“Where are we going?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager.
“It’s a surprise,” he said in that growly sexy voice. He was 18 and out of high school, I was 16 and in the thick of teenage drama with its extreme highs and gut-wrenching lows–up for anything, experimental, reckless and naive.
At a party, his hand had brushed up against mine when reaching for his beer. It was as if time had stood still. I closed my eyes and everything went in slow motion. The long stroke of his dark finger across the back of my wrist, the way his head cocked, his eyes meeting mine just for a moment.
We’d only ever hung out in groups. We’d stare at each other from across the room–his gaze intense with those dark, sunken eyes. Then he’d look away, engaged in conversation, sipping a beer, nodding in agreement. His dark jeans and motorcycle boots, that simple white shirt with the black leather jacket hanging loosely off his muscular arms. The thighs of his pants greasy from working on his bike, his jacket dusty from walking the trails. His clothes smelled like 40 ounces of Olde English. His breath, a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes.
The inside of his car filled my nostrils–musty, sweaty, the smell of a man, I thought. “How much farther?” I asked innocently. We were screeching down the windy back roads of McCourtney. I knew this road well–my parents lived way down at the end–past where anyone had ever been. Except Adam. Who also lived past the point where any towny would go. We were boondock folks. The real rural. I felt safe knowing exactly where we were. Next, we’d pass the animal shelter, then the horse ranch. Then, we’d make our way up to the highest point of the mountain–the dump on our left and the most magnificent sunsets to our right.
The road was pitch black at the darkest hour of the night. It was treacherous even in the brightest part of the afternoon on account of the truckers illegally driving these back roads to avoid tolls–big pickups with trash spewing out from under their loose-fitting tarps. Deer, rabbits, snakes, critters of all sort roamed these woods and were known for darting out into the gray abyss of pavement just as cars were coming round one of the many bends in the road.
Tonight there was a full moon and a mountain lion warning (there was was always a mountain lion warning.) “What are you doing?” I screeched with excitement and fear.
“It’s fine. I can see everything” he said, as his rough hand touched my bare knee. I felt warm between my legs. “The moon is light enough,” he assured me as my eyes adjusted to where the beam of his lights had been. We turned off to the left. Where exactly had we turned? My eyes hadn’t quite acclimated and I’d somehow missed the placement of the road we’d gone down. Had we passed the dump? Had we passed the ranch?
“I’ve never been down here,” I said, searching the trees for something familiar. It was a dirt road, narrow and completely isolated–not one house, not a single driveway, just a road that kept ascending. The trees were thick, we couldn’t see anything but the glint of moonlight off the rocks just ahead of us.
“I thought I’d show you something new,” he said. He looked at me, a crooked half-smile, “Are you scared?”
“No,” I lied, feeling my knees shaking. I let my arm hang out the open window. The cool air whistled around my fingertips, my palm stretched out like a bat soaring through the dark night. The sound of the tires kicking up rocks against the tinny underbelly of his car, the dusty smell mixing with all of his smells and the pine needles and the spring flowers–my head was filled and confused, drunk on olfactory input.
“You..” I started, sounding drunk and confused, “…smell good,” I finished. He smiled and sort of looked down at the steering wheel.
“You’re a weird kid, you know that?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “I’ve been told.” I tilted my head to the right, my ear filled with wind and my hair flapped against my bare shoulder.
“You cold?” he asked.
“Um, a little. Yeah,” I admitted, rubbing the goosebumps on my arms.
“Hang on,” he said as he guided my hand to the steering wheel, “hold this for a sec.”
“Adam, I can’t!” I screamed. “I don’t have a license…and, I can’t see anything!” He laughed. I’d never heard his laugh before. It was real. It was big and low and genuine. The kind of laugh that makes everyone around you giggle. And, so I did.
He yanked his jacket sleeves off each arm, leaned over and put it around my shoulders. “Kinda cheesy, don’t you think?” I asked. “I mean, the whole, ‘give a girl your coat’ thing. It’s very John Hughes of you.” We’d bonded over our love of eighties movies, Portishead and our parallel upbringing.
“Yeah, well, sometimes a girl just needs your jacket.” He looked at me through those heavy lids. His eyes a deep brown, his thick black rockabilly hair wind-blown and askew. He’d grown up on a commune too. He was the first kid I’d met who was like me–weird and too grown for his age–reflective, sensitive and unable to fit in anywhere.
“This is it,” he said. There were two other parked cars. He brought me to a lookout? I thought.
“It’s a little ways from here.”
“This isn’t really my thing. Where are we?” I asked anxiously.
“Come on, I’ll show you,” he whispered.
We walked, and tripped, up a rocky path for what felt like miles into a clearing. I could make out a structure–a stone building, a rounded arena or stage or…I couldn’t quite make it out. It was falling apart, there were huge chunks of rock everywhere. As we got closer I could see melted wax on some of the outer walls, red and black graffiti and movement inside.
“I don’t like it here. I don’t like it here at all, Adam. Let’s go.” I said turning fast, catching my bare leg on a blackberry bramble. I pulled at the long vine, scraping the thorns all the way down my calf.
“Hey, wait a minute..” I heard him yell.
I did my best to retrace the path we’d climbed–losing my footing every now and again. He caught up, started to say something and stopped short.
We walked in silence.
“What was that?” I asked, slamming the car door.
“I don’t know it’s just kind of a hangout. People go there to drink and chill. There’s all these weird, creepy stories about like seances and devil worshippers who like, do their magic up there or whatever. But, it’s just kids trying to freak you out.”
“It gave me the heebie jeebies and it’s weird and freaky,” I said breathlessly. I could feel the droplets of blood on my calf. I better not have stepped in poison oak, I thought. “And, keep your fucking lights on. I’m not trying to die tonight.”
He shifted nervously in his seat, gripped the steering wheel too tight and cleared his throat, “I thought you’d be into it. There’s a really great view up there. And, it’s spooky but in a cool way.”
“I get it, I’m not pissed. I just felt weird up there, that’s all. Thanks for taking off with me.”
The sound of the wind took on a different tone in the quiet of his car–eerie, cold, lonely. Adam seemed to be breathing his cigarettes, not so much smoking them. His inhalations were deep, reflective almost, and he didn’t bother to blow the smoke out so much as simply exhale it naturally.
Adam turned onto the long, dirt road. “I can walk from here,” I said.
“It’s far, it’s dark out, let me drive you.”
“No, really it’s cool,” I countered, in need of the fresh air and the moonlight and the stars and the solitary walk. He leaned over to kiss me–I let him. His breath was hot and smoky and he pushed his tongue too far down my throat. I pulled back, attempted a half-smile and said goodnight.
I stood still, in the light of the moon, at the end of my road and watched him reverse his car back onto pavement. Dust rose up where his wheels had momentarily spun out on the gravel. I watched as the red of his tail lights faded behind the second hill of our shared road.