K.D.'s Crash

         I used to be happy, back when things made sense. High school was simple. Everything was blocked out for us. We knew what was expected, and we knew how to break the rules. Monday to Friday was a mix of cutting class and falling asleep. Afternoons were for getting high, or hitting on chicks at the mall. Weekends meant sleep, booze, and parties.

            That’s all gone now. If I’d done things different—if I had finished high school—I might be happy now. But no. Now I’m stuck. The school I dropped out of is now the hell where I work as a janitor. Now my Monday to Friday routine is cleaning. Most days I want to beat the shit out of these punk-ass kids. I’m sure I could’ve found another job somewhere if I had tried hard enough. There was one thing though that I liked about the school, but maybe I was wrong about that too.

            I was never really a bright kid. I repeated a couple grades in primary school before my teachers decided that they needed to pass me so they wouldn’t have to see me again. Dad always worked day shift, leaving me to fend for myself. The only thing that I ever actually got good at was fixing up my bike—it was a piece of shit Suzuki dirt-bike, but my granddad had given it to me when my mom died. He hoped it would help me cope, or something.

            That bike was what eventually led me to meet my first good friends. Dom and Tiff. I was testing the new brakes I’d put on the bike when I nearly ran Dom down. He thought it was funny, and we became friends from there. He liked to think he was a gear head like me, but he was usually too baked to wrap his head around rebuilding an engine. He was the one who got me into pot and booze. We used to shoot the shit every night, cruising around and doing nothing in town. We would talk about girls, and how we’d get the hell out of that shit hole one day.

And then along came Tiff. She wasn’t really hot—in fact, she was plain. She had short-cropped brown hair, and wore overalls. I never thought I’d see a girl in a shop class, but then Tiff came along and showed everyone how it was done. I met her after class one day and told her about my bike. She thought it sounded cool, and even followed me home to see it. And that’s how she met Dom. I should’ve made a move on Tiff earlier, but I ended up losing her to Dom. I don’t know what it was she saw in him. I guess she just wanted to try to “fix him.” He sure needed it.

I lost my chance. Dom and I managed to stay friends for a while, but after the accident, I was never able to face him again. I loved Tiff, and because of him I would never get my chance with her. There’s a memorial outside my school where they list the names of students who died while attending; the closest I can get to Tiff now is when I polish it.

Now I’m a janitor and there’s only one chick I know who’s willing to stick by a loser like me. Kendra Dawkins. K.D. She’s like me: shitty family, shitty home, shitty choices. K.D. is the type of girl who’d take what she could get. Not like Tiff—well…not exactly. It’s not that she isn’t pretty. She’s one of those psycho punk girls: unstable. One day she’s your best friend, and the next she’s stealing from your wallet for her next fix. Crazy bitch….

            I met her last year, after I’d dropped out and I was putzin’ around, looking for a job. We met in the waiting room of T.H. Mitchlin where we were both applying for something—I forget what. I remember her looking across the room at me. I followed her down the hall. I remember our hot sweat and the pounding of my chest against hers, our shadows close in the dangling bathroom light. We were on fire: ablaze, with racing hearts. I could feel the drive between us. I pressed my mouth to hers and she pressed herself to me. Looking into her eyes, I saw. I saw the truth. In that moment—two souls joined—I knew the truth. In her eyes I could see how right this was. I knew I had lied to myself: Tiff wasn’t the end. We never did make it for our interviews that day. Of course, after we fucked up their bathroom, I’d have been surprised if they’d hired us.

            We started seeing each other about once a week. Then twice a week. Then it became a regular thing. I finally caved and took the job at the high school, because she thought it was a good idea. With a salary, I managed to start renting a room off of East Main. It was shit—barely big enough for a bed, but that’s really all I needed. K.D. had a place too, but she never let me see it. We’d usually just find an alley or do it in my single-bed palace.

            My Monday to Friday school routine blurred. Some weeks K.D. would disappear, so I’d find some other easy chick. It wasn’t like K.D. and I were ever exclusive. I’d catch myself thinkin’ about her, though. I’d be in bed with Tina from Walmart, or Lizzy from the Seven Eleven, and my thoughts would always jump back to K.D.’s thin, wiry frame. She reminded me a bit of Tiff in the way that she would care for me. I mean, even though she was usually shooting up when she came around, she still seemed genuinely interested in how I got along with my job, and how I was feeling. She pushed me to make some good changes in my life. She cared about me, but I had to learn to see lies.

