Wilder Read online

  We bumped over some divots, and she went with it, leaning in, never complaining. This was the thing I had pictured: Meili on the back of my bike, the wind, the open fields, her holding me tight enough that I felt her fingers on my ribs. But it was lonely and off. She didn’t want to be here. It was that gap between what you tell yourself and what actually happens. I hate that gap. I want to destroy that gap.

  We passed through the woods into the clearing at the top of Brandt Hill. She climbed off first, removed her helmet.

  “What’s this?” She looked down at the bowl with the dirt-bike trails and jumps. She was rolling another cigarette, pulling tobacco out of a dark-blue pouch.

  “It’s trails you can ride.”

  Most of them you wouldn’t want to do with two people, though. I didn’t know why I’d brought us here. But this was what I’d pictured: me and Meili on Brandt Hill, her laughing at something I said. There’s that moment when a girl laughs at your joke so hard she looks away, and then, right as the laugh is ending, her eyes dart back to you, and she has this sweet, lit-up smile cause you cracked her up. That’s the moment I’d pictured.

  Not this.

  “Imagine that,” she said, bored as hell.

  I heard the strain of a motor. A tractor, thankfully, not a bike on its way up the hill.

  “Look, I’ll take you home. Where do you live?” I was sick of her.

  “We just got here.”

  “You hate being here. Why did you even come?”

  “I dunno,” she said, licking the paper and sealing it. “I mean, it’s complicated, y’know?”

  “No, it’s not. I asked you to come for a ride and you said no, and then you came anyway, even though you don’t want to be here. That’s not complicated, it’s stupid.” I was pissed. Enough.

  She laughed, and smoke came out of the first non-sarcastic smile I’d seen from her all day. “You’re right. It’s fucking stupid, isn’t it?” She looked down into the bowl. “D’you mind if I have a go?”

  “On the bike?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you ridden before?”

  “Uhhhh … once.”

  She was already climbing on, cigarette in her mouth. She cranked the throttle, and I had to yell to be heard. “So, that foot is the gears, and it’s in neutral, which—”

  “Do you mind?” She leaned over, wanting me to hold her cigarette. I reached out and carefully pulled it from between her lips. That was sexy. Dead sexy, as Meili would say.

  “You should wear a helmet,” I said, bending to pick it up.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” she said, and peeled out.

  She headed down into the bowl, a move that isn’t easy. She wobbled but then sped through the cut and up the far side. She flushed some birds out of the bushes, and they briefly flew above her, a nature goddess on a Yamaha. She rode the rim, then turned toward a small ramp. She slowed before she hit it, almost too much, because if you hit it slow, you tip forward. But she cleared it. She wasn’t ripping it up, but she wasn’t bad at all.

  She did a last run up to the edge and got a tiny bit of air coming over the top. She put her feet down to steady the bike as she landed, then gunned it back to me and slid to a stop.

  “That’s not bad,” she said, smiling and looking to see if I was impressed. I was.

  I could hear the tractor again, now that the bike was off. That was Unionville: shut off one motor and you heard the one behind it.

  “You call me fag?” she said.

  “What?”

  “You got my fag? The cigarette?” I passed her the now-extinguished cigarette. “Proper etiquette says you puff on a girl’s cigarette to keep it lit until she comes back.” She took out her lighter.

  “I don’t smoke.”

  She was off the bike now, and I put the kickstand down. “You don’t have to inhale, silly.” She relit the half cigarette, her face haloed by the lighter. I liked looking at her face.

  “You’ve done that before,” I said.

  “Yeah, in Malaysia we used to ride everywhere. Lit’rally. On the beach, in the jungle. It was mad.” She brushed her hair back, took a long drag, and looked out over the bowl. “You want to know why I came?” I didn’t answer. “I was having a fight with my aunt, and she was saying I didn’t have any friends here, and it was all my fault, so I said: ‘Actually, someone did ask me to … to do something today,’ and she tells me I absolutely have to go, I have no choice, so then I thought I’d tell her that it was a motorbike ride with a pyromaniac—I mean, no offense, I don’t know if you’re a pyromaniac, but that’s the sort of thing that would terrify my aunt—and then I realized she would never let me go if she heard that, so I said, ‘Fine,’ and I fuckin walked out and came to your house.” She said it in one breathless sentence. Meili talked in short, bored bursts or long, unbroken paragraphs.

