Last Love, Everlasting

The car plunged towards the crest of the hill, its wheels digging hard into the soft earth and kicking up dust. At the peak, with one last rev by the driver, it took the speed and made air its road. For an instant it was silhouetted against the bright late morning sun with wheels still spinning, and then, as tires touched the earth, Dash’s right foot crushed the acceleration pedal and sent them both recklessly racing towards a corner. The road there was smoother but hardly gentle, with a wall of rock on one side and a steep drop down a mountain on the other. The only thing that stood in the way of certain, terrifying death was a rusted, fragile looking guardrail.

Dash took the corner at full speed, one side of the car leaving the road and tasting air again almost in a warning to her, but the left set of tires gripped well enough, and soon she was through the turn and back on all fours.

And again she demanded the car faster.

Only a madwoman drove with such arrogant disregard for life and limb.

Only a madwoman, or a dreamer.

“C’mon, baby.” The encouragement was low and challenging, as was the grunt that followed. The tone was one of a woman who considered speed a banquet and fear the wine.

“Come. On.” When the car balked at her demand for more speed, she pounded quickly on the clutch, slammed the car into a different gear, and returned to pressuring the acceleration pedal.

Birds, startled from sleep by the loud revving of the engine, flew from the trees and bushes on the cliff above to scream into the sky. Their noise was soon lost in the distance. When the road veered to the left, Dash took it without a pause. The edge of the road gave way to cliffs now, cliffs that spilled sharply for seventy feet to the blackened shadows of trees. Pebbles danced off the dirt to shower soundlessly into the empty space.

Dash glanced down but didn’t slow. She never even considered it.

From that height, there was no scent of the rain that had fallen two days ago and still dampened the woods that were thick enough to not let in the light. Even the sound of wind bothering the trees was indistinct, like a soft hiss. But from that height, the woods below held a danger and mystique all of their own. The tips of trees looked like spears rising out of the darkness, ready to skewer. Every year the road, the cliffs, and the woods claimed their tribute in the lives of men. Dash understood this, accepted this, for so it had been since the beginning of time. So it would continue to be. At times like this, she put herself in the hands of fate and backed her bet with her own skill. She never felt more alive than when she was at death’s door. Or, well, at the end of his driveway, maybe.

After she cleared the most dangerous turn, it was a steady, straight incline to the top, easy and boring, as if that turn was the final challenge point, the last dragon guarding the castle at the top.

With an internal sigh and some regret, Dash slowed to a boring 20 and pulled into the parking lot of the scenic overlook.

When she lifted her hands from the steering wheel they were covered in sweat. She wiped them on her jeans and reached to stop the gentle rumble of the car, spinning the keychain around one finger once it was free. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and passed her tongue over her teeth, then she opened the door and got out.

The wind was bellowing strong, sending her hair wrapping around her neck and whipping her back gently. Annoyed, she gathered it up in a sloppy ponytail and tugged the black hair band from her wrist with her teeth to hold the hair in place. She put her hands on her hips after she was done, and leaned on the hood of her car. She could feel the heat emerging from the engine and frowned, turning to pop open the hood and let it cool.

The car was a thing of beauty: a 1968 Shelby GT500KR convertible, one of only 231 produced in the Acapulco Blue color. It had been a sweet-sixteen gift, although not really a surprise. She and her father had spent a good summer fixing it up five years ago, back before they’d moved to Ponyville. When they did move they’d driven it proudly across the country, and he had even let her thirteen-year-old-self take the wheel when they’d gone through the Podunk south-of-nowhere places where traffic consisted of one car per hour. That had been a good summer.

And this past summer had been the worst one of her life.

She fisted her hands in the pockets of her track jacket and strolled over to one of the picnic tables sitting just a few feet from the edge of the cliff. She sat on the table, rested her feet on the sitting bench, and removed the slightly crumpled pack of Cool Blues from her jacket pocket. Packing it ten times she took one out and lit it.

Ponyville stretched below her, nestled so closely against the Blue Ridge Mountains that it was practically climbing them. Also known as Fucking Nowhere, Virginia, it was a solitary little insignificant town with a population of just over five thousand and three stoplights.

Dash utterly hated it. She didn’t even know why it was called Ponyville and had never cared enough to ask anyone because knowing the reason would not lessen the stupidity of the name. The place was boring, friendly, safe, and had a knack for attracting people back to it because it was a good place to raise kids. Her father was among those. He’d been born and raised in the damn town and had sworn never to come back, but after Dash’s mother walked out on him he had apparently seen no alternative. She knew he hated it, too, but it didn’t mitigate her distaste for the town, or for him for taking her there.

She took a drag of the cig. She was holding it with three fingers, the thumb, pointer, and middle, and turning it into the inside of her hand to keep the wind from it. She was Cali born and raised, familiar only with relentless sun and white beaches and palm trees and tanned, blond, booty-shorts-wearing girls. Nobody cared where you went to in San Fran. Nobody knew you or wanted to know you, even. Compared to Ponyville it was fucking heaven.

She’d grown up rich, too, in the exclusive neighborhood of Cloudsdale, San Francisco. It had been as far away from her life now as you could get, full of fast, shiny cars and loud house parties and beautiful people. Her father had owned a chain of business—she couldn’t remember or care enough to remember what it was that he sold, exactly, and it wasn’t like it mattered anymore since the stock market destroyed itself and made them move all the way out here.

Her eyes turned to the rolling, green mass of land northeast of the central town and she sighed wistfully, taking a really long drag from the cigarette and holding it in, letting the smoke sting the inside of her lungs to keep her in the present and away from memories and thoughts that she’d rather not remember or think.

Because, well, not all things about Ponyville were bad—actually, there was one thing about it that was good. Hell, better than good. It had been the very best thing in her life for three years…

…And Ponyville had managed to ruin even it. She released the pent-up smoke in one harsh exhale.

Whatever. She was out of this place come next summer. One more year, just one more year left. She’d taken to repeating that in her head like a mantra.

The alarm on her phone went off, and she dug it out of her pocket with a scowl.

Get your lazy ass dressed for work it said cheerfully, and she couldn’t help but smile a little.