            It was during a stretch of one of her absences that I really started to worry about her. She didn’t have a job, as far as I knew, and she had always been hitting me up for some Jacksons. That’s how I knew she’d be back. I almost got fired for thinking about her. I would often take breaks by the school memorial; where I one thought about Tiff, I now thought about K.D. Fatass McGrass, my boss, kept yelling shit at me one day about how I was never ‘round when he needed me and that I needed to quit takin’ smoke breaks there because it encouraged the kids. I swear the man should’ve been a prison warden rather than a principal. I ended up turning around and walking away that day. Fatass said if I ever pulled that shit again, I’d be fired. I tried to just get her out of my head, but then I found myself seeing K.D. everywhere. I hadn’t felt this way since Tiff…

            I really needed to get her out of my head. The feeling of loss was so bad, that I even turned back to working on my bike. I hadn’t touched it since I dropped out of school. It was bad back then. I was a wreck after what happened with Tiff and Dom, and then I learned that my old man had racked up some more gambling debts. That’s when I made the decision to get out of my dad’s place and drop out of school. My plan was to sell the bike and take a bus; I could’ve gone anywhere and started from scratch. But I couldn’t get a buyer, so I just hid it away behind dad’s place. I stole some of mom’s old jewelry that dad left lying around and sold it so I could start myself off. I didn’t do so hot in the beginning, though, so I spent the first couple months doing the homeless bit before I got caught. Cops kept me overnight the first time, but they wouldn’t keep a vagrant like me for too long. With no place to stay, I finally started trying to apply to some jobs. Stupidly, I went back to my old high school, but I kept looking for something else. Meeting K.D. made things…click, somehow.

            Dammit… K.D—I couldn’t get her out of my head. I needed her back in my life. I felt like something was wrong, that something had happened. But days went by and my hopes began to dwindle away. Days became weeks and months until finally I saw her again.

There was a light, misty sort of rain, and she was crouched against the Latimer building next door to my apartment, shivering and coughing into that over-sized coat of hers that carried everything she owned. I almost missed her. She didn’t move when I called her name, so I gave her a shake, then scooped her up and carried her quickly back to my room. She was shaking like crazy, and she was sweating from a fever. When she looked up at me, her eyes were sunken and wrong. Her life had finally caught up with her. She looked at me and whispered my name.

            “Craig… I—I need—I need—get Dom…”

            She could barely stay conscious, but if she was asking for Dom, I knew what was wrong. I grabbed some cash from the shoe box under the bed, and bolted out the door. Although I hated him, I knew where Dom would be—he’d been dealing behind the Sheetz for months.

The thought of seeing him again after these past couple of years…it made my head explode with vivid memories of the wreck. It had been one of those warm summer nights—the kind that feels like it’ll last forever. Dom had just used a blotter of LSD. We had been out riding around—I was following their car on my bike—when the selfish bastard ran off the road. Tiff didn’t stand a chance in his car. I jumped off the bike as fast as I could. When I got there he was laughing his head off beside her. The front of his car was splattered red. The moonlight reflected red in the spears of windshield around her. She was on the ground gasping for air—a blade of glass in her neck. She died that night to the sounds of Dom’s mad laughter. He later called it an accident, but no one laughs at an accident like that. No matter how high he was.

            Dom managed to weasel his way out of jail time thanks to his dad, the lawyer, who then kicked him out of the house. Last I heard about him, he was dealing down West Third by the old Sheetz. I had to pass by the school to get to Third, so I had to take out the bike. I hadn’t touched the thing since the night Dom’s car went off the road, but I knew time was an issue. K.D. couldn’t last long...

            I could see the Sheetz as I rounded the next corner. I looked around. Dom would be in the alley, high or dealing. Somewhere.  I parked the bike by the store. He had to have customers. But I didn’t see him. I was going crazy. I asked inside the Sheetz, but he was nowhere. Nowhere. I crouched beside a wall in the alley, and pulled my knees up to my chest.

            It began to drizzle. Water ran down my face. What was I doing? I was losing it. Here I was, trying to get a gram of heroin for a girl who had disappeared for months, then only came back to find me when she needed to get high. That’s all she wanted. Why was I putting myself through all of this? A crack of thunder and then I looked up. The rain began to fall harder. I sat there soaking it up, getting drenched. My body was numbed out, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the cold, or from the shock. I shivered and realized that I had been crying. I knew I should just get out of town. I should just leave—pack up my few belongings, hop on the Suzuki, and get out. But I couldn’t.

