This took a while, I know, but I have an actual reason this time! lol My piece of crap computer deleted a huge chunk of it and I had to redo it. So it feels off to me, even if it doesn't to you. I feel like there are parts that were better the first time and some other parts that turned out better this time. So...yeah. Enjoy! :)
They were halfway across the parking lot when Gwen realized something. She hadn't thought about it before because it was a natural thing most of the time, but now it hit her. "Oh God!" she slapped her forehead.
Duncan looked at her with a half interested expression, liking the sound of her voice in that moment. "What?" he asked dumbly, frowning lightly.
"How the hell are we supposed to get there?" she cried, throwing her arms up into the air. "I mean…we could walk. But…that would take forever…or maybe-" she perked then, stopping mid-sentence as she noticed him trailing off to the side away from her. "Hey!" she called after him. "Where are you going?"
He glanced back at her a moment, rolling his eyes at her denseness as he continued to drift away from her. He scanned over each and every car he saw until his eyes landed on the perfect one. It was a red corvette with orange flames running down both sides. He smirked deviously, moving close enough to run his hands over the smooth surface. It looked to be old, but it was so incredibly cool it didn't matter. A perfect candidate to be hotwired. He still needed to get in the car though. He searched around, dropping down to the ground to look for rocks.
Gwen blinked a couple of times as she watched Duncan drop down to his knees. She wasn't really worried about him at this point. She figured he was merely looking for something, what that something was beyond her. "Duncan!" she cried with a hint of amusement as she trotted over to him. "What are you doing?"
Duncan found a good sized rock and smiled, picking himself back up from the ground to turn toward Gwen. "What's it look like?" he teased, chugging the rock at the passenger window of the car. It shattered instantly, shards falling into the seat and onto the ground around the window.
"Oh my God!" she covered her mouth with both hands, pressing hard so as not to laugh. "Duncan!" she whined unconvincingly. "You can't do that!"
He frowned. "Why not? We need to get out of here and we don't have a car. This guy, whoever owns it, is loaning us his car for the time being."
Gwen burst out laughing. "No. It doesn't-I mean…you could be arrested."
Duncan grinned widely. "So?" he shrugged. "I'm still technically a minor. Besides, I've been to juvie plenty of times already." He stuck his hand through the hole in the window and unlocked the door.
Gwen's eyes widened. "You remember!" she cried.
Duncan coked his head to the side. "Yeah…I may not remember some things but I still know a bit." he paused. "Look, can we talk about this later?" he asked, pulling the door open and carefully crawling across the seat to hit the unlock all button. Of course Duncan being Duncan he wasn't careful enough. On his way back he slid his arm across the edge of a piece of the glass, sucking in a sharp breath.
Gwen nodded to his question, too absorbed in her thoughts for once to notice anything had happened. She was thinking hard on his memory issues. It was obviously selective, in a sense. He couldn't remember at least two years back, that much was for sure especially since Courtney came into his life a year ago and Gwen two years back. She sighed, running a hand through her yucky hair. How was she supposed to deal with this? She loved him dearly, her best friend. But he saw her as nothing more then a stranger.
Duncan jerked back out of the car, gripping his arm tenderly as blood dripped from it. It stung like hell, like when he was six. He had been running around with a bunch of boys who were bigger then he was. They weren't too happy with him being included so they were seriously trying to push him down as an excuse to get him out of their game. He was much faster then the lot of them though so it was proving difficult for them to accomplish their goal. "Can't catch me!" he'd screamed over his shoulder, not paying attention to where he was going. It was this minor act of stupidity that had him running face first into a large tree. He'd stumbled back and, attempting to catch himself, skinned his arm on the ground.
Skin was pulled away in chunks on his arm and he basically screamed bloody murder, the group of bigger boys circling around him with horrified expressions. Only one, his cousin, ran to get Duncan's mother. And soon after Duncan fainted from staring at the blood too long. He didn't have to go to the hospital or anything, but he made sure to stay away from those boys for a good long time. That was for sure.
Duncan shuddered at the memory, bringing his hand away from the small wound to see that his hand was now covered in red liquid. Even now he wasn't the biggest fan of blood, especially his own, but it wasn't bad enough to make him faint. He merely felt light headed as he moved to tear a piece of his pants off to wrap around the cut. He'd fix it later when Gwen wasn't around to have a spaz attack.
Gwen was still standing off to the side, paying little mind to him for the second time. Now she was wondering what would happen if they were to get pulled over. Neither of them had their license, even though they were of age, and would be in a hell of a lot of trouble as such. She supposed she could use the 'he lost him memory' card, but honestly it would do little good. They'd say that Gwen was perfectly fine and could have stopped him from driving. Best case scenario she'd be dragged off and he'd get off scott free. Worst, they'd both be screwed. "Duncan…" she started, looking to the passenger side to see he had disappeared. Her eyes grew wide as she spun around. "Duncan!"
