The Fixes (14 page)
Authors: Owen Matthews
Eric sleeps for a couple hours on the hard holding-cell bench. Wakes up to his cell door opening. The guard again.
“Come on out,” the guard tells him. “You're free to go.”
“Huh?” Eric sits up. Rubs his eyes. “I didn't get arraigned or anything yet. Aren't you guys supposed to arraign me?”
“I don't know about that,” the guard replies. “They just told me to come get you. So come on.”
Eric follows. Feels something like vertigo, like he might be still dreaming. The guard leads him out of the holding cell area and through the police station to the front desk. There are a couple men in suits standing there, waiting. One of them looks like a Very Important Cop.
The other is Eric's father.
(WTF?)
The senator shakes hands with the other man as the guard sets Eric free. “Thanks very much, Chuck,” he says. “He'll make things square with Allen Headley, I'll see to it myself.”
“I don't doubt it,” “Chuck” says, and both men turn to look at Eric. “Let's just hope the young man's learned his lesson.”
Eric stops walking. Hears the doors close behind him, locking him out of the police area. Turns around anyway, tries the door handle. Wonders whose car he has to steal next to get himself locked back
in
.
It's just past dawn. Eric and his dad are riding home in the back of Eric's dad's chauffeured Yukon SUV. Eric can smell the stink of the jail on him. He's exhausted.
His dad is the first one to speak.
“The night sergeant recognized your name on the booking sheet,” the senator tells Eric. “He called his lieutenant, who happens to be a good friend of mineâwoke him up, I might addâand thank god. They were ready to
arraign
you, Eric.” The senator rubs his eyes. “Stealing a car? What the hell were you thinking?”
“I can't believe this,” Eric mutters. “I can't believe you bailed me out.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What happened, Dad?” Eric glares at him. “What happened to all that stuff about Integrity and Honor and the Connelly Man? We're Connellys, aren't we? Aren't we supposed to
earn
everything? How does you calling in favors fit in with
everything you have ever told me since I could understand English?
”
Eric knows how he must lookâwild-eyed, a little insane. He feels like his entire worldview is unraveling.
Good, he thinks. Let his father see it.
Eric's dad glances up at the driver. “Lower your voice,” he says. “Do you know what it would do to our family if word got out about this? Do you know what it would do to me, publicly?”
“As if that's any excuse,” Eric says. “How many secrets have
you
buried, Dad? How many times has
that
been a justification for doing the same shitty things every other asshole does?”
The senator's eyes dart back to his driver. “I think we're good here, Tom,” he calls forward. “Bring the truck around back. We'll walk up the rest of the way.”
The driver slows the car. Eric's dad opens his door. Steps out onto the pavement. After a moment, Eric follows.
It's quiet outside. The sun is slowly rising. There's dew. Tom drives the Yukon away, and Eric and his dad are left standing there, a couple houses down from the Connelly residence.
Eric's dad waits until the Yukon disappears. Then he looks at Eric. He doesn't look mad, though. He looks a little, you know,
mournful
.
“You're getting older, Eric, and you deserve the truth. I'm sorry I waited so long to give it to you.”
Eric doesn't say anything. He stares at the ground. He's still mad, and he's tired, and he doesn't know where this is going.
“But we're past that now, aren't we?” Eric's dad clears his throat. “People make mistakes, son. When you're young, you make plenty of them. I wasn't an angel; I made my share.”
“So you did do it,” Eric says. “You beat that guy up in San Francisco, you and your friends.”
Eric's dad looks surprised. After a moment, he nods. “We'd had too much to drink. We were in the wrong neighborhood, and we were young and stupid and spoiling for a fight. I regretted what happened as soon as I sobered up.”
“You committed a
hate crime
. And you paid your friends off to cover it up.”
“No. It wasn't like that, I promise you. And that momentâthat one terrible moment of stupidityâit would have
ruined me,” Eric's dad says. “It would have derailed my entire future.”
“What about that guy, Roger, or whatever? What about his future? After you kicked his ass, what happened to him?”
The senator winces. “I don't know,” he says. “He signed the agreement we drew up, cashed the check, and disappeared. We never heard from him again.”
His dad straightens. “But after twenty-five years in political office, I'd say the good I've done more than makes up for it. And that's why you can't do things like this, son. This Corvette thing. You have too much potential.”
Eric ignores this. “And Mom? Is that true too? Did you cheat on her?”
“I didn'tâ” Eric's dad catches himself. Glances up at the rows of houses, like he's afraid Eric's mom might be listening. He sighs.
“A moment of weakness,” he says. “That's all it was. It wasn't an affair. It was hardly a
night
.”
“Does Mom know?”
The senator glances at the house again. “She thinks it was a fabrication,” he says. “Lies my opponents cooked up to slander my name.”
“So you never told her the truth.”
Eric's dad looks away. “What could I tell her? It'd have broken her heart.”
