All of us knew each other from elementary school, but I'd never really spoken to Clyde until high school. The popular kids were singled out on day one, and Clyde was one of them, so he hadn't spoken a word to me since 5th grade, and I'm pretty sure even then, the most he asked of me was to borrow a pencil.
No, I truly met Clyde Donovan in the parking lot after school. I was just leaving the library (I was there finishing past due homework so my parents wouldn't see) when I rounded the corner to the custodian exit steps.
I heard him say: "You can only make those jumps because you have fat fucking tires."
I saw Token Black on a bike (with fat tires indeed) at the bottom of the steps, grinning.
"It's not about my tires, it's about balance. You could make the jump too if you didn't keep freaking out about height." Just then, he saw me about to walk by and yelled out for me.
I stopped and readjusted my backpack strap. "Hey."
I liked Token. We sat next to each other in English that year, and he was quite a chatty guy. I couldn't help but like him. Everyone did. We picked each other and a couple of other students to be in our book report group for The Great Gatsby. We made up a skit where a scene took place from Daisy's point of view… with Token as Daisy. Yes. Even since then, I've harbored a soft spot for the 1920s Flapper Drag Queen aesthetic, and I'm not sure where on the Richter Scale of gayness that puts me.
Anyway.
Token asked, "What are you doing?"
"Nothing, just leaving."
"You want to chill with us?"
Clyde whipped his head around to look at me, then whipped back to Token. "We don't even know him!"
Token frowned. "Yeah, we do. That's Kyle Broflovski. We've known him since kindergarten, dumbass." He wheeled slightly over to me. "Sorry, he does know you. Clyde is just a little high right now."
"I get it," I said. "You're usually high in American History, too. I sit right behind you, Clyde."
"You do?"
"Yeah. Sometimes you get dandruff on my desk."
Clyde squinted with his mouth open.
Token doubled over laughing, holding his stomach. I thought he might fall off the bike. "Dude, I told you… you're fucking crusty."
"I am not!"
Clyde looked at me again, meeting me with amber eyes and a button nose. Immediately I wanted to take it back.
"Do I really get dandruff on your desk, dude?"
"It's not a big deal."
"Tell me next time it happens, will you?"
"Sure."
Token was still laughing. "I wouldn't be surprised if a whole ecosystem was living in your head."
"Okay, damn, I get it. I'm gross."
I think Clyde would have fit in with our Trash Boi group.
"I'm hungry as fuck," Token said. "You want to go to Arby's with us?"
"Is there even one around here?"
"Yeah, there's like a little corner one outside of town. Head and Shoulders over here and I-"
"Hey!"
"-we go there all the time."
As if my stomach heard him, it started growling. "I could eat."
…
Token tied his bike to his Range Rover. He tied us in too.
I sat in the back, watching the passing cornfields and grazing cows.
"So, Kyle."
Token's eyes glanced at me from the rearview mirror.
"Yes?"
"You got a boo?"
I laughed. I wished I could have said I liked this guy Adam, but if I did, they could have slammed the brakes and tossed me out onto the dirt road.
"I've got me and my hand," I said.
"Cheers to that, bro. Me too." Clyde twisted around to fist bump me.
"Well," Token continued, "I'm only asking because that one girl in our group, Heidi Turner, thinks you're cute."
"She does?"
"Yeah, she really wants you to dick her down."
"Dude, no," Clyde turned to me again. "She's fucking weird man. She raised her arms the other day and her armpits were actual bushes. I swear I heard Wookie noises coming out of them."
"Maybe Kyle is into that," Token said. We entered the drive-thru line.
"I'm willing to find out."
Clyde scrunched his nose. "Gross."
I had yet to text my mother to let her know where I was, so I flipped open my phone to do so. There was a message from her: "Where are you? ASS HOME. NOW."
I said, "Can't. Getting food w/ friends c u l8er."
She started calling. I shut the phone.
A couple of kids sat on the sidewalk with a bottle of pills. They popped them back like they candy.
Token pulled up to the speaker and started ordering. I peeped my wallet and found about two dollars and some change.
"What do you want?" Clyde asked, his head turned so I could only see his profile.
"Nothing. I'm short on cash today."
He smirked at me. "I didn't ask if you had money. I asked what you wanted."
…
Around finals weeks, Token slowly started breaking off from us. Then he started dating another girl from English and spent all of his time with her that wasn't spent bookkeeping in his dad's office.
