and as we turn the corner an unfamiliar thrill of energy goes through me. Between my dad and the uncs, getting off on doing something I shouldn’t is undoubtedly written deep into my DNA.
“Lennie,” Larry says, his gigantic hands squeezing the car wheel nervously. They must be sweating something awful; I’ve already watched him wipe them on his pants twice. “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
I’m too on edge and too angry and too much of an asshole to say something reassuring.
But I also know that I can’t scream at him to shut up and grow a pair.
I can’t because he’s my ride.
And also sorta kinda my friend.
He would say that I’m his best friend. And maybe someday something more. He doesn’t think I know about that second one. But I can see the way he looks at me all moony. I know why he gets pouty and sullen if another guy talks to me, even if that guy is only passing along an insult. And once, when we were wrestling after playing paintball, I counted six times that his hands “accidentally” grazed my boobs.
But the “and maybe someday something more” isn’t my problem with Larry. My problem with Larry is that I don’t want to be his or anyone else’s friend. I know it’s melodramatic to say that my friends tend to die young, since it’s only happened once. But the thing is, I’ve only ever had one friend. Dylan. Nobody was interested in the position before she came along. And after the way she died, well, I sorta figured she’d be the last.
Larry had been my lab partner in biology for all of junior year. Most of our interactions went like this:
Me: You understand what we’re supposed to do?
Larry: No. Do you?
Me: Not really.
Larry: Oh. Huh.
Me: Yeah.
As the year wore on, we sorta bonded over our shared C and D grades. And I was sorta impressed by his ability to laugh no matter what shitty things people said to him. Everything seems to simply roll off his enormous back.
And then Dyl disappeared. The first half of April was lost in a haze of growing anxiety while the rest of it is just . . . blackness. I skipped school as much as possible, and even when I was physically present, I wasn’t truly there.
I hardly noticed when Larry started following me around and doing things like meeting me at my locker. And while part of me thought it was pretty fucking presumptuous for him to assume he could slip into Dyl’s place, at the same time it was . . . nice. Comforting, even. In the last week before summer break, we hung out a few times after school and got embroiled in an epic Grand Theft Auto battle that somehow stretched into late August.
During all this time, he’s only asked one gently probing question about Dyl—that I immediately shut down. He’s never said shit about my family. I would’ve torn his head off if he had, so maybe that’s just Larry showing some good sense. Or maybe he’s a genuinely nice guy. I suspect the latter, and as much as that eeks me out, it kind of intrigues me too. It’s like being friends with a creature you’ve always thought was only make-believe, like a unicorn. It seems too good to be true. So I’m constantly waiting for him to tear the horn off and become an ass like everyone else.
In the meantime, Larry has two other things going for him.
Number one is his size. At six foot five and 250 pounds, Larry is big enough to be intimidating. Not that he uses his size to do anything. He has this idea that it isn’t fair for him to hit back because he’s so much bigger than everybody else.
Number two is his car. When he turned sixteen, Larry’s parents let him pick out any car he wanted. He chose a bright yellow Mazda Miata. I don’t know how the salesperson kept a straight face watching Larry climb into that tiny convertible for a test drive. Seeing him in this car reminds me of when I had my Ken doll use a Matchbox car to pick up Barbie at her shoe box house. It’s still nice, though, to have a friend with wheels. Especially one willing to drive me wherever I want to go and who never thinks to ask for gas money.
“Lennie.” Larry says my name again. Louder. And whinier. “Maybe we should go