Duncan stood up from where he'd been crouched over on the drivers side. "What?" he grumbled uninterestedly. "I'm trying to work here."
She half smiled. "Sorry…but we really can't do this." she moved her foot in circles on the pavement. It was a bad nervous habit.
He rolled his eyes, snorting and ducking back down to sift through the crap in this guys car. He had gloves, great, and some papers, paper clips, candy, and other useless junk. He sighed. There was nothing to start this hunk of junk. He needed a screwdriver of some sort.
Gwen frowned, lowering herself down to his level and stuck her head in the passenger side. "We can still walk." she was half begging for him to consider it.
Duncan shook his head as he crawled into the seat and craned his head to look in the backseat on the off chance that there might be something left behind there. "Do you wanna come or not?" it was a rhetorical question really. He knew, no matter how much it went against her code or whatever, that she would without a doubt do anything to tag along. He smirked. "Then clean off the passenger seat so you have a place to sit." he half ordered, enjoying the power.
She hesitated only a fraction of a second before she hopped to it. She reached over for one of the gloves to push the glass without having to worry about cutting herself. Blood was cool and all, not just fake blood, but only when it was someone else's. She wasn't a fan of her own. She saw that her plan wasn't to smart when one of the pieces of glass sliced open a spot on the glove. "Opps…" she whispered, looking over to Duncan who was now half way in the back, his bottom half only being used for balance. She threw the glove back to its spot with haste then, grabbing an ice scrapper in the windshield instead. With this her job was made easy. She got all of the glass in a neat pile, moving to the side to be out of range as she hit the pile as hard as she could to get it out of her seat. It shattered instantly, a huge smile spreading across her face.
As she was doing her chore Duncan was becoming lost in the back seat. He searched the seats, the sides where something could have fallen, and the floors. All there was to be found were sunglasses discarded due to cracks, toys older then time itself, a gameboy game, Ziploc bags with crackers, and mountains of dust everywhere. It was plain to him that no one had ridden in the back in years, maybe not even for as many as ten years. Ten years. He sighed in a mixture of irritation and reminiscence. What it would mean if he could be but a child, protected by his mother and father like a precious jewel. More so he wished he could remember it all. Whatever had happened to him had jolted his brain and pushed many memories away from his grasp.
"Done!" Gwen chirped, doing a fist pump and grinning widely.
Duncan was slightly startled by her outburst and jumped so that, if he hadn't been down so low, he'd have surely hit his head on the ceiling. He even thought of turning around and scolding her until his eyes came to land on her face. She hadn't been this happy, truly delighted. Duncan wanted to say this fact pleased him to no end like he knew she'd say of him in a similar situation, but he could not. All he could say was that he was unable of crushing her spirit by calling her down. "Great." he said instead smiling a half smile before turning back around and digging beneath the seat of the front ones. It felt so disgruntling, making him cringe and groan softly. But it was well worth it. He found precisely what he was looking for. It was a flat headed screwdriver. He wondered for a moment if the owner of this car or their now grown kids had used it to do as he was about to do. "Yes!" he cried after clearing the thought from his head. "Hell yes!"
Gwen jolted up and hit her head on the roof of the car, groaning lightly as she tenderly rubbed her head. "What is it?" she murmured, straining to hide her discomfort.
Duncan pulled himself back up to the front, a huge grin that would have matched Gwen's plastered on his face. "This is perfect." he rolled it around in circles in his hand as he spoke. "Perfect." he muttered again, looking up at Gwen afterward to see she no longer looked thrilled. "What?" he said out of instinct, eyes widening of their own accord. He even found that a part of him wanted to reach out and touch the spot which she was holding with such care. He quickly pushed the urge away.
Gwen shrugged, forcing a smile to convince him all was well. "Nothing." a pause. "Just hit my head. It doesn't matter." she looked down at the object in his hand. "So…you found what you were looking for?" she perked, truly interested in his findings.
Duncan brightened again, forgetting about her injury in a moments time. "A screwdriver!" he exclaimed, moving his hand closer to her face so she might get a better look at it. "And it's a flat head."
"I know what it is." she chuckled lightly. "Remember?" she reminded him. "I was your best friend. If I didn't know that stuff then I'd never have made it farther than school acquaintance." she nudged him gently in the arm.