“Yeah,” Eric says. “I guess you're a hero, then.”
He just starts walking. Down the block. Away.
“Where do you think you're going, Eric?”
“Away,” Eric tells him.
“You most certainly are not. You're going to have to face
some
consequences for this Corvette thing, son. You're grounded until your mother and I decide otherwise.”
Grounded
.
Eric stops walking.
Looks back.
Laughs.
“Grounded,” he says. “The hell I am.”
“So you just walked away,” Jordan says. “And he didn't try to stop you?”
“What could he do?” Eric replies. “He can't control me, not anymore. Not now that I know all this dirt on him's real.”
Jordan nods, his eyes wide. “I guess not,” he says. “But still. That's a ballsy maneuver.”
They're standing in Jordan's driveway. Haley and Paige are there, too, listening. They were all waiting out front when Eric's cab pulled up. They all listened as Eric told his story.
“Nothing you could do,” Jordan says. “So long as you kept your mouth shut at the precinct, it's no harm, no foul. You didn't talk, did you?”
“Are you kidding? Not to a damn soul.”
“You're not wearing a wire?”
“A wire? What the fuck, dude?” Eric draws back, kind of panicking. Relaxes when he sees the smirk on Jordan's face.
“I'm just messing with you.” Jordan puts his arm around Eric's shoulder, steers him toward the house. “Get some sleep, have a shower. We have a surprise cooked for you later.”
“What kind of surprise?” Eric says, but Jordan just smiles, and Eric's too tired to pursue the line of questioning. Feels like a shell of a person.
He follows Paige and Haley into the house.
Eric sleeps all day. He wakes up and showers. He puts on a pair of Jordan's board shorts and a beach hoodieâ
(it kind of hangs off him; he's not as built as Jordan)
âand goes downstairs and outside to the pool, where Jordan and the girls are lounging. They all look up as he comes out onto the deck.
“There he is,” Paige says.
“We were beginning to think you were dead,” Haley says. “Like, we'd have to send Paige up there to check for a pulse.”
(Paige blushes at this.)
“Go easy on him,” Jordan says. “Neither of
you
spent the night in a holding cell.”
Eric smiles weakly. He's still groggy. He's still feeling a little, you know,
shaken
by the whole experience.
“Anyway, he's alive.” Haley sniffs the air. “And he doesn't stink anymore.”
Jordan claps his hands. Stands up from his deck chair. “Which means it's time to get cracking.”
They all pile into a car.
(The car is
not
Jordan's BMW.)
(It's a Tesla. Model S.)
“What's this? Where's your Bimmer?” Eric asks him.
“This?” Jordan starts the motor and the car
hums
to life. “It's my dad's, technically. Not that he ever drives it.
It doesn't sound like a real car
, he says. He likes his AMG better.”
(Jordan's dad's AMG has a 6.3-liter V-8 engine. It
howls.
It also burns gas like a mother. Fuck the environment.)
Jordan drives out of the garage. The driveway gate slides open, and Jordan pilots them out onto Marine Drive. He turns left, away from Capilano.
“Uh, how far are we going?” Eric asks them. “I'm still pretty, you know, beat from last night.”
Haley leans forward. Slaps Eric's shoulder. “Man up,” she says. “You spent a few hours in the Capilano jail. You're not Nelson Mandela. You'll see where we're going when we get there.”
“It'll be worth it, E,” Jordan says. “I promise.”
They drive out of Capilano and up to the highway. It's dusk by the time they reach the on-ramp, the sun setting through the trees. Jordan takes the northbound ramp and points the car up the coast and into the mountains. He drives until he reaches the little dirt-road turnoff to Fincher's Bluff. Then he turns.
Gravel spits up against the Tesla's underbody,
ping-ping-ping
ing as the car climbs up the narrow logging road. The trees close in on all sides, tall and dark and imperious, and the Tesla
hums
louder as the grade gets steeper. Eric takes out his phone, watches the signal disintegrate from LTE to 3G to one bar to none. They're up in the wilderness now. Fincher's Bluff.
The road climbs for a while, and then it levels off. It widens into a clearing, marred by the remains of old fire pits and beer cans pockmarked by BB pellets and birdshot. It's almost full dark again, the stars out in abundance, something you never see in downtown Capilano. But Eric isn't looking at the sky. He's looking across the clearing, to the very middle, where Jordan's BMW is waiting for them.
Jordan stops the Tesla at the edge of the clearing. “Okay, everybody out.”
The girls climb out of the back seats. Jordan's looking at Eric, waiting for him to move. “I don't get it,” Eric says. “Why did you bring me here?”
“So the Fix didn't work out as planned. We're not going to let a little speed bump ruin our party, are we?”
Eric climbs out of the car. Looks across at the BMW, lit up in Jordan's headlights.
“So, what?” he asks.
“We have to do something with Jordan's car,” Haley says. “We can't take the chance that asshole Headley saw me and Paige drive off in it last night. It's
evidence
now.”
