Runaway took a step toward him and seethed. We could see the anger now in her eyes. Her hands were shaking, and her entire frame trembled from rage.
“You don’t get it, do you? Everyone’s telling me to back off, so I did! Now you think that the only injury was the one in your leg.” She pointed to his suspended leg.
“You weren’t with us—you didn’t see what we saw. You weren’t the helpless bystander, watching their best friend getting smashed up and feeling absolutely helpless to do anything about it!” She was now yelling at him. “If I could, believe me, I would kill Brandon with my own two hands, but I have been recently lectured on the finer points of revenge!” As she yelled, she glared and pointed to the rest of us.
“So you’re going to do nothing?” Stephen yelled back. Spite and anger filled his voice beyond recognition. “That’s it, then? Just wallow in pathetic, overwhelming self-pity mingled with guilt?” he spat back and glared at her.
“You don’t understand crap,” she said through gritted teeth as she allowed the tears to flow. I knew Runaway well enough to know that they were not tears of sadness, but tears of anger. However, instead of arguing her point with him, she let frustration and angst overtake her. She turned, punched the hospital door open with her foot, and stormed out.
Grant immediately followed her out the door and caught sight of her just as her anger exploded. She grabbed a tray full of hospital paraphernalia, threw it across the hall, and kept walking. We could hear the metal as it echoed from being thrown against a wall and then hitting the ground.
I couldn’t help myself and I followed Grant out the door. I couldn’t let this go, I couldn’t let her go. I had to make sure she was alright. I was certain that Grant could calm her down, but I had to be sure so I followed them both.
Grant turned the corner and ran after Runaway, who was already halfway down the hall,
“Runaway!” he yelled.
Finally catching up to her, he grabbed her by the arm and whirled her around in mid-stride.
I stayed behind Grant—I didn’t want them to see me standing there. It wasn’t like I was spying—I just knew I would get in the way if they saw me so I stood just around the corner from where they were. From where I was standing there was a mirror hanging from the ceiling so it would be possible to see what was coming around the hall. This made perfect sense in a hospital, because one would not want to run into a gurney. For me it worked out well because I could see them both from around the corner.
“What are you going to do?” he demanded. Grant was mad as well, and stood within inches of her face.
“What difference does it make to you? I got Stephen’s message—didn’t you? Were you not in the room?” She pointed down the hall, and then looked directly back at Grant. “I’ll make the S.O.B. pay!” she seethed.
“Runaway, you can’t touch Bret, even if he is guilty. Besides, you can’t prove anything!”
“Damn you and everyone else who is telling me to back off! I’m sick of it!” She shoved him hard. Raging with anger, and through gritted teeth, she spat every word at him.
“What the hell am I supposed to do, Grant, just let it go? Is that what you really want me to do? I mean, deep down, you just want to walk away and pretend it didn’t happen? I can’t do that, Grant—I’m not you… I can’t just keep it all bottled inside and walk around like nothing happened. And I would think with as competitive as you are, you couldn’t do it either. Or is it because you seem so laid back that it doesn’t bother you?” She looked at him hard.
“Don’t you feel? Don’t you want retribution? Don’t you want to see him pay for what he did to Stephen? He hates me so much that he had Brandon turn on all of us
,
not just Stephen. I can’t forget that, and I don’t know how you can!” she yelled at him.
Grant held her by her shoulders. She let her tears of anger slip from her eyes.
“No, I do care,” he said, more slowly now. “I do want retribution, but Runaway, I’m not going off half-cocked, either… if you would just stop for a second and use that brain of yours, you would see the solution.” Grant was now trying to calm her. He seemed to realize that maybe we had pushed her too far. Maybe he also realized what we had just a few minutes ago in Stephen’s room was wrong.
He looked directly at her as he held her with only his eyes.
“Don’t forget, you’re the one who started this whole racing thing—you’re the one who has been dreaming of it since you were a kid, and if you would just take a minute to calm down and not go off like a crazed woman, you have got to see what I see—now you have got to look at the whole picture.” He took a breath and let his hands fall free from her shoulders.
