On the Day I Died (14 page)

Kev saw it, too, and he gave a little gasp. Walking over with exaggerated casualness, he picked it up. I know it’s weird, but for a second he looked like he was holding a ball of fire, like the thing might actually scorch his hands. Its glow lit up his face, spotlighting the smile forming on his lips. He didn’t have to say a word. I knew he wanted it.

The ornament was shaped like a stallion rearing up in a fighting stance—neck arched, muscles taut, front hooves beating the empty air. On its ferocious face, its nostrils flared, and its eyes—red stones sunk deep into the metal—flashed with anger. Two nubs, like tiny horns, sprouted from its forehead. And its chrome lips, curled back in the heat of battle, revealed teeth that were not really teeth, but fangs. Razor-sharp like a wolf’s, not a horse’s.

What’s that about? I wondered.

Kev glanced at the price tag taped to its bottom.

“Ten bucks,” he said. He pulled out his billfold, counted his money, sighed. “I don’t suppose—”

I shook my head. “Sorry, man, I’m busted.”

“Then there’s only one thing to do,” said Kev. He tucked the ornament under his shirt.

“No way!” I gasped. “
You’re
going to
steal
it?
You?
”

I couldn’t believe it. Not Kev. Not the guy who made his bed every morning, who returned his library books on time, who came to a complete, three-second stop at every stop sign!

“You’re kidding, right?” I said.

But I knew he wasn’t. Crossing his bony arms over the conspicuous lump under his shirt, he sidled toward the parking lot. “Are you coming, or what?” he asked.

Licking my lips, which were suddenly dry, I glanced over at the shack that served as the junkyard’s office. Through its one grimy window, I could see Darryl—a concrete block of a guy—talking on the phone. His face had the look of a pit bull. He leaned forward to peer at us through the streaked glass.

“This is
not
a good idea,” I hissed.

But Kev just kept going. Bent over, pressing the ornament to his belly, he speed-walked toward the gap in the corrugated fence and out into the parking lot. Not exactly nonchalant.

The office door popped open, and Darryl’s beefy shape filled the frame. “Hey,” he shouted, “what’re you kids up to?”

“N-n-not a thing,” I stammered, trying to keep my cool. Whirling, I took off after Kev.

He was already in the Chrysler, the motor running. “Quick, get in,” he said.

As I flung myself into the passenger seat, Kev put it into gear. Even though he was driving the getaway car, he signaled before turning left onto Cline Avenue.

“This is no time to drive like an old man!” I shouted. “Put the pedal to the metal!”

He inched the grandpa-mobile up to the speed limit.

I caught my breath, let a few miles pass before turning to Kev. “What was that about? We could have gotten our friggin’ butts flattened back there,” I told him, although
friggin’
and
butt
weren’t exactly the words I used. “And all for that … that piss-ugly piece of metal.” I looked down at the ornament lying on the seat between us.

“I couldn’t leave it, Rich,” said Kev, his eyes kind of glazing over for a second. “I don’t know why, but I
had
to take it. It was like it wanted me to … like it
insisted
.”

“It insisted you
steal
it?” I snorted.

“I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s the truth. I—”

He stopped, as if something had interrupted his thoughts. Pulling over to the side of the road and triple-checking to make sure the car’s blinkers were on, he grabbed the ornament and climbed out of the car.

“Now what?” I said.

“I just need a minute.” He walked around to the front of the grandpa-mobile and set the ornament on its
hood. The thing looked both silly
and
spooky, like one of those fake tombstones people put in their front yards at Halloween. For a second, Kev just ran his hands over the ornament’s glinting chrome. Then, after pawing around in the car’s backseat for a roll of duct tape and a wire coat hanger, he started jerry-rigging it to the car.

I got out, too. “Can’t you at least wait until we get home?” I asked. I was still worried about Darryl.

Kev shook his head. “It has to go on now.”

“How come?”

“It just does.”

I persisted. “What’s the big hurry?”

Kev whirled, face flushed, sweaty hair flopping. “Because I want to put it on now, Rich. Okay? It has to go on right
now
!”

I raised my hands in mock surrender. “Hey, defib, okay? You stole it, so I guess you can do whatever you want with it. But it’s going to be hard not to say ‘I told you so’ when it goes flying on the expressway.”

