “Drive us back to the junkyard,” he instructed. “And if this car doesn’t prove it’s better to live life in the driver’s seat, then nothing will.”

  “I don’t have my driver’s license,” she said.

  “I don’t have my driver’s license,” Cash mocked her. “I don’t have a college fund! I don’t have a daddy who understands me! I don’t want to be inconvenienced in exchange for happiness! Do you know how many people would slap you in the face right now? Shut up and drive!”

  Once again, Cash knew the exact button to push. Mo looked at the open highway in an entirely new light. She wrapped her fingers around the steering wheel and stepped on the gas, and the sports car roared down the road. It was fun to be a passenger in the Porsche, but it was a completely different experience behind the wheel. Cash controlled the stick shift, but knowing she was in complete control of the speed and the direction gave Mo a sensation she had never felt before: she was in charge—and it was addictive!

  “This is awesome!” Mo said.

  “I told you!” Cash said. “This is how your life should feel!”

  “Fuck you, Stanford!” Mo yelled toward the open sky.

  “Yeah, that’s it!” Cash said.

  They raced down the road until it became another highway altogether. Mo turned back around and only slowed when she saw her friends and the junkyard in the distance.

  “Wow!” she said. “This is exhilarating! No wonder everyone in Hollywood loves James Dean so much—I can only imagine the freedom a car like this gave him.”

  Cash knew very well that the icon was actually killed in 1955 after crashing his Porsche 550 Spyder, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her.

  “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today. That was his motto.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  THE JAILHOUSE

  “Over here, you’ll find the last photo Bundy and Claire Carmichael ever took,” the tour guide said. “The photograph was taken in 1933 at a secret location organized by the Chicago Daily Tribune. The pair had caused a media sensation during their time on the run and agreed to an interview if the Tribune paid them the costly fee of one hundred dollars. The newspaper was later criticized for aiding wanted criminals and their business suffered greatly until the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.”

  The Bundy and Claire Jailhouse Museum in Old Town, Amarillo, Texas, was barely big enough for Cash and the Downers Grove gang to stand comfortably inside. However, at five o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, the small brick building was crammed with them, three large families, and their tour guide.

  “Here, we have a wanted poster from 1929, where the reward for capturing the dangerous duo was set at a whopping three hundred dollars,” the tour guide said. “Beside it are some examples of how Bundy and Claire have impacted our pop culture. This barrette is one of many pieces they inspired for Marc Jacobs’s 2008 fall collection, Bad Marc. Here’s a photo from the set of the 1965 film Jailbirds, where Jack Nicholson and Ann-Margret famously portrayed the Carmichaels. Next to it is a picture of the 2001 television remake starring Frankie Muniz and Hilary Duff. As you may have noticed, the couple were not as attractive in real life as they’re often depicted.”

  “That’s putting it nicely,” Joey whispered to Topher.

  “Right?” he whispered back. “I thought they were bulldogs in people clothes.”

  The tour guide squeezed through the center of the group to show the items on the other wall.

  “Moving along,” she said. “This map shows all the locations of Bundy and Claire Carmichael’s crimes throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s. As you can see, it reads like a timeline. They were teenage lovebirds from southern Illinois who eloped in 1926 to avoid the arranged marriages planned by their families. Then in 1927, they met notorious gangster Baby Face Bucky and joined his band of Chicago mobsters. He introduced them to a world of crime, and they became the infamous criminals we know today.”

  “Sounds familiar,” Mo whispered, and eyed Cash.

  “Eventually the Carmichaels had a falling out with Baby Face Bucky—and by falling out I mean they shot him in the face. In 1929, they fled to Missouri and started their own gang. From 1929 to 1935, the couple committed twenty-seven robberies and thirty-six homicides across the southwestern United States. Law enforcement officials of eight different states joined forces to track down the pair. After a grueling six-month manhunt, they captured the Carmichaels in the desert just a few miles away and brought them back to this jailhouse. But the rambunctious couple’s story is not over yet. Right this way.”

  The tour guide stepped into a jail cell the size of a broom closet.

