Jimmy bolted for the woods.
“What are you doing?” Byron called out of the dark. He was standing now, peering into the car. “Jesus Christ! You’re trying to make it look like Cam drove? What if he’s alive? He’ll tell them you were driving!”
Jimmy stopped, frantically looking around for something blunt. He stooped to pick up a rusted piece of tailpipe, maybe a foot long. It would do the trick. He knelt by the driver’s door and drew it back.
“JIMMY, ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND?”
Byron’s eyes were like softballs. He grabbed Jimmy’s arm.
Jimmy let the tailpipe fall to the ground. He felt his brain whirling, his knees buckling. He felt Byron pulling him away.
As the cop cars squealed to a halt near the blaring car, he was moving fast but feeling nothing.
4
9:27 P.M.
“Request backup.”
Voices crackled behind them as Jimmy’s feet squelched into a puddle, ankle-deep. He stumbled upward, arms splayed out in front, grabbing unseen branches. The rain had turned the ground into a sodden mess that muffled their footfalls.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Mea maxima maxima culpa.
He turned to look back at the police. He could give himself up. He could demand to be delivered to the nearest church, where a kindly priest could condemn Jimmy to hell for what he’d done to his dead friend before politely giving Jimmy over to the electric chair.
“Will you come on?” Byron whispered.
Jimmy felt Byron’s hand grabbing his shoulder, pulling him up over a fallen tree trunk.
They fell to the ground, peering over the top. Their panting was barely discernible above the racket of the rain falling on the leaves. “You okay?” Byron asked.
Below them, a cop car had pulled to a stop facing the Corolla, its headlights trained on it. For the first time Jimmy saw how bad the accident had been. The car was totaled—the front smashed in, the roof dented, the rear accordioned inward from the guardrail crash.
“I’m great, Byron. Never better. I figure if I don’t get pneumonia or pleurisy or Lyme’s disease or a heart attack from guilt or electrocuted by the state, you and I can go have an ice-cream soda!”
“You having some kind of PTSD moment, dude?” Byron muttered. He was shaking. “No offense, but after what you just did—almost did—I’m worried for my own life here.”
Jimmy felt cramped, as if he’d swallowed some kind of slow-acting poison. “I—I didn’t mean to do it.”
“That’s reassuring,” Byron whispered.
“I don’t know what came over me. It was like my brain just… just…” His voice drifted off.
Byron put a heavy, waterlogged arm tentatively on Jimmy’s shoulder. “Look. You… you were under pressure. Like, temporarily insane? And from what I saw in the car, hey, Cam’s toast anyway.”
“Is that supposed to be a consolation?” Jimmy said.
“No! What I mean is, even if you had hit him, I don’t think it would have been murder, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this,” Jimmy said. “Cam is a person! He was your friend.”
Byron grabbed him by the collar, his lips retracted, his teeth seeming to float in the darkness. “You think I’m a cold, callous son of a bitch? If you really want to know, my stomach is razor blades right now, and if we talk about this another moment I’m going to cry. Or scream. Or throw you down the hill. So maybe let’s just drop it.”
They crouched near the ground, frozen in place. Jimmy felt the rain in his toes, running down his face, still washing blood and glass off his clothes, making his arms shrivelly like his grandfather’s. It felt as if the rain were a part of him. The cops were training flashlights into the Corolla, barking orders into walkie-talkies. In moments another cop car screeched into view, followed by a tow truck and an ambulance emblazoned with the name POLK-BAUMAN HOSPITAL.
Jimmy watched the EMT workers quickly, efficiently pull Cam out of the car, lay him on a stretcher, and load him into the ambulance. As it pulled away, siren blaring, the tow truck hooked up the front of Cam’s car.
The police officers, huddled in rain slickers, began searching the surrounding area. One of them stopped at the deer.
“Oh, Jesus…,” Byron muttered under his breath. “Don’t do that…. Please don’t do that….”
“Did you take the rope off its legs?” Jimmy asked.
“Duh, what do you think?” Byron snapped. “I’m not stupid enough to forget that.”
