What do you do with a hundred nearly identical cars? You sell them for parts, that's what. You get the junkyard to take what it will, offer up the rest to the locals, then get plastered in the backseat of the only one that's left, the biggest fuckup Kavinsky could make, no engine, one axle, two fucking square tires.
Jiang spreads his hands out on the black leather seats and wonders if Proko was there when he made it. Skov and Swan laugh because they're drunk and they always thought Jiang was a little too sweet on ugly ol' Proko.
Jiang tells them to shut the fuck up. He knows what they do, they're obvious as anything. Swan looks at him with his escort eyes, and Jiang wonders when life's going to start making sense again.
"In another timeline," Skov says. Jiang chucks his empty beer can at his head.
It hits the dash, which is one solid piece, the steering wheel can't even turn. Kavinsky must have been out of his mind when he made this thing, this impossible, glorious thing. It's like terrible modern art, the type that looks like a kindergartner could make it, only you try and you realize you can't even do it.
"He was a miracle," Skov says. "A goddamn fucking miracle."
They're going to torch this car once the three of them can be bothered to get out of it, just Molotov cocktail the shit out of it because that's what Kavinsky would have wanted and what Proko would have done. Not just the Proko Jiang adored but the other Proko, too, the one Swan and Skov talk about, who fought with Kavinsky half the time and was entranced by him the rest. Whatever happened to that Proko is a mystery. All Jiang knows is he came back different one summer and Swan took that as a sort of threat, like he thought Kavinsky might replace him, too.
Jiang never believed that. If Kavinsky wanted Proko dead, he wouldn't have brought him back. Skov and Swan never got Proko's appeal, the thrill in having someone so happy to see you, someone a little too dependent but never too demanding because, more than anything, you needed someone to need you.
Something happened and no one knows what it was, least of all Proko. It wasn't on purpose. Jiang can't believe Kavinsky, for all his awfulness, would have done it on purpose, not to Proko. Jiang may have only known the first him for a few months, but there had been a connection between Kavinsky and Proko. That's what Jiang wants to believe.
Just because you help someone change doesn't mean you didn't value the person they were.
"He should have been immortal," Swan says. It sounds bitter, like everything he says lately.
It has not been a good summer.
The fairground burns.
The air is hazy with gasoline fumes and the heat of the fires. All around them there's crackling and popping. Paint blackens and peels off old, dry wood. Pieces of sideboard break off and fall to the ground as red hot embers. It looks and feels like a level of hell.
Swan tilts his bottle and pours the rest of the Grey Goose on the ground as a tribute.
"We should get out of here before the cops show," he says, swinging the bottle above his head and letting go. It makes a high arc and shatters against what was once a ticket booth. Now it's only fuel.
"You don't think they'd want to watch?"
The cops probably would enjoy seeing Kavinsky's ill-gained territory destroyed. Another blight on the community gone.
"Let's get out of here. Leave it." He means the fire. Leave the fairground burning. Someone else's mess to clean up.
Jiang tosses his beer can on the ground with the others. It bounces on the packed dirt. All the grass is withered and yellow-brown. The fire is the only thing remotely alive in this forgotten place.
"Yeah, let's go."
They let an inferno consume the last traces of Kavinsky's kingdom. Kavinsky never liked fire for all that he couldn't stay away from the stuff. Exposure therapy, Skov called it.
Did you ever get over your fear, K?
They turn their backs on the fairground. Sirens sound in the distance but they're too far away to do any good. There will be nothing left to salvage when the fire department gets here. Flames already fill the rearview mirror as Swan drives them away.
Wouldn't it be something if those flames spread and set the whole of this fucked up town alight.
There's not much to do in the valley these days. The three of them are listless, fucking timebombs waiting for someone or something to give them purpose.
They find it in Ronan Lynch.
Oh, not the way you'd expect. They don't buddy up with him or even engage him other than Jiang, who is actually genuinely personable when he feels up to it.
They watch him. They ward off disaster. Lynch has been known to leave bodies in his wake, one, two, three, four. They make sure no one else is going to lose somebody because they got mixed up with Lynch.
In point of fact, they don't do much. They get Carruthers to stop pestering Parrish, tell members of the crew team Gansey isn't coming back, spread rumors among the public school kids. It's more than a little pathetic for people who used to run with Joseph Kavinsky.
Which is what's expected of them now. People like seeing a good come to Jesus moment. They aren't so interested in dealing with the leftovers.
No one notices when Swan's drinking starts to get out of hand. It was always excessive; now it's frankly alarming. The administration looks sideways when Jiang skips half his classes and doesn't get out of bed some days. No one cares that Skov is winning a one man contest for most punchable douche in school.