  The fact that she knew where I lived could have been creepy, but it felt flattering. I’m not hard to find; anybody in town could tell you where Jason Wilder lives. But it means she asked.

  “It’s amazing you don’t have friends,” I said. “You’re so sweet.”

  She laughed, coughed up smoke. “That’s what’s great about you, Firebug: you’re sarcastic as fuck, and I fuckin love it. Everybody here is so goddamn genuine, it’s sick. But riding in there”—she pointed in the bowl—“that was the dog’s bollocks. So, cheers.”

  Her smoke—not the car exhaust of a regular cigarette but intense and organic like a grass fire—was overwhelming, nauseating, and I turned my head. She noticed and waved the smoke off, exhaled out of the corner of her mouth.

  “The what?” I said.

  “Dog’s balls, something amazing. ‘Bollocks’ means a load of crap. Like, ‘Oh, bollocks!’ But ‘the dog’s bollocks’ is really, really good.” And then with only the slightest pause: “So, what about this fire?”

  “What fire?” My heart started racing.

  “The fire you’re in trouble for.”

  “What about it?” Smoke, cigarettes, burning grass, burning houses. I was dizzy.

  “What happened?” She left it open. “Before you answer that, did you bring any snacks?”

  “Snacks? No.”

  “Great, cause I did.” She reached into her coat pocket and offered me a bunch of red grapes. “I’m a bit scratchy at first, but look, I brought fags, I brought snacks. I’m pretty good long-term.”

  I took a few grapes and started eating—that helped—hoping she would forget her question.

  But when I looked back at her, she raised her eyebrows and said, “So. The fire.”

  Big breath. Finish the grape. “It was stupid. I was getting back at these guys who did all this stuff to me and my house. It was part of a fight I’ve been in.” Meili munched her grapes and nodded, as if I was describing a vacation. “Last summer, some stuff happened with my mom, then I got involved, and it kind of escalated. Six months ago, day after Halloween, these guys shot bottle rockets into our house. They cut the screen window and shot eight bottle rockets in.”

  “What’s a bottle rocket?”

  “It’s a firework, a little stick with a firecracker, and it shoots through the air, and then the firecracker explodes.”

  “Right, OK.”

  “I freaked out. I went to this one kid’s house, and I opened the window and put this huge firework canister in there, this cardboard tube that shoots all these different things, and it was fuckin stupid, cause I didn’t think about how it could start a real fire. Which it did. And the fire trucks came, and all this shit happened and…” I stopped. Meili was still eating and listening happily. “This is the part I can’t tell without crying. So, I’m sorry, but I’m gonna cry.”

  Her eyes went fake-wide. “It will be the first time I’ve seen someone cry, but I think I can handle it.”

  “There was a boy who got hurt, he got burned. A little kid.” A sob welled up, as always. “Seven years old, just a little guy, and he got burned kinda bad.” I leaned my head back and sq
ueezed my eyes shut. “He’s OK, he’s gonna be OK, but he was in the hospital. And … that’s how I ruined my life.”

  We were quiet. No more tractor. A breeze pushed Meili’s hair toward her mouth.

  “Not ruined, exactly. A bit dramatic, don’t you think?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not like you killed someone or, you know, went paralyzed or something. Just sounds like you fucked up.”

  “Tell that to people around here.”

  “Are you going to jail?”

  “I was in for twenty-four days. I’m on probation, a suspended sentence. If I mess up again, I go to juvenile detention for a long time.”

  “Brilliant. So you’re basically free.”

  “Doesn’t feel that way.”