She worked at Burt’s Garage, and it was perhaps the only other good thing about Ponyville and her life. Cars made sense to her in a way that very few things did, and most of the work she did was easy stuff like changing oil, since apparently she was in a town full of people who couldn’t do that themselves. Kind of weird considering that it was the country and most ‘country’ people knew their way around cars. But whatever, it paid, and it was something that she enjoyed doing. Plus, her workmates were both her age, and whenever there was downtime they talked shop, girls, sports, and drank Burt’s soda. The old man always threatened to take it out of their pay, but he hadn’t yet and in fact always seemed to have at least three twelve packs in the fridge.

She scooted forward off of the picnic table and hovered her hand above the engine to gauge the amount of heat rising from it. It hadn’t cooled nearly enough for her liking, but would probably be fine if she drove at a reasonable speed down the mountain. Clamping the cigarette in her teeth, she opened the door and got in, starting the car. She was already dressed for work in a black pair of jeans and an oil-stained white tee underneath her track jacket. Lifting her ass, she grabbed the sky-blue bandanna out of her left back pocket and her phone out of her right. She tied the bandanna on her forehead and plugged the phone into the aux. chord, fingers playing over the screen until The Offspring started tapping out the beginning of “Come Out and Play”.

Good running music, she thought and then grinned and revved the engine without putting the car into gear. The entire album was just one fast track after another, and it was always the album she drove to work to. It was really too bad she had to take it slow.

She put the car into gear, peeled out of the scenic overlook, and drove leisurely down the mountain. It was gorgeous, full-blown summer. Green everywhere. The road was sun-bleached gray, cracking and old, and grass peaked out of it in places. Off to the side of the road, wildflowers grew high enough to touch the bottom of the guard rails—little blue stars, yellow cups, tall, lacy spears of white—their colors almost overwhelmingly bright in the sun. The cliff face to her right had ivy slowly swallowing it from a diagonal angle, giving the impression of long, slender green fingers stretching out along it. Beautiful, wild.

Nobody really traversed this mountain. Ponyville didn’t get very many tourists, and the locals had already been once or twice and saw no need to look at the town they lived in every day just from a higher vantage point. Except her and a few other high schoolers that came up here to neck, the mountain belonged to nature. She was sure that once she left the plants would slowly claim it all together. The recession lingered, clinging to the economy like a boulder tied to the leg of a drowning man, and any money the local government could scrape together wouldn’t be put towards paving the roads and fixing the guardrails of a mountain that nobody cared about.

She sighed and shook her head. The beat and lyrics of the song she was blasting came back to her. She decided that she’d gone slowly for too long and that the engine had enough of a break. She floored it, and the beauty of nature blurred into general greens and browns. She thought that maybe if she drove fast enough, she could outpace the depression.

Fuck Ponyville, she thought. Her throat was tight for some reason that she didn’t want to acknowledge. Fuck AJ.

One more year, just one more fucking year.

She made it to work twenty minutes early and grinned at the slightly shocked look on Jose’s face. He was just getting out of his car, and he was always at work half an hour before she was. Her hands were sweaty again when she lifted them off the wheel, and again she thought that she should invest in a pair of driving gloves. She looked into the rearview mirror to make sure that her eyes weren’t bloodshot. Heaven knows Jose would never let her live it down if he knew that she’d been up on the mountain crying.

Jose tapped on her window and she rolled it down, letting the chorus of “American Idiot” by Green Day blast into his face. He rolled his eyes and gestured for her to turn it down. When she just grinned insolently at him and did nothing to abide his request, he narrowed his eyes and reached over to turn it down himself. Her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, the other coming around to wrap around the back of his neck. She wrenched him up and slammed his head against the padded roof of the car, but the music was abruptly stopped anyway as he ripped out her aux. chord.

“Asshole,” she growled, but she was grinning. She let him go, and he rubbed his head in a dramatic fashion and dropped the end of the aux. into her lap.

“Whatever,” he replied, but he was grinning too. She plugged the cord back in and then turned the volume to a soft 10 instead of the 30 that it had been. “American Idiot” came back on when she pressed the play button. It was on its last chorus with only about thirty seconds remaining.

“You’re so patriotic,” Jose said sarcastically, rolling his eyes. He was a short guy—really, really short, actually, just three inches taller than her own five-foot-one frame—but heavily built. He was not so much muscular as he was solid, a chunk of tight fat and untoned muscle so dense that it almost had a gravitational pull. He was three years older than her, and rapidly approached the legal drinking age, which she of course intended to benefit from.

“Fuck patriotism,” she replied carelessly. The song switched to “Ignorance” by Paramour. Good shit.

Jose ran a hand through his dark curly hair and looked around the somewhat busy Main Street. There were a lot of empty shopfronts. “Yeah, sure not what it used to be when we were growing up.” He turned back to her and grinned. “You remember Razors?”

She laughed and wrapped both of her arms around the back of the headrest, hands gripping elbows. “What, the flip phones? Hell yeah. I had, like, three.”

He smirked. “Couldn’t keep all your hoes’ numbers on one?”

She nodded with a salacious grin. She had, of course, been only in middle school and therefore did not have any ‘hoes’ to speak of. Her father had bought the phone for her because that had been the year she’d started riding the bus home, because that had been the year he’d started working every hour of the day, because that had been the year that—

Well, whatever. Yeah, she totally had three phones for all her hoes, and not because she kept ‘losing’ them out of spite for her father.

“I’m surprised you’re here so early,” Jose continued. He had both of his arms resting on the topmost frame of the door, both hands on top of one another and forehead resting against them. Deodorant, male and strong, wafted from his armpits.

“Yeah, well, I’m trying to nab me a raise,” she said. “Collect all my pennies and get the fuck outta here.”

Not that she was planning on arriving half an hour earlier every day. Jose could have that, the suck up.

“Yeah,” he sighed, and looked around again. “I’ve been trying to do the same.”

“Sometimes you’ve got to stop trying and just do it, bro,” she told him, as she’d told him a hundred times. He was probably gonna be here forever, truthfully. There was just always something holding him back. Family, or not enough money, or a new girl he was seeing—he was a master of excuses.

“Yeah,” he sighed again but sounded dubious. “Maybe next summer, when you go. Where you going?”

She shrugged because she didn’t really care where she ended up as long as it was, “Away from here.”

The song switched again, this time to Wolfmother’s “Woman”. Dash started tapping her foot along with the beat absentmindedly. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. There was still about ten minutes left until work began.

