Southampton Spectacular

Also by M. C. Soutter

Charcot’s Genius

Undetectable

t
his is for my parents

One night in late July, when Devon Hall was just fourteen years old, she abandoned her friends on the side of the road, seduced a group of older boys, and stole a car. But all in the nicest possible way.

She and Florin and Nina were on their bicycles, riding back from the movies. They were on First Neck Lane, which, like most of the roads in Southampton, was wide, well-maintained, and pitch-black at night. Southampton folks did not like streetlights outside of the town proper; they ruined the scenery.

The girls had gone to see the early showing of the latest
Pirates of the Caribbean
movie, which had not been nearly as good as they had hoped. The movie had been nearly three hours long, and afterward the girls had taken their time strolling down the brightly lit walkway outside the main street theater, stopping into the Haagen-Dazs shop next door for ice cream, and sitting on one of the green wooden benches outside. The air was warm and bug-free, and they had no responsibilities. Their parents knew where they were; Devon had called her parents to say they would be home in forty-five minutes.

When they finally unlocked their bikes from the stand outside the theater and began the half-mile ride home (Florin and Nina were sleeping over at Devon’s that night, as was often the case), it was already past 11 PM. They pedaled away from the town center, and the light faded gradually to nothing. Riding single-file, they could not even see each other on the road.

They did not hurry. They were veterans of this kind of night riding, since bikes were generally the best and easiest way to get around during the summer. Parents sometimes didn’t want to drive you where you needed to go, but a bike was always ready. A bike was very patient. And everyone lived within biking distance of the clubs, and of town, and of one another.

There were almost no cars traveling along First Neck Lane at this hour; the few that did come along provided a welcome respite from the dark. The headlights created brief periods of incredible brightness, and then the girls were left in the red of receding taillights. Once a car was out of sight, it left a darkness that seemed even more total than before.

The group of boys who had seen them outside the ice cream shop that night had tried calling out to them earlier. From their car, while the girls were sitting on the benches, eating their Haagen-Dazs. But Devon and her friends had ignored them. Or perhaps had not even heard them, since their shouts were cautious, and self-conscious in the public arena of that well-lit town center. In any case, shouting across a lane of active traffic wasn’t worth the effort.

Stuck-up girls anyway
, they thought.

But when they caught up to them on First Neck Lane, these five boys in their rumbling, smoke-belching car felt suddenly much more bold. Now they would have relative privacy. Time to work.

Devon saw the light of an approaching car on Florin’s back, and on Florin’s pedal reflectors, and she wondered at first why the shadows created by these headlights were moving so much more slowly than the others.

In another moment, the car had pulled up alongside them.

“Look who it is,” called the boy in the front passenger seat, as if greeting an old friend. He was wearing a smudged white tank top and a hat pulled down low, so that it was difficult for Devon to see his face. All of the boys were wearing their hats this way. “The princess and friends,” the boy said. They were all 18 and 19, and the car they were riding in was an old convertible with a cheap custom paint job. There were three of them crammed into the back. The car’s engine was shuddering, as though the driver didn’t quite know how to manage it at slow speeds.

“Just keep going,” Devon said firmly, in case either Nina or Florin were too distracted to concentrate on pedaling. “They’re drunk.”

“That’s no problem,” called one of the boys in the backseat, in a tone of voice that said he was glad to be found out. The other boys laughed as if he had said something very clever. They were elated; at least Devon had acknowledged their existence. “Drunk is good,” the boy in the back seat went on. “Drunk is just
right
. You should try it. Loosen you up. For later.”

More howls of approval, louder now.

Devon rolled her eyes and said nothing.

“You want to take a ride with us?” said the boy in the front passenger seat, with a confidence that was growing.

The driver joined in. “
That
sounds good,” he said, and he leaned over to rattle the shoulder of his passenger encouragingly, as if the suggestion of Devon getting in the car had been a small stroke of genius.

But the driver was not concentrating. As he leaned over to congratulate his friend, he was careless with the hand that still held the wheel; suddenly the car was veering straight at Devon. Like a cat, she sprang off her bike, over the large gutter that ran the length of First Neck Lane, and onto the grassy side of the road. The boys shouted at their driver in alarm as the car’s right wheel rolled lazily over Devon’s bike frame with a crunch, then down into the gutter and up against the high curb. The boy behind the wheel finally managed to snap out of his shock and step on the break, but by then the car’s engine had stalled out.

The engine pinged and ticked at them in the silence.

“Nice,” one of the boys in the back seat said, very quietly. All five were turned toward Devon now, against their will. Under their low caps, their expressions were pained. If they could have twisted around in their seats without seeming foolish, they would have. None of them looked at her.

They wished they could speed away into the night.

“Holy shit,” said Nina and Florin together, as if suddenly realizing how close their friend had just come to being seriously injured. “Nice jump,” Florin added.

