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You just got back into town and your former besties ditched you at a crime scene. They destroyed the boy's cars and left you behind to take the fall!
You don't want to be here. You told them that. Twice, actually — once in the parking lot of the bar where they'd found you, and again in the backseat of Marlon's truck when Rudy cracked his window and said "lighten up, it'll be fun." That was forty minutes ago. Now you're standing in the dark behind Rellick Auto & Performance, the building you've only ever seen from the road on the drive into town, and three of your old college friends are grinning at you like you're still the same kid and this is still funny. Wasn't always the three of them. Used to be a bigger crowd. Used to be louder. Now it's Marlon's truck, Rudy with the bolt cutters he borrowed from somewhere he's not saying, a girl named Kellie who nobody really liked even back then but who always laughed at the right times, and you. You. Back in Halvern after six years away. Back for reasons that had nothing to do with this. "Whose idea was this," Kellie murmurs, but she's already looking at the padlocked side door like she's sizing up a present. Marlon's grin doesn't reach his eyes. It never did. "Consider it a welcome home." Rudy cuts the chain. The sound tears the quiet of the industrial stretch like a gunshot. Nobody flinches. The garage smells the way it should — oil, metal, rubber, something sharp underneath you can't name. There's a rolling toolbox by the door. A radio on a shelf, unplugged. A half-drunk coffee on the workbench, gone cold. Three cars. A black coupe you don't recognize, low to the ground, tucked in the far bay. A red hatchback on the lift, wheels off, axles exposed. And in the center bay, under a tarp that's been pulled half-off — a black Meridian. Rudy whistles low. That's the one. You don't know how you know, but you know. The way Marlon's looking at it. The way Kellie's already reaching for the tarp the rest of the way. "That one's got to be worth what," Kellie says, not really asking. "Forty? Fifty?" "More," Rudy mutters, running his hand along the quarter panel like he's appraising it. "If it's what I think it is." Marlon's already moved on. He's pulled a flashlight from his jacket and is sweeping it across the workbench, across the tool wall, across the framed photos tacked above the electronics station — three younger guys, all awkward, all painfully thin, arms around each other in front of some beat-up car you don't recognize. Marlon holds the light up and laughs. "Jesus. Look at them." Kellie leans in. Makes a sound through her nose. The photo is old. You can tell because the black ink looks faded and the frame is cheap and one corner's bent. But you recognize the faces anyway. You always will. You don't say anything. You watch Kellie take the photo off the wall and turn it over in her hands. You watch Rudy pop the hood of the Meridian like it's nothing. You watch Marlon unscrew the cap of something on the workbench and sniff it and grin. The black car gleams under the flashlight like it's waiting. It takes twenty minutes. Rudy pours sugar into the gas tank for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of Kellie dragging a key down the side of the red hatchback, deep enough to hit primer in three places. Twenty minutes of Marlon slashing the leather seats of the Meridian — the good car, the one that mattered — with a box cutter, methodical, patient, like he's got somewhere to be afterward. You stand near the rolling toolbox and don't touch anything. Twice you almost say stop. Twice the word gets stuck somewhere behind your teeth because Marlon gave you a look both times — flat, cold, the same look he used to give the weird kids when they got in the way — and the word dies. "You always were a buzzkill," he'd said once, second year, and you'd laughed it off, but you hadn't forgotten. You haven't forgotten a lot of things. Kellie takes the photo. Folds it. Pockets it. "Memory," she says. Marlon is already heading for the door. His truck is gone when you get outside. The lot where he parked is empty. Engine sound fading down the road, just past the point where you'd bother running after it. Kellie's car is gone too. Rudy is leaning against the wall by the side door, lighting a cigarette. He takes a long drag, then looks at you through the smoke. "Should've been funnier about it," he says. Then he pushes off the wall and walks toward the street. A different car. Someone picking him up. The taillights blink twice and disappear. You're standing alone behind the garage with your hands in your pockets and the smell of gasoline and sugar drifting out the door behind you. The night is very quiet. They come back faster than you'd think. Headlights swing into the lot — a single truck, dark green, dented in the rear quarter. Engine cut. Doors. Three sets of boots on gravel, fast. You don't run. There's nowhere to run to, and besides — Marlon, Rudy, Kellie, they left you here. You can feel the shape of it now, clear as the photo Kellie pocketed. The plan was always this. The plan was always you, standing in the middle of it, taking the weight when it landed. You just didn't think they'd do it tonight. The side door slams open. The tallest one comes through first. You don't recognize him for a second — and then you do, all at once, the way a word comes back to you mid-sentence. Same jaw. Same eyes, except they don't look away anymore. Same shoulders, except they're not bony anymore, they're something else. He's taller than he was. Broader. The messy black hair is the same. The face is sharper. There's a black triangle under one eye that wasn't there before, and ink crawling up both arms and out of the collar of his shirt, and his hands — His hands are wrecked. Grease under the nails. A fresh cut across one knuckle, not even closed yet. Behind him — the other two. One you recognize instantly because he hasn't stopped glaring since he walked in the door. Built like he lost the skinny kid and replaced him with spite. Tattoos down both forearms. Eyes already finding the Meridian. The third one — glasses, piercings, lean — has already moved past the door and is crouched beside the coupe, touching the fender with two fingers like he's reading braille. The tall one is standing three feet away from you. He hasn't looked at the cars yet. He's looking at you. For a long, terrible second, nobody says anything. The radio's still unplugged. The coffee's still cold. The side door's still hanging open where the chain used to be. Then he exhales — not a sigh, not quite. Just breath through his nose. Controlled. His eyes move from your face to the Meridian. To the seats. He doesn't move for a long time. When he does, he crosses the bay in four steps. The glove comes off slow — he's wearing one, black leather, mechanic's — and he runs his thumb along the first slash in the leather. The sound it makes under his nail is very small. The garage is silent. He turns back to you. "What the fuck," the stocky one says from the lift, voice low and shaking with something that's halfway to a yell. The one by the coupe hasn't stood up. He's just crouched there with his hand flat on the paint, head bowed, like he's counting to ten. The tall one is still looking at you. "You've got ten minutes," he says. His voice is quiet. Flat. Halvern in it, the same as it ever was, but lower now, harder, stripped of whatever softness might've been there back then. "Ten minutes to tell me how you're paying for this. Cash. Check. Doesn't matter. You're paying for all of it." He steps closer. "All of it," he repeats, and the quiet in his voice doesn't change, but something behind his eyes does.