She didn’t feel like going to school tomorrow. It was the first day, but that had never held any appeal to her. Dressing up and showing off the tan/haircut/clothes that you got over summer—she was just so over the whole high school thing, and the temptation to drop out was ridiculous. She’d been of age to do it for about a year now. But she couldn’t, of course. She’d promised.

“Where’s Jet?” she wondered out loud after a while. Jose had taken out his phone and started playing Angry Birds. He was always playing that stupid game, any chance he got. It was more than a little annoying. What was so attractive about killing pigs and birds?

“Probably running late, as always,” Jose said. He looked up from his phone screen. “You know, for someone named Jet, the guy sure is slow.” Jet wasn’t his actual name, of course, and if it was then his parents were probably fans of ketamine because who the fuck named their kid Jet?

Dash snorted. “Yeah, in more ways than one.” It was all the drugs, probably, but Jose didn’t need to know that. “Hey, you still dating that gas station girl? The one with the rack? What was her name?”

He rolled his eyes and said, “Cynthia.”

“Yeah, her. You guys broke up?”

“Yes, not that it’s any of your damn business.”

She waved a hand in front of her to stop him and then frowned. “Wait, you two broke up, and you didn’t pass her my number?” At his blank stare, she frog punched him in the arm. “Dude!”

He grabbed her wrist when she would have hit him again and held her away. “Keep dreaming Dash, her type isn’t ‘depressed and heartbroken over an ex’. You’d’ve had no chance.”

“Would’ve done better than you,” she shot back, grinning, and pulled her wrist free. A part of her snarled at his jab, but she hid it. There went the mention of AJ again—today was looking to be against her in that department. Anna-Jane had been the first thing she’d thought of when she woke up this morning, and everything had gone sideways since then. It was probably because school was tomorrow.

Jose’s smile dimmed, and he drummed his fingers on the roof of the car. “You ready for school?”

Dash snorted. “What are you, my father?”

“Nah, just—you know.” Jose gestured. “With Anna-Jane and… everything.”

Dash pressed her lips together tightly. Of fucking course. “I’ll be fine, Josey. I am fine.” She was getting really tired of saying that, and even more tired of everybody acting like she was going to break into hysterics or start slitting her wrist whenever AJ’s name was mentioned. But she had cried over her today already, and it was only noon. That ritual was usually reserved for right before bed. So maybe wrist-slitting wasn’t too far down the totem pole for today. She pictured blood running in streams down her forearms and then shook her head in horror to dispel the images. Nope, she’d take driving very dangerously as her method of acting-out-after-a-life-shattering-break-up, thank you.

Jet’s little Toyota pulled into the spot beside them, effectively ruining Jose’s continued questioning. Dash glanced at the dashboard clock and turned off her own car, putting her phone into her back pocket and getting out. She rapidly closed the distance between her and her friend and punched a few rapid, not-so-gentle jabs to Jet’s chest just as he was getting out of his car. Her standard form of greeting him. He flinched away from her, raising his arms defensively to cover his chest.

“Why you almost late, Jetty?” she mocked.

“I’m a busy man,” he said defensively. “Places to be, people to meet. We going to the track after this?”

“You know it.” It was their code phrase for ‘I’ve got your pot for you, do you want it?’. Jet had never run a day in his life outside of mandatory PT, though he was tall and skinny.

And Dash didn’t run either, anymore.

The three of them made their way into the building, taking the diagonal stairs that slanted across its back two at a time. Burt’s place was small and situated above his garage, but it was well furnished and comfortable. Dash thought that perhaps he had a house once and that most of the furniture was from there. The back door that they always used led directly into the kitchen—white tiles, white fridge, dark countertops; tiny, but perfect for one guy. Dash thought that she might like to have a kitchen like that someday since she didn’t cook at all, ever, and therefore saw no need for a kitchen to even be in her house. She did, however, recognize that all houses unfortunately came with one.

Burt always had a bowl of Granny Smith apples on the countertop right next to the door, and Jet always grabbed one while Jose disappeared deeper into the apartment to tell Burt that they were here. Dash opened the fridge and eenie-meenied between Mountain Dew and Pepsi since she hated Dr. Pepper.

“Throw me a pop,” Jet mumbled.

Dash said, “It’s ‘soda’, and get your fucking own.”

“Where’re you from? This here’s Virgin’ya, an’ we calls it ‘pop’ here,” Jet said in a mocking country accent and then took a large bite of apple, chewing in an exaggerated, obnoxious fashion. Dash tossed him a Pepsi. Or maybe she threw it at his face to get him to stop, but that was a matter of semantics. Just like the difference between pop and soda, even though it was totally called soda.

He caught it, grinned. “Gracias, mi amiga.”

“How much do I owe you?” she said.

“One hundred.” Jet flicked the side of the can to dispel the carbonation so that the soda wouldn’t blow when he opened it.

She swore and put down the Mountain Dew that had been on its way to her lips. “Seriously? It wasn’t that much last time.”

“The recession has a stranglehold on us all,” he said dramatically. She glared at him. He opened the soda and to her dismay it didn’t start overflowing all over the place. “If my dealer’s prices are up, then my prices are up, and if you were a dealer, then your prices would be—”

“Shut up, man,” she snapped and took a drink of the Mountain Dew. Jet was always raising his prices, but he was also the only dealer that she knew. Maybe she should stop smoking pot, but high was the only time that she was ever happy, anymore. She wondered moodily where Jose was, and what was taking him so long to talk to Burt. She could only be around Jet for so long, even if he was funny.

“I’mma go find Hose,” she mumbled and walked around the counter. As soon as she stepped through the archway that led into the dining room, Jose appeared in front of her. She stopped suddenly, jumped a little, and the Mountain Dew in her hand splashed out onto her shirt. She swore, more because of how cold it was when it sunk through and touched her skin than over any real worry for her clothing.

“Did I scare you?” Jose asked with a chuckle, and she glared at him.

“Surprised me,” she corrected. “What was taking so long? We got a lot of clients or something, today? It’s Sunday, we can’t have that many.”

Jose looked away from her face. His body language changed, becoming jittery. “Uh, no.”

“What’s up?” she asked. She furrowed her brows at him and the way he wouldn’t meet her gaze. She could smell bad news two miles away, and Jose was such a soft-hearted guy that he was shit at hiding that he had some.

“I, uh,” he said eloquently. “Well, Burt wants you to have this.”