“You did your job,” Jordan says. “But we still have to take precautions. Why get caught if we don't have to, right?”
Then he smiles. “Also,” he says, “my dad bought that thing for my birthday. He sent his assistant, with a credit card, to pick it out.”
He pauses.
“I just want to see that fucker burn.”
They burn the BMW to the ground.
Jordan's Molotov cocktails work wonders, and he also brought four jerry cans of gasoline. Eric and the others drench the Bimmer inside and out with gas. Then they step back, light their cocktails, and hurl the bottles at the car.
The BMW erupts into flames. The explosion takes Eric's breath away. Instantly, the flames are devouring the car, sending choking columns of black smoke up into the night. The fire is ferocious.
Eric and Jordan and Paige and Haley step back to the edge of the clearing to watch. They're utterly alone up here; even the lights of Capilano don't make it this far around the mountain. Nobody will ever know what they've done.
It's a weird feeling, being so wild. So utterly free.
Eric is captivated.
Eric is . . .
exhilarated.
Jordan has a joint going. He puffs twice, passes it to Haley. Then he turns back to watch the flames.
“You guys don't even know,” he says, and the fire dances in his eyes. “You don't even know how far we could take this.” Then: “We could fix this town forever, if we really put our minds to it.”
Afterward, when the flames have died down and the BMW is mostly just a smoking pile of ash and charred steel, they stand in a circle at the edge of the clearing and stare up at the stars.
And now that they've had this, well,
orgasmic
experience burning down Jordan's BMW, it's time for the real talk.
The gritty stuff.
They start having those meandering, embarrassing heart-to-heart convos you always have when it's late and you're drunk and/or high with your best friends in the world.
They start saying things they'll probably be ashamed of, but won't ever really regret.
(You know how it goes.)
Jordan starts.
“They kicked me out of town,” he says, looking up at the sky, not a cloud anywhere, just a carpet of stars. “My parents. They, like, they gave me a choice: either
move
, or go to juvenile hall.
“I beat some dude up,” he says. “Some shitty actor, that's why I'm here. I nearly killed this idiot.”
The others don't really say anything.
“He deserved it, though,” Jordan continues. “Not that I'm condoning what I did, but he wasn't even a
good
actor. Like, don't put on airs like you're king shit because you had two lines in a toothpaste commercial. You're a long way from Brad Pitt, you know?”
The others kind of nod. This is Jordan's story. Let him tell it.
“And I got off,” he says. “That's the most fucked-up part of all. I should be in jail right now, but because my dad makes Hollywood blockbusters they cut a deal and I'm up here and nobody gives a shit. Like, nobody cares at all,” he says.
“Hypocrites,” he says.
Just the wind in the trees for a while, thenâ
“I tried to kill myself.” Haley's staring across the clearing, and her voice is nonchalant. “This is right after I went away. I did this whole fucking urgent care thing for my, like, eating disorder, talked to some stupid shrink for an hour every day for, like,
weeks
, and then I get out and I'm actually feeling okay and I come back to Capilano and it's, like, the worst. Thing. Ever.”
She shakes her head.
“Seriously, my mom and dad didn't know what to say to me. It's like they thought I was going away to, like, fat camp or something, like I would come back and suddenly know how to be perfect and skinny and beautiful. Like Tinsley,” she says.
E has only ever seen pictures of Tinsley. She's smoking hot, but it's not like Haley's ugly. Compared to, like, ninety percent of the people in the world, Haley is hot as hell. But Capilano's for the one percent of the one percent. Capilano's for people like Tinsley.
“I went up on the bridge to the city one night,” Haley says. “I thought I would jump off. Just, like, fall. Hit the water and break every bone in my body and die there, and that would be that.”
Paige gasps. “I remember that! You posted that picture.”
Haley nods. “Instagram,” she says. “On top of the Lions Gate Bridge, one o'clock in the morning. I guess I wanted to see if anyone cared.”
“And?” E says.
“And I got, like, twenty-three likes.” Haley laughs a little, hollow. “But nobody actually
cared
.”
Jordan puts his arm around her. “I do.”
Haley leans into himâ
(and E feels a little pang of jealousy).
“I was, like, up on the railing when he called me,” Haley says. “He was the only person in the world who actually
got
it.”
She doesn't say it like she's accusing anyone, but E and Paige look down anyway, look away, self-conscious.
(They knew Haley then. Where were
they
?)
“I told her it wouldn't matter,” Jordan said. “I told her, if she died, nobody at Cap High would come to any, like, big, huge
epiphany
about the error of their ways. They would just think you were some weakling who couldn't cut it.
“I told her she wouldn't do anyone any good if she jumped off that bridge, but she sure as hell could teach those assholes a lesson if she
didn't
.”
Haley nods. “That's why I'm out here.
“That's why the
Pack
,” she says.