I thought Clyde wouldn't come around since Token wasn't there to buffer between us anymore, but I was wrong. At first, my parents were happy I had someone to hang out with. Clyde would come over to the house and have dinner with me and my parents, sit politely when Ike showed off his Minecraft castles. He would say shalom to my mother when we came home from school. My father joked that Clyde was now an honorary Jew and we would be happy to drum up a bar mitzvah celebration.
It was a different story when I went to Clyde's house. His father sat in the living room every evening, feet propped up in front of the T.V., smoking. He never spoke much to me, but would give a terse, windmill wave that created a circle of smoke.
Amongst the ashen hallways, photos of Clyde's late mother hung on the walls. I remember when she died - the news of death slinking down on us like a thin veil of fog in only a matter of hours - the currency of small-town tragedies.
Clyde never brought her up. She watched me, waiting to be introduced. Death impedes on manners. I never said hello to the dark-haired woman with a button nose.
I wanted Clyde to like me. I spent so many hours only seeing the back of his head, and now that I had his eyes, I wanted to keep them there. I laughed at all of his butchered jokes. I never disagreed with him, even when it was painful. One particular night, after an onslaught of booze and debauchery, the tried to convince me that the sun is actually a flaming rock and if we, the human race, harnessed its energy, we could create fire-powered elevators.
I asked what he meant, and he said flames in the wires.
Like electricity?
Yeah, like that.
Spending time at my house became volatile. My parents would stultify me in front of Clyde. My mother, especially, wouldn't let me get a word in to defend myself.
I stayed in Clyde's basement for hours. We ate pizza rolls, mozzarella sticks, and played Call of Duty when we weren't snorting up lines in someone else's bathroom.
I was sunk into the couch, my throat dry, my eyes wet, sniffling, when he said he believed his father wished Clyde was dead. He blamed himself for his mother's death. And he believed that his father blamed Clyde too. I could not speak, because I didn't believe it was my place to judge what goes on in the minds of others… who am I to say Clyde's father didn't blame him? What could I say anyway that would numb his vexation? He was already numb.
"You know what that cocksucker did right after he got her life insurance money?" he said one night, passing me a joint while we sat on a bench by Stark's Pond. I leaned forward, basketball in my lap.
"What?"
He always waited for me to say what when he spoke this way. Like he wanted to gauge how interested I actually was. It was cute.
"He bought that '78 King Cobra that's out in the driveway sometimes. You've seen it."
"Holy shit, really?" I asked, then sucked in a long hit, watching him nod like you get it? You feel me? He had also just switched shampoos so his hair bounced around his face.
"He bought it, like, a month after she died."
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah."
"But I mean, wouldn't you do the same? You know, to distract yourself?"
"You think material shit can replace people?"
"That's not what I fucking said, Clyde. I'm only saying it's a distraction."
It was August now. We were just about to start our senior year of high school and had spent the whole summer breathing off each other. I sobered up. At least, I was trying to. I kept my nose clean for a good two weeks at that point. It just wasn't doing anything for me, and I hated waking up not knowing where I was.
We were in his basement. I watched him throw darts.
I couldn't hold it in.
"My parents want to send me to a mental hospital," I said.
He stopped, arm cocked, an instant marble statue. "For real?"
"I overheard them the other night. They can't handle me anymore and they want to get rid of me."
Clyde looked at me for a long time, then at the dartboard, and threw. Bullseye.
"We're not letting that happen," he announced.
"I don't think I have a choice."
"You always have a choice."
He walked up to the board and ripped out the little plastic arrows, and pegged them into the bullseye at once. "Let's run away."
"T-together?"
"What do you think?"
"Well, I…"
"Look, our families hate us. What's the point of sticking around?"
"I don't think your dad actually hates you. And I don't think my family hates me. They just don't understand me." I leaned against the air hockey table.
Clyde stared at me again, longer this time, focused on the blossoming bruises on my neck.
Then he said, so quietly: "Eventually they'll hate you. People hate what they can't understand."
I didn't believe it to be true, but it still felt like a golf ball hitting the back of my head when he said it.
He went on, scheming out loud about how we could leave that very night and keep going until we were out of state. We could go around the whole country even! Stay in cheap motels and pick up girls (another golf ball when he said this).
"What about money?" I pressed.
"I have an allowance saved up."
"Okay, and what happens after that runs out?"
"We can sell."
"Oh fuck no, I'm not about to be a traveling drug dealer on a fucking ice cream truck or something."