“There are other ways to hurt people besides beating the crap out of them—other ways to annihilate their own self-importance. Bret obviously feels threatened by you—that is why he did what he did. But you have an opportunity now to get back at him even better and harder than what he did to us, and more importantly, to you.
“I don’t know if Bret knew what was going to happen,” he began to explain. “But he probably just figured a little accident would teach us a lesson. Don’t you see?” He stared at her hard. “Bret has so much more to lose than we do right now. All he has ever wanted was to be better than you, and you have either showed him up or beaten him outright—he has never gotten the better of you, and it bugs the crap out of him. Don’t you see? He has lost to you every time—that’s why he keeps coming back. He keeps trying to win.
“Now he has done the unthinkable and crossed a line that should have never been crossed. Don’t you see what an opportunity you have? It took me awhile to figure it out, but now it all seems so clear.”
For so long, all of us had been telling her to back off and let Brandon go, let the cops handle it, let justice do its job. Even if they couldn’t prove anything, they had scared the crap out of Brandon. But what none of us had thought about was the best way to get at Bret. Runaway, we knew, had just wanted to hurt someone, and we were afraid that she would, so we did everything we could to stop her—even going so far as to tell her that we didn’t want to race.
But in retrospect, that was the one thing she
had to do, and in that moment Grant realized it, and in the back of my mind I knew it as well.
“Get Bret where it hurts,” he said slowly.
“Let the police take care of what they can, whether Bret or Brandon gets busted or not. You know as well as I do, they will never confess, and therefore they will get off scot-free with the law. But you have to control yourself, your anger, and your gut response for Stephen.” He pointed toward the door. “He doesn’t need this crap, and he doesn’t understand what we have been dealing with and going through. But I am telling you now, as sure as I am standing here, you can get Bret where it hurts. You know as well as I do, there isn’t anyone else who can beat him.” He stared harder at Runaway, like he was asking her to understand what he was thinking.
“Get Bret where it hurts—sweeten the deal… the Tri City Championship… pink slips,” he whispered.
Runaway balked for an instant… the Tri City Championship. None of us had thought about it either, it was only about one month away and of course we weren’t even considering it. But, she immediately understood the ramifications of the pink slips—years of work, money, saving, sweat, and tears. It wasn’t just her reputation on the line—it was her beloved car. Her car, which meant everything to her. All her life she had dreamed of it, and all of her life she had worked for it. It was the one solid thing she knew she would always have—the one thing that would not let her down
.
“What if I lose?” was all she said, looking at him, bewildered.
“How can you?” He stared back at her.
Her eyes went wild, as she tried to peer into Grant’s soul, and for a moment, her nerve unraveled before her.
“Grant, you know as well as I do that Bret’s car and mine are the same, pound for pound. Yeah, I might have a couple extra horses, but that’s not enough to win.”
Grant held her with his gaze, understanding that this was just a moment of doubt.
“Runaway, you know how to drive better than anyone I have ever seen. You’ve been driving since you were three—don’t give me that crap that it’s only in the car. Take the race, take his car, and then you will be taking his pride.”
I closed my eyes and slowly exhaled.
Chapter Seventeen
Runaway immediately left the hospital on her own without saying a word to anyone. She left us wondering what her next step would be.
From Stephen’s hospital window, I watched her drive away. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand how she was going to fix the situation.
When Grant turned to come back around the corner I said, “Hey.”
“You heard, huh?” he’d said.
“Yeah,” I took my time talking. “I followed you but then figured you had the better temperament to deal with her so I just stood here not wanting to interrupt.”
“Let’s go back to Stephen’s room,” was all he’d said. “I’m sure they’re wondering what’s going on.”
When we came back into Stephen’s room, Grant told Brian and Stephen all about his talk with her, and his suggestion of going after Bret.
