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.

16. Arnie

Arnie's old man worked the second shift on the line, standing eight to ten hours a day fixing roll bar after roll bar to one four-door chassis after the next. It wasn't a job with a lot of variety, but he wasn't the sort of man who needed much of that. The job kept him and Arnie and Arnie's mom fed, clothed, and under a roof, and that was enough. Some thousand-odd times each day, the pneumatic drill sped up to however many RPMs and back with a sound like an overgrown kazoo, and it was from a couple decades of that happening, what made Arnie's old man go a bit hard of hearing.

Arnie walked to school and sat up at the front, because he wasn't much of a reader and it helped to keep close up. He was doing a times table and counting up sixes on his fingers when something struck him in the back of the head. He yelped with surprise and forgot his math problem.
"I saw that!" said Mrs. Carver. "Now you get up here, and you give me that pea shooter!"
Tanner Edwards stood up slowly and walked over, glowering.
"You're sitting in the corner for the rest of the day, mister." She walked over to Tanner's desk and began moving it towards the wall.
Tanner looked at Arnie like it was Arnie's fault Tanner had shot him. Arnie looked down, at his workbooks, at the numbers. He tried to think of how many times to add sixes together to get forty two. The numbers blinked out as Tanner's fist crashed into the side of his head. Arnie jumped out of his seat and tackled him.
Mrs. Carver turned around, pushed her cat-eye glasses up to the bridge of her nose, and sighed at the fracas.

The principal looked at Arnie, who sat fidgeting, counting the tacks in the fringe of the leather-upholstered armrest. Arnie counted 'one, two, three' in his head, 'one, two, three' so many times he didn't know how many.
"I've called your father," said the principal, "but there's no answer. His work number, as well, to no avail. Hard to get a working man on the line, it would seem. Foreman doesn't think it's fair to use up his break minutes before their time." He touched the corner of his moustache. "Look at me, Arnold." Arnie did as he was told. "Mrs. Carver tells me you hit that Edwards boy. Bloodied up his nose. And I know he hit you first, but that doesn't mean I can just call it settled and done." Arnie looked at the principal's shiny forehead and said nothing. "Now, seeing as you live within six blocks of the schoolhouse, the rules allow that I can send you home as a disciplinary measure in accordance with what's laid out as appropriate for this situation. Can I send you home, Arnold?" The principal leaned forward and raised his eyebrows. Arnie sat up straight. He looked around, then looked at the principal and nodded.

When he walked out the door and far enough on that nobody was watching, he decided he didn't want to go home. He wanted to see his dad, and to sit in the car, and to hear the few words of advice he knew his old man would have about this. "Bullies are like balloons," his old man had said before, "they look real big until you pop 'em." Well, he'd popped Tanner Edwards, now what? Arnie walked along the dirt path towards the automotive factory. He knew where there was a part of the fence to climb over, and the big bay doors that were always open during the day. He knew where to find his old man.

The factory floor hummed with machinery and the sounds of labor. Pounding engines running and stamping sheet metal forms, pneumatic this and that whistling and the staccato shot of spot riveters all came together in a kind of harmony that made Arnie's young heart lift up with joy. He sat down near the door and looked at the grassy field and the sun-filled sky outside, and then to the working men and the enormous machines, the sparks and motion that lay further in, every part of it alive with rhythm, with purpose. He wanted to be a part of it, to make this music every day. That was it, he thought. He was through with school. He'd had enough of school.

15. Seth and Annie

Seth tugged on the strand of skin fraying off of his fingernail, and hissed through his teeth as it bit into the quick. The newly torn fissure yielded a trickle of blood. Seth popped the finger into his mouth and wished he would have just left it alone.

The first six notes of "The Star Spangled Banner" tore from Annie's guitar like bullets from a revolver. The crowd caught fire; Seth looked up with worry lines on his forehead. This wasn't on the setlist. He didn't know the bass line. The audience was already into it. What was he supposed to do?
"Just kidding," Annie laughed into the mic, and dropped the impromptu Hendrix homage. Seth's shoulders rose and fell with an unburdening sigh. He chuckled at himself. What a free spirit that girl was, he thought. There was no one like her.
The songs went on as scheduled, and Seth's hands, programmed by obsessive sessions of practice, plodded along on autopilot. He was proud of his consistency. Note for note, he played precisely what was written, with no deviation whatsoever. Not that anyone noticed.
Annie seemed never to repeat herself exactly. Seth had an ear for this and he would notice the spatchcock revision of a score, especially careful to discern improvisational adaptations from mere mistakes. As he would point out, Annie did not make mistakes. She seemed possessed by a force that made her fingers fly, spewing riffs humbucker-hot when necessary. Sometimes she'd put the tempo just where it felt perfect and find, somewhere in those strings, scales that made harmonies with key changes that would break your heart, break it exactly right. Seth couldn't believe the enormity of the music in those hands. Her arms were so thin.