"Well," he grinned. "You won't need to worry about that."
"...why?"
"We're taking the Cobra."
…
Green beans. Sweet potatoes. Grilled chicken. These things were on my plate that night. Clyde was seven houses away, packing a bag, probably snacking away on something as he did so. He and his father never ate meals together.
I pushed the metal spokes into the spine of a green bean, splitting it in half. My fork scraped the ceramic and Ike winced.
"Something wrong with your food, Kyle?" My mother asked after swallowing iced tea.
"No, it's perfect." I didn't look at her. I ate a little faster to catch up with everyone.
My father cleared his throat. "So boys, your mom and I were thinking about seeing District 9 tomorrow night. We were hoping you'd come with us."
Without skipping a beat, Ike said: "That movie looks stupid."
I said, "You think everything looks stupid."
"Everything is stupid."
My mother just rolled her eyes and rubbed her forehead.
"We haven't been to the movies as a family in months." Gerald was getting into his authority suit again. "We're going tomorrow."
Ike shook his head. "I have plans."
"For what?" I laughed. "You going to rob a village with your Runescape girlfriend?"
"Coming from someone whose World of Warcraft character is a girl."
"So? Girls are cool."
"Literally your internal fedora is showing."
"How?!"
"GiRls aRE CoOL."
"Shut up, you're like 13."
"Okay boys, we get it. That's enough," my mother groaned. She took another long sip of tea. I smelled the faintness of alcohol when she set down the sunflower-patterned glass.
"Fine."
"Fine."
I wondered, staring down the handle of my fork if this was a cover-up to take me to Greenwood. As an adult, I know they couldn't legally drop me off at a psychiatric ward without my consent unless I was dangerous. Still, they could have worked up to it and coaxed me into going voluntarily. They really just wanted to go to the movies.
…
"Where the fuck are you?" Clyde texted.
"I'm still packing. I waited until my parents went to bed."
The truth: I had just started packing. When my parents bid adieu for the night, and the house was all silent save for the ticking grandfather clock in the family room, I ran to the bathroom and puked up everything I told my mother was perfect. Fuck, this was really happening. I was really going to leave.
My mother knocked on the door. I was still hugging the toilet, sniffling.
"Bubbe, you okay?"
"Yeah, Ma. Just threw up a little, it's fine." I flushed the toilet.
She opened the door, squinting and red-eyed with a nightgown on. She pressed her hand to my forehead. "You don't feel warm."
"I think I ate too much"
"No such thing."
"Tell that to the toilet."
She helped me up. "Come on, go sleep it off."
I did as I was told - went to my room, changed into pajamas, wrapped myself up in blankets. She came back with a cup of ice cubes and set them on my nightstand.
"Suck on some ice in about ten minutes, it'll help."
"Okay. Good night."
I thought she'd leave with my goodnight, but no, she stayed there, clearly wanting to ask something.
"What is it, Ma?"
"You're not going to tell me who put those bruises on you, are you?"
"I can't."
"Why?"
"Because it was my fault. I started it."
"It doesn't matter. I want to file a police report first thing tomorrow. No one puts their hands on my baby and gets away with it."
"Mom, please. I don't want a whole big fuss over this. Besides, I'm not telling a cop anything either."
She sighed. "Fine. You can have it your way for now, but I'm not letting this go."
"I know."
She leaned to pat my head but stopped just before touching my hair. She gave a tiny wave instead.
"Good night, Kyle. Feel better. I love you."
"I love you, too."
Now I was packing. I wore pajamas still, with a jacket. I folded only a few things into a backpack: two shirts, underwear, jeans, socks, deodorant. I quietly grabbed my toothbrush and a bar of soap from the bathroom. Looking around my bedroom, I wanted to take my books and CDs but knew, much like this old life, I couldn't take everything with me. I slid in only Alice in Wonderland and a Gorillaz album. Then, I wrote Ike a letter. I don't remember what it said, but I quietly slipped it under his door, listening as he muttered petty insults to his online friends. I don't remember what I wrote.
Clyde texted again: "DUDE YOU NEED TO GET HERE LIKE RIGHT NOW."
I went back to my room, slung my backpack over my shoulder and crept out of my bedroom window. It was nearly one in the morning when I left to face the world.
…
Clyde was sitting in a lawn chair in his front yard. His leg bounced. He was sweating, twitching, smoking. His hands shook.
"I'm fucked," he said.
"Huh?"
"God, I'm so fucked."
"What do you mean?"