Kev slapped another piece of duct tape around the base of the thing, gave it a test wiggle. “It’s not going to fall off. It’s on good and tight.”

I doubted it. Kev’s mechanical abilities rated right up there with his social skills—meaning they were practically zilch. Three different times he’d tried to fix the grandpa-mobile’s passenger seat belt—a matter of simply tightening the retractable spool—and three different times he’d failed. The belt was still useless, all thirteen
feet of it hanging out like a dog’s tongue on a hot summer’s day.

I climbed into the car and sat on that lame beach towel.

Kev slid behind the wheel. But he didn’t start the engine right away. Instead, he sat gazing through the windshield at the shimmering stallion. “Want to hear something strange, Rich?” he finally said. “I really like seeing that hood ornament out there. It makes me feel, I don’t know, like Clark Kent bursting out of a phone booth or something. Kind of invincible, like nothing and no one can touch me.”

From then on, things were pretty normal until we got back into the city. I pushed Cheap Trick into the cassette deck, then banged along on the dashboard while Kev clutched the steering wheel and navigated rush-hour traffic. But as the city’s skyline rose into view, something came over Kev. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes wide despite the blinding glare ricocheting off the hood ornament.

“Earth to Kev,” I called.

That’s when the wildness crept into his face.

“Kev?” I asked. “You okay?”

Kev answered by smashing down the accelerator. The car leaped forward.

“Holy crap!” I cried as the grandpa-mobile registered speeds you can bet it’d never reached before—
ninety … ninety-five … a hundred miles per hour! “What’s the matter with you? Slow down!”

Kev yanked the car across three lanes of traffic. Brake lights flashed. Horns blasted. “Woo-hoo!” he hollered, as if he was riding one of the roller coasters at Great America. He sped up, slipping behind a gravel truck.

“Slow down! Slow down!” I cried as the truck’s back end loomed, filling the windshield. I braced for the impact, sure we were going to die in a fiery crash.

Kev swerved out of the lane without even checking his side mirror, barely missing a blue Chevette. The guy driving lay on his horn. Kev just laughed and tore away, careening through the traffic like a psycho.

My stomach lurched and my armpits turned to puddles. “Stop it! Slow down!”

He grinned at me like a jack-o’-lantern. “I told you, Rich. I’m invincible, man. In-friggin’-vincible!” He tilted back his head and howled like a wolf.

Then he gave the accelerator another punch, and the Chrysler responded like a rocket. Veering crazily onto the shoulder, he took the 159th Street exit ramp so fast I bounced out of my seat. Outside, the familiar sights of Tinley Park swept past in a blur of color and speed. Just minutes later, Kev wheeled the car into my driveway, coming to a squealing, slantways stop.

“Are you crazy?” I gasped, clawing open the passenger door and stumbling out onto the driveway. “You could have killed us both!”

“But I didn’t,” said Kev, his chest still heaving from his adrenaline rush. “That was some ride, huh?”

It was all I could do not to knock his teeth down his throat. Kicking the car door shut, I huffed toward the house.

“Hey,” he called after me. “What’s your problem?”

I didn’t even look back. I just kept walking.

I steered clear of Kev for the next week or so. Sure, I was still plenty mad, but I was scared, too. And not just by his driving. No, something else had frightened me. It was the look on his face as he’d clenched that steering wheel. Wild. Uncontrolled. His eyes glinting like those on that crazy chrome horse he’d strapped to his hood.

Then on the Saturday before school started, he pulled up in front of my house.

“Hey,” he said. He got out of the Chrysler and strolled up the driveway to where I was tinkering under the hood of my beater, a ’72 Ford Pinto I’d dumped my entire life savings into—all five hundred bucks of it. “Looks like she’s coming along.” Leaning down, he tapped the new running lights I’d just installed. “Looks good.”

I knew this was Kev’s way of making up, that his complimenting my wreck of a car was the closest I’d ever get to an apology. I accepted it.

Pulling my head out from under the hood, I took a closer look at him. Jeez, he looked like crap! His eyes were sunken, and he’d lost weight. His T-shirt hung on
him like wet laundry, and his belt—cinched on the last hole—barely held up his baggy jeans.

“What have you been up to?” I asked, wondering if he’d been sick.

“Driving,” he said. “I’ve been driving.”

Just the word seemed to trigger a change in him.

