Misfits

Kyle

Blood. The sweet, magical nectar of life. How it pumps gloriously into the cold air of morning when a kill is fresh. The putrid, tangy, oddly satisfying smell. Steam rising from a carcass. The eyes go wide with panic, roll around uncertainly, and then just… relax into eternal sleep.

She had been a fighter, that's for sure. All wary innocence until it was too late and I slashed open like a new Christmas present ripe for unwrapping. And then she gurgled -- she had tried to scream, I presume -- and then it was pulse, pulse, pulse, slower and slower until once again, silence, and crimson on white and the smell of breakfast in the air.

Julie

We looked around the front, but all had deserted us. I turned around, and saw Adam wave hello to us. I had almost jumped, seeing him illuminated by the orange, buzzing light. It was like he had appeared out of nowhere. I shook my head to clear the adrenaline fog.

"Hey. Where have you two been?" He asked us as he sat on the curb, fiddling with his blades. It looked like he was tightening them. His blades were crappy and worn down, even he admitted it. He refused to buy new ones, he said that these were to be the blades he'd become famous on. Famous indeed, when he skated on nothing but axles and torn padding…

I spoke up, defending our actions."We were over at the dump. We decided to go look for some stuff to add to our collection at the hangout spot. We didn't find anything. Well, we found something, thanks to Rob…"

"Oh, shut up." Rob glared at me.

"What happened?" Adam raised his eyebrows at us. I laughed."Dumbass over here, Rob, got caught by some…some guy. I saved his ass, and he better admit it."

"Yeah, she did save my ass. Like always." Rob agreed with me, folding his hands together and bowing in mock submission.

Adam's head went back and forth between us, his eyes finally rolling. Then he looked up to the sky and sighed, over dramatically. "God help us. You're going to get us all into trouble one day. Especially at this rate. You could have been killed or hurt or caught or… ugh!" He sounded disgusted. "Oh, wait, you were caught. You fuckwits just managed to escape."

"It's better than us being brought home by the cops. Mom would love that." Rob pointed out to Adam. Adam sighed.

"Well, yeah. But not sneaking around in places is even better! Imagine that! You can have fun and not get caught doing anything by anybody! Because you'll be doing something legal!”

"You’re no fun, dude." Rob said innocently. Adam whacked him on the back of his head. Rob glared at Adam, then hit him back. Adam let it go, moving a safe distance away from Rob.

"Gah! Where're you two heading now? Or you gonna hang out here for a while?"

"I think I'm going to head home for the night. It's dark anyway," I interjected, feeling suddenly drained.

"I don't think we should be seen together, tonight, Julie. I'm going to head over to Steve's for the night." Rob shifted from left to right, swaying with the breeze.

"Adam?" I turned to Adam, wondering what he was going to do. It was dark now. He grinned at me, cocking his head to the side.

"I'll go with you. Don't want you raped. I'll make sure the lady gets home safe, Rob."

"Oh, fuck off." I hit his arm with my fist, as he tried to move out of my way.

He rubbed it and nodded. "Oww… just let me get my blades off. We'll walk. I'll hold your board, and you can have my blades, that way it won't be so obvious. They'll be looking for two skateboard holding people, a guy and a girl, right? So if you have blades and…yeah. That should work. I doubt anyone's looking for you anyway."

"Yeah. Hey, why don't you and Rob switch shirts? He saw us long enough, and he obviously knows what Rob looks like. He even touched Rob."

"Bruh?" Adam looked quizzically at Rob. He shrugged.

"Sure. And for the record, he had your shoe too Julie. You didn't escape unstained." Rob said, rolling his blue eyes, but not objecting. He was too shaken still to argue, I realized. His mom would kill him if he got caught by the cops. Not that mine wouldn't…I pushed that thought out of my head. No one would be catching either of us…now or ever. Besides, we had done nothing wrong.

"Good thing I'm dying my hair tomorrow." I said to them as they switched shirts.  A fly buzzed in that out-of-place moment of silence. Adam sat down and started removing his blades. Rob nodded to us both and turned to leave.

"Tomorrow, Rob?" I called to him as he walked away with his board.

"I'll be here. Always am." He yelled back.

Adam reached down, unsnapping the sides of the blades. It echoed strangely in the night's silence. The moment was wrecked when a car flew down the road.

"You know, it's not like there's even any sign that says no trespassing. We had as much right as that guy did to be there…" I griped.

Adam looked at me, raising his eyebrows. His eyes reflected yellow in the streetlights, a strange comparison to their normal light, steel blue. He shook his head and started to take off his other skate, not saying a word to me. When he was done, he picked up his blades and offered them to me. I took them and he took my skateboard from my hand, as if it was an even exchange.

We stood, and crossed the street when no cars were coming in the distance. The stars were emerging from twilight. Airplanes dotted the horizon. It was hard to see the broken, uneven edges of the sidewalk, but we managed. Adam took a breath, as if about to say something.

"So what were you and Rob really doing?" He asked as we walked. I looked at him, but he didn't return the look. He was looking down at his feet, as if he was afraid to ask. Was he avoiding my glance?

"We were just looking for shit that we might've been able to use for our hang out spot in the woods, and then I hid on him; so he was trying to find me and instead that guy found him. I heard the yelling, after I lost sight of him for a second, and I was about to haul ass, you know. So then I hear Rob actually yelling back! I grabbed Rob's board, which was laying in the grass and skated up to the pair. I yelled something like 'Come after me, I've got more tits than he does.' "

"I frightened the guy so he loosened his grip, turning his attention to me. Rob got away and I ran out with him and threw his board over the barbed wire fence. The guy grabbed my foot as I was crawling out but he was too big for that hole, or he didn't want to go after us anymore or something. He said something to the effect of "Come back here", we yelled fuck you and ran off to the fields."

"Well, I always knew the dump was a bad idea. Build it or find it!" He said, telling himself more than me. I shrugged

"Ah, it's loads of fun. Screw you, Adam."

"Go ahead." He countered boldly. I stared at the ground in surprise, and then I eyed him, and he looked straight back at me. His eyes held a world of secret knowledge in them. I looked away first.

"You alright? You're never like that." I asked finally, and he laughed.

"Of course I'm. I don't think you have the courage to screw me."

"I don't want to. You should respect that, Adam." I said, turning serious for a moment. He sighed.

"I know, I know. It's just I see you play around with the other guys and I get… annoyed." He trailed off, then picked it back up, "or something. We're friends, right?"

"Yeah." I felt relieved. I realized that in those few moments my adrenaline had kicked back up, but it was going down. He didn't want anything from me.

"Forever?" He gave me the cutest look, portraying an ideal figure of innocence.

"Definitely." I said, turning to him and offering a pinky from my right hand. He took it with his left. That done with, we walked along in silence, not breaking our grip. Our pinkies fit perfectly together, so much that I barely noticed that we were holding hands until later on. We turned the corner into our housing track, and walked to my house, three houses past his own.

"See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah. I’ll be out, eventually." He said, turning and walking back towards his house, which we had passed on the way to mine.

"Oh, Adam, wait! I want my board!" I yelled at him, realizing that I still held his skates in my hands.

"Oh yeah." He said, jogging back over to me. We switched possessions and then he turned again, walking slowly away, without another goodbye. I watched him leave, wondering why that had taken place. Had we really just held hands?

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