“So they’ll think the deer bounced off the car?”
“Is that what you’re worried about—whether the cops will find out what you did? Is that it, Jimmy? Is that what Cam’s life means to you? Who’s cold and callous now?”
“What are you worried about, Byron?” Jimmy snapped. “Why did you run away? Why aren’t you down there giving them information? Why are you acting so fucking weird?”
Byron turned away without replying. Then he grabbed Jimmy by the arm.
Below them, the police officers were turning away from the deer, toward the woods.
“Shit. Come on!” Byron whispered.
As the two scrambled farther into the shelter of the trees, a searchlight beam swept over the log behind which they had just been lying.
5
10:03 P.M.
“John F. Kennedy swam five miles with a belt in his teeth, towing a wounded soldier,” Byron called out, gasping for breath at the top of a weed-choked incline in the woods. “John McCain was in solitary confinement, with two broken arms, for two and a half years.”
“Good for John McCain!” said Jimmy, feeling around for his shoe that had been sucked into the mud. “What’s the point?”
“The point is, it’s only a shoe!” Byron said. “Walk barefoot. That’s why God gave you feet. And besides, you shouldn’t have worn those faggy Vans anyway! We get to this party, they’re all going to think you’re gay.”
“And this is bad because…?”
“You scare me, Jimmy.”
“That’s your problem.” Jimmy was out of breath, sick of running in the rain, and not about to move another inch before finding his missing shoe. He and Byron had gotten lost in the woods several times, but to his credit, Byron had managed to keep his bearings by finding the occasional streetlight and following the contour of the road. Which did not stop him from being a pain in the butt the whole time. “Found it! Thanks, Byron, for your patience and sensitivity.”
“Fuck you, okay? That wasn’t me with the lead pipe back there, Mr. Congeniality.” Byron winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m cranky. Must be the rain.”
Jimmy tried not to let the words in. Forcing his foot into the soggy shoe, he stood and followed Byron. They were approaching a distant cluster of lights, a group of houses at the top of a rise. Just past a pine grove, a house with big plate-glass windows was all lit up. Cars were parked all around, speckled with reflected light. “Remember the GPS?” Byron said excitedly. “Remember when it said, ‘In point-six miles, turn right and go to the end of the road’? Look—check out that last house on the right.”
Jimmy had never felt his heart beat like this, like it would pop out onto the ground if he didn’t keep his shirt buttoned. “What do we tell them? They’re Cam’s friends.”
Byron shook his head. “They’re not. Trust me. He heard about the party on Facebook. Some football dude from another team. We walk in there and pretend we belong. We tell them our car ran out of gas and we had to walk. We’re stupid New York City kids. We’ll get them feeling good and superior—”
“Sooner or later people are going to hear about the accident,” Jimmy said.
“By that time, we’ll have convinced some yutz to drive us home or drop us at the train station.”
A few feet from the house, Jimmy’s knees locked. “I—I can’t.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s all wrong, Byron.”
A scene was taking shape in his brain: The day dawns on the Hong household. Cam’s little sister is eating breakfast in the kitchen by herself as the sun rises over West End Avenue. She thinks about her brother as the coffee starts self-brewing, and she wonders if her dad has set it for one fewer cup. Someone appears in the doorway and it looks like Mrs. Hong, only she appears to be ten years older, her cheeks raw from tears, while across town Reina Sanchez weeps for the love of her life....
“Jimmy? You can’t flake out on me now. What’s done is done. We have to move on.”
Jimmy imagined himself moving on, walking away, head facing straight upward, breathing in the rain, letting it drown him… reaching a precipice in the darkness and just stepping quietly over it…. “It’s like a Martin Scorsese movie,” he said quietly, “where someone makes one bad choice. Like, one stupid, cowardly, amoral choice he didn’t really have to make, because if he did the right thing in the first place it would have been tough but way better in the long-term. But he can’t see that so instead does the stupid thing, and it fucks up everybody?”
“What?”
“We shouldn’t be here. We need to go to the police.”