  “You’ll get over it.” She finished her grapes and got out a fresh rolling paper. “D’you know when I was twelve, me and my girlfriend stole a taxi—a fucking taxi—cause this shit driver kept us waiting in his cab while he drank or whatever, so, finally, we jumped in the front seat and took off. It was absolutely mad.” She smiled. “Until we hit an old lady, like, a really old lady. Too old to even, like, walk down the street. It was a complete disaaaahster. And I cried for days. Lit’rally. My dad had to, like, hold me for two days. I wouldn’t let go of him.” She squinted her eyes closed, shook her head. “But it was alright in the end. She went to hospital, she came back out, it wasn’t so bad. And I thought my life was over. But, unfortunately, it wasn’t.” She grinned and curtsied. “Instead, I’m in beautiful Unionville.” She lit the cigarette, blew a swirl of blue smoke through the hair in front of her mouth. How did she not set her hair on fire? “But it is nice to cry a bit. Anyway, sh’we go back?”

  That was it. No discussion. Just: tell me your most heartbreaking story, I’ll tell you mine, and then, great, let’s go. Meili swerved fast.

  “Uh, yeah. If you want.”

  “Mind if I drive?”

  “Prolly not a good idea.”

  She was already climbing on. “It’s like that, is it? The girl can ride up here in the woods, but not in the real world, right?”

  “No, I have to be careful—”

  “God forbid anyone sees you being driven around by a girl.”

  “No. Bullshit.” I was conceding and climbing on the back now, but I wasn’t done with the argument. “Don’t turn this into a gender thing. If you aren’t licensed, we—”

  “It was bullshit, wasn’t it? I only said it so I could get what I wanted. I am so crap. How can you stand being with me? Don’t fucking answer that or I will crash this piece of shit with both of us on it, swear to fucking god, are you ready?”

  No. Yes. Didn’t matter.

  I reached both arms around Meili’s waist. She started up fast, and we zoomed down Brandt Hill.

  The gap was gone: this was what I pictured, only reversed. Meili driving the bike, me behind. Holding on to her—tightly because she showed off by riding a little too fast—was the sexiest thing I’d done in years, maybe ever.

  If you’re a good person, this won’t make sense to you. For the past four months, my only physical contact with people had been fighting. The crunch of my elbow on Dmitri’s cheek. The burn of a well-done headlock. Putting my chin on Meili’s shoulder reminded me of that, scratched a similar itch. Scratched it better, of course. I’d forgotten what a friendly body felt like.

  I shifted my arms, pulled closer to her. Meili’s body was kind of blocky, thick in the middle like a boy’s. She didn’t have boobs, or much of a butt. Her gorgeousness was beyond that. She was sexy because she smelled real and talked real and chewed her food real. Other girls looked like girls; Meili was a girl.

  I held on to her as we bumped down through the woods. It was warmer on the back, shielded from the wind. I enjoyed it so much I didn’t mind when she passed my street. A longer ride.

  “You missed the turn,” I yelled. She was opening it up on the paved road.

  “What?”

  “You missed the turn. My house is back there.”

  “We’re not going to your house,” she yelled, and I grabbed on tighter as she cranked the throttle. She let up a bit and signaled a left turn.

  “OK, not funny,” I said.

  Where did she turn?

  “No, Melissa, we can’t stop here.”

  Stewart’s Root Beer.

  THREE

  She stopped the bike awkwardly in the gravel parking lot, and we half stepped, half fell off.

  “This is stupid,” I said, keeping my helmet on as if I might not be recognized. The orange Stewart’s sign behind Meili, chronically short of letters, announced: NOW OP WEKND T 10. It was Friday, a big night for Stewart’s, but it was early yet, not crowded.

  “I’m hungry. What d’you want?” She was walking to the front door, past two pickups, one of which I recognized. Unfortunately. Polaris sticker and a custom hitch.

  I couldn’t retreat now that I was here. Shit. I hung my helmet on the handlebars and followed her through the glass doors. A two-tone bell chimed whenever the door opened. Ding-dong. To me, it meant: next round, come out fighting.

  “Mark! Tammy! How you doin’?” Meili was chatting up a table of four by the windows. “Mind if we sit?” She could talk to anyone, although she basically hated everyone. And people were curious about her.

  Mark, who wasn’t part of my battle, hesitated. “Uh, well—”

  “Fab. And let me get you something, what d’you want, Tammy? Hot dog? One of those foot-long fuckers?” This made Tammy laugh. “No, right? It’s like, ‘No thank you.’ You blokes have got it all wrong, you think girls want some donkey-size monster. I mean, it’s gotta be big enough, right, Tammy? You don’t want some little sausage-link fucker.” She wiggled her pinkie, and now Mark laughed, too. “But, no, I don’t want a fuckin bloated horse dick, OK? Thanks.”

