Runaway “Their Moment in Time” (25 page)

“You S.O.B.!” she screamed.

Then suddenly she changed—she was no longer hysterical, furious, or out of control—she scared me in that she instantaneously went calm. Her voice even scared me, as it was low, calm, and I would say, quite evil.

“You…” her eyes focused on him, hate spewing from every pore of her existence.

“Was this for me?” she demanded, her anger flaring. “Huh? Was this supposed to show me? Was this supposed show Stephen?” She now went back to yelling. “Is this how you’re getting back at me, you bastard!?”

Bret said nothing. He simply stared at her. Then he started his car and put it in drive, pushing her out of the way, and drove off.

Runaway turned around and glared right through me—never in my life had I ever seen her look that way. She walked past me, or rather over me, it seemed like, and with her teeth clenched, she muttered, as if to herself, “I hope for his sake I’m wrong.”

Runaway stormed back toward the diner. There, we all saw where she was staring with such hatred—directly at Brandon.

Runaway threw open the door and we followed her in.

My mind was in a whirl. Brandon sabotaged Stephen for Bret?

It sunk in.
Holy crap,
I thought
.

I was stunned. It all fit… every nuance, every snide remark, every absent Saturday night. Brandon had sided with Bret—Brandon, who hated Stephen, and Bret, who hated Runaway.

What better way to get back at her than fix a race so one of her precious Shakers loses—and for Brandon, what a great way to humiliate Stephen, to have a tire, of all things, fall off.

Perfect, except something had gone horribly wrong, wrong enough to land Stephen in the hospital and Kurt, at the very least, in the emergency room with bumps and bruises.

What’s more, we now stood to lose it all.

I glanced over at Grant and saw his face—I immediately knew that he had reasoned the whole thing through as well, and had drawn the same conclusions.

Brandon, by this time, had tried to find sanctuary in his father’s diner. He was hiding inside, near his dad. He now jumped at the sight of Runaway, as she stormed through the front doors and headed toward him.

“Whoa, Runaway,” Mr. Thompson tried to intervene and step in front of her. “We don’t know that Brandon had anything to do with Stephen’s car. You all have been friends your whole lives—don’t ruin it by jumping to conclusions.” He tried to speak to her like a father.

“The hell we won’t,” she spat at him, as she pushed past him.

“I didn’t think… I didn’t know!” Brandon wept as he sat in our booth.

She walked over to him and, clenching the edges of the table, she said, “You didn’t think, you didn’t know what?” She spat out the words from between her clenched teeth.

“I… I didn’t know it would be so bad. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.” He looked up at Runaway with the most angelic face. He pleaded to her with his eyes.

“You pathetic excuse for human existence!” she said through her tightly clenched jaw. “You did it, didn’t you?” She was lethal in how she spoke.

She grabbed him again, this time, thankfully, by the shirt, and pulled him out of the booth. She then slammed his body against the wall and got in his face.

“I knew it,” she snarled. “You fixed his car, didn’t you? You little piece of crap. How much did Bret pay you? I hope it was enough to cost a life!” She threw him against the wall again.

“I should have known that you would do something. I thought you would, but I didn’t know when. I can’t believe that any of us put trust into a piece of crap like you. You disgust me,” she said, her teeth still tightly clenched.

Brandon started to cry. Runaway was relentless. Even Mr. Thompson didn’t know what to do.

“We always knew you didn’t like him, and apparently you just proved how much tonight, didn’t you? You’ve hated him for so long and you just couldn’t wait to get back at Stephen. For a little extra cash, you’d just loosen up the lug nuts and get back at him. Well, I hope you’re happy with yourself—you finally got the attention that you wanted,” she seethed.

“Now, while one of my best friends lies in some hospital, I’m here wasting my time with a piece of crap like you.” She turned and shoved him down to the floor—Brandon, at that point, just pathetically slumped there as she stood over him.

“It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t know!” he screamed pathetically through his tears. “I didn’t mean to hurt him! Please, please, please! You gotta believe me! Runaway, you gotta believe me!”

“Hey,” Brian stepped forward quickly between the slumped Brandon and Runaway, who was still standing over him. He looked directly in her eyes. “Let’s back up a bit,” he said calmly. “There’s nothing that can be done at this point. Officer Tessler is standing just outside the door, and we can tell him what we believe.” He motioned to our policeman friend, who was just finishing a report for the other cops, who were still mingling outside.

“Look,” Brian continued, looking intently at Runaway. “All that is going to happen, at this point, is that you will get busted if you go much further, and it doesn’t help Stephen at this point.” His voice softened. “Runaway, just walk away.”

He was right, but it didn’t curb my anger or anyone else’s, certainly not Runaway’s.