He handed her a check—fifteen hundred dollars, signed by Burt. She took it.

“Okay?” she said slowly.

“It’s this month’s pay, with a little extra.”

She slowly raised her eyes. Jose still wouldn’t meet them. The month had just begun. An explanation for the strange behavior came to her suddenly, but she dismissed it. There was no way.

But Jose still wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Are you serious?” she asked softly. “He’s firing me? Hose—Josey, c’mon, man.”

“The fucking economy, Dash,” Jose explained in a rush. His accent started to come out like it always did when he was distressed. “And you’re going back to school and won’t be able to work full-time—and Jet and I can handle the work ourselves.”

“You and Jet? Jet?! Who’s fucking late every other fucking day?” she snapped and gestured wildly behind her to the general area of the kitchen. It occurred to her briefly that Jet was not even four feet away from them and could hear everything that was being said, but she was too enraged to care. She’d done good work for Burt the entire summer, and this felt like a betrayal.

Jose clenched his jaw and stared at her with a helpless expression. She threw the check to the ground, but it was just flimsy paper and slowly floated down instead of shattering or making a thump like she wanted it to. She stormed past Jose and deeper into the apartment, through the living room and past the tiny, cramped laundry closet until she was at the door to Burt’s office. She threw it open, and it banged on the wall. Spitefully she hoped it put a dent in it.

“What the fuck, Burt?” she demanded.

The old man looked up from his computer. He was only like fifty or sixty, she guessed, but his hair was snow white over his thin face. He had the roundest stomach she’d ever seen—the kind usually reserved for pregnant mothers—and thin legs that looked like they would snap underneath his impressive beer gut at any moment. He removed his half-moon glasses. His eyes were pale blue. Honestly, he kinda looked albino.

“I thought you said you’d let me work part-time during the school year,” she reminded him furiously. “What the fuck?”

“There’s not enough work for you to work part-time,” he snapped. His voice was creaky from a pack-and-a-half a day. It was the kind of voice that could create strange tones and notes that the human voice was not particularly meant to create. It sounded to always be on the verge of giving out.

“Look,” he said and put on his ‘negotiating’ voice. “You’ve done right by me—done good work all summer long even though I know it was ‘underneath your talent’.”

She rolled her eyes hard. That had been a fucking joke. Jeez. It was true, but still.

“And I know you’re trying to head to NASCAR after this,” Burt continued. “My nephew knows some people, and he’s like a son to me. I could talk you up to him. You’d be sponsored for sure.”

Her eyes slowly widened, anger draining out of her. It was a foot in the door—hell, she was prepared to work with just an open door, but this was an actual step inside the Goddamn professional racing world. Sponsors where everything and the first one was always the hardest. The track, the trophies; her entire life flashed before her. She was practically a salivating mutt, and Burt was holding a bone.

“So what, I just have to take the check and walk?” she asked. The visions disappeared—because at one time she could see herself being an Olympic gold medalist in track, the best in the entire world, and she wasn’t even fucking running nowadays. Life sucked and then you died. The only guarantee was today, and today she was losing her job over a lazy, incompetent drug dealer.

She shook her head. “No, Burt. If I’m going to get the shit talked up about me to your nephew, I’m going to earn it. Don’t fucking fire me—especially not over Jet. He’s a drug dealer.”

“The fuck, Dash!” Jet shouted, and where the fuck had he even come from? She tried not to flinch, kept her eyes glued to Burt’s as the old man sat frozen in his seat. Jet stomped inside the small office. Had he been eavesdropping? “What the fuck?” he shouted again, right into her face. He was a tall guy, not muscular or anything but he could be intimidating when it counted.

He was also one of her friends, however loosely the term defined him, and she was throwing him under the bus.

There was something to be said about loyalty—it was such an undefinable thing. It was all about perception. The opposite of it was betrayal, of course, but betrayal was not something concrete with a solid, unanimous definition that applied to every person. The eye of the beholder and all that shit. She’d felt betrayed when Burt tried to fire her, but his reason was sensible, and he’d been generous by the advanced, large check and the offer to make her dreams practically a reality. In his eyes, it was probably not a betrayal at all but an uncomfortable necessity. Did loyalty really make dividends in the end? What would being loyal to a guy, a friend, like Jet really bring her? Lessened prices on pot? A part of her hated that the world was so dog-eat-dog, that the warm fuzzy feeling of having done something good wasn’t enough, wasn’t as long-lasting or practical or ‘needed’ as a job was.

Maybe it was selfish—in fact, the more she thought about it, the more she was sure that she had just made a mistake. Because working at Burt’s Garage wasn’t her dream, it was just a fucking summer job. Burt had been offering her a chance to have her dream and set her up with his nephew. He was bargaining with her. Maybe bribing her. Still, she didn’t need the job to make her dreams reality, she just wanted it for some reason. The reason was probably because it was being denied to her.

The room was silent. She closed her eyes as regret and mortification washed in waves through her. She replayed the last few minutes in her head. She was a fucking child. Storming into her boss’s office and cursing him out, demanding explanations. Throwing away a friendship for a job that she didn’t need but wanted. Wanting to have her cake and to eat it, too.

Burt didn’t move. He was like a statue made out of marble. Finally, his nostrils flared and he clenched his jaw. He closed his eyes.

“Get out,” his failing voice whispered. Dash took in a breath in surprise, but then his eyes opened and focused on Jet and she relaxed a hair. And then felt wretched and guilty again. She wanted to take everything from the last ten minutes back. She should have taken the damn check and gone.

Jet gaped at the old man. He opened his mouth several times, probably to argue or plead, but no sound came out. It was turning out to be the most dramatic last day of summer in her life, if not one of the worst. Finally, Jet closed his mouth with a click and spun on his heel. He looked stiff and strangely military while he did it. It was probably the rage.

He paused right outside the doorway that led out into the hall. “I may be a dealer, Burt, but take a guess at who’s one of my buyers,” he said in a dark, almost sinister voice. Shivers rolled up Dash’s spine, and then back down. She’d never heard him use that voice before, never heard anyone use a voice like that outside of the movies. She knew she’d made an enemy, just like that.

Burt’s eyes snapped to hers. Jet left.

“Is it true?” Burt demanded tightly.

She clenched her teeth together. Nodded.

Burt exhaled, dropped into his chair. When had he stood up?

