Liberty

MICHIGAN AVENUE FICTION WINNER 2012

I don’t know why John ever moved to Indiana. Okay, I do – he wanted to get away from his psycho family. But still, he could’ve found a closer college so we could hang out occasionally, instead of a week at a time every year. I pulled up to his house with my windows down, music blaring. I know John doesn’t like the Deftones, but it’s my car. My car, my rules.

“O’Doyle rules,” I say, with as deep of a tone as I can muster. John’s walking down the walk from his house. He can’t help but smirk as he walks his lanky ass up to the passenger door.

“Get in,” I say.

As I drive away from his house, I explain the mediocre life I’ve been living, and how I should’ve done better in high school so I could’ve gone with him. It’s the same conversation we have every visit.

“Thanks for picking me up,” he says. “I can’t stand those idiots.”

See, John doesn’t drive. His psycho family never paid for him to have driver’s training. He got a permit, but they wouldn’t let him behind the wheel. Contradictory, if you ask me. Sometimes I just don’t get people.

I tap along to the drum beat on my steering wheel. “I don’t have anything to do anyway. What you wanna do?”

John sighed. “Let’s go to the gas station. I need to caffeinate. Can you believe my dad bought me a fucking Rush Limbaugh book?”

I can’t hold in the laugh. “Better gift than driver’s training, right?”

“I think I was switched at birth,” he says.

We pull up to the gas station. We buy a few energy drinks, a tradition of ours, planning to spend all night replaying the Zelda series. Patrick is behind the counter – the only person I’d ever seen behind the counter in the years I’d been coming here. His face lights up with a grin when he sees us. I can never tell if that grin is real or just pretend.

“Hey, Johnny and Harvey!” He can never get my name right. I stopped trying to correct him a long time ago.

I sit there and engage in the usual small talk. Tell him how I am, John tells him how he is. We walk over to the beverage section to pick up our fuel. There’s a hot redhead standing in front of our section. She’s wearing a green hoodie, blue jeans, and converse all-stars.

“Dude… go talk to her,” John says.

I walk up to see her holding my beverage of choice – a blue version of my favorite energy drink. It’s the last one.

“You don’t want that one,” I say.

“Why not?” She shoots a look towards my face with complete ferocity. Her horn-rimmed glasses frame her burning fireball eyes.

“It doesn’t taste good. The green one is better.” She could see through my lies. Why wasn’t John saying anything?

“I think I’ll take this one.”

On her right hand is a tattoo, three yellow triangles arranged in a pyramid.

“Nice tattoo. Come play Zelda with us,” I say, completely fixated on the fact that this was the first girl I had ever seen who knew had even heard of Zelda.

She raises one eyebrow.

I grab the energy drink out of her hand. “We can share this.”

She couldn't help but smirk.

“What’s your name?” I say.

“Liberty.”

We get into my car. Liberty up front with me, John in the back with himself.

“Do you smoke?” She asks.

I shake my head.

“Care if I do?”

“Be my guest.”

Out of the corner of my eye I see her put a cigarette in her mouth. She lights it up. A skunky smell fills my nostrils. Liberty coughs.

“Is that what I think it is?” John asks.

“Huh?”

“What is that?” I ask.

Liberty laughs. She rolls down her window. “What’d you think I was talking about? Cigarettes?”

I pull the car over into the parking lot of my old school. “I think you should put that shit out. It’s illegal.”

She looks at me and smiles. “It is?” She coughs again. Her eyes are bloodshot. Red as her hair. She looks at me again and starts laughing. She laughs so hard that her voice gives out. She’s holding her side in pain.

“What’s so funny?” I ask.

“You. It’s not gonna kill you.”

I look back at John. He shrugs.

“Give me that,” I say. Liberty hands me the joint. It feels strange in my hand. Wrong. Dirty. I bring it up to my mouth and take the biggest hit my mouth can hold. It tastes foreign. I suck it into my lungs and the smoke burns like fire. I cough like I’ve been punched in my throat.

Liberty laughs. She takes it from my hand. “Not bad for a beginner.”

“Shut up.”

John sits in silence as Liberty and I finish the weed. He occasionally laughs. I think I’d laugh too, if I saw him doing something so stupid. The clock on the dashboard hasn’t changed in forever. I turn on the radio. I look around at the schoolyard, cast in shadow, and I remember my time here. I wonder if I’m the first to break the law here. I wonder if I’m the first to wonder such a thing here. I snicker.

“How are we getting home?” John asks.

Liberty and I laugh and can’t stop. You’d think we’d just heard the funniest joke in our lives. “You drive,” I say.

“Are you serious?”

“It’s just like riding a bike,” Liberty says.

I climb into the back seat with Liberty and John climbs up to the front. I pull her to my side as John maneuvers my car with surprising grace out of the parking lot.

“Not bad for a beginner,” I say. I turn to Liberty and plant a long, slow kiss on her new lips. She tastes like tangerine. I look out my window to the hazy street lights.

“How do you feel?” she says.

“Free.”