Knock on Wood

Trying to ignore the fact that there was now a -- well, two lethal weapons in the back seat of my car, we stopped at a Wendy's in Lorton before the expressway so we could have the some food since it was around 4pm and we hadn't eaten since breakfast.

I got a spicy chicken sandwich with fries and Dr. Pepper, Amy got a double cheeseburger with a side salad and a milk.

"Milk? Are you 16," I said as soon as she'd ordered, "or 6?"
"What's wrong with milk? It does a body good."

I fought every instinct to make a lewd joke about that.

"Besides," she continued, "they make them in these cool bottles now and offer them at all the fast foods so hopefully there'll be fewer fat kids running around in the future."
"I don't think it would be hard to stop fat kids from running around," I said as our trays were served up.

We found a table and unwrapped our sandwiches like Christmas presents, Amy asked if I'd told my mom about anything. I told her I hadn't yet, not because I wasn't sure if she was "one of them" but because I was never sure if I wasn't making too big a deal about everything.

I felt like too much attention was being put on me when Amy was around, so I asked her if she told her parents where she was going today.

"Did I tell my dad I was going an hour upstate to shoot guns with a boy? No, I didn't." She jabbed at a tomato slice from her salad with her fork.

With a boy. Was that a joke about what this might look like, or what it was? I didn't know anything about either. Jeez, she's 16. Well, I was 17. Maybe she was going to turn 17 soon, because if not I was going to become two years older than her in a month. I could ask her when her birthday is, but I don't want to keep bringing that up.

I realized just then that I hadn't said anything in quite a while, and pulled my eyes away from Amy's salad. "So what did you tell him?" I asked.

"That I was going to the mall with some girlfriends. He doesn't like to deal with girl stuff so he doesn't keep track of my friends well enough to know I don't have any girlfriends," she said.

Her hair kept falling from behind her ear and into her face. The streaks of color had mostly grown out and were fading. I noticed she wasn't wearing the "I'm a punk" wristbands she used to wear, and her shirt wasn't heralding any bands or 1980s fad. She wasn't using pencil under her eyes anymore either, it made her face look more innocent.

"What about your mom?" I asked. I never heard her say anything about her mother in the few times the conversation wasn't on me.
Amy held her lower lip in her teeth for a moment before saying, "My mom left about six years ago."

Ah crap.

"Oh," I said. "Sorry."
She shook her head, "No, it's alright. She had a breakdown or something, said she couldn't live with my dad anymore and at first said she couldn't even look at me. She moved out, never got around to filing for divorce. After a few months she started talking to me again, she calls every once in a while. Kind of distant, still, but I dunno. My dad's been different since then too, he left the Marines and started doing construction. Sometimes I think he did something that freaked the hell out of her, but he never talks about it."

"Wow." I didn't know what else to say.
Her face flushed for a moment. "Yeah," she said.
"Do you have any siblings?" I asked.
"Nope, only-child-syndrome; just like you."
Just like me.

"But anyway," Amy continued, "since he keeps his distance from me I get plenty of freedom. If I wanted to I could be doing all kinds of wild stuff."
"Like driving an hour upstate to go shoot guns with a boy," I said. We both laughed, I was glad I could bring some levity to the conversation at last.

Amy pulled a napkin around in front of her. "I don't have a pen," she said, "but this makes, what, six?"
"What? The shooting?"
"Yeah, the shooting. I'm not like an expert, but you shouldn't be able to shoot like that on will."
And so the conversation was back on me. "Might bunch it together with the fight thing. Maybe something is just different with my brain where I memorize all the stuff I see in movies, like fight scenes and gun fights, and it all simmers there under the surface waiting to be summoned up."

Amy snuck one of my fries.

I thought for a second and said, "Maybe I'm some weird Remembers-Everything Kid, and the FBI or NSA has been paying Mr. Comstock to keep an eye on me and stop the word from getting out until they could figure out a way to use me."
Amy frowned, "And your dad got close to finding out so they killed him?"
I shrugged. "Maybe he just died. People die. Maybe this is all just some crazy way for me to keep my mind off of the fact that my dad is dead."

Amy looked disappointed, "I asked you about that before, at Starbucks, and you said you thought this was real."
"Maybe I wanted it to be real, maybe I wanted to keep going on not even thinking about the reality of the situation and keep my brain in fairy-tale land, maybe I wanted to get you to keep talking to me."

This conversation was entirely too deep to be taking place at a Wendy's.

"You think I just talk to you because I think you're a ninja or Batman or Jason Bourne or whatever it is any given minute?" Amy asked, defensive.
I didn't say anything.
"I talk to you," she went on, "because this is interesting, and you're interesting. And because you talk back, and don't just think I want to borrow your chemistry notes."
"You don't take chemistry."
"You know what I mean."
"You didn't drink your milk."
"Are you mad at me now?"

I pressed my back against the chair and leaned my head back. I don't know what I'm mad at.

"No. I'm just worried, I think, that if this whole thing is real. If there's some big, government... thing going on here, and it now involves me and guns..." I trailed off.

"What?" Amy asked.

"...then it's only going to get worse."

Amy set her elbow on the table and plopped her chin in her hand. "You should knock on wood," she said.
"You should drink your milk," I said.
"I'm serious."
"The table's formica."
"That's not wood?'
"Laminated plastic composite."
"You should find some wood."
I stood up, we were both done eating. "Come on," I said, "you can take your milk to-go."

And we were gone. I pulled out of the parking lot and could see the sign for the highway onramp when a bright light filled my vision. I looked up at my rear-view mirror, the car behind me was flashing brights. "What is this?" I said to myself, angling the mirror to get the light out of my eyes, then more lights came -- these ones red and blue and spiraling. The car behind me was a cop, trying to pull me over.

I swore, and tried to pull over but the road I was on had no shoulder and I didn't want to just stop in the lane, so I flashed my brakes and kept going slowly until I got to a road I could turn into. It was a residential road with houses on both sides onward as far as I could see in the dusk light. I pulled into the first driveway, and the police cruiser stopped on the road behind my car.

"Were you speeding?" Amy asked.
"No, I don't kno--" I was reaching for my car's registration when I suddenly remembered the gun in my back seat. And the hundreds of bullets. And the knife. I might as well have stopped and bought some crack rocks and strapped a dead hooker to my trunk.

I should have found some wood.