            I stood up and ran back to my bike. The engine growled, then sprang forward. It seemed like I went even faster this time. The rain was darts. I tore off down the street, swerving through traffic. I rode through a back-lot short cut, throwing up mud in my wake. I got back to the room, and jumped up the stairs.

            The room was quiet when I returned. I opened the door and lit a candle to see that she was still there. I felt for a heartbeat. Nothing. Her body was on fire though. I started shaking in fear. What happened? I wasn’t gone that long… I tried to remember everything I knew about CPR. I pulled K.D. close and was overcome with the most vivid sense of déjà vu.

Like that first night we met, I felt her hot sweat mixed with my pounding chill. Our shadows were close in the candle’s light. I was on fire now. I pressed my mouth to hers and pushed. I did all I could. Then, looking into her eyes, I saw. I saw lies. In that moment—two souls split—I knew the truth. She didn’t need me to get drugs. In her dilated eyes I could see how wrong this was. I knew I had lied to myself. This night…everything I’d forced myself to believe… it made me sick. Her eyes were deep pools of black and in their depth, I saw the way she had pulled me in. She had played me a fool from that very first day at T.H. Mitchlin’s. She wasn’t the one I’d love—she was just one more tragedy in my life.

But there was nothing I could do now. I had tried so hard to convince myself that I hadn’t loved this girl. I tried to force myself to leave—to forget. But I couldn’t. This was just like Tiff all over again. K.D. was dead, and now I’d never be able to tell her –she would never know that I loved her. I pulled her tight. My eyes were dry by the time I pulled away.

The light was growing dim. The sun had descended, and the candle’s wick had almost burned down. I pulled the coat off of K.D. and tossed it on the floor. When it landed I heard shattering glass. I dug into her pockets, and recovered a needle and spoon. I stared in my hands.  She had done this to herself. She’d overdosed. Surely she came here for my help. Right? But why did she send me to get Dom if she already had her smack?

Empty is a good word. I was emptiness. I stood up, letting the diary fall to the floor. I looked around at the mess I was living in. The mud I had tracked in was everywhere. Garbage was strewn on the floor. In fury, I grabbed the keys to my bike, and ran out the door. The rain had stopped again. I jumped back on the bike and everything began to blur. I felt a sick nausea. Tiff kept popping in my head, but she was actually K.D. I kept seeing Dom; kept seeing myself, and us. Everything was wrong. My whole life was wrong.

Dusk, now. I stopped my bike a couple blocks away. I could see Dom, leaning against the wall of the Sheetz, smoking. I watched for a while. It must have been a busy night—I saw two deals go down within thirty minutes. I couldn’t remember why I had come here, but I saw myself in Dom’s place. I was leaning against the wall like he was. I could see his life—our life—my life: day after day, pushing my wares. I come home at night to find Tiff—not Tiff…K.D.—in bed waiting for me. I’m making money: real money. I’m not washing bathrooms or scraping gum off desks. I’m my own boss. My work schedule is flexible. And if I get tired of a girl—tired of Tiff…of K.D—I get rid of her and move on. My life—no, his life—is perfect.

It wasn’t as if I envied his life, though. I just found it all unfair. Everything Dom had done, these two dead girls, his drug dealing, everything…. And yet he was still doing well for himself. He doesn’t deserve to live this way. I heard K.D.’s command echo in my head: “get Dom…” Get Dom. Get him. With a newfound purpose, I moved forward. I’d get him, alright. I felt all the pain—Tiff’s, K.D.’s…mine. It was pumping me up.

Dom saw me as I approached, but he made no attempt to move. As though he had accepted his fate and punishment, he allowed me to do what must be done. Even with my fists connecting with his face, rising bloody each time, we both knew this was right. He heard me now as I laughed, mad. His screams—the ones he must’ve meant for Tiff those years ago—they finally sounded now. His wails of pain were loud, but I could hear acceptance and personal blame in his cries. And then there was silence.

All was still. There were no sounds. No cars. No sirens. No rain. Just silence.

I stepped back from the scene. Dom was limp. I could no longer tell if he was breathing. My knuckles were sore and dripping red. My breathing was hard and heavy, my eyes blurred with tears. What had I done? I ran back to my bike, hopped on and took off. I had no idea where I was going. I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t stay here. I had to leave.

When I peeled out of that alley and left the town behind me, I knew I was never going back. That was when my life would have begun. I could have hidden myself away, and gotten a real job. Maybe started a family with someone who would have actually cared about me. I could have been a success. I could have been any number of things, but now I was free of all those dreams.