He got up. The chair fell behind him. In the light of his cigarette, I could see red snakes in his eyes. His nose was running.
"Dude, are you high right now?"
"I think so. I think. I took. I don't know what I took. I think I took too much."
"Clyde, what the FUCK. What is happening right now?"
"Trent. It's Trent Boyett. He had to go to the hospital. I broke a couple of ribs or some shit. His face is all fucked up. He fucking… he just fucking told the hospital people that it was us. That it was me. His dad called my dad and he wants to press charges. I can't go to jail, man. I won't. No fucking way."
"They can't pin the whole thing on you, not really…" I don't know how I was able to keep any composure. "You saved my life."
"No, I took it too far. I could have killed him."
"But you didn't…"
Clyde rubbed his eyes. His own backpack sat on the ground at his feet.
"You need a lawyer, Clyde."
"No… I don't want any of this."
"What do you want to do then?"
"We're leaving. We're leaving and we're not fucking coming back."
He was still shaking.
"I don't know, Clyde. If we take off now and get caught later, it's going to make things a lot worse."
He drew the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled a slither of smoke in my face. "I thought you were my friend."
"I am!"
"Then help me."
"I'm trying to help you think straight, dude. You're too fucked up right now."
"You know what? Fine. If you want to stay here, it's whatever. I'm going no matter what."
"Now?"
"Right now."
He walked to the garage and I followed. I knew he knew what he was doing. He fucking knew there was no way I'd let him drive alone. When we opened the side door, Clyde flipped on a light.
I had never seen a Mustang up close before (never been much of a car buff), but this one was beautiful: the rounded hatchback door, geometric-patterned rims, bright banana paint, and a massive red cobra decal garnishing the hood.
"Damn."
"Special edition," Clyde remarked.
He threw his backpack in the rear seat and climbed in.
"Clyde. No." As soon as I saw him behind the wheel, my decision was cemented. I was going with him. I threw my backpack in too, then held my hand out. "Give me the keys."
"It's a stick shift."
"I can drive stick."
He slapped the keys in my palm and scooched over to the passenger side.
My parents drove bigger cars, so when I sunk into the leather, I didn't expect to be so low to the ground. How does someone drive this thing with bumps in the road? All the undercarriage must scrape now and then. I grazed my hand over the interior door. All stitching and leather. The eight-track tape player was empty. I thought if I turned on the radio I would hear a broadcast from 1978, the car itself felt like a time machine.
Staring rigidly at the dashboard, Clyde said my name.
"Yeah?"
"As soon as the garage is open, we have to peel out of here, understand? There's no going back."
"I know."
"This thing has a V8 engine and it's loud as fuck. As soon as my dad hears, he'll wake up and come out running. We get one chance, Kyle."
"Let's make it count, then." I nodded to the garage door remote, clipped to the sun visor. "Do it."
He reached and pressed the button. I held my breath. When I saw the door lift and a sky wide with stars, I ignited the engine (just one decibel louder than my heart), grabbed the shifter, the skinny black wheel, and floored into the street.
We made it just outside of town limits and Clyde began to relax. He took his seatbelt off and leaned out the window like a puppy.
At approximately 2:40 am, Roger Donovan called the Park County Police Department to report a stolen car. He had checked the basement to see if Clyde was hanging out there. No trace of him. He checked in his son's room and found the area strewn about - a terrifying storm of clothes, videogames, food wrappers, and sports gear lying about. But no Clyde.
Roger then called the Broflovski family to see if perhaps Clyde was over there (he wanted more than anything to rule out Clyde as a suspect). A groggy Gerald answered his cell phone, but happily obliged Roger and did a sweep of his home. He checked Kyle's room only to find his own son missing. The bed was made. All books were lined neatly on the shelf. There wasn't a hair to be found. He had left behind one sticky note on the corner of his desk. It read: I'm Sorry.
Ike was still awake, but unaware that Kyle had left. When Gerald opened Ike's bedroom door, he saw the lined notebook paper on the floor. He picked it up, skimmed over the words, and swore. Ike asked to read the letter but Gerald would not let him.
Gerald hung up with Roger, then called the police himself. The county police wrote a report of both boys missing.
By 3:30 am we were westbound, just outside of Gypsum. We decided just before then that we would drive all the way to California if we could. I was getting tired and wanted to park somewhere but Clyde insisted we weren't far enough from South Park to rest.
