Of course Sonic busting down my door wasn't new at all. So why should I be surprised that half of my breakables were nearly crushed? That's the only plus about having a friend who can run seemingly faster than the speed of sound sometimes.
Still, he'd never burst in that powerfully before. So whatever was on his mind was something big. And I kind of just stood there with my mouth open.
"Hey, Tails. What's up?" he said in a blur. I didn't know how to react. I never do with a question like that. "No, seriously," he continued. "What's up? Are you free?" And instantly he was checking my calendar like a dog spotting a cat.
"Oh, good. You are free." This conversation was stunningly one-sided. "I've got bus tickets all the way to the West."
And I threw a coaster, wildly, hoping it would hit him. It didn't.
Sonic, who'd ducked (but didn't need to), looked up, seeming unsure. "Uh...hey, I've got ferry tickets too. If you, uh, don't like buses?"
"Shut up. Stop talking, right now. Just don't!" I yelled. I hadn't seen Sonic for two years, and frankly, I thought he was dead. And then two years and I'd gotten a life, a house, a job!
"Um...does this mean you are coming?" Sonic asked, completely ignoring me. Classic Sonic. Of course he was turning to leave already.
Two years ago, an early-graduated mechanic, struggling to hold a job, lost a door to a hyperactive beatnik called Sonic. The struggling mechanic, alias me, sixteen, was swept up in the wake of this person only one year older who seemingly couldn't stand still for five minutes. Frenetic journeys were made, but somewhere along the way, we got separated.
And that made me want to throw another coaster. For once in two years, I acted on impulse.
Sonic's face lit up in recognition. "Oh-so that's what you're angry about!" he said, and then added: "And doesn't that feel fantastic? Acting on impulse like that? C'mon," he finished with a quick jerk of the head.
And before I knew it, I was on a bus' window seat, determinedly not looking at the guy beside me who'd been dead to me for two years.
Every so often Sonic would turn his head to glance over at me. I didn't humor him by responding. Somewhere along the way, I forgot where we were, dozed off, and woke to my shoulder being prodded repeatedly.
I ignored it.
Again with a prod. I made my displeasure known with a grunt.
Again with another prod. I finally turned. "What?" It was more of a bleak statement than a question. I didn't want to know.
Sonic was standing over me, holding on to a pole in between our seat and the seat in back of us. He stepped back and made a gesture with his hand to say, Come on over here and stand.
"I don't want to," I grunted. Sonic's eyes flashed to someone in front of me, so I followed his eyes.
…Oh. Standing in front of me was an elderly lady who clearly couldn't be holding onto a pole for the entire ride. Awake now, I quickly jumped up and out of my seat to join Sonic. I felt terrible for being rude to Sonic in front of the old lady, and essentially, being rude to her. I wanted to criticize Sonic, but really there was nothing to criticize as of now. Really, I had thought of myself as the polite one.
"The polite one, and the one to brood about it when he's upset. Don't let it bother you, Tails, I told her you're an okay guy." Sonic was assuming a casual position against the pole. "I think brooding gives you wrinkles, anyway."
I tried to say 'shut up' with my eyes, but Sonic was oblivious. So I went about brooding.
The bus jerked, and Sonic nearly fell over. I tried not to laugh, because I really wanted to get back to my brooding. Which never ended up happening, in fact. Sonic took my arm and dragged me off the bus a minute later. "This bus is going way too slow, man. Come on, I know where we can get a faster ride." And we spent the next 10 minutes walking to a car joint that was farther away than it looked. Once there, Sonic began trying all the handles.
I guess this shouldn't have surprised me much; after all, Sonic used to borrow cars all the time. I only say borrow because, technically, he never crashed a stolen car, and he always returned it with some money. Sometimes he returned it with the little money we had left, which always irritated me. Jobs were not as easy to find then as they were ten years, twenty years before that.
But this time something was a little different about Sonic's 'borrowing'. He used to always have some kind of prayer (gag and bad pun alike included) thanking the car dealer for leaving the door unlocked. Oh, and this car was a blue and rather fancy-looking Pontiac. Which he never used to like.
"Sonic…are you okay?" I finally asked, five miles down the road.
"Huh? Uh. Yeah. Definitely." I remembered the way he'd broken down my door. Obviously he wasn't. We sped on.
Even if Sonic wasn't okay, I realized I'd missed his driving. I had been scared to drive since I got a license. Sonic had never been that way. If it was fast, he was on it. And surprisingly, his driving was safe even at 110 mph. He dodged cars like a mosquito. Although to other people it felt like careening, driving was one of the only things I trusted Sonic with.
And we were headed West. West was the holy place for beatniks like Sonic. And at that, I guess beatniks like me as well. West was the land of speed, bop, and night air. To other people, it was Station Square, but to us, it was West.
And I kind of dreaded going West.
The reason behind my sudden sour note started two years ago. I had two working copies of a machine in front of me, at my home, ready to go out to the world and show it what I could do.
A second later, I had one working copy of a machine in front of me and a boot on top of my formerly beautiful machine. Sonic. Of course by then I didn't recognize him by appearance, or rather I wouldn't have if I hadn't guessed from that look in his eyes.
Via letter correspondence from my college friend Rotor, I learned about Sonic. Sonic was a just-out-of-jail kid with no reason and no rhyme, except that he found the soul in everything. 'The soul' was an abstract term I'd started seeing in Rotor's letters. Evidently their relationship was a symbiotic one, at least as far as brains were concerned.
Let me just save you all the bother of describing this unusual mind marriage by showing you a letter excerpt between the two.
"Rotor—responding to your last letter. I believe that all the points which you hereby described are as significant as the matter of fact way you presented the alternative paradigms, that is to say…
"Nah, just kidding. Have you seen the bop scene out West? The soul, man. The soul. They know where it's at, man. They just blow and blow and blow and they never stop"
Sonic's words, like his lifestyle, kind of just always spilled out. But from what I gleaned from Rotor's letters, everything this Sonic said, or tried to say, or didn't even say so much as radiated, was meaningful. My mother didn't like him. I laughed. I knew she had a good reason for not liking him, yeah, but I wanted to unravel the mystery of this guy. And maybe someday be that guy.
So I knew the guy standing in front of me had to be Sonic. And he eagerly shook my hand, nodding vigorously, saying, "Show me around!" before I even had a chance to shake his hand back. But instead of me showing him around, the beatnik, the future village idiot and genius, the corrupted saint showed me a thing or two.