Love is a Car Chase

It was cold, goddamn fucking cold by the time we got out to the lot. I was squatting behind the building with Tyler, watching as he blew a slow stream of smoke into the air. He was always smoking. First thing in the morning when he woke up, last thing at night before he went to bed. He started to pace. Back and forth in the alley, it made me nervous to watch him move.

Standing up, I spat on the ground. "Tyler, cut that out. Candice and Rid gotta be nearby. What's the deal? If she just wanted us to steal a car, she wouldn't need all of us. What's going on?" I know he knows more than he's telling me by the way he won't meet my eyes. He looks down. Up. At things that aren't there, anything so I can't see them. I know when he's lying to me, and he lies often. His shoulders rise and drop and I glare at him.

He fidgets. That's fucking right, I know he's going to tell me now. He knows that I can tell when he lies. Normally he just doesn't give two shits, but this time he does. It must be something serious going on. I watch as he flicks some ashes onto the ground and peers around the corner. "It's not the car. It's somethin'. I'll tell you after." I give him my best dirty look but by that time he'd turned around, signalling furiously to somebody. Sure enough, when I peeked around Candice was walking towards us with one of the biggest toolboxes I'd ever seen.

Nobody ever takes Candice seriously. She's a little girl, around the same size as me, blond hair, bluest eyes you'd ever seen. She deceives. She's one of the smartest and quickest girls I know. First, it was just petty theft. Me and her, we would steal things, little things. Purses and lipstick, clothes, anything we wanted we could have it. We only ever got caught once, and Candi dealt with that. Nobody ever could say no to her, I don't know what it is exactly but she's got it. She can pack a punch, too. Some guy once, when we were taking the late night bus home from downtown, he tried to hit on her and she smashed him square in the face. I think even Ridley was impressed. She was a girl who could look after herself, not that I wasn't. We were the children who had been pushed aside and had to learn to look after ourselves. I've lost count of the cigarette burns on me, the constant reminder of how fucked up my life has been.

But I don't care. I like it. I like knowing that I've been at the bottom. It makes me feel alive.

Candice jimmies the door and I lean against the car, watching Tyler. He's nervous. His hands are in his pockets and he paces and fiddles, he wants to get the fuck out of here and I know it. I know he's scared, and I don't know why/ I've never seen him like this, not in all the shit we've done. This is a big deal and there's a lot of shit that he isn't telling me. Tyler isn't the kind of guy who gets nervous. He's the kind of guy who conquers the motherfucking world because he isn't scared of shit, he isn't scared of anything, he knows he can do it. "...Ty?" I narrow my eyes at him and he shakes his head just as Candice pops the door open, Ridley fiddles under the hood until the wires spark and the engine roars to life.

"Get in." Tyler says. he crawls in the back seat and he wedges over and makes room for me. I get in, scrunch into the back seat as Candi and Rid climb in the front seat. Candi tosses the tool box in the back seat, she tells me to put it in the trunk. I reach back to pull out the section of the seat in the middle so I can stick the box through to the trunk.

Tyler scrunches up his face. And I understand why he's so nervous. in the trunk, not so cleverly hidden by a tarp is the biggest load of cocaine I've ever seen in my life. Package upon package, stacked up to the top of the trunk, all the way back. There must have been 50 grand worth of coke in there.

we're so fucked.