Three Miles Past by Jones Stephen Graham

Author:Jones, Stephen Graham [Jones, Stephen Graham]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Nightscape Press
Published: 2012-12-22T16:00:00+00:00

3.

That afternoon—this was Friday, the Friday before the rest of my life—RJ opened their utility door, caught me at his dad’s refrigerator, my arms clinking with garage beer.

“I’ll pay you back,” I told him.

“Remember Zelda?” he said back, not even a little concerned about the beer, or his dad.

“Which one?” I asked.

We’d raced through them all.

“Fourth grade,” he said.

NES. His dad had insisted we start there, even though it had already been a serious antique by our third grade.

He was right, too. It was the right place to begin.

I got the last beer I could carry, balanced it on top and eased the refrigerator door shut with my calf.

“Gannon with two n’s . . . ” I said, then looked all the way up the steps to him. “So, this mean you’re back, man?”

“Where have I been?” he said, something mocking in his voice.

“We need to take it live,” I said, catching a beer, and he heard the goodbye in my tone, opened his hand for me to waltz out into whatever this night held for me, and started the garage door down before I was halfway across the drive.

Because I was suddenly sure that if I looked back, I’d see Cedric trotting up out of the past, barely going to make it under the door, I looked back, fumbled the one bottle that kept getting away. It shattered at my feet, the door sealed itself to the concrete, and I wanted so bad to scrape that brown glass over, into the little gutter RJ’s dad always edged between the drive and the grass, then maybe get the hose to take care of the guilty smell. But Lindsay. Lindsay Lindsay Lindsay. And RJ’s dad knew we were into that beer anyway, didn’t he? He had to. It was understood.

Just before she picked me up, my dad surely driving home from his shift, his face grim as ever, his talk radio whispering to him—I was having to time this so perfect—my phone buzzed with a text.

It was the lamp in my living room, the image I’d deleted. It was just standing there. Different anonymous number.

I looked to RJ’s house and the one light that was on, it went off.

Pulling away with Lindsay, then, we passed RJ’s dad, and, right before she turned right for her house, I caught RJ’s dad’s brake lights flaring. So he wouldn’t run over that shattered bottle on his concrete. So he could get out, be sure he was seeing what he was seeing. So he could walk inside, ask RJ what he knew about this, RJ looking up at him from his laptop, a tolerant grin already pasted on his face.

I shut my eyes, rubbed a cold beer against my face, and I’m sure it goes without saying here that, when we got to her place, her parents were gone like she’d said—that was never the part anybody lied about—but four of her friends were there, and they had brought movies.

They held their hands over the

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