  She glanced over at me. I was by the door, watching but not exactly looking at James Bouchard, aka Butchie. The gray linoleum had a path worn into it from the door to the counter, cows to the feed trough. I was at one end of the path, and Butchie was at the other, ordering, not yet aware of me. He was part of my battle, not central, but definitely in it.

  “Foot-longs for everybody, then? Jason, what d’you like? We’re all getting … horse wieners.” Even she started giggling now. “I can’t believe you say ‘wiener’ here. It’s appalling.”

  Tammy said, “Jason, come sit.” Some people liked me from before the fire. It was easy to forget that.

  I pulled a chair over. I vaguely recognized the other two girls. Sophomores?

  Mark gave me a chin chuck. “Sup?” School hoodie with the hood on for some reason. Dressed like a jock though he wasn’t. Not useful in a fight. I’m just saying.

  Tammy said, “Jason, do you know Ann-Marie and Marcy?” Big girls with straightened hair, not popular but not not. Like a lot of thick girls at my school, they wore tight clothes all the time. They smiled, but with an edge: I’m meeting the pyromaniac.

  “How you doin’?” I said.

  They both said “Good” right away and then giggled. I made people nervous.

  Butchie was texting, which would bring other boys here. And I would fight and get my ass kicked. In front of Meili. Goddamn.

  “How are you, Jason? I heard you’re on probation or something, right?” Tammy, glittery eye makeup and two different earrings, as alternative as it got in Unionville, was being nice and maybe a little nosy.

  “Yeah, I have to be a good boy. They check up on me, but—”

  “Alright, they’re a bit skinny for horse cocks, but they are plenty long, aren’t they?” Meili put down three foot-longs, overflowing their red-and-white cardboard trays, and went back for more.

  “When are they gonna let you back in class?” Tammy asked. After a bunch of fights at school, all because of the fire, I had been pulled out of class four months ago, January 12, and sent to the Rubber Room. For my own protection.

  “I don’t know
. They don’t tell me stuff.”

  “That’s messed up,” Mark said, shaking his head.

  Meili dropped two more enormous hot dogs on the table. “Who needs one?”

  Mark shook his head.

  “Someone’s having two, then.” She pushed one toward Tammy. “Have you ever taken on two at once, Tammy? Don’t answer that. I found out the hard way you do not want people telling tales about you at this school. Isn’t that right?”

  “You mean that whole Darren thing,” Tammy said. “That was so crazy!”

  “It was ridiculous. I’ll tell you one thing I learned, it’s like … like, Tammy, you’re fucking gorgeous, right? Seriously, look at you, you’re so cute. And then, look at me. I’m a chubby ten-year-old boy, right? But around here, it’s like, ‘Asian girl. Must chat her up.’” She moved her arms robotically.

  “Yeah, guys go crazy for Asian girls,” Tammy said. “We call it the Asian Persuasion.”

  “That’s good,” Meili said. “Or even PersuAsian, you know, if you put the A in there to make it ‘Asian.’”

  “There’s already an A in ‘persuasion,’” Tammy said. “That’s why we call it the Asian Persuasion. Asian girls have magical powers.”

  “Yeah.” Meili cringed a little. “That is … better, isn’t it?”

  I saw her profound disappointment. Being surrounded by people who couldn’t keep up, who didn’t appreciate PersuAsian, was physically painful for her.

  “But, seriously,” Meili said. “Laura whatever-her-name-is is so gorgeous. She’s a knockout, right? I was like, sorry, Laura, I’m not even in your league. I’ve got nothing. Now, are either of you boys ever going to interrupt me and tell me I’m not ugly? Cause it seems to me I’ve been saying I’m ugly for a while now, and I’m waiting for a little, like: ‘Hey, Melissa, you’re not that bad.’”

  “Ohmygod, you’re totally cute,” Tammy said, and Marcy and Ann-Marie nodded. “You have such a pretty face…”