Free Rockoholic by C. J. Skuse Page B

vegetarian, he’s not really into zebras. I don’t care, OK? I want him with me. And you are going to take us back to the pub, right now, me
and
Jackson, or I’m going to do something really, really, really . . .” And then I lose my nerve a bit and I stumble over my words and I can’t think of a single thing that I would do if Mac didn’t drive us back to our shitty little town. Back to Nuffing. Nuffing-on-the-sodding-Wold. So I just end the sentence on the third really.
    And Mac says, “Really what?”
    I’ve had a little more time, so I’ve thought of something. “I hope you never find out.”
    Mac twists back in his seat, does a few more sighs. Then he mumbles about the windshield being too steamed up and whacks the heat up full blast.
    “Well, if you stopped sighing it might clear a bit quicker,” I snap. He throws the straws and paper napkins back at me, followed by Jackson’s burger and my mozzarella balls in turn. We hit the road again. For a second, I think that he’s going to go back around the traffic circle and head back to Cardiff and that, if he does, I will never ever
EVER
speak to him again. But he heads for the South West. He heads back toward the Severn Bridge. Back to Nuffing-on-the-Wold.
    “Thank you,” I say and he holds his hand up to shush me, then puts it back on the steering wheel where it grips hard. I slurp half of my Diet Coke — I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was until now — and place Jackson’s burger box on his chest with his fries. I eat my mozzarella balls in total silence, watching him. There’s no stereo on. It’s just the car bobbing along the deserted motorway toward the bridge, jolting over the odd speed bump and whipping past the tall orange streetlamps as the rain lashes down upon the metal roof. I’m usually ravenous for anything fried but this time I can taste every globule of fat, feel every artery snap shut, and pretty soon I have indigestion.
    “Stop it,” says Mac in the silence.
    “What?”
    “Looking at him, all cow eyes. You’re not keeping him.”
    I haven’t even realized I’m doing it. I’m just staring at Jackson. The car is so quiet and this is well odd, because when me and Mac usually go out in his car, he has the radio blaring and we’re singing our lungs out to classic rock or doing Gaga impressions to make Cree laugh. But not tonight.
    Every so often Mac sighs, or Jackson gargles or coughs, but apart from that, it’s just road noise and the occasional other car overtaking us. I can’t look at Jackson so I watch the pine tree air freshner and the jelly dolphin charm swinging together under the rearview mirror. It isn’t until we’re on the bridge, right in the middle of the bridge, that the silence is cracked by a sharp intake of breath and a deafening yell.
    “Jeeeeeesus aaaarrgghh, oh my gaaaaaaaad, help me! Get it off me, get it off meee!!!!”
    Jackson’s burger flies off his chest and it’s raining French fries as I’m pinned to the side of the car while Jackson flails and flips about in his seat, climbing across me to try and open the front passenger door. Luckily I’ve locked it. If I hadn’t, he would have leapt out of the speeding car.
    “Wh-what, oh my God, what is it?” I keep saying, utterly at a loss for what to do.
    “What’s he doing?” cries Mac, struggling to keep control of the car.
    “Get it off me, get it off meeeeee!” he screams. Mac swerves and the car screeches onto the hard shoulder of the road and stops. Jackson crawls right across me, fumbles with the door locks and the handle until it almost snaps in his hand, and jumps through the seats and out of the car. Outside in the freezing night, he rips off his straitjacket and flings it upward. It lands. He grabs it again and flings it harder, high up and over the side of the bridge.
    “Get off meeeeee! No, no get off, get off get off!”
    He takes his boots off and flings them in the air, too, so he’s just standing there, screaming in his white