Body Surfing

Patek Philippe to see what time it was. “We’ve only got a few minutes left. I wanna have all my wits about me.”
    “Yo, cut it out with the twenty-four hours thing. It’s seriously not funny anymore.”
    Suddenly Sila turned to Q. “Jesus fucking Christ. It’s your fucking fault all this happened. I had no idea it wasn’t you until Jasper said Michaela’s name. You told him she would be in that closet, didn’t you? You set the whole thing up. Why in the fuck would you do something like that?”
    Again, silence filled the car. Jasper could see that a muscle in Q.’s cheek was twitching.
    “Maybe I wanted to save him,” he said in a funny voice. A voice that didn’t sound like Q. at all. “Maybe I didn’t want him to suffer my fate.”
    “What the hell are you—”
    Sila was cut off by a snuffling, snorting sound, and Jasper realized his friend was fighting back tears. Sila’s eyes widened. She put her hand on Q.’s cheek and he shrugged it away, but the gesture was more petulant than angry. She put it back and this time he let it stay. A few seconds later, she took off her seatbelt and leaned over to hold Q. “Baby,” Jasper could just barely hear her over the engine. “Oh, my stupid, stupid baby.”
    A second snort broke from Q.’s mouth, followed by a loud guffaw, and in a voice Jasper almost didn’t recognize Q. said,
    “Suck it, bitch.”
    “What the—”
    “I said suck it .” A half-scream escaped Sila’s mouth before Q. smashed it into his crotch. “Don’t fucking tell me you didn’t know. You’ve wanted to get in Jasper’s pants since fifth fucking grade. Now shut up and suck my dick, or I swear to God I will drive this car into a fucking tree!”
    Q. stomped on the gas and the car surged forward. Trees crowded in close like pylons on a slalom course, and the darkness between them seemed every bit as solid as the trunks. He took both hands off the wheel and the car veered into the left lane. Somehow over the engine’s roar Jasper heard the distinct sound of a zipper opening, and then Q. grabbed the wheel and jerked the car to the right. The Porsche fishtailed, the tires screeching across the asphalt.
    “Jesus Christ, Q.!” Michaela screamed. “Stop!”
    Q.’s eyes—wide, crazy, absolutely alien—found Jasper’s in the mirror.
    “Listen to me carefully, Jasper.”
    “Q., stop the car—”
    “I said listen , Jasper. Go home.”
    “Q., just stop the car and we’ll—”
    “Home , Jasper. There’s no place like home. Home sweet home. A man’s home is his castle. Home . Go there.”
    The Porsche picked up speed. The bright digital display read ninety-six miles an hour. 97. 98. 99. Choked sobs came from Sila’s body.
    I’d steal my old man’s Porsche and get Sila to blow me in the front seat, then drive it into a cliff at—
    100.
    “Q., please. Stop. Please .”
    Q.’s eyes were lidded, a guttural moan came from deep in his throat. The knuckles of his bloody hand were white in their grip on Sila’s hair. And then suddenly his eyes snapped open and he slammed the back of his head into the seatrest again and again.
    “Remember, Jasper! Home!”
    For a moment, Jasper didn’t recognize the face in the mirror, so distorted was it by an unfathomable mixture of hatred and ecstasy. With a grunt, Q. jerked the wheel to the left, hard, then let go of it.
    “What the—?” he screamed. His hands flew up to cover his face. “No! No! No!”
    The tail of the car spun beneath Jasper. Panic clutched his guts. But then a strange, almost numbing peace seemed to flood into his body. Time thickened, slowed. Milliseconds fell through eternity like drops from a roof with a hole in it. The engine screamed, the tires squealed. There was a thunk! as something broke beneath the chassis.
    Yet Jasper felt safe, as though he were cocooned inside a fluid-filled bubble. He heard Michaela scream. He heard Sila scream. He heard Q. scream. They were all screaming, but he was just looking. Looking out the Porsche’s tiny window at a solid wall of stone that filled his plane of vision. He could see every striation in the schist, every quartzite crystal and fossilized tree root, every dark vein of granite and sparkling fleck of mica and creamy blue seam of jasper.
    The word jogged something in his memory. Jasper? What— who —was Jasper?
    He felt something squishy between the toes of his right foot, and remembered the slug that had been in his shoe that morning. Remembered the