Boy by Blake Nelson

Chapter 16

One night I was in my room, messing around with my brother's camera, and my phone rang. It was Antoinette. "Do you wanna go driving?" she said. I could tell she was outside somewhere.

"Driving where?" I asked.

"Just driving, with Kai and me." I thought about it a second. I wasn't doing anything else. "Okay," I said.

"Where do you live?"

I told her my address. "Can I bring my camera?" I asked.

"Bring anything you want."

They arrived outside my house ten minutes later. They honked their horn.

I mumbled some explanation to my mother and headed out the front door. I strode down the driveway and crawled into the backseat of Kai's beige Subaru. Kai was driving. Antoinette was in the front passenger seat. When I closed the door, Kai hit the gas and we screeched away down the street. I said nothing as I tried to protect my camera from Kai's bouncy driving style.

"Is that new?" said Antoinette, looking back at the camera.

"No. It's my brother's."

"Can you take pictures in the dark?"

"With a flash."

"Can you buy cigarettes?" said Kai.

"Cigarettes?" I said. "I don't know. I never tried."

"We need cigarettes," said Antoinette.

"What do you need cigarettes for?"

"Uh, like, to smoke?" said Kai.

"We thought, since you're tall . . . ," said Antoinette. "I'm not that tall."

"People card us because we look weird," said Kai.

"Which is so, like, sexist or lookist or whatever."

"You have to be eighteen," said Antoinette.

"Will you do it?" said Kai. I looked out the window of the car.

"I can try," I said.

We pulled into a Safeway. Kai and Antoinette thought this was the best place. I left my camera and went inside. I bought a liter bottle of Cherry Coke, a bag of Sun Chips, a pack of gum, and then asked for two packs of Marlboro Lights. The checkout lady, to my amazement, sold them to me. I thanked her and went out. Back in the car, I tossed the two packs of cigarettes into the front seat. Kai hit the gas and we screeched out of the parking lot.

So then they smoked. And I ate Sun Chips. Nobody really talked. Kai put on the radio and bopped around in her seat as she drove. Antoinette didn't bop around. She was looking at something on her phone. I watched the two of them. I wondered if they did this every night. They wanted to go to a place called Command Control. This was an arcade downtown, on a scuzzy block near the bus station. Command Control had pinball machines, Pac- Man, Space Invaders, and other games from the past. It was also full of skeevy, downtown, bus-station-type people. Kai and Antoinette showed no fear and walked straight in. I had my camera around my neck and gripped it a little extra tightly as I squeezed in among the leather jackets and home- made tattoos. One guy had two tiny metal studs sticking out of his forehead. I tried to maintain a neutral expression on my face.

Kai wanted to play a game called Street Fight in the Bronx, but it was currently occupied by a huge woman with dyed black hair and pockmarks. So then Kai was freaking out and she sent Antoinette over to the woman to ask how long she was going to be. Antoinette came back and said she was almost done.

So then Kai got to play Street Fight in the Bronx. Antoinette and I walked around and looked at the different games. It was very dark and noisy in there. It smelled like mold and cleaning chemicals. Then Antoinette wanted to go outside and smoke. I followed her out. We sat on the curb of the street, her smoking and me trying to act casual with my four-thousand-dollar camera while bums and criminals and drug dealers hovered around.