  “This is where Bundy and Claire Carmichael awaited trial for two whole months. While incarcerated, they befriended the jailer, Officer Clancy Jones. The officer was fascinated with their criminal history and the manipulative couple took full advantage of him. They filled his head with grandiose stories from their time as outlaws. Slowly but surely, Bundy and Claire convinced Officer Jones to help them escape and join them on the run. On November 3, 1935, the jailer brought them weapons, but as soon as he opened the cell door, they shot poor Clancy dead. Other police officers nearby heard the gunshot and rushed to the jailhouse—and so began the most infamous shootout in American history. The Carmichaels were outnumbered, outarmed, and out of time. With no possible way for them both to get out alive, Bundy made the famous decision to sacrifice himself for his wife. He shielded Claire from the police’s gunfire long enough for her to escape into the Texas desert. They spent weeks looking for Claire Carmichael, but the woman was never seen or heard from again.”

  All the women in the room sighed and held a hand over their heart. The tour guide pointed to one of a thousand bullet holes in the brick walls.

  “As you look around the jailhouse, you can still see the damage that resulted,” the guide said. “That concludes this afternoon’s tour of the Bundy and Claire Jailhouse Museum. Are there any questions?”

  Sam raised his hand.

  “Yes?” the tour guide asked.

  “I’ve read numerous reports that Bundy and Claire actually seduced Officer Clancy Jones and were caught in a devil’s threesome when the shootout began,” he said. “Can you confirm or deny?”

  The tour guide gulped and side-eyed the families in the jailhouse.

  “That I can’t,” she said. “The Bundy and Claire Jailhouse Museum only shares history that’s appropriate for Texan families. Are there any other questions?”

  A little girl raised her hand. “I’ve got one!”

  “What’s that, pumpkin?”

  The girl looked up at Cash. “Are you the guy from TV that everyone’s talking about?”

  Everyone in the jailhouse turned to Cash like he was the most exciting exhibit on display. Topher, Joey, Sam, and Mo cringed.

  “Nope!” Topher said. “Definitely not him.”

  “He gets that all the time, though,” Sam said.

  “That guy is way cuter than he is,” Mo added.

  “Hey, I’ve got a question!” Joey announced. “Can we take pictures in the cell?”

  It was the perfect diversion and all the families immediately whipped out their cameras. While they eagerly awaited the tour guide’s answer, Topher, Joey, Sam, Mo, and Cash made their own Claire Carmichael–esque escape and quickly dashed into the gift shop next door.

  The museum shop was five times the size of the jailhouse itself. They hid the actor behind a towering shelf of tacky merchandise while the other visitors took pictures and eventually headed out.

  “Okay, they’re all gone,” Topher said from the lookout. “I thought the family in the mat
ching T-shirts would never leave.”

  “I’m starving, can we get some food?” Joey asked.

  “Oooo! Let’s do Tex-Mex!” Sam said.

  “We aren’t going anywhere until I buy these Bundy and Claire salt and pepper shakers!” Mo said and pulled a pair off the shelf. “These are too good to pass up.”

  The others waited in the front of the shop while Mo paid at the checkout counter. Topher and Joey browsed a magazine section and were disheartened to see Cash on the cover of all the tabloids. Apparently his fainting episode in St. Louis was the biggest story of the week. The boys blocked the magazines so Cash didn’t see them—but they couldn’t shield him from everything in the shop.

  A television in the corner of the store was showing an episode of The Panel, a daily talk show cohosted by four well-known women: a comedian, a trophy wife, a corporate tycoon, and a retired athlete. No one was paying it the slightest attention until Cash became the topic of their discussion.

  “Since everyone else in the world is talking about him, we might as well, too,” the comedian said. “By now I’m sure all our viewers have seen the video of actor Cash Carter passing out at a St. Louis concert or the hilarious video remix that’s recently gone viral. The actor’s representation released a statement on Monday saying he was simply dehydrated and is now feeling much better—but not everyone is convinced. Ladies, what do you think? Is this incident the actor’s one-night stand with scandal, or is it the overture to something far worse?”

  “This breaks my heart because my kids and I love Wiz Kids so much,” the trophy wife said, and placed a hand over the golden cross of her necklace. “I know a lot of people have been quick to judge the actor, but I’m not going to make a big deal out of this. We all make mistakes. He probably had too much to drink and is learning a lesson the hard way.”

  “Unfortunately, this is not the actor’s first episode of questionable behavior,” the corporate tycoon said. “Since this story broke on Monday, numerous reports have come out of the actor getting drunk at bars, partying at clubs, breaking and entering, receiving various noise complaints at his home, and driving around Hollywood with strippers. All of these incidents have happened within the last three months, by the way. I think it’s very clear Cash Carter isn’t making mistakes but is having some kind of mental breakdown.”