Rumble Fish by Hinton S. E

Author:Hinton, S. E. [Hinton, S. E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Childrens, Classics, Young Adult, JUVENILE FICTION/General, Contemporary
ISBN: 9781938120824
Amazon: 1938120825
Goodreads: 17860506
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 1975-09-15T07:00:00+00:00

7

We went downtown that night, across the bridge, to where the lights were. It wasn’t as hard to talk Steve into going along as I’d thought it’d be. Usually I had to hound him and stop just short of threatening him to get him to do anything his parents wouldn’t like. This time, though, he just said, “Okay, I’ll tell my father I’m going to the movies.” Which was the easiest time I ever had talking him into something. Steve had been acting peculiar lately. Ever since his mother went into the hospital he’d had a funny kind of empty recklessness to him. He looked like a sincere rabbit about to take on a pack of wolves.

He met us at our place. I never went to his house. His parents didn’t even know he knew me. I poured half a bottle of cherry vodka into a bottle of sneaky pete to take with us.

“Here, take a swig of this,” I said to Steve as we went across the bridge. There wasn’t much space for walking. You were supposed to drive across. We stopped in the middle so the Motorcycle Boy could look at the river awhile. He’d been doing that ever since I could remember. He really liked that old river.

I handed Steve the bottle, and to my surprise he took a drink. He never drank. I’d been trying to get him to for years, and had just about given up on it. He gagged, looked at me for a second, then swallowed it. He wiped his eyes.

“That stuff tastes awful,” he told me.

“Don’t worry about the taste,” I said. “It’ll get you there.”

“Remind me to chew gum before I go home, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. The Motorcycle Boy was ready to move on again and we trotted along behind him. He covered a lot of ground with one stride.

It was going to be a good night. I could tell. The Motorcycle Boy was basically a night person. He’d come home in the morning and sleep past one or two, and really just be getting awake good around four. He was hearing pretty good, too, and didn’t seem to mind us going with him. He didn’t use to like me following him around. Now it seemed like he barely noticed we were there.

“Why do you drink so much?” Steve asked me. Something was bugging him. He always was kind of nervous and bothered, but I couldn’t believe he’d ever try to pick a fight with me.

“You can’t stand your father drinking all the time,” he went on doggedly. “So why do you? Do you want to end up like that?”

“Aw, I don’t drink that much,” I said. I was over into the city, on the strip, where there were lots of people and noise and lights and you could feel energy coming off things, even buildings. I was damned if Steve was going to mess it up for me.

“Man, this is gonna be a good night,” I said, to change the subject.

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