The highway lights made the tour bus interior a carousel of warm orange glows. They overlapped and faded away. The singer, reclined and serene, looked like her skin was the colour of caramel, then of milk. "Annie?"
"Yeah? Oh, hey Seth."
"That show, it was a great show. You were great, you're always great."
"Yeah, thanks."
"No, I mean it, you're really something else. Something special."
"Mm, thanks for the compliment. And you're a great bassist, you are." She yawned. "Yeah, really... great, Seth. But look, I don't like too many compliments on my playing, you know? They just stop meaning anything. It starts to be just a sound people make. You know what I mean?" She shifted her shoulders, settling back into the seat.
Seth took this for humility. He fought the urge to kneel. "I mean, more than just music." Looking for the right words, the road noise filled the cabin.
Annie opened her eyes and turned. Seth, leaning so far forwards that he barely made contact with his seat, picked at his fingers. She wondered what she should say to him, what she could say.
"You know, Seth," she said, looking up to the roof, "for a bass player, you're very high strung." She smiled in a good-natured way and looked over. Passing lights from outside made shadows spin across Seth's features like a sundial in time-lapse. He looked at his hands, fingers all working over each other, probing irregularities.
"Sss," he muttered, and put a bleeding finger in his mouth.

14. Old man and grandson

"The only thing that might keep us alive in there was if we got off the first shot. There was a thing they'd say. Shoot first, you're a hero; shoot second, you're a casualty. Those of us that made it, well, being clever counted for a lot. Some of the time, when we came to a bunker from around back, they'd know we were coming. You'd see a little further around the hatch than where you could point the gun, so they'd just turn the big machinegun right around and train it on the door for when we came in. When they did that, we'd stay put. Lob a grenade through. Clear out the whole room."
"You'd frag 'em?"
"Would 'n' did. A dozen times." He looked into his teacup and saw the reflection of his face. When he picked it up, the image shattered into ripples.
"What was your best kill?" asked the grandson, who knew only youth.
The old man thoughtfully set down his tea and leaned towards the impetuous boy.
"One German saw the grenade come, and he ran for the door. The explosion took off his arms and head. Threw the rest into the hallway. He looked like a sweater with the sleeves rolled up."
The grandson didn't think much of it at the time, but the words created for him a special part of the season in late September. When the first autumn chills crept in, and the cold mornings gave way to warm afternoons, he would see again and again the specter of this ragged corpse of the man who had not made it to the door.

12. Stephanie

Stephanie laughed, and immediately felt exactly as she would have if she’d punctured the lid on a can of fish that had spoiled inside the tin. She wished she hadn’t done it. Her mother’s eyes lanced her.
“It isn’t funny.” Her voice was quiet and taut.
“I know, I just…” Steph had time to finish, but she didn’t have the words for it.
“You just nothing. Have some respect.”
Stephanie looked at her feet, studied the grout in the tiles of the kitchen floor. She wasn’t sure why she had laughed. Nothing seemed funny; she wasn’t sure how else to react. Her mother turned back to the telephone. As Stephanie walked to her room, she heard her mother’s voice spilling into the hallway, offering cooing susurrus of consolation not meant for her.

“I think it was, like, this mental image of one of those horse-drawn carts from the olden days, you know? And it, like, losing a wheel or going off the road or whatever.” Stephanie took a sip of grape Fanta, trying not to slurp from the can in case her friend could hear. She took in the other half of the conversation through the plastic pink cellphone and emphatically, though her friend could not see the gesture, rolled her eyes like a pair of volume knobs being twisted to maximum. “I know! My mom just doesn’t understand at all. Like, what’s so great about being what's probably the most crappiest, y'know, way to be, anyways? They’d be so mad if I got that way, but for my sister it’s all, like, good job. If it was me, they’d kill me for sure.” She sat down and looked in the mirror. She looked at the things on her desk, reached for something and stopped, bit her lip. “Yeah no, well, that’s okay because he pulled out.” She sipped at the Fanta again and, finding it empty, threw the can in the garbage.

6. Tasha

Tasha liked Hayden as soon as she set eyes upon him. He always appeared disheveled, and yet composed, as though careless attractiveness were a quality he could not suppress through sheer lack of effort. His manners matched. Tasha could tell Hayden's attention was valuable by how sparingly he laid it out. Eventually she worked up the nerve to approach him, and was relieved to find herself accepted in his presence, not the target of the mysterious, sarcastic scoff he doled out frequently. She had met his unfathomable standards. She felt unique; Hayden was so often alone.

She asked him to have coffee with her and he laconically agreed. They went out. She told him all about herself and he laconically approved, of everything. She told him she found him handsome, and they returned to her dorm room where he laconically made love to her. Afterwards, he began to get dressed. She asked him why. He said something which, though he didn't know it, completely and irrevocably changed the way she perceived him. He might as well have torn off his face.

Once he'd gone, Tasha went out by herself and walked in the snow, inventing obscenities so potent that no words existed with which to express them.