He put a hand over his eyes and braced his elbow on the desk like he was going to go to sleep. Dash didn’t move. She kept thinking about Jet’s voice.

“Well, I can’t run a shop with one guy,” Burt finally declared. He took his face out of his hand and looked at her sternly. “And a dealer is worse than a buyer—a dealer spreads that stuff around. They’re the rotten core of the apple.” His jaw clenched again. “It stops today, though. You using that shit. It’s sick, and I have half a mind to throw you out, too. But the dealer is worse than the buyer, so you can stay—but you give me your damned word, on anything you hold dear, that you won’t do it again.”

“I swear on my future. On my father’s grave,” she vowed. She was a little numb, in disbelief of her luck. She probably should have sworn on her father’s grave before she swore on her future since the life of her only relative should be more important than her future, but she’d already proven herself to be an awful person, so it was probably hardly surprising. She wanted to swear on Anna-Jane’s name, truthfully, but didn’t think that Burt would be okay with her swearing on the love she had for her lesbian ex-girlfriend.

Burt rubbed at his face with both of his hands and gave her one more stern look. “Fine, good. Get to work. We opened half an hour ago.” He turned away from the both of them, back to his computer. Dash gaped silently at him for a few seconds before slowly spinning and walking out of the office. She wanted to ask if the offer of the sponsorship was still on the table, but didn’t know how to go about it without sounding like she was selfish.

She followed Jose down into the actual garage in silence. Jose would probably show his disappointment in her in some way or another, eventually, but for now she was getting the silent treatment from him. When they were inside the garage, Dash went to the radio while Jose flipped on lights and opened the metal curtain that separated them from the rest of Main Street. Dash tuned the radio carefully. It was an overly-sensitive, ancient thing with a temper and she thought about throwing it away every single day that she had worked there and replacing it with a newer model. Preferably something that could play the music on her phone since the radio stations that could be picked up from Ponyville had a lot to be desired.

The radio picked up some banjo song, and she scowled and turned the damn thing off, finally giving up. The silence rang between them, awkward and full. She missed Jet’s jokes and almost non-stop conversation already. Her fingers slowly traced the top of the radio absentmindedly before her hand fell to her side. Jose was at the large tool cabinet, fiddling, stalling, with his back to her.

She looked out across Main Street. Church had probably just let out. The traffic was more active now than it had been when she drove to work, scores of cars lined up at one of the two stoplights in town—the one responsible for keeping Main Street reasonably accident free. Not that anything could really happen when the speed limit was fucking twenty-five, but still. She tilted her head as her eyes roamed across all the trucks, minivans, SUVs. She listed off the models, the year numbers, and missed Jet all the more since it was their little game—Jose had no interest in the outside of a car, only the inside, so he was pretty much clueless about such things.

Damn it all to hell, she really had fucked up, hadn’t she? Hindsight was twenty-twenty, and she really had.

But, well, it wasn’t like Jet was broke. He was still a fucking drug dealer, and he was always raising his prices. More, now, probably, since he’d lost the job. She wished she’d gotten the damn weed from him before work or something. She needed it. She also wished she’d kept her mouth shut, took the check, and walked.

She looked up at the ceiling and then rolled her head back down to look at the cars outside and blew out a breath. She had to quit, didn’t she? It felt like it was the right thing to do. She didn’t deserve the job, didn’t really need it, and now didn’t even want it since it cost her a friendship.

“Yo, I’ll be back,” she called over her shoulder to Jose, but didn’t move. A part of her was resisting the decision that she had just made, but she pursed her lips, bounced twice on the balls of her feet, and walked to the door that led up to the apartment.

She moved slowly up the stairs, even stopped once when the internal battle within her reached an extremum. She wondered why she was having such a hard time doing something right. A voice inside of her said that quitting wouldn’t mend what she’d done, and that she was being unnecessarily noble about the entire thing. Jet was barely a friend, and even if she found him and apologized and said that she’d quit he still wouldn’t forgive her. That voice of his—

She started moving again, shaking her head free of the thoughts. She could be stubborn as hell when she wanted to be, and she exercised the skill now. She took the stairs two at a time until she stood inside the apartment again. Doubts still picked at her, but they were quieter in the face of her bullheadedness. She paused and grounded herself, and then let out a thought that she knew would silence them altogether.

This was the right thing to do, and she was a good person for doing it.

She could practically hear AJ’s voice saying the words, and she instinctively rolled her eyes because then that voice said, “Say it, hun.”

“It’s the right fucking thing to do, and I’m a good fucking person for doing it,” she spit out--and felt better, just like that, like she always did.

She stepped up to Burt’s office door and knocked tentatively before twisting the handle.

“Hey, boss?” she said quietly. Her mouth was dry and she felt awkward but it was the right thing to do, and she was a good fucking person.

Burt didn’t glance at her. He was typing quickly at his computer, and she always liked the sound of experienced fingers moving across the keyboard for some reason. The precise, fast clicks. She enjoyed the noise for a second and then stepped deeper into the office.

“Listen, uh, can I talk to you?” she said. She put her hands into the pockets of her jeans.

“Hold on,” Burt muttered, still intently focused on whatever it was he was typing. She waited with a surprising amount of patience and serenity. Those magic words of AJ’s really did the trick, or maybe it was because she was in no hurry to get all of this over with.

She stared out of the window at the bright sun beating on everything outside, att her car parked next to Jose’s. It lifted her already alright mood like it always did. There were few things in this world that she loved more than her car. She decided she’d wash it when she got home—because while she didn’t care about showing off the tan/haircut/clothes that she got over summer, she did care about showing off her baby, and damn it if it wouldn’t be the shiniest, coolest, most unique fucking thing in that student parking lot come tomorrow morning. She could picture the looks on the faces of the freshmen when she rode in blasting… some cool song—something that she also had to decide on tonight—and wearing her shades. Yeah, yeah, tomorrow could be good. Tomorrow could be pretty alright.

Burt finished typing and swiveled his chair to face her. “What’s up? Problem?”

Feeling pretty good, she grinned and shook her head. “Nah, I just, um…” she trailed off, thought for a second and shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t feel right about what I did. Ratting out Jet like that. And I’m sorry that I threw a fit like a spoiled brat. I get your reasons for wanting to let me go, and you’ve treated me really good this entire summer.” She stopped, realized that she’d lost her original point in coming here and that she was heading into mushy territory dangerously fast. She cleared her throat. “What I mean to say is… that… I quit.”