Duncan grit his teeth as she did so, her having hit him in the spot that was cut. But other then that there were no outward signs that he was hurting. This being the case, as he wanted, Gwen didn't notice. "Right." he muttered to himself in a half response to her cheerful reminder. Not that he really wanted to be told. He rather preferred that he not know of the details of their relationship. Knowing them but not feeling the emotion that normally would go with them would only hurt him more, him and her both. Besides, he was pretty sure she was what most classified as a friend with benefits. Or maybe it was just easier to believe this.
She was quick to hop into the passenger seat then, eyeing Duncan expectantly. "Well?" she prodded. "You gonna do this or what?" she pulled her door shut.
He frowned, narrowing his eyes at her in suspicion. "What happened to the girl who was scared stiff of just breaking into the car?"
She laughed nervously, rubbing her arm. "I dunno. I guess I see that you aren't about to stop this and as your friend I'm obligated to follow you." with her next words her tone turned serious. "I wouldn't want you to get killed being stupid."
Duncan's frown deepened. There she went again, talking about hoe devoted she was willing to be. Why wouldn't she cut it out? It was really pissing him off. "Whatever." he growled, flipping the screwdriver through his fingers before he jabbed it into the ignition. It'd be nice if he had a hammer to get the screwdriver in better, but that wasn't about to happen so he did as best he could. He hit it with his hand instead before deciding it wasn't getting in any farther and tentatively turned it.
Gwen felt his annoyance vibrating from him to her and she lowered her gaze. She hadn't meant to make him mad with her concern, but it was hard for her not to display her deep affection towards him. She was so used to being able to say the same thing and getting a laugh or a playful hit on the arm that it was kind of jarring. She sighed softly, looking up out of the windshield. It was a bright day. One wouldn't think, looking up at this sky, that anything could be wrong in the world at this moment. All they would see was the promise of a new day and a lack of rain for yet another day this week. But that was not so for Gwen. She saw what was really meant to be seen. She saw the truth, and the truth was a bitter substance that no one wanted to admit existed. She saw that nothing was ever perfect, that each and every day someone suffered from something like a disease, physical injury, or even death. Worst of all she saw that all this effected not only the afflicted, but all those who loved them. They hurt just as much if not more then the victim. One could even say that the onlookers were the true victims. That's how she felt of herself at least.
The engine revved to life, much to the boys surprise and his smile returned.
Gwen perked. "How did you do that?"
Duncan knew that she was referring to the fact he didn't remember everything and snorted. "I've been doing this since I was like twelve." he chuckled. "So trust me when I say I know what I'm doing."
"So you remember being twelve…" she whispered, obviously in pain over this despite the fact she should be thrilled at him at least remembering this much. She just couldn't help but wish he remembered a little further, at least to when he met her.
He recognized what was bothering her and scrambled to change the subject. "Ready to drive or what?" he said smugly, smirking deviously as he situated himself properly in the drivers seat and took a grip on the steering wheel.
Gwen's eyes widened as she saw that flicker in his teal eyes. She'd seen it enough to know what it signified. He was about to do something incredibly stupid which would no doubt risk both their lives. "Duncan." she said like a mother would when warning their child to watch their step.
Duncan's smirk stretched further across his face at seeing the fear return to her pale face. "What's wrong?" he teased, reaching out and pulling his door shut.
Gwen swallowed hard. "Um…" she couldn't exactly explain what she'd seen in him. He wouldn't like her going on about who he used to be for one thing nor would he appreciate her resistance. "Are you sure you know how to drive?" she said instead. "I mean, I know you've been doing it for a year or so without your license, but…" she trailed off, not knowing how to end it.
Duncan snorted, not letting her mention of the past he was incapable of reaching out for and grabbing on to in his own mind ruin his excitement. If he remembered he remembered how thrilling it was when he got behind the wheel. In all honestly he could even recall Gwen's voice scolding him on a daily basis for his bad driving habits. Thinking of her acting as such made him snicker.
"What!" she cried, not liking that laugh. It combined with all other things he'd done made her worry ten times more.
"You worry to much." he answered simply, tightening his grip on the wheel. "I told you. I've been hotwiring cars since I was twelve. Why would I do that if I wasn't going to drive them?" he poked fun.
She rolled her eyes. "I wouldn't put it past you to be an idiot like that." she grinned. "Just look at yourself now." she pointed out. "You're stealing."
"Are you sure you're my best friend. Cause you sure don't seem to be remembering much of things I've done."
Gwen grimaced. "I…I've only known you for a while…" she grumbled, lowering her gaze again.
Duncan didn't like the way he had upset her so, but made no move to console her. Instead he stepped down hard on the gas pedal. They shot backwards in the blink of an eye, throwing the both of them forward instantly.