Byron spun him around and leaned close. “Jimmy. Jimmy, listen to me. You have to promise you will never, ever go to the police.”
“It’s wrong, Byron…”
“Say it,” Byron insisted. “Say it, Jimmy. For your own sake. For the common sense to not totally screw up your life, everything you ever dreamed of—college, med school, business school, or whatever the fuck you want to do. Say, ‘I promise I will never go to the police.’”
“What do you care? You weren’t the one driving.”
“Say it!” Byron’s eyebrows and lashes dripped rain, but the strength of his gaze seemed to vaporize it.
Jimmy looked away. “IpromiseIwillnevergotothe-police….”
“What?”
“I promise I will never go to the police!”
Byron held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”
“Go to hell,” Jimmy replied.
“Seriously. I want it.”
“I already promised you.” Jimmy fished around in his pocket. “Besides, I don’t have it anymore.”
“Bullshit.”
“I don’t, okay? I must have dropped it.”
“What if someone finds it?”
“I’ll cancel the account, okay?”
“That’s not the point—”
“I don’t care what the point is, Byron! I already feel like the only thing that keeps me from killing myself is the decision whether or not to kill you first—so will you shut the fuck up?”
Byron sighed. He put both hands on Jimmy’s shoulders. “Okay. Sorry, dude. My bad. We’re going to go in there. We’re going to get dry. We’re going to get drunk. And then we’ll figure things out from there. Somehow we’ll get ourselves home.”
Jimmy nodded. Numbly, he followed Byron out of the woods and toward the light. The sound of the pounding rain picked up a bass line and transmuted into a loud hip-hop track.
6
10:19 P.M.
“Dude, you look like a fucking chicken. What happened?”
The guy asking the question was skinny and had an Adam’s apple that resembled a trapped peach. He was exactly the kind of overgroomed, khaki-pantsed future Ivy Leaguer who seemed to gravitate to speech teams, to Jimmy’s constant horror. Only this guy seemed a couple of ounces away from incoherence, his right hand wrapped around a drink in a McDonald’s collector sippy cup exactly like the ones Jimmy remembered from his fourth-grade summer vacation trip to Yellowstone National Park. “We hit a deer,” Jimmy said. “In the road.”
“Totaled the car,” Byron interrupted. “So we walked through the woods in the storm. Nothing to guide us but the moon. Which, as you can see, must have been some feat.”
“Dang.” The guy took a sip, and the song changed to some Euro-pop dance tune that made Jimmy feel nauseous for vaguely cultural reasons. “Anybody get hurt?”
“Yes,” Jimmy said.
“No,” Byron said.
Jimmy felt Byron stepping on his foot very hard. “Yes and no,” he clarified.
Adam’s Apple looked oblivious. “Me and my brother have lots of clothes. You want some?”
“We’ll give them back to you tomorrow!” Byron replied. “Thanks.”
The guy turned toward the living room. “Be right back. Chips and shit are in the kitchen.”
“Right,” Jimmy muttered under his breath, “we’ll give the clothes back. We’ll mail them from Manhattan. That’s believable.”
The kitchen was nearly the size of Jimmy’s apartment, with stone floors, granite counters, a percussion orchestra of pots and pans on hooks, and three sinks. “We have to keep our mouths shut, Jimmy. Do you want something to eat?”
“Not if I have to keep my mouth shut.”
“God, I love houses,” Byron said, opening up four cabinets before he found the drinks. “I wish my parents would buy one. Come on, what do you want?”
“Clothes. I can’t think until I’m dry.” Jimmy turned toward the living room. The music was shaking the house, with speakers placed at perfect angles in all corners of the room. Rugs had been rolled neatly off the floor, which was packed with dancers. Two girls were having jumping contests with full glasses that spilled into puddles on the wood parquet, and three couples were managing to hook up conspicuously on an L-shaped sofa arrangement.
“Your mom never taught you to use an umbrella?” a voice called out.
Jimmy turned to see a boyish-looking girl with short dark hair, green eyes, and wearing a flannel shirt and overalls. “I was in an accident,” he said. “We hit a deer.”