The boy in the front passenger seat seemed to agree. He raised his eyebrows a fraction of an inch and gave a small, grudging nod.

Devon took a deep breath, let it out, and shook her head slowly. She did not look scared. Or even particularly upset. The driver of the car stole a glance at her, glad for the opportunity to see this girl so close, and lit up like this, with the headlights directly on her. She was glaring at them as if she couldn’t believe, could not
believe
that yet another group of drunk teenagers had run over her bike. As if this happened to her every Saturday night. As if she were regularly forced to leap clear of randy young men and their banged up cars, like a rich governor trying to walk through a shanty town, set upon by vagrant children and their prying hands. She looked tired of it all.

She probably has a collection of old bicycles in her garage
, the driver thought.
For drunk guys to run over
.
Replaces them once a week.

Fourteen-year-old Devon Hall ran a hand through her shoulder-length, dark brown hair, and she seemed to make a decision. “Florin, Nina, put down your bikes and come over here for a minute, please.”

They came and stood next to her on the grass, and they waited. The boys waited, too. As if hoping for lenient treatment from an angry parent.

“Florin, please read that license plate out loud.”

“New York, 398K-442D.”

“Great. Nina, you too, please.”

Nina read out the same information, and then Devon asked them both to repeat it. When that was done, she took another slow breath. “Can you both remember that number?”

They studied the plate for another moment, then nodded at her. The boys began swearing under their breath. They didn’t like where this was going.

“Excellent,” Devon said. “Now get back on your bikes and get back to my house, and let my parents know I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes.” She hopped off the grass and onto the road, and she walked toward the driver’s door.

“Fifteen minutes?” Nina said. She hesitated. “And you’re going… where?”

“I’m driving these idiots home,” Devon said. She flipped her hand impatiently at the driver. “Shove over,” she said. “Cozy up with your friend there. You’re all going to get yourselves killed.”

The driver gave her a protesting look. “You can’t drive this car,” he said, not sounding very sure of himself.

“
You
can’t,” Devon corrected him. “And if you don’t get out of that seat right now, my friends and I are going to call in a DUI with attempted vehicular assault on a minor.”

The driver’s face fell. The boys in the back looked nauseated. The one in the passenger seat turned away.
These rich kids with their lawyer parents
, they all thought to themselves.
It’s not fair.

Looking beaten, the driver climbed slowly over the gearshift and wormed his way onto the edge of the passenger seat next to his friend. The two of them now looked very uncomfortable. Physically and emotionally. “It’s a stick,” the driver noted lamely, hoping this might slow Devon down.

“No, it’s not,” she said, climbing in and closing the door behind her. “It’s a standard four-on-the-floor with a Porsche-type cone synchronizer.” She glanced at him with something that looked like pity. “And you’re killing it.”

Lawyer parents who also restore old cars in their spare time
, the boys corrected themselves.
Son of a bitch
.

“He’s a pilot, not a mechanic,” Devon said, as if reading their minds. “But close enough. And my mother’s the lawyer. Retired. Teaches grade school now.”

Right. Got it. Thanks very much.

“Devon,” Florin called out to her. “Are you sure about this?”

Devon bent forward and found the lever without looking, adjusted the seat to a position where she could reach the pedals comfortably, and started the car. The engine responded with a grateful rumble, as if rejoicing at the touch, finally, of a practiced hand at the controls. “Back in fifteen minutes,” Devon repeated, when the engine had settled down to a reasonable volume. “And you’ve got the license plate, right? You guys are my insurance policy against these ruffians.”

Nina and Florin nodded, and they each put a hand up to wave goodbye. They felt almost sorry for the boys in the car. Bigger, older, and drunk to boot, and yet Devon had now commandeered their car. Not only that, but she had also somehow managed to refer to them as “ruffians” in a way that stated quite clearly that they were nothing of the kind. That they were hapless, harmless imbeciles who needed to be driven home by a high-school freshman who was still two years away from getting her own license.

Devon put the car into reverse and freed them from the gutter. “Okay,” she said, without turning to look at any of them. “Where are we going?”

Her tone did not invite jokes, and they considered for a moment. Finally one of the boys in back spoke up. “Over past Toylsome,” he said. “On Wickapogue.” The others nodded in silent agreement. That was the right house to pick, the one where there would be no parents tonight. They could split up from there. “Just after the corn fields,” the boy finished.

She nodded, put the car in gear, and pulled away with a roar. The three boys in the backseat fumbled hurriedly for their seat belts.

They sped along First Neck Lane for a minute, Devon working her way through the car’s gears like a jockey feeling out a new mount. She downshifted and made a hard right onto Great Plains Road at the last minute, and the two boys in front had to grab the side of the car to avoid tumbling into the gearshift. She glanced at them, and then she patted the steering wheel as they roared off toward Cooper’s Neck. “Quicker than you look,” she said to the car, congratulating it. “Too bad about the paint job.”