Gwen was caught off guard by the jolt and nearly slammed her head into the dashboard. She was lucky that she had good enough reflexes to catch herself. "What was that!" she screamed, eyes wide and breathing a notch above normal.
Duncan was grinning in a way similar to the devil himself, a snicker hiding behind his lips. "I wanted to go." he said in a way that showed he was stifling a laugh. "So I did." he shrugged, foot lingering an inch above the gas. He was ready to get the hell out of here. He knew that if they lingered here to much longer then some personnel would come looking for them and drag him back to the hospital and bust Gwen for assisting in stealing a car.
Gwen crossed her arms over her chest. "Without even warning me!" she cried in a half whining voice. "I could have had my forehead split open!"
Duncan snickered. "Well…at least we'd be next to the hospital." he shrugged, about ready to burst out laughing.
Many things might have changed about him, but she saw one big part of him that had without a doubt remained, his quick-witted humor. She snorted. "Ha-ha. Yeah. And if that had happened I would have beaten you to death." she was half kidding, but only half. If he were to hurt her she would have no problem with doing the same right back. She cringed. Only she had already hurt him. Him hurting her would be payback. She had no right.
"Yeah, right. If you say so Pinocchio."
"At least let me put on my seat belt." she said, pulling the belt over her chest and snapped it in place with a heavy sigh. "You should do the same." Before the words were completely out of her mouth she was thrown forward.
The only thing Duncan had listened for was the click of her belt before he slammed his foot back down on the gas with immense force. With that they were speeding forward toward the car parked front of them.
"Ahh!" Gwen screamed in a high pitch. "Duncan! Car! Car!" her eyes were wide already after only a second of starting.
Duncan knew exactly how long he had before he would make impact and waited the amount out until there was but a split seconds chance to avoid the crash and jerked the wheel hard right, gritting his teeth hard.
Gwen, regardless of her restraint, was thrown to the left just as hard as before, hitting her head on the side of Duncan's headrest. She let out an involuntary moan, hurrying to straighten herself before they made another sharp turn. "Duncan!" she cried. "You're crazy!"
Duncan chortled. "Nah." he disagreed with a shake of his head. "I just love a good rush!" the laugh that followed sent chills down Gwen's spine and had her scrambling to brace herself.
Gwen knew what Duncan said was no lie. Ever since she'd known him he'd insisted on doing all sorts of crazy stunts. At first she thought he did so to fit in with his other psycho peers and played upon this to try and convince him to stop. It didn't take long for her to see this was not the case. He did it because he wanted to. And since they were friends she quickly developed his habit. She followed him into dangerous situations all the time. It made her feel unbelievably proud, especially when he told others that she was the only girl he trusted enough to bring along. It was the highest award she could possibly receive. Anything from him was number one in her book. Still as familiar as she was with his varying ways of getting rushes she had never quite gotten used to this method. Something about being amongst other idiots made it as bad as a death sentence. This was why she found herself gripping tight onto the armrest to her left and the pocket on the side of the door on her right.
Duncan went on at a constant speed of sixty miles an hour all the while, having slowed down only slightly from his speed at the start. He never imagined slowing down any further, so it was a good thing he didn't have to as they sped on toward the school. "How ya doing?" he asked without genuine concern, taking his eyes off the road as he always liked to do. Only now it wasn't to take in her beauty, it was to see her petrified expression.
"Duncan!" she snapped in return, raising her right hand to point urgently ahead of them. "Light! Slow down!" she was practically jumping up and down in her seat as she tried desperately to get him to take his eyes from her and see that they were coming up on a four way intersection. This was the most dangerous place in town, only a few miles from the school.
Duncan jumped a bit, swirling his head about to take in the scene he was coming up on. The light was still green, but he knew what she was spazzing over. She saw that the light would change before they got there and knew he wouldn't think about letting it stop him. And she was right. The light flickered from the top green spot to the middle where it was yellow, but instead of heeding her warning he did the exact opposite. He pressed his foot down harder on the peddle, bringing their speed up to seventy easy.
She wanted so much to cover her face with her hands as their car raced forward so that she wouldn't see the horrific scene she was being forced to enter. They were going to crash. She knew it. And it didn't help that the vehicle opposing them was the largest one possible. It was a semi truck and it was moments away from getting the green light and going.
And then the light on their side changed to red, just as they passed beneath it. "DUNCAN!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. But it was to late. There was no more time left to stop at the speed he was going, and no room to reverse, and they both knew it. They were screwed.
So, what do you all think? I left you on a cliffhanger. Tehe. You'll find I like to do that quite a bit. :) And remember, constructive criticism is always appreciated, especially with the pov. I have a tendency to go from one to the other on accident. ^^'' Review please! :D