He turned to go, but the girl’s eyes lit up. “Really? Where?”
Jimmy eyed the kitchen. Byron was lost in the crowd. “The highway. About point-six miles away. We were driving here, the three of us—”
“Weird. It’s not even hunting season.”
“We weren’t hunting. We hit it—”
The girl laughed. “I know. They get shook up and run all over the place when the season starts. They sense it. That’s when a lot of them get killed—zoom, right out into the road. But now, in October? If you want deer meat, it’s roadkill or nothing. Do you like venison?”
“What?”
“It’s amazing, if you do it right. My dad field-dresses deer. Moose too, but personally, I’m not a fan of moose meat. I have this cousin in Alaska—”
“Uh, excuse me…,” Jimmy said, backing into the crowd and looking around desperately for Adam’s Apple.
Emerging from a knot of loud frat-boy types was a guy with a shaved head and soul patch. “Duuuuude!” he said, holding up an arm. “Rain Man! Wet T-shirt winner!”
Jimmy let the guy pull him into an obligatory handshake that seemed too forced and obsessively accurate. The guy smelled like Old Spice and had the kind of fussed-over hairline that screamed old guy losing hair. “You got anything?” he asked.
“Got?”
“I hear there’s some good shit here.” The guy winked at him and looked around. “Hey, didn’t you come in here with a friend?”
“He’s full of shit. It’s different.”
The guy looked confused for a moment, then punched Jimmy on the shoulder. “Funny guy.”
Adam’s Apple was bounding downstairs now, holding a bundle of clothes in each hand. After Jimmy’s last two encounters, he seemed refreshingly normal. “My bro is about your size,” he said, shoving one pile to Jimmy. “Don’t tell him I gave you this. Where’s your friend?”
“Follow Mr. Clean.” Jimmy gestured toward Shaved Head. “Who is that guy anyway, your grandfather?”
“Crasher,” Adam’s Apple grumbled. “Must have just walked in. Fuck him. You can change in my room. Up the stairs to the left.”
“Thanks.” Jimmy threaded his way around a kissing couple (oblivious) and three guys playing a game on their iPhones (even more oblivious). At the top of
the stairs, a girl screaming, “Eww!” ran past him, abandoning a guy who was kneeling by the toilet (by far the most oblivious).
He turned left and ducked into a room decorated with Korn, AC/DC, and Metallica posters. He sat down on a pile of coats—and it moved.
Jimmy bolted to his feet.
A barely awake face peeked out from beneath the pile. “Do you have Bluetooth?”
“No! Uh, sorry,” Jimmy said.
“If we’re talking,” the guy said with a blissful smile, his eyes closing, “you have Bluetooth….”
Jimmy waited for him to conk out and then quickly changed clothes into a plaid button-down shirt and khaki pants that came up to his ankles. “Stylin’,” he muttered, reaching into the wet pockets of his pants for his wallet and cash. It took him a moment to remember that the phone was gone, but the wallet was soaking wet, so he grabbed a plastic bag from the trash and wrapped it.
Outside the door he could hear Byron talking with someone. He shoved the bag into the pocket of his dry pants and headed for the door.
The music suddenly stopped.
Jimmy heard an agitated murmur of voices, pounding footsteps, a shuffling of furniture, cabinet doors slamming shut, a dozen people ssshhing at once.
Someone poked his head in the door and hissed at Jimmy, “The lights! The lights!”
Jimmy flicked off the switch. The darkness in the room only lasted a moment, as a wash of angry red light came in through the window, sweeping quickly from left to right.
He ran to the window and peered out at a police car parked at the curb, its top light flashing. The happy major-third chime of the doorbell pierced the silence—once, twice…
KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK!
Now the guy under the coats was sitting up on the bed. “Jenny…?” he said tentatively.
“Sshhh!” Jimmy replied.
The knocking stopped, and an exasperated voice called in through an open window, loud enough to be heard on the second floor:
“Come on, guys, open up. We’re just looking for somebody.”