She stopped breathing so hard and looked at Brian for the first time. Clarity seemed to finally set in. She took a deep breath now and exhaled. She looked at the rest of us, and seemed to realize the wisdom of Brian’s words, and turned to leave.

Over her shoulder, as she was leaving, she looked at Brandon and said, “Rot in hell,” and kept walking.

Chapter Sixteen

In the days that ensued after the accident were like a nightmare.  Everyone was questioning everyone else, and police were everywhere reenacting the accident. Everything turned into a whirlwind of accusations, vengeance, retribution, worry, police inquisitions, and parental discomfort. The city was ready to close the quarter-mile due to parent complaints—they didn’t want the same thing happening to their sons.

Obviously, Runaway had immediately gone to the police and told them everything she knew about Brandon’s suspicious activity and the confrontation she had with him. Rumor had gotten around that Brandon was just trying to mess with Stephen, play a joke on him, but that it had not worked out.

The problem was that it was all just hearsay and the police had nothing on Brandon other than unjustified rumors. However, the police investigation showed that the lug nuts on Stephen’s right front wheel had been loosened, or had come loose, which was what had caused the tire to disengage from the mounts. Unfortunately, though, the police couldn’t prove that Brandon had done it—the lug nuts could have come loose on their own just from the tire spinning. And what was worse, it would look like Stephen hadn’t checked them.

No matter what we said, or how we tried we always heard the same thing from Tessler—he was, after all, a cop.

“Can’t you do anything?” I had asked him one day.

“Like what?”  He looked at me sternly.  “There is a thing called evidence Topher, and without it we have nothing.”

I reminded him about the rumor, and he reminded me that it was just that—a rumor.

But we knew better, we knew what happened. But more than that, we knew Bret had ultimately put Brandon up to it—the problem was, we couldn’t prove it. So we were left with what we knew as the truth, and nothing we could do about it. I think this alone was what threw Runaway into spiral of vengeance and hate. Day after day, we tried to either calm or reason with her, but she wasn’t having any of it. Runaway was seething in a fit of anger and loathing. Talking to her was virtually impossible, as most of the time she was ready to verbally lash out at anyone who even came close to her. She kept ranting about going after Brandon and “killing him with my own two hands.”

She seemed to be obsessed with vengeance for Stephen—all she ever talked about was finding Bret and Brandon and getting even.

Behind her back, we talked incessantly about what to do. We had to figure out what to do about the club. In the early day or two after the accident we went to the The Oasis, and people would ask three questions. One—how was Stephen? Two—how was Runaway? Three—were we still racing? By far, the second and third questions were the hardest to answer. So we stopped going to the Oasis and we just stayed within the protection of our own neighborhood, where no one could get to us and ask us questions we couldn’t answer.

But for me, throughout all of this, I was looking at Brian in a different light—he had been the one to calm Runaway when I was stuck, rooted to the floor where I stood that night at the diner. It was Brian who had stepped forward, even before Grant. It was Brian who had the sense to talk not only to her, but to Officer Tessler.

But then I thought about it more, and I knew it had to be him—it couldn’t be one of us—we were too emotionally involved, and there was no way we could have formed the right words. At that point I began to change my mind about him and focus on the problem at hand—racing.

After much deliberation, cussing, and discussing, we decided that racing was probably over for us. We were fine if others wanted to race—but this was not something we could participate in any longer. Stephen, we were told, could barely walk, as his left leg was so badly damaged in the crash. Runaway… well, she was just so stoic that we believed she lost her nerve.

More than that, though, we felt that if we took her out of racing, she would be as far away from Bret as she could get. Otherwise, she’d have to face him again, and we just couldn’t allow that to happen.

Honestly, at that point I was done with racing, and so were Grant and Brian—we just felt that we owed it to other clubs to give an answer to the question that they were already asking.

Even at school, we were pestered to death. Runaway never spoke, so it was hard to imagine what she was thinking. We were resolved that, because of everything that had happened, we were done. Done racing, done putting ourselves out there, done risking any more friendships.

Done.

Now all we had to do was tell Runaway.

We were with her every day at her house during that first week after it all happened, pretending to be okay. She would sit in the back yard at her patio table, staring into oblivion, and we would sit around the table, pretending we didn’t have anything to say.

Grant, at least, was brave enough to sit next to her. Don’t get me wrong, we were all upset, but there is something to the saying, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

She couldn’t let go of any of it. It wasn’t that she felt any worse than we did—it’s just that we knew we had to move forward. She held onto whatever anger she felt for days. By not racing anymore, we thought we had found the surest way to resolve her bitterness.

After talking it over, we decided that it was time to tell her. Grant volunteered, as he was the strongest, at least physically.

“Runaway,” he said one day.

“What?” She didn’t even look at him.

“Well,” he began cautiously, “we’ve been talking…”

She flashed him a death stare.

