No Return

33

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Mandy asked from the front passenger seat.

She was excited, and probably a little anxious. It was her first party at the Rocks, after all. Wes and Lars were pros compared to her.

“I’m sure,” Wes said from the driver’s seat.

The dirt road was really not much of a road at all-two ruts on either side, beaten down by the tires of those who’d passed this way before, and a narrow, deeper gouge running roughly between them, cut there by the infrequent desert rains.

Wes turned the wheel suddenly, barely missing a rock sticking out of the ground on the right side. In the backseat, he heard Lars tumble sideways and the sound of several bottles clinking together.

“Careful!” Lars said. “You don’t want me to break any of these in here, do you? Try explaining that to your folks.”

Wes eased off the accelerator. “You should be holding on to them.”

“I am holding on to them.”

“Dip!” Wes yelled out.

The van lurched downward, then jerked up just as quickly.

“Woohoo!” Mandy cried out.

“Holy crap,” Lars said.

When the road evened out, Wes said, “We need some kind of code phrase to let each other know we’re ready to leave.”

“Leave?” Mandy said. “We haven’t even got there yet.”

“Yeah, but if any of us gets to the point where they want to go, then we all go. That was the deal.”

“Right,” Mandy said, sounding less than happy. “I remember.”

“So the code word?” Lars said.

“Dip!” Wes yelled out.

The car bounced again.

“I’m not sure ‘dip’ would be a good word to use,” Lars said. “Hard to work into a sentence.”

“Very funny, jackass,” Wes said.

“Why don’t we just say we want to go?” Mandy suggested.

“Because that would be completely uncool,” Lars told her. “We want to sneak away so people think we’re still there. We don’t want them knowing we left early. They’d think we were a bunch of losers.”

“Even if they do, at least we won’t be the only losers there,” Wes said. “Tommy from the debate team said he’s coming with some of his friends from band.”

They all laughed.

“Some of the guys from the football team are going to be there, too,” Mandy said.

“Really?” Lars said. “That sucks.”

“How do you know that?” Wes asked her.

“Jack told me.”

“Jack?” Wes asked.

“Jack Rice.”

“Why were you talking to that jerk?” Lars asked.

“He’s not so bad once you get to know him.”

Wes rolled his eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Question number two,” Lars said. “Why would anyone want to get to know him?”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Wes said.

“You guys are idiots,” she said.

“We’re the idiots? Who’s the one getting all kissy-kissy with Jack Rice?” Lars said.

“I never said anything about …” Instead of finishing the sentence, Mandy punched Lars in the arm.

The VW swerved a few inches off the road, brushing the front fender against a creosote bush. “Hey! Careful. You want to kill us?”

“A little sensitive on the whole Jack thing, aren’t you?” Lars said, rubbing his arm.

Mandy groaned. “Just stop talking. Both of you.”

They drove in silence for nearly a minute before Lars said, “We, uh, never came up with our exit phrase.”

A wry smile grew on Wes’s lips. “How about ‘There’s Jack’?”

He was already ducking when Mandy’s fist slammed into his shoulder.