snapped-on wrong, maybe permanently

Maybe he’s a basketcase. Maybe he’s fucking losing it. There are two parallel tracks of blood painting his upper lip, and a fist-sized blotch on the decal of his bleach-stained Slayer tee shirt that’s already beginning to turn crusty brown. His whole right hand is mashed and puffy. His right eye is beginning to swell. What do you tell a woman with two black eyes? Nothing; you’ve already told her twice. Ha ha ha. He doesn’t think he’s going to get a shiner out of this, not even one black eye; his nose isn’t even broken or he’d have felt it, hell, his dad would’ve felt it. What happened back there was him holding back.

Gravel scratches smarting on his cheek, involuntary dampness still sticking to his face, blind-crazy salt tears that all seem to have come unstuck at once. He can still taste the asphalt, he can rub the chipped edge of his molar with the tip of his tongue and taste blood. He doesn’t want Patrick to see him like this — Jesus fuck, he doesn’t want anyone to see him like this, but here they are.

They drive for a while down Merit Street, Hockstetter with a long-neck beer bottle pressed between his legs in the driver’s seat, taking broad skiddy turns and rattling down the shallow slope to a halt as the rocks and gravel crackle off the Trans Am’s paintjob. Henry stares at himself in the smudged strip of metal mirror. Not too fucked up, not too bad at all.

When he looks away, there’s Patrick leaning over the gearshift, his face like a mask, like Michael Myers, all blank and white. He takes Henry’s face in his hands, pulling at the bruises. Patrick’s thumbs rub at his cheeks, a gentle swipe at first and then a little too hard. The skin around Henry’s eyes is a little swollen — from the blow, not from crying, though he did cry — and Patrick’s fingertips are roughened and dry, his bitten fingernails have crescents of black dirt under them. His touch isn’t gentle, more examining. A crack about playing doctor almost tumbles out of Henry’s mouth, but the weird look in Hockstetter’s face makes him stop. He’s looking at Henry the way he looks at the flame from a lighter — hungry, thirsty.

There there, little baby. Hockstetter’s never going to respect him after this. He’s seen him flat on his ass on the parking lot pavement, crying real tears like some kind of gigantic homo faggot queer while half of Derry’s adults must’ve drove past pretending not to see, and now he’s going to rip him apart. It’s what anybody with balls would do. Survival of the fittest. Henry blinks a couple times, with the blood surging in his face. Patrick plants his elbow hard in the crook of Henry’s arm and pins him to the arm rest, and he kisses him. He kisses him, his broad beery mouth covering Henry’s entirely — here in the last of the daylight, under the trees.

Henry’s mouth opens without a complaint. His friend’s tongue is hot and wet and it doesn’t stop at probing Henry’s teeth — it sweeps and scrapes his upper lip, probing at the blood. It only hurts a little and Henry opens up to it like a flower, not knowing what else to do — knowing what he should be doing but hesitant to do it, without a knife in his hand, liking it too much. He kicks out, driving a sneaker-heel into the burn scarred floor mat, and that must make Patrick hot or something. He makes a noise, and sucks hard on Henry’s lip.

They’ve fucked around before, down in the woods, down in the back seat. He can smell Patrick’s breath, his dirty hair, he can taste something in the hard immediacy of the soul kiss. He expects something else to follow it shortly — a hand grabbing his dick, or something, the way Patrick fingers girls through their panties, under their skirts — but it’s all about the blood.

It’s a long kiss, and comprehensive. The inside of Henry’s mouth hurts when it’s finished, and his whole face feels like it’s been chewed by a rabid St. Bernard. His head is swimming, and his gut is tight. Hockstetter’s long spidery leg is flung over into the passenger’s side, tangling against Henry’s at the ankle.

“I could fucking kill you,” Henry says, and presses the tip of his tongue against his teeth. “I could fucking kill you, Hockstetter.” Throbbing at the back of his brain, like the seasick throb when his father knocked him down: fucking cocksucker. Fucking shit. Fucking-A.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Patrick says, evenly. Henry doesn’t know if he means the kiss, the blood, the hit, or any of it. Any of it at all.

Henry makes fuck-yeah sounds of agreement, with the blood still whistling in his nose. He tosses his head a little, stiffly careless, but Patrick’s big hands are bracing him in place.

Patrick sticks his chin out, letting the hair fall away from his face. “I bet I could double back and run him over.”

It’s not, you know, a kind gesture. The way Patrick’s face kind of blisses out when he says it, a momentary flutter, it all makes it clear he’d get a kick out of it and nothing else. He’d get a kick out of bashing old Officer Bowers’ head into the asphalt like a fucking watermelon, hearing him hit the bumper like a stack of bricks. Patrick’s not scared of Butch Bowers. He’s not scared of anything. He’s a dumb crazy fuck and he loves to see freaks and faggots get hurt. Likes to see anybody get hurt. He’s not afraid of the cops. And Hockstetter knows all the best places to hide.

Double back and he’d be there, waiting. Butch Bowers is going to be looking for his son sooner or later — looking for Patrick too, he knows all of Henry’s shithead friends but he doesn’t know that Patrick’s borrowing Belch’s Trans Am all weekend and he doesn’t know Hockstetter took French leave from shop class yesterday and he doesn’t know what Henry knows, about the junkyard, about what Patrick does to little furry things with teeth and claws, about the blood.

“Like fuck.”

“Have a smoke, take a piss. You can wash your face off at the gas station and sleep out in the garage. It’ll be dark soon.”

The Hockstetters’ garage, where Patrick’s mom never goes and there’s a sagging couch with a dent in it shaped like Patrick’s dad and a stack of titty magazines and more lukewarm bottles of beer. Patrick’s knees are wide apart, and yet the bottle of beer is still propped up between his legs. Henry’s gut flashes with irritation — that Patrick Hockstetter’s out here drinking without him, that he sped to the rescue when he probably couldn’t even see straight. A real knight in fucking armor. He’d rather die than thank him.

“Gimme that.”

Patrick passes him the bottle, idly palming at his own dick as he does so. Henry scuffs at his mouth and nose with the back of his wrist. The wash of warm beer wipes out the taste of blood.