I, however, didn’t agree with everything and I told them so. The only part I had a problem with was that I didn’t think her car would win—they were too equally matched. I was not going to let her risk everything just to prove a point, and I felt compelled to tell her so the next day.
It was a cool spring day in late May on a Monday that I saw her again. I was glad it was Monday, because after Stephen’s accident, it felt like the weekends dragged on forever without racing.
The first opportunity I had to talk to her, I was going to speak my mind and tell her that I thought Grant was wrong about racing for pink slips.
That morning, I parked next to her in the parking lot and quickly grabbed my backpack and hopped out of the car. Runaway was quicker than I was—she was already walking with determination to class. It was as if she didn’t want to talk to anyone, let alone me. I jogged to catch up to her.
“Hey,” I yelled at her back.
“What?” She didn’t bother to turn around.
“Hold up.” I finally caught up to her. “Can we talk for a sec?”
She stopped and exhaled quickly, showing her annoyance. Finally, she looked at me and said, “What?”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I am sure Grant already told you—I’m going after Bret, the best and only way I know how,” she answered.
“And just how are you going to do that?” Brian asked, with eyebrows raised.
I hadn’t realized that he had come up from behind us and was already listening to the conversation.
“What makes you think he won’t do to you what he did to Stephen?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t do,” she retorted. “He wants to get at me any way he can. He doesn’t have anything against Stephen—he only used Brandon because he knew Brandon is weak, and Brandon has always hated Stephen.”
Clearly, she was on a roll. “Bret wanted to teach me a lesson, and that lesson is that he supposedly is better than me in every way. He could never win by driving, so he thought fixing a race would prove his superiority—that, and he wanted to show me he is in control.”
She took a breath—she had said so little for so long that it was quite a shock to hear her talk so much. “Look, don’t you guys get it?” She looked at us both. “All this was only to get at me, so I am going to offer him what he wants on a silver platter, and then I will take what means the most to him.”
“Runaway,” I looked at her, “This is insane—you have to know his car is just as fast as yours, if not faster and racing for pinks is insane.”
“I don’t give a crap what his car is.” Her anger flared as she glared at me. “I’m not going to let what he did to Stephen go unnoticed.”
“It’s your car,” I said, under my breath.
I knew I couldn’t hold her back from her vengeance any longer. During their conversation at the hospital, Grant had essentially given her the green light to seek her personal justice. There wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it. I had felt helpless many times during the course of the year, but this was the first time that I felt like I could control nothing. I couldn’t control Runaway, my friends or my feelings. Nothing seemed to make sense to me anymore, and I was getting lost in what was right and what was just gut instinct. I couldn’t even tell her how I felt about her. I had tried, on several occasions, to talk to her, but we were always surrounded by people. I wanted just a moment, just a chance to tell her what I was thinking, but I knew that that was impossible. So I had to let it go.
She abruptly walked away from both Brian and me. We were left standing there, staring at each other.
“You can’t change her, man.” Brian seemed to be reading my thoughts.
I looked directly at him. “I don’t want to change her,” I said, looking down at the ground and then back up at her walking away. “I just want to protect her,” I murmured.
He shrugged his shoulders, “You can’t, and isn’t that the part you love the best about her?”
What?
I had to do a double take.
“Come on, Topher—you wear your emotions on your sleeve. I’m just surprised she hasn’t noticed that you’re in love with her.”
“Are you serious? You can tell?” I was incredulous.
“Dude, you’d have to be a complete idiot not to notice. But no worries—it’s not like any of us cares. You do what you can to hide it and keep it in check—we get that. It’s not like you wanted to have these feelings for her—it just happens.”
Brian was suddenly making me feel better, but then again, not really, because they knew
I loved her. I thought the only one who knew anything was Grant, but I was sorely mistaken.
“You mean you all know?”
He understood my question. “Yeah, even Stephen. He thinks it’s…” he paused for a moment, and then continued, “what did he call it? ‘Fascination with the unattainable’. I don’t know—it was something like that. You know Stephen.”