Burt blinked. He wasn’t a man of many facial expressions or emotions, really, but surprise slacked his face for a split second before he composed himself again. “You quit,” he repeated, staring at her hard.

She winced and shrunk under his gaze, the confidence fizzing out a little. “Yeah, if you’re still willing to give me the advanced pay and talk to your nephew for me.” She winced again as soon as her voice died out, because it was kind of backwards to be demanding benefits for quitting. She damned her own fucking selfishness sometimes, the easy way that her wants would just come out of her mouth before she had a chance to curb them. “I mean, you don’t have to,” she said lamely, belatedly. The conversation was not what she’d envisioned. “I just—it would mean everything to me.”

Burt said nothing for several seconds. She fisted her hands in the pocket of her jeans and bounced on the balls of her feet.

“Are you doing this because you’re unhappy with the job, or because of what happened with Jet?” Burt asked her carefully. His voice was kind, she thought, though it was hard to tell since he’d ruined his vocal chords so much that emotions didn’t actually register through his voice very well.

“Because of what happened with Jet,” she instantly replied, and then amended, “I mean, the work is slow, sometimes. Well, usually. But I like it. I like the work. I just don’t think that I should have the job while Jet doesn’t.”

Burt’s face darkened. “He’s a drug dealer,” he pointed out, and she had never heard him so close to losing his composure.

“Yeah, but—”

“No ‘but’s, Dash,” he said sternly, almost snapping the words. He sighed, ran his fingers underneath his glasses to rub at his eyes, and then took the glasses off and folded them. He sat back, and the chair squeaked under him. “I lost my boy to cocaine,” he said with little fanfare, and she twitched where she stood, not sure what she should offer in response to the admission. She’d never been good at heart-to-hearts, and her bedside manner was practically nonexistent.

“I’m sorry?” she said, almost asked. It was basic manners if nothing else. Burt didn’t really seem all the broken up over it.

“Yeah, well,” Burt sighed and then gestured with his folded glasses. “It was fifteen years ago. Anyway, drugs… drugs I can’t stand. Drug dealers, who spread that shit around without a care in the world? I hate ‘em with everything that I am.”

“There’s two sides to it, though,” she argued before she could stop herself. Because, well, there was. “The buyer has just as much responsibility. They’re the ones who scrape the money together, who contact the dealers—”

“And the dealers never say no. They could change the entire culture and save lives if they just lied and said they didn’t have any,” the way he said the words sounded passionate, like he’d put in a lot of thought about just how the dealers could change the world if they became liars. “Or stop dealing drugs altogether.”

She shook her head. “But the users would always find someone else. Especially if they’re addicted.”

Burt sighed, looking weary and old. She pulled her hands out of her front pockets and moved them into her back pockets. “Look we’re getting off track,” she said. “I get why you fired Jet, and I’m not here to ask you to hire him again or anything. I just don’t think I deserve to have the job either, as stupidly noble as it sounds. It’s a good job, but I don’t need it.” It really did sound stupidly noble.

Burt pursed his lips and set his glasses back onto his face. He laced his fingers together on his stomach. “Okay, well, I don’t exactly have a replacement lined up for you all ready to go.”

“No, it’s fine. Consider this my two-week notice, or whatever.”

“Alright, then, if you’re sure,” he said, sounding something like unsure himself.

She nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“I’ll start putting the word out, then.”

She nodded again, and then spun on her heels to leave.

“Oh, and Dash,” Burt said before she could take a step. “The check and offer still stand. I would have done it regardless of what happened.”

“Oh,” she said dumbly and turned back around to smile awkwardly at him. She’d somehow forgotten. “Thank you. Just, thanks.”

He chuckled. “Thank me in all of your winning speeches, and we’ll call it even.”

A laugh burst out of her, unabated. She felt lighter, at peace and almost giddy, for some reason. “Hey, you know it. I won’t forget my roots.” It was such a country term, so unlike her, and a part of her winced at how much it sounded like something AJ would say. She knew that as soon as she crossed the state line, Virginia would be the last thing on her mind, roots and all.

“Good, now get back to work,” Burt dismissed, sitting up and swiveling back to his computer again.

She left the office and galloped down the stairs, practically throwing her body against the door that led to the garage and bursting into it. Jose had an ancient-looking dark blue truck up on the lift and was talking with two girls not ten feet away from it. Dash put both hands into her pockets and wandered closer to them but only until she could duck underneath the truck and inspect it.

“Hey, Hose, what we got?” she asked.

Jose didn’t look at her, and there was a pause before he answered gruffly, “Needs a suspension tune up badly, a new set of wheels.”

Dash ducked out from underneath the car and walked closer to him until they were shoulder to shoulder. She nudged him with her elbow. “Suspension—your favorite thing,” she teased because Jose hated working on the suspension. She looked at the two girls in front of her.

They were high school, college age. Both taller than her by a head. Sisters, maybe, or best friends. They had the same nose, though; a little upturned, just on the right side of cute. So sisters probably, though they looked as opposite as night was from day.

One was heavier set than the other, straddling the line between being attractively curvy and pudgy. She had blond hair that reached down to the shoulders but not any further, and every individual lock looked like an honest-to-God spring. Dash had never seen hair so curly. She wore a frilly light pink dress and a small, fragile-looking golden cross around her neck. Her eyes were the bluest things Dash had ever seen, like the deepest part of a summer sky. They were such an unnatural, startling color that Dash wondered if she was wearing colored contacts.

Her sister was lanky, with knobby knees and elbows, and straight mousy brown hair that went down her back a ways until it almost reached her ass. Her dress was dark blue and conservative—like the kind of thing a damn grandma would wear. Her face was pale, drawn, a little sickly, almost. Her eyes were small and almond-shaped where her sister’s were large and round, and the color of them wasn’t nearly as shocking a blue, but blue all the same. The cross around her neck was silver.

Dash nodded at them, said, “Sup?”

The blond one smiled widely at her. “Hi,” she chirped. Her eyes were so bright Dash had a hard time looking at anything else. Her sister didn’t say anything.

“Introduce me to your friends, Josey—don’t be greedy,” she teased and nudged him again. She blinked and looked away from the blond when she realized that she was blatantly staring.