Truthfully, things haven't changed all that much.
They lost their king, not their goddamn minds.
"Yo, Jiang Zemin!"
Jiang's mood sours instantly. Last week, Skov took to calling him Jiang Lijun and Jiang was this close to running him over with his Supra. Swan would have let him do it, too.
"What?"
"You, me, we're doing lunch. Come on."
Jiang's tempted to say no. Four months ago, he wouldn't have hesitated. Skov would've asked someone else, then tossed a greasy bag of food at Jiang when he got back. Most of the time, he'd even remember to get something Jiang could actually eat.
"Why don't you ask Swan?"
Skov pulls a face and Jiang is tempted to laugh. It must be one of their bad days. What are they called? Every day.
"He's gonna meet us there."
Jiang's eyebrows raise. Huh. That's unexpected.
They drive out of Henrietta and hit the interstate. Skov doesn't try to get him to talk. Jiang's content to stare out the window.
For too long now, Jiang's been living with an ever dwindling supply of impossible pills, hanging out with one person he genuinely hates and another who can't stand him, and waking up every day to confront the fact that the two people who made this place actually fucking bearable aren't coming back.
Nothing feels real anymore. Skov asks him to go somewhere and Jiang doesn't even comment about Swan's shoes kicking around in the back or the empty beer cans on the floor. For a second, he actually thinks what right do I have to tell Skov how to live his life?
Four months ago, he would have said he had every.
"I got to seventy once," Skov says. It's not really a way to start a conversation but Skov's always a little more disjointed, a little less connected to reality, when Swan's being nice to him. Or maybe Swan tolerates him more when he's like this. One of the two.
"Was Swan with you?" Jiang asks, shoving a handful of fries in his mouth. It's the only thing he's eaten all day, the only thing he can stomach lately. He doesn't actually care. He's just making conversation, trying to act like the three of them have something in common other than Kavinsky, fast cars, and anything that makes life suck a little less.
"Swan's always with me." He grins lecherously at the boy sitting next to him, the one whose shoulders he's got an arm wrapped around. "Swan's the reason I get out of bed in the morning."
If Swan finds this as supremely creepy as Jiang does, he doesn't show it. He steals one of Jiang's fries, examines it dubiously, and eats it.
Why are they here? Jiang wants to know. Why did Skov pull him out of school? He doesn't want to be here. They don't want him here.
They are not friends.
Skov launches into a story Jiang doesn't want to listen to so he doesn't. Skov's one of those people who needs to talk to fill the silence. Jiang likes silence. He likes being alone, no one around, quiet so strong it's almost white noise.
He likes noise, too, but only if it's loud. Yelling, screaming, thumping bass. So long as it's not harsh syllables spoken in an undertone or quiet threats wrapped in careful words.
"Do you want to go?" Skov asks. He's holding a milkshake in one hand, straw to his lips. Jiang tried a milkshake once before realizing lactose intolerance wasn't going to go away no matter how much he wanted it to.
Jiang blinks. "Go where?"
"Johnson's holding a party this Saturday. You wanna go?"
Jiang has no desire to go anywhere with Skov.
"No," he says simply. "I don't think so."
"You sure? A bunch of people are gonna be there."
Jiang's sure.
"You don't need the rest," Swan says suddenly, pulling the milkshake out of Skov's grip. Skov brushes it off but Jiang feels the jab.
He presses his hand to his stomach. It's small but noticeable. He's back on regular meds again now that the dream ones have started drying up. The side effects aren't worth the extra alertness, not when he can get the same effect from cocaine or molly. It's not hard to find dealers in this town. Mostly it's meth, though heroin's on the rise across the country what with the slightly smaller chance of blowing your house up during the manufacturing process (why does he know this, he shouldn't know this, since when has he cared about countrywide dealings of anything, he should just take the meds and smile through the weight gain and the acne and the fact that he's not getting any better, he'll never get any better. He should. He won't. He's going off the meds soon, he knows it, he can't cope with being hideous on top of everything else).
Swan's looking at him. There's no way he knows everything Jiang is thinking. Jiang's anxiety just makes it look that way.
Swan pushes the tray of fries closer to Jiang. He takes a sip of Skov's milkshake. For Swan, that's almost an apology.
"You want to catch a movie later?" Swan asks, directing the question at Jiang.
Swan doesn't actually want to watch a movie with him. He's pretending, just like Jiang is, putting in the effort. They're on the same wavelength: stick together, pretend they're friends. One day they might be. More likely, they'll weather this year in each other's company, because, the truth is, they only have each other.