19. Raleigh

Raleigh smelt rubber. She shook her too-large helmet into place and pulled on the chinstrap to make it fit better. The strap pinched and the helmet was still loose, but she figured that was as good as it would get. Eyes forward, she gripped the wheel, counted to three, and pressed the pedal to the floor. Nothing.
"Hey!" The track operator didn't hear her. "Hey!"
"Cool it," he said, running blackened fingers through his ear-length hair. Raleigh thought she caught sight of a tattoo on his forearm.
She looked down the track and wrinkled her nose. The operator waved down someone else's kart and directed them into the pit, then walked over to where Raleigh waited.
"Take it easy out there, willya?" he half-mumbled as he did something to the engine. "Y'r keyed up a bit much."
The engine sputtered to life. Raleigh didn't know what he meant; she wasn't even sure what he'd said. If he said anything else as he stepped aside, she didn't hear it. Someone roared past and yelled, laughing at her. She saw his face, barely: it was Jason Rousseaux, a boy she knew from school. She started after him, but he was a long way ahead. "Take it easy, huh?" she thought. "I'll show you taking it easy."
The kart rocked around the turn and came wide out of it, making Raleigh lean heftily with the momentum. She took a hand from the wheel to wipe sweat from her eyes. Her hand was sweaty too. Focusing on the back of Jason's kart, she saw she was going a little faster on the straightaways. She was catching up, so she drove harder.
"Nice moves!" she shouted above the engines, bringing her kart alongside Jason's after four laps. He looked at her, then back at the road, then back at her. He said something.
"What?" Raleigh yelled. He said it louder and she still couldn't make out the words. Maybe they'd talk when the racing was done, she thought, get a soda at the shop by the side of the track and rehash some of the turns. Then he brought his kart in tightly, and Raleigh tried to get nearer to him so she could hear better. She steered carefully and kept her eyes on the tires, trying to get them close without touching.
He started to yell, and then they were both spinning and bumping as the karts left the road. Grass flew up in rooster-tails from the tires. When they came to a halt, he was in front of her, facing away. She fumbled with her chinstrap and called his name. His engine growled, and the kart did not move. The tires spun. A spray of dirt stung Raleigh's face.

17. Earl

It wasn't a good idea, but Earl didn't know that as he fastened the chinstrap on his helmet and inched the shopping cart over the edge of the ravine.

"Accidental-slash-dental coverage. No, that's not a typo. It's the category of insurance related to incidents of an unintentional sort, resulting in damage to your teeth. I'd say that's about what we're dealing with here, wouldn't you?"
"Yef. I gueff fo." Earl nodded.

The tissue around the stumps in Earl's gums was the colour of turnips. One eyetooth, mostly intact, jutted out at a ridiculous angle. The dentist prodded it with a latex-coated finger. Pain exploded from that spot in a pattern that reminded Earl of spiderwebs, or maybe the stripes on a watermelon. "Yep," the doc said, "that's a mid-root coronal fracture. This one's got to go, too." He picked up a pair of grippers. "Want to do it right away? No sense in waiting."
"Uh-kay." Pain again. Twisting, white-hot rivers that began with the motions of the dentist's wrists and traveled at light speed through Earl's head, straight through his brain and out the other side. "Uhhhh," he said.

"...so that's pretty much why I can do this," and Earl pulled a beer out of the plastic ring pack and opened it against his front teeth.
"What was that, Earl, four years ago?"
"I reckon five." He swigged from his can.
"Think you could bite open a bottle?"

7. Sophie & Brian

The scar looked like red wax dripping straight down from Sophie's hairline, narrowly missing her eye. She turned towards Brian, and he cringed.
"Long time no see," she said.
He found it difficult to make eye contact.
"Yeah, I uh, I'm glad to see you're up and around."
"Are you kidding? I've been out of the hospital for a month already."
He was silent. She bit her lip, knowing she'd meant that to sound less forceful.
"Look, I don't want you to worry about this," she gestured towards the side of her face, "okay? I'm over it. You don't have to beat yourself up."
Brian made a face like he was trying to force something that wouldn't come. He turned away and expelled the breath he'd been holding in, then tried again with his right hand over his heart. "I think it would be better if..." he trailed off, losing the nerve to admit what she already knew.
Sophie waited, and breathed deeply. She smiled politely. He's such a goddamned actor, she thought. He looked down.
"I can't help blaming myself," Brian said to his feet.
"That's something you'll have to get over."
When he looked up, she was waiting for him. Her gaze locked on to his. She knew exactly how pretty she was, or used to be, and the only penance she asked was that he would carry on like nothing had changed.
"Every time I see it," he began, and looked away. "I hear the squealing tires, the breaking glass..."
"That's a fucking Pearl Jam lyric, Brian." Her voice cracked. She was tempted to hit him. She attempted to calm herself, to keep a grip on the situation. If they shouted it out, she knew he wouldn't call her again. He'd consider it over and try to forget. She had already looked in the mirror and swept her hair over her face in a dozen variations. It didn't work.
He looked at her with uncertainty. No words came. He felt angry that his life hadn't prepared him for this.

"Want to see a movie?"

3. Walter

Walter lowered the stock from his shoulder and un-winked his eye. The cordite smoke hung in the windless air like a blot of bird shit on a clean pane of glass.

The buck hadn't died right away; it was still kicking out its last. They do that sometimes, Walter knew, before they shut down entire. Echoes of the shot rumbled distant. The peal of the gun diminished into a murmur of assent, speaking to the heart of the hunter.

Waiting for the throes to stop -- a single kick from one of those hooves can split a man's brain-pan as it were a grapefruit, he'd heard -- Walter did a few things. He took off a glove and scratched his ruddy brown moustache, smelling the leather scent remnant on his trigger finger. He checked his buck-knife to see that it was sharp; it was. The kicking stopped. The animal would still be breathing. Walter decided it was time to take care of it, and began to cross the two hundred or so yards that separated them. Hell of a way to meet somebody, he thought.

He found the deer next to a tree that looked so goddamn much like twelve-point antlers. How in the hell. The doe stretched its neck up, its eyes deep and watery as a woman's, taking in the sight of him. Walter saw the fight go out of the quiet creature. He made it go quick.

The next day, he shaved his moustache.