GB96 - Carla's Way Part 8

The night air is hot and soupy, drowning Central Florida.

Brass gleams in the beam of your flashlight. You snap the cylinder of the revolver shut and tuck it into the waist of your shorts.

Hornie County is full of big properties with plenty of acres. Many of these properties have little more than junked vehicles and abandoned trailers to occupy them. Most of it is owned by people thousands of miles away.

You emerge from the swamp onto the paved driveway, pointing your light each way. Frogs and cicadas make the swamp noisy, but all the noise makes the place feel no less still.

Stef joins you in the middle of the road. Like you, she has a bandana around her neck that she can easily pull up to act as a mask. She checks the magazine of her father’s pistol, then slaps it in and holds it down by her side, opening and closing her fingers on the checkered grip.

The crisis that came over you at the end of Senior Year is over. It’s not about love or Stef, it’s about you and growing up. It’s about realizing that your life isn’t on rails anymore, however much your mother tries to guide it and take care of you. You also know that your life won’t come to you. Things aren’t true just because you want them to be, as Stef proved. Reality is what it is, and it’s your job to figure out for yourself how you’re going to fit into it.

You can’t spend her whole life partying. You can’t ignore the responsibilities that are coming. You also can’t abandon your friend, and you’re not sure that you can **** yourself to be the person that your mother wants you to be. What you’re doing is a risk, maybe an unnecessary risk.

But just standing there is how you strike out. If you want to get a hit, you have to swing the bat. If you have to protect your friend and make a life for yourself, you might as well do both at the same time. Maybe your mother will appreciate the practicality of that.

You check your watch.

“Remember. We have to take care of that tape,” you remind Stef.

“I don’t think we have to. He’ll destroy it himself. He probably already has.”

She might be right, but you need to be thorough. This isn’t something that you can afford to be sloppy with.

“We can’t skip any steps,” you say, your eyes on the road.

Stef watches you with an unusually grown-up look on her face.

“You’re good at this,” she says.

“We’ll know if I am if this works,” you tell her.

In the distance, a recognizable rumble is growing over the sounds of the swamp. That’s a lot of motorcycles, and they’re coming this way.