“I was just about to get their names, Dash,” Jose said tightly, annoyed with her probably. She sighed internally. She hoped Jose would get over his little sulking period. She didn’t need to lose two friends on the same day. She didn’t really care all that much about the sisters’ names.

“Yeah, alright, man. I’ll start on the suspension, you do the paperwork thing. I’m Dash, by the way,” she threw out a little carelessly as she turned away. Her mood was taking a nosedive at Jose’s coolness. She wished that kind of shit didn’t bother her as much as it did. She wished that she could be a proper lone wolf like she always saw herself as. Lone wolves didn’t live very long, though. She’d learned that much from watching Animal Planet, and she honestly liked other wolves—uh, people. People.

She went to the truck, but her eyes wandered back to the trio. The blond girl giggled at something Jose said. He was speaking in a warm, low tone of voice to them—probably fucking hitting on them, too, but that was whatever. She wondered if the girls went to the high school. She’d never seen them before, and it wasn’t like the high school was all that big. They looked too old to be freshmen, the blond one especially was too… well-endowed to be just hitting puberty.

Heh, yeah, alright, she was kinda cute. Forgettable, though, nothing too special except for those fucking eyes of hers. Dash wished she’d gotten her name, but it wasn’t anything that she couldn’t weasel out of Jose, once she fixed their relationship.

However she was going to do that.

The house was dark, empty, and just the way she’d left it. Her father still wasn’t back even though it was past eight. Dash stumbled through the front door, a Wendy’s burger in hand and just about dead on her feet. She didn’t turn on the lights, too preoccupied with eating and frankly too lazy and tired to bother with the effort—she’d found her way through the house in the dark more than she did in the light, honestly. Or maybe it was a fifty-fifty split since it was light every morning when she left, and dark every night when she came back.

She opened the door to her room and cool air welcomed her instantly. It was the only room in the house that was properly air conditioned, since her father had been gone for five days now and she didn’t spend enough time inside the rest of the house to bother with temperature controls. Plus, it saved money.

She didn’t turn on the light in her bedroom, either, and instead took a two-step running leap onto her bed, twisting to face the ceiling while she was in the air and landing on her back. Her bed had no bed frame because she’d broken it several months ago doing what she just did, so now all she had was a boxspring and mattress on the floor. Since it better allowed for running leaps like that, she didn’t really care.

She took another bite of burger. The thing was gigantic, fully loaded with all the toppings, and therefore kinda hard to swallow. She’d left the drink and fries in the car for breakfast tomorrow, but now she regretted it. The thing was fucking awful for her, too, and had she still been getting ready for track season, she’d worry about how many milliseconds it would add onto her run time. But, well, not anymore. She took another bite as if to prove that she was living a better life now.

She missed running so much that it fucking hurt if she thought about it for too long. So she didn’t.

Lazily she rolled to the side and sat up, retrieving her laptop from the end of the bed and putting it on her lap. She opened the lid and typed the password with one hand because the other still held the burger. The background of her laptop was a still shot of her car in autumn, orange and brown leaves on the ground and in the trees behind it. Anna-Jane had taken it on the farm.

Dash shook her head and pulled up Skype, clicking on the only contact on her list and pressing ‘call’. It rang once, twice, a third time, and finally was picked up. The grainy image focused until a heart-shaped face framed by long strawberry blond hair filled Dash’s laptop screen, and she grinned at the sight of her oldest, closest friend. Probably her only friend, now. Again.

“Hey, Shi,” she said. She reached behind her and propped the pillows up against the wall so that she could sit up better, then took a bite of burger.

“Hi, Dash,” the girl said. Some of her hair fell out from behind her ear to dangle in front of her eye, but she tucked it behind again and smiled sweetly.

“What’s up? How’s life?” Dash asked as if it had been longer than three or four days since they had spoken.

“Good, all things considered.” Broken sounds, tad bits of conversation and something like a gunshot was picked up by the computer’s mic and stuttered into Dash’s ear. On the screen she saw Shiloh’s thin brows knit in irritation, and her eyes glance to the side at something off-screen.

Dash sighed. “Zeke, again?”

The girl turned back to her and bit her bottom lip before nodding silently. “He’s been watching a lot of Law & Order, lately, and has decided—”

“That being a cop is his calling in life,” Dash wryly finished for her, because it was same-old-same-old with Ezekiel Parsons. His ‘callings in life’ changed as often as his socks. Well, probably more, now that she thought about it. She rolled her eyes. “At least it just requires a high school diploma.” A thought came to her, and she winced. “Then again, he’d probably end up shooting himself, somehow. Don’t let the state hand him a gun; we’d all be safer for it.”

A horrified look came upon Shiloh’s visage, and Dash waved her burger in the air. “Let him work in the K-9 unit or—yeah, no, alright, that’s even worse of an idea,” she amended when the other girl paled even more in horror. “Relax, he’ll change his mind in a few days. Also, tell him to move the fuck out.”

“It’s not so bad,” Shiloh said quietly. “Eli likes having him around.”

“How is Little Man?” Dash asked, and tore off another bite of her meal.

“Destroying everything, as usual. Thankfully, he’s doing it at his grandparents’. His birthday is—”

“This Thursday,” Dash said softly. “Yeah, I remember, Shi. My presents are in the mail and on their way across the continent as we speak.” Well, tomorrow they would be. Dash had completely and utterly forgotten, but what kind of Godmother would she be if she admitted to that?

“You didn’t have to.”

“Sure I did. I’m the best Godmother in existence.” She puffed herself up a little and then carelessly bragged, “I spent over two hundred dollars on him.”

She wrapped up the rest of the burger and tossed it onto the bedside table. And then she realized that now she would have to spend two hundred dollars.

“I really wish you’d tell me what you got him,” Shiloh sighed.

“It’s a surprise,” Dash said. Shit, like, two hundred dollars? What was she fucking thinking? What would she even buy for him for that much? A bike, maybe? A bike and… something else, since she said presents, like a dumbass.

“Yeah, a surprise for him. I’m his mother,” Shiloh deadpanned.

“You just want in on the secret,” Dash said distractedly. She shrunk the size of the video until Shiloh’s face was just a five-by-five at the corner of her screen, and then pulled up the web browser to do some Goddamned research on kids bikes.

“I just want to know that it’s safe.”