“There’s nothing like driving, Rich,” he went on, and even though his face looked hungry, his voice sounded slack, as if he was reciting some dull poem from lit class. “It fills your mind, and all you can think of is going fast, going far,
getting there
.”

He wasn’t making any sense. “Getting where?”

“Wherever the roads take me—to the city, to Mexico, to the moon. It doesn’t matter just as long as I’m driving.”

He looked away for a moment, and when he looked back his face had lost its wildness. In its place was a sad, thoughtful expression. “I should go.”

“What’s your hurry?” I said. “You just got here.”

“I know, but …” He stumbled around for an excuse before adding, “I’ve got to be somewhere.”

“Where?”

Kev didn’t answer. He just started down the driveway toward his car.

I trailed after him. “Listen, man, are you okay? Do you need—”

I couldn’t finish my sentence. The grandpa-mobile! It was as changed as Kev. A spiderweb of cracks spread across the left side of the windshield. The right rear
bumper was caved in. And the puke-beige paint blistered and bubbled in places as if he had driven it through a furnace. The car was ruined … well,
almost
. The hood ornament still glowed shiny and bright.

When he opened the driver’s door, a hot billow of air puffed out. It stank of burned matches and something else I didn’t recognize. Papa Smurf was singed a dull brown.

“What’s this all about, man?” I asked. “What happened?”

“Driving happened,” he answered. Sliding in behind the steering wheel, he turned the key.

The Chrysler’s motor revved, and I swear I saw smoke—
real
smoke—puff from the stallion’s flaring nostrils.

Kev leaned out the window then, and his eyes met mine. “There are back roads out there, Rich. Lonely, forgotten roads leading to places no one’s ever gone, places that can’t be found on any map.”

“What do you mean?”

The car revved again, eager and impatient. The hood ornament seemed to glow even brighter, its red eyes flashing.

“It’s time to go,” Kev said. Putting the car in gear, he roared away.

I stood there, looking down the empty street.

Back roads … places that can’t be found on any map
.

Worry began to eat at me.

“Where have you been going, Kev?” I said to no one. “Where have you been going?”

The next afternoon, I took a stroll over to Kev’s house. The grandpa-mobile was in the driveway. It was splattered with something wet and slippery that reminded me of the insides of the fetal pigs we’d dissected last year in biology. In places, the splatters were chunkier, fleshier. Picking up a stick, I poked at an especially big chunk. It oozed pus green.

I jumped back, startled and disgusted, and flung the stick away. With a shudder, I wiped my hand on my jeans. I saw black smoke seeping from beneath the hood, giving off that same acrid burned-match stench I’d smelled coming from the front seat yesterday. The car’s paint was bubbled over most of the fenders and hood, and along the wheel wells black scorch marks angled backward.

Behind me the screen door slammed.

I turned.

Somehow, Kev looked even thinner than yesterday—his dark eyes hollow, his skin pulled tight over his skull. He shuffled toward me, car keys in his hand.

“What’s the deal, Kev?” I was shaken and needed answers.

“I told you. I’ve been driving.”

I glanced back at the car. On the hood, the stallion’s red eyes began to glow orange, like hot coals. It was as if a
fire was burning
inside
the ornament, as if I was looking through the window of a furnace.

It all became clear to me. “It’s the hood ornament, isn’t it? It has some sort of power over you.”

His laugh sounded hollow. “It’s led me on amazing adventures, Rich, taken me to incredible places.”

“Have you lost your mind?” I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Come on, Kev. Walk away from it. Just walk away.”

“You don’t get it! I’m different now,” he said. He stepped around me and got into the car.

“This isn’t you!” I shouted. “Don’t you see? It’s that … that … thing!” I grabbed it, to rip it from the car’s hood. It was searing hot, frying the skin on my palms like bacon. I jumped back, waving my throbbing hands, blowing on my blistered fingertips.

Kev started the engine.

“Stop!” I cried.

“I can’t, Rich,” he said. “Don’t you see? I have to drive.”

I yanked open the passenger door and grabbed wildly for the keys. Kev batted me away, and in that second, the car bolted backward, flinging me headfirst into the space between the seat and the glove compartment. With a screech, the car roared down the road, weaving and careening like a rodeo horse, like it was trying to toss me out. And I would have fallen out, too, if not for the length of broken seat belt coiled on the floor. I grabbed it, clung to it, used it to steady myself on the front seat.