Grant cleared his throat. “We…” he looked around with trepidation, “have been thinking…”

Here it comes,
I thought.

“That… maybe we shouldn’t race anymore.”

Wham.

“What?” She turned to him with a lethal stare.

“We…” he paused, “shouldn’t risk anyone else…”

“What?” she screamed, as she glared at him.

“Runaway,” Brian tried calmly. “Look, this just isn’t right. After what happened, well…” he looked around at all of us. “It’s just not what we bargained for, and obviously… people are now getting hurt. I know you defended it to Tessler the night of the accident… but it just doesn’t seem worth it anymore.”

She glared at me with eyes that seemed to be piercing holes into my head.

“What about you?” she asked.

I looked at her—what could I say? I felt the same way, but to tell her would simultaneously kill me and her. Racing was what she wanted—this was her dream. I knew her heart, and I also knew this was how she wanted revenge someday, but I was compelled by better judgment and a deep protection for her. I loved her with everything that was in me, and I had to protect her somehow.

“Yes,” I whispered, with downcast eyes. “I agree.”

“So that’s it, then?” She looked around at all of us. “You want me to just roll over and walk away? And all of you are in agreement?”

We purposely looked away, but we all assented.

“Fine.”

She got up, pushed back her chair, and walked to the farthest part of her back yard. She yelled over her shoulder, “You can leave.”

***

After a while, people began to calm down—even the parents calmed down. It wasn’t like they encouraged the racing, but they certainly weren’t picketing to close the quarter-mile down anymore. Most parents had understood what we all knew, that Brandon had one problem—bitter vengeance.

The city officials agreed to let the racing continue, so long as it was monitored better and cars were checked and rechecked before they were allowed on the line. No one could blame the parents and the authorities for being cautious—hell, we were more cautious than anyone, because we knew the truth.

Stephen’s car was a mess. It wasn’t so much the front wheel, though it was ground down well enough—it was when the car rolled that the majority of the damage was done. The hood and deck lid had unlatched in the crash and were subsequently destroyed, and the top of the car, as well as the driver’s side, were pretty well beaten up.

Runaway’s dad got a-hold of Jim, the guy who had done all the body work on Runaway’s car when she first got it, and had him come and look at it. He walked the entire circumference of the car and figured that he could try save it with two things—time and money. Jim said he could remove the roof, only the A-pillar was bent, but the B-pillar—which was the rear support of the roof—went undamaged. He also said that it was not difficult to replace fenders, windows, and deck lids. He had worried that the frame might have been bent—if that would have happened, then the car would have been unsalvageable. However, after taking it to his shop and performing a few critical inspections, he noted that the frame was intact.

Every one of us pitched in, as well as our families and friends in the tri-city area. The car was eventually restored. We were amazed that Jim could fix it. He said that it wasn’t so much his skills as it was Buick’s structural integrity and design. We felt that fixing the car was least we could do, since trying to do anything else for Stephen was out of our hands.

Stephen himself was a mess, Kurt had walked away with only minor bumps and bruises, but Stephen had lain in a hospital for weeks.

He had sustained major injuries to his entire left leg—apparently this was where the majority of the damage was. Ironically, though, the damage done to his knee or leg was not from hitting it against the car, it happened as a result of legs hitting one another. Being strapped in the car had kept his body secure, but his arms and legs flailed around hopelessly. His right leg didn’t sustain as much damage as the left because it was fairly unobstructed. His left leg slammed into not only the door panel, but also into the steering wheel column. From what we’d understood from his parents, his left leg was violently thrown about in the crash. It took about twenty-four pins, lots of screws, and two metal plates to put his knee back together, along with another fifteen or twenty screws for his ankle. Once the car had landed, the dashboard had crushed his leg and therefore he had also broken his femur and tibia. Stephen’s parents were told that although the chances of him walking were probable, the chances of him walking without a limp were impossible.

Stephen’s upper body injuries included a bruised sternum from hitting the steering wheel, and a ruptured spleen just from the sheer violence of being thrown about as the car flipped. His head had hit the A-pillar of the car and resulted in a massive concussion, and the flying shards of glass gave him multiple facial lacerations.

His parents, as well as all us, were simply thankful that that was all he had sustained.

A few days after the accident, we went to the hospital to see him. Because of his concussion, it was necessary for the medical staff to keep him sedated so his internal injuries could heal, but they had made sure that he was responding to stimuli. With a concussion, the medical team was required to disrupt his sleep every twenty-to-thirty minutes to make sure that he wouldn’t slip into a coma.

In the first days or so after the accident, we went to the hospital where we’d wait silently. We weren’t allowed to see him, as he was in ICU—we just saw his parents and they reported to us how he was doing. But waiting silently wasn’t that bad, as silent was how we did most things now.