A listing of prices from the local Walmart had Dash exhaling a breath through clenched teeth. She glanced back up at the camera. “If you had it your way, he’d walk out of the house wrapped in fucking bubble wrap like in that one commercial. Let the boy be a boy, climb trees and fall out of them and break his arm and shit. Boy stuff.”

“Are you calling yourself a boy, then?” Shiloh teased while Dash scowled at the damn bike prices. Like, really? But what else could she get him? Her heart was a little set on a bike now. She scrolled down and looked at the pictures and lists of specs. Her eyes settled on a ten-speed, dark blue one with light-blue and yellow lightning bolts on it. She stared really, really intently at it and then glanced at the price. And then immediately closed her eyes when they screamed in agony.

“Dash?” Shiloh called.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dash responded belatedly. She minimized the screen vengefully and looked back up at the video camera. “The tree thing was like, one time.”

“It was three times—you even did it with a cast on. You even broke the cast.”

“The tree had to be conquered,” Dash said solemnly. It had been the tallest tree in the entire neighborhood, and she was determined to be the coolest kid on the block a.k.a the first and only to climb it.

“My parents had to cut it down,” Shiloh said exasperatedly. “And there were a lot of pretty birds in it—”

Dash rolled her eyes hard and threw her arms up into the air. “Yeah, and they used to wake you up for school every morning with their singing—I know, I know. I’m an awful fucking person for taking away your birdie alarm clock.”

She glared and Shiloh pouted until they both started laughing at the old memory. Something in Dash’s chest coiled and got tight.

“I miss you, Rae,” her friend sighed, fond and sad at the same time.

“Don’t call me that,” Dash muttered. She swallowed around the knot in her throat and croaked out, “I miss you, too.”

Shiloh licked her lips and looked down at her keyboard. Dash idly wondered how she would have even gone about sending a bike through the mail—she was sure that there were ways, but those ways probably cost a hell of a lot of money. She could probably have just had it delivered to Shi’s address from a local Walmart, but she didn’t know if California carried the model. Well, alright, they probably did. She was just being cheap and making excuses.

Her eyes slowly lowered until they were half-lidded, the weariness of a 6 AM nightmare-induced wake up call making its presence known. “Talk,” she instructed lazily. Shiloh was still staring down at her keyboard, looking deeply lost in thought.

“I saw her in the store today,” the girl whispered after a pause.

“Who?” Dash laced her fingers together and pulled her arms up towards the ceiling, stretching out the muscles in her biceps and forearms. Her elbow popped, and she sighed in satisfaction as she lowered her still-laced hands behind her head, enjoying the way her muscles became warm under her skin. She toed her shoes off lazily while she waited for her friend to respond. She was only half interested in the conversation now; the warm, sleepy feeling settling into her readily now that she had acknowledged it. She had half a mind to fall asleep dressed and without a shower—it wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last.

Shiloh said, “Rae.”

“Don’t call—” Dash began.

“No, I saw your mother, Rae, at the grocery store today.”

The sleepy mood disappeared. Dash swallowed thickly, staring at the screen but not blinking. Shiloh’s fidgeting picture didn’t register in front of her—she saw nothing.

“She left San Fran years ago,” Dash argued calmly. She barely recognized her own voice, and, damn it, why was she reacting in this way? She shook herself out of the stupor. “Are you sure?”

“Yes—I stared a little too long, and when I turned around to leave she looked up and recognized me and called me back. We chatted—she asked about you.”

“The bitch has no right to ask about me,” Dash snarled. Anger had been slowly walking towards her during Shiloh’s retelling, and finally it wrapped her into its embrace. “What did you tell her?” she said through gritted teeth.

Shiloh played with her fingers, nervous in the face of Dash’s rage. “I-I told her you’d moved, and that I had lost t-track of you years ago. That we fell out of contact.”

Dash breathed in deeply through her nose and exhaled through her mouth. The deep-breathing practice was bullshit, honestly. Rage still pounded through her.

“Good,” she seethed. “I don’t ever want to see her face again.”

“I know, Dash,” Shiloh sighed. “I’m sorry I brought it up, I just thought that you should know.”

Dash shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t care if she’s asking about me in San Fran—I’m in fucking Virginia, now. There’s no way she’ll find me here.”

Her friend didn’t seem to have a follow-up, so they sat in silence. Dash tried to calm her racing heart and pounding head. The anger drained away into annoyance, and she couldn’t stop thinking about her mother. The fucking gall of that whore.

“Was anyone with her at the store?” Dash asked, even though she would rather have talked about any-fucking-thing else.

“No, no one.”

Dash drummed her fingers hard on the empty surface beside the touchpad. “Did you see a ring?”

“I-I don’t know—Dash, why don’t we talk about something else?” Shiloh said quietly.

Dash blew out a long breath, her cheeks puffing out. She wasn’t even staring at the computer screen anymore but over the top of it and at a spot above her door. She was decidedly grumpy, and questions and scenarios played in circles through her head.

She grumbled, “Because now I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Would it really be so terrible?” Dash’s eyes snapped onto Shiloh’s face at the question. “I-if she found you again, I mean.”

“I don’t know—how would you feel if Tyler just walked back into yours and Eli’s life again?”

Shiloh paled and stared at her with her lips pressed together so tightly that they barely stood out against her milky skin. Finally, she said, “I’d be grateful that my son got to know his father.”

Dash snorted. “No, you wouldn’t. You’d be pissed as fuck.”

“Okay, yes, I’d be very angry,” the girl amended. “But I’d probably be grateful after. If he decided to stay. Even if he didn’t, at least Eli would know.”

Dash winced, not feeling too happy with herself for bringing up the analogy. “Well, I’d be hella pissed too, on your behalf. And I’d stay pissed since I know you wouldn’t.”

Shiloh giggled, a little sadly. “Thank you, Dashie.”

“Yeah, no problem.” She glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen and found that they’d been talking for close to an hour. “Yo, I gotta sign off, Shi. School tomorrow.”

“I’m glad you’re still going to school.” Shiloh smiled sweetly at her.

Dash pursed her lips. Jeez, fucking school was tomorrow. And she hadn’t washed her car like she wanted to.

“Yeah, well, I promised you I’d graduate, didn’t I? I always keep my promises.”

She wondered why she even bothered when so many people in the world didn’t keep their promises. Far larger promises, promises that hurt others with their shrapnel when they were broken.

But her word had always been her bond—there was something to be said about loyalty, after all. Loyalty to herself, if nobody else.