carefully made up, you can tell at close range, so that sheâll look natural from a distance. Clever.
âWhy dâya cover up your freckles?â I say.
âWhat?â She laughs self-consciously.
âNo, serious. I love freckles. Theyâre sexy.â
She flushes, pleased with the compliment packed carefully in a crate of criticism. Iâm on the make. Sheâs sipping juice from a bottle, offers me some, and I swig it back. Sheâs saying something about the juice, but Iâm swallowing so I canât hear. She lifts her hand in protest, squawks out loud, but I drain the bottle in one long gulp and toss it away, into the street. Iâm taking her for every thing sheâs got. She giggles.
We get to the car and, whaddayaknow, the âthingâ sheâs looking for isnât there! I say, âHow sad I wonât get to see this city while Iâm here.â She looks at me sideways in that profound, fateful moment when she makes her decision, and voila, weâre in her brand-new, candy-apple red Honda Civic hatchback that Daddy gave her. The tinted windows whirl down, the music blares, and weâre off. She gives me a tour of her favourite American-owned coffee retailers, the shopping mall where she bought her ridiculous outfit, her hairstylistsâ shop (âHeâs really cool and sooo sweetâ). She points out the CN Tower with its rotating restaurant in the fat bulge of it, the glass elevators on the side sliding up, sliding down. She claims itâs the tallest in the city, in the country, in the world, practically. I shrug.
She rests her hand on my knee at a stoplight. She leans toward me. âYou and me, weâre going to fuck tonight.â
I smile wide and the knot inside tightens. I say, âIs that so?â and she nods her head yes. Sheâs got that terrible smugness about her, like the way cowards ego-bloat when theyâre high on cocaine. She tells me Iâm hot.
Someone honks. The light is already green, and she stalls the car. More honks. Her tires squeal. She drives nervously, hopping from one lane to another, making bad decisions, going nowhere.
She speeds up to make a yellow light then slams on the breaks, sliding us halfway into the intersection, and I think I might not even get a chance to kill this bitch, she might do us both in first!
âSmoke?â I offer her a joint. She refuses, saying she usually likes coke or speed or crystal meth or like any club drug, really, but definitely not pot âcause it makes her all ⦠âParanoid?â I say quietly.
âUm, yeah. I guess.â She asks, âWanna see the lake?â and I say, âSure, why not. I like nature. Water.â
Her hand is back on my thigh now, sheâs scratching at me with her long manicured nails. She says, âJust looking at you gets me wet,â and I think, how original, you stupid, boring broad. She says something about some fantasy on the beach. The one where a stranger takes her down and frees her from herself; she lets loose, wild and dirty, leaves her endless petty hang-ups behind.
Iâm thinking how easy itâd be to stash her body, take the car, hit the highway. And then sheâs swinging sharply to the left, careening across three lanes of traffic, narrowly making it to the onramp for a decrepit express lane going in a completely different direction.
âYou seem a little wired,â I say, clutching my seatbelt, snapping it into place, knocking her hand off of me.
âYeah,â she hiccups. âThe pills I took are kinda kicking in.â
She laughs; thereâs a maniacal twinge to her face now, and it looks eerie in the silver lights along the highway.
I lick my lips. âWhy donât we pull over right now?â I say, like Iâve said to a million other creeps who have driven me around. âEver done it on the side of the road?â
She giggles. Sheâs undoing her shirt