pushed open the door, jumped out, and looked around for Byron. “I think he’s . . . he’s . . .”
The siren’s wail was growing closer. How would he explain this? You see, officer, in New York City no one gets a license until they’re in college. But my dad taught me to drive on weekends, on Long Island. No, I don’t have the registration either. The car belongs to—belonged to . . . him . . . the deceased.
He’d have to get out of here before they came. He looked past the car. There was a gully, a hill. It was pitch-black. He could get lost in the night.
Asshole! No, the cops would figure it out. Fingerprints. Friends knew he was driving—Reina Sanchez, she had to know. She was all over Cam. She’d tell them. So it wouldn’t only be manslaughter. It would also be leaving the scene of the crime. What was that? Life in prison?
Stay or go, he was screwed either way. Because of a deer. A fucking stupid deer. Without the deer, everything would have been all right.
“BYRON!” he shouted.
In the distance he heard Byron retching, with characteristic heroism.
Cam was now slumped into the driver’s seat, his right shoulder touching the bottom of the steering wheel.
He used me. He convinced Byron to get me to drive so he could go to a party. And now he will never ever be accountable. Because he’s . . .
Dead. He was dead. He would never move again, never talk.
And that opened up several possibilities, some of which were
Unthinkable.
An idea was taking shape cancerously fast among his battered brain cells. If you were thinking something, it wasn’t unthinkable—that was Goethe, or maybe Wittgenstein, or Charlie Brown. The idea danced between the synapses, on the line between survival and absolute awfulness, presenting itself in a sick, Quentin Tarantino way that made perfect sense.
It was Cam’s dad’s car. It would be logical that Cam would be driving it.
No one will know.
He grabbed Cam’s legs. They were heavy, dead weight. He pulled them across the car toward the driver’s side, letting Cam’s butt slide with them—across the bench seat, across the pool of animal blood and pebbled glass.
Jimmy lifted Cam into an upright position, but his body fell forward, his torso resting hard against the steering wheel.
HONNNNNNNNNNNK!
The sound was ridiculously loud. Around the bend, distant headlights were making the curtain of rain glow. No time to fix this now.
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.
July 4
Dear Diary,
That’s ridiculous. Who writes “Dear Diary” in a diary? I mean, who writes in a diary at all? Shouldn’t I be blogging?
This is lame.
July 5
Okay, so this isn’t going to be a diary. It’s a journal. I guess that’s the same thing, but “journal” sounds less like I’m riding a tricycle or something.
Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 16.
It’s so weird sharing a birthday with your country. Always fireworks: never for you. Mom always plans an actual birthday dinner—usually the Saturday night after July 4th so that I can have a day where we celebrate just for me. It’s fun, kinda like having two birthdays in the same week.
We’re not big July 4th celebrators . . . celebrators? Celebrants? People. Whatever—we’re not big on July 4th. Usually in the afternoon we have friends from school over and walk down to the beach to play volleyball. There are lots of nets at the beach just down the hill, then we haul ourselves back up the canyon to our house for a cookout in the evening. My brother, Cam, invites his friends from the varsity soccer team. Mom gets my favorite cake (the one with the berries in it). After we gorge on grilled meat and birthday cake, we all crowd onto the