“You got cheddar?” It really wasn’t a question.
I tapped the pocket to my jean jacket that held the four fifties from Dad. He expected me to buy a birthday present for Mom’s party tomorrow night. “Plenty,” I said, staring into the darkness. All I could see was my angry reflection in the passenger window. It glowed an eerie green from the dashboard lights. I opened the window and leaned my arm along the frame, inhaling a gush of fresh air. Warm wind billowed into the front seat, almost knocking off my cap. Black as oil, the Gila River Indian Reservation stretched across the right side of the four-lane road, with Pecos Road the clear dividing line. Even when I squinted, I couldn’t see a single spec of light anywhere—not a porch light, headlight, even a firefly. It was like squinting at the edge of the world. When I was a kid, I’d wondered if anyone lived beyond Pecos Road. Sometimes I still did.
I’d been on the reservation twice in my entire life. One time with Seth to buy beer and cigarettes with our fake IDs at a gas station near Casa Grande, the other time on a school field trip in the fourth grade to spend the day with reservation kids. It had felt like the bus had driven us into the middle of the desert. Tumbleweeds had bounced across the road like lost brown beach balls. Where are all the houses? I remembered wondering. The parks? The malls? The people? When we’d finally arrived at their school, which was one big musty-smelling room with desks pushed to the edges, we’d sat on the floor in a circle, our legs crossed, and listened to an old man. He must have been at least one thousand years old, with braids that stretched down to his knees and skin with more wrinkles and folds than I could count. He’d talked as softly as a whisper, telling us crazy stories about coyotes and stars. I’d sort of half listened, peering around the room at the reservation kids, who’d numbered half as many as the ones in my class. With jet-black hair and eyes to match, they’d all looked alike and fidgeted just as uncomfortably as we had—all except one girl with ponytails high above her ears. She’d sat across from me. When our gazes had met, her eyes had sparkled like marbles. She’d smiled at me, revealing a gap between her two front teeth, but the grin had lasted only an instant. The girl with the shiny ponytails had never given me a chance to smile back.
“Let’s make a stop in Chandler. I hear Grady’s selling,” Seth said.
I blinked. “Cool.” Then I closed my eyes and filled my lungs with more desert air as Seth cranked the stereo to something with plenty of electric guitar. We flew all the way to the Interstate with the reservation right beside us, still and endless. It felt like driving straight into the sky.
When we reached the light before the freeway on-ramp, Seth pulled up alongside a big dude on a motorcycle. The guy was dressed all in black like he was freaking Zorro or something. We were the only vehicles waiting for the green. This light always took forever to change.
“Let’s have some fun,” Seth said, turning down the stereo.
“Don’t—” I said, but I was too late.
With one arm draped over the steering wheel, Seth lowered his head to peer out the passenger window and yelled, “Nice leather!”
The guy turned, the whites of his eyes widening with surprise. Black hair blended with his jacket and hung down to the middle of his back. First he looked at Seth. But then, with his nostrils flaring, he glared at me.
My heart began to hammer against my chest. I spoke through clenched teeth, “Don’t do anything, Seth.”
Seth revved the truck engine anyway.
Biker Guy shook his head like we were both idiots. After a few agonizing seconds, he pulled back on the throttle. The motorcycle roared one hundred times louder than Seth’s engine.
There was only one thing left to do.
The light turned green and Seth and Biker Guy jumped on their accelerators, tires squealing, racing toward the freeway.
Seth let out his maniacal laugh, the one that meant we were headed for nothing but crazy trouble and I would end up regretting it the most.
I braced my arm against the door as the truck picked up speed. “Don’t!” I yelled into the wind. “Don’t race this guy!” The last time we’d road-raced a guy from school, Seth had almost flipped the truck.
Still laughing, Seth replied by cranking the stereo. The bass competed with my pounding temples.
As the lanes merged from two into one, Seth ground the accelerator to the floor. Blue-and-white smoke billowed around our windows in angry circles.
The front of the truck stayed even with the motorcycle. One heartbeat later, Seth flew the truck past Biker Guy, pinching him off. On purpose. Biker Guy had to swerve into the emergency lane to avoid getting clipped, but not before glaring one last time at our truck, his gaze settling squarely on me.
“Dumb Indian!” Seth yelled, even though the wind and the stereo drowned out his voice. “Nothing can beat my truck!” He slapped the steering wheel with both hands.
I turned to Seth, breathing like I’d just run a marathon, and shook my head.
He mouthed, What?
“You’re freakin’ crazy!”
He kept grinning, the green lights from the dashboard glinting in his eyes. “I told you we were gonna rock tonight!” He offered me a fist bump.
I ignored it. But then a smile slowly built across my face when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw Biker Guy stopped on the side of the road, the front tire of his motorcycle still spewing gray smoke. He was giving us the finger. For some reason, I thrust my hand out the window and returned the gesture, maybe because I was mad at him for challenging Seth, mad at the whole world for simply existing or just relieved that we’d never see Biker Guy again.
Mostly I was glad no one had wound up in the hospital.
My head was spinning and my lips were feeling rubbery when someone at Zack Fisher’s party mentioned something about Coach Lannon.
My ears began to function, even though Gwyneth Riordan was sitting in my lap, grinding against my crotch. She had been saying something about renting a houseboat at Lake Havasu for spring break. “We just need your parents’ credit card for the deposit,” she said after getting me so hot that I would have gladly stolen all of Dad’s credit cards and given them to her.
Three of my teammates from the Lone Butte High School golf team and their girlfriends were crashed around a glass table in Zack’s backyard next to the swimming pool. Music blared from hidden speakers in the corners of the patio, and the pool lights cast a wavy glow across everyone’s faces. I had to blink a few times to focus.
“Coach said he was going to make a big change to the team on Monday,” Zack yelled over the music as he chugged from his beer can. The table was littered with gold-and-silver cans and empty bags of potato chips. Zack crushed his can underneath his foot and tossed it with the empties. “Didn’t say what, though. But that’s what I heard.”
Zack was an okay dude, but he was always hearing things; most of the time he got it wrong.
“Who said that? Who said he was making a change?” I leaned forward, pushing Gwyneth’s legs to one side, struggling to stop seeing double. Gwyneth pouted, but golf was one of the few things at school that mattered to me. The team had struggled last year, and this year we expected to do better.