Yeah
, I thought
I know Stephen
—enough to know he was absolutely right.
“Come on,” he grabbed me by the arm. “We’re going to be late.”
Apparently I must have looked worried, because he then said, “Look, we’ve known for a long time. Well, Grant and Stephen have…”
“Did they tell you?” I caught my breath.
“No, I figured out on my own, and quickly, I might add.” He smiled at this. “Come on, Topher—it’s no big deal. We’ve known for a while and believe me, no one will breathe a word to her.”
We had started walking to class again when an alarming thought suddenly struck.
“Did Brandon know?” I looked at him, horrified.
“Are you kidding?” He now laughed. “That guy is so freakin’ stupid, he wouldn’t notice boobs on a jackass.”
I now liked Brian even more.
A few weeks had passed since our sobering moment in the hospital, and Stephen was finally back in school—in fact, this was his first day, and he was driving his newly finished car. Jim had completed Stephen’s car just days before he returned back to school, and for once, Stephen was rendered speechless. We saw him walking into class, just as we arrived.
Stephen looked up with a big grin and said, “Ah, back within the confines of academia,” as he made his way into government class.
He was using crutches to help him walk as his leg was still in a massive brace that went from his hip to his toes, and it seemed as if he was in pain, as he was moving slowly. “Don’t worry.” He looked at me and winced a bit. “This is just a precursor to my dancing career.”
It was great to have Stephen back in school, not only to see his goofy grin everywhere I went, but because he always helped us out in English. We were tremendously behind, something he clearly was not happy about.
“Have you not read anything during my convalescence? Did you all find that becoming ignorant and obtuse was preferable to intellectual rigor?”
We couldn’t hide our guilt—we had begun reading Orwell’s
Nineteen Eighty-Four,
and it just wasn’t a riveting read—politics, government, and this thing called Big Brother. I just couldn’t keep any of it straight.
“It’s called classic for a reason,” he leaned back from his desk and whispered to me.
“Well, then, if it’s a classic
,
it should be in a museum, where you look at it and don’t have to read
it,” I whispered back.
“Don’t equate classic with antiquated,” he said, turning back around.
Brian cleared his throat and grinned.
Runaway still wasn’t exactly her normal self. She spoke only a few words all day, but she also laughed and smiled a bit, too.
We all had math sixth period. During the last few weeks, Runaway still wasn’t talking much. She would stand and talk with us, but it was never about anything really important. However, today Runaway seemed to become more pensive with every passing moment. I sat directly next to her, Grant sat behind her, Stephen was in front of her, and Brian was just on the other side. I looked at the three of them with questioning eyes, but they just shrugged their shoulders as to what was wrong with her now.
Class had been particularly boring, as we were wrapping up the year and reviewing what would be on our final exam when the bell rang. Runaway, who was already packed up, grabbed her stuff and bolted out of the room before we could even close our notebooks. Quickly, as best we could because of Stephen with his braced leg and crutches, we followed her, but by the time we got out of the building, she was already driving out of the parking lot. We wanted to run to our cars, but were held back because of Stephen.
“Just follow her without me,” he said, exasperated by having to maneuver so slowly.
“No way, man,” said Grant. He hoisted Stephen onto his back in order to carry him to his car.
“Oh, well, now—this is dignified,” he lamented.
“Do you know a better way?” Grant demanded as he jogged to our cars.
“No,” he confessed.
After following Runaway out of the parking lot, we caught up to her on Foothill. By then we could tell where she was headed—Bonita High. When she eventually turned right onto Bonita Avenue and drove into the school’s parking lot, I felt my stomach drop.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that we were here. Even if someone had told me she was going to confront Bret, I would have been somewhat okay with it, but now that I was here, I was nervous. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her instincts or her “plans,” it was just that I cared about her too much now—I was too involved.
We only caught up to her after she had parked and gotten out of the car. School wasn’t quite out yet, so the parking lot remained void of any students—this would at least give us a chance to figure out exactly what she was doing here.