“The thing that everyone knew about him, of course, was that he was a shit. My parents and most other adults loathed him, because he was such an obvious liar and two-faced, and the only times Thom ever got in trouble were when he was with Kyle. But in Thom’s case the good-looking smarmy boy wasn’t just one of those bad-influence types that you wait for your kid to outgrow; he was an active menace, and a threat to our family’s master plan.
“Because Thom was a genius. Everyone knew that. From as far back as I have memories, I remember sitting on the couch, between my parents, while Thom gave ‘lectures’ to us about meteorology, chemistry, bagpiping, you know, whatever happened to be his fascination that particular week. And he had a lot of fascinations, every single one of which my parents allowed and encouraged him to pursue, even if it meant pulling him out of school and taking him somewhere expensive and inconvenient. The Galapagos? No problem. Stanford, for a spring-break program? Absolutely. Looking back, I’m sure it was an incredible drain on their finances and energy, but they never seemed to think twice about it. The schools would get on board with it, too, because it was so obvious to everyone that Thom was this incredibly brilliant kid, and one day we would all be able to bask in the reflected glow of his genius.
“I know this should have made me incredibly jealous and resentful, and I guess maybe at times it did, but since I was younger and it was such a dominant theme in our family life, I just sort of accepted it. There are things you just know as a kid, things that can never be disputed: we love this sports team, Grandpa is a drunk, and Tommy is a genius. None of that can be questioned, and nothing but nothing can get in the way of it.
“Which was why Kyle Luedtke was a huge problem and, looking back, probably goes a long way toward explaining my violent, uncontrollable crush on him. He was beautiful and he was a danger to Thom’s predetermined path to greatness? Sign me up!
“June 2nd of that year was the first really hot day of the summer, and as evening came it turned into one of those bathwater-humid midwestern nights, when you feel drunk just breathing the air. Kyle and Thom were headed out for the night, to the movies on Highway 100 they said, but I knew that was a bunch of bullshit. They were just going out to drive my dad’s old Chevy Caprice Classic around town all night. For a teenager in a boring-ass town like this, an available car with a full tank of gas is, as I know you know, the gateway to all evil. Drinking, drugs, sex—there was really nothing that couldn’t be done in a moving vehicle at night in the summertime. This, please understand, was not wise. I am not recommending this type of behavior. I am telling you how it was, Scott, and you will no doubt recognize it as how it still is today. But very bad shit was going to go down that night, so please don’t romanticize what I’m saying. At all. It is my step-parental duty to tell you that.
“Anyway. I’d had a particularly awful day, full of the sorts of things that normally would be forgotten by the following week, but given the events of that night, I remember every single one in vivid detail. Trust me when I tell you they are all exceptionally boring. Something about so-and-so saying something shitty about me to what’s-her-name and bullshit like that. Point is, I was really sad and depressed and had locked myself in my bedroom when I saw Thom and Kyle headed out to the car, and I yelled to them, out the open window, that they should take me with them. Thom didn’t even respond, but Kyle stopped, looked up, and said something to Thom, so I knew there was hope.
“Kyle and I had made out before. Twice. Maybe a little grinding. I’m sorry, too much detail? OK, well, we’d made out twice, and he never tried to touch my breasts or anything. OK, I’m sorry, Scott, but this is how the story goes and you asked, so do you want to hear it or not? My point is, he was seventeen, I was fifteen, and he’d been sweet and tender with me and never tried anything I didn’t want him to. Which only made my crush worse. I remember the second time we made out I’d tried to push things further than I should have, and he suddenly remembered he had to be somewhere. And he left. This guy may have been a liar and a troublemaker, but he knew how to behave himself with someone younger than him. Fine, I was in love with him. Or maybe I just remember it that way. Memories can be fucked sometimes.
“So they let me go with them. And we all three drank and those two smoked weed, and at some point after midnight, somebody had the bright idea that we rock mailboxes. It’s sort of an antiquated custom, you may have never heard of it, OK, wait, I can see by the look on your face that you have, so, fine, you know the drill. Find a good-size boulder, not so big that you can’t hold it comfortably, then look for a mailbox that’s on a long, straight stretch of road, get the car up to at least forty miles an hour, and drop the rock on the mailbox as you go past.