We had shut our phones off because of all the calls from our parents and concerned friends. Clyde opened a state map, smoothed it out on his lap, and hovered over it with a small flashlight.
"What's the first thing you want to do when we get to California?" I asked him.
"Megan Fox."
"You're going to have to be more realistic."
"Okay. I… I don't know. I don't really care what's there. I just want to be happy."
By 5:30 am we stopped and pissed. We are stale grits and coffee at a 24-hour diner in Grand Junction. We were three hours away from the Utah border.
The Park County Police Department is in search of CLYDE DONOVAN and KYLE BROFLOVSKI. Neither family nor law enforcement has been able to contact or determine the whereabouts of these individuals. Both were last seen last evening in their own homes. Both are considered to be mentally unstable, possibly armed and dangerous. They are suspected to be in a yellow, two-door 1978 King Cobra Mustang with a custom license plate of "DVAN180."
Clyde Donovan is 5'7", 150 lbs, brown hair, brown eyes. Kyle Broflovski is 5'9" 160 lbs, red hair, green eyes.
Anyone who has information should call Colorado Central Dispatch at (719) 547-8976.
Not long after we left the diner, and the black of night was unfurling into blues, we heard the siren. Flashing lights filled the car.
"Fuck." I started to slow down. I thought: Well, At Least We Tried.
"What are you doing? Go!"
"Are you fucking serious?"
"Go!"
"We have to stop-"
This is the part that made me stop believing in God. If we are all inherently good, carved like marble from his image, then why do we all have the capability to break? (I suppose that's the downside of being shaped by someone else.) (especially when we're made of such breakable things.)
Why do we all have that root of evil planted so deep in our bellies, finally sprouting through to our brains and makes us stuff our parents into trunks, chop up our husbands and wives and scatter their limbs in the mountains? Why, when another day teased us with fruitful promises, when He wants to fill our lives with blessings, did my best friend press a knife to my neck?
"Speed up or I'll kill you."
"Clyde... "
"I'm not fucking around."
"Please. Please, don't. You wouldn't…"
"I would."
He pressed the handle in. The police car began yelling at us through a loudspeaker: PULL OVER. PULL OVER. NOW.
"Don't pull over," Clyde warned.
"I have to!"
This is the part where I realized that I lost Clyde. I didn't know who this monster was. This person who brought a switchblade down across my cheek to get his threats taken seriously.
I cried.
I don't know how I was able to speed up. I felt my own warm blood seeping down my face, dropping off at my jaw.
I drove, drove. I weaved. Clyde freaked when another car started tailing. I'm just glad I didn't crash into any innocent bystanders.
Clyde twisted and turned in his seat, sometimes accidentally swiping my arm with the blade. At one point he hugged the seat, staring out the back slats of the window.
Written on a separate piece of paper and taped inside Kyle's journal:
Is love a kind of gravity? (Affinity.) And is the space between people and between objects a sort of meat, or matter? Maurice Merleau-Ponty coined the term flesh of the world which he characterized as a sort of incarnate principle, this charged space, a viscous tension between organisms in relation - space we commonly think of as empty. (I made a drawing recently in which a caveman is saying, Love is a very diffuse meat).
-My Meteorite, Harry Dodge, pg. 165
Increase momentum. Velocity. Panic. Fuck.
A third car faces us head-on. We'll be out of gas soon (dumb) and I've given up on the idea of surviving the next few minutes.
I keep going, swerve around the cops just barely.
We're not going to make it, we're not going to make it… This is Clyde's new muttering mantra.
He's right.
I steer to the right, close to a strip mall, ready to slow down and end this. I don't care if he slits my throat.
But he doesn't. He takes the wheel from me. I scream for him to stop. I pump the breaks. I tried to pump the brakes.
We hit a beautiful cedar tree going 60 miles an hour.
The car becomes space, timeless, and we are meteors - though I
I was stationary, strapped in orbit forever and the other body ricocheted through cosmos, insides on fire
crashed into me then into the beyond space, cracking into the bark and sizzling on the hood
a snake's feast
The lights were broken in but the sun was rising and I could see his eyes staring me down as he lied there snapped in half,
putting it together in his brain that he was in pieces and would die in pieces.
An arm reaches into the window, puts a mask over my nose and mouth, tells me to breathe, breathe. I am covered in my own blood, shards of glass stick out of my arms and chest. One in my neck.
You're Lucky, the paramedic says.
I ask if I'm dead.
She says I almost was. She says I am Lucky, Lucky, Lucky.
