I open my eyes, and two pictures swim in and out of focus, pulling apart then shimmering into one.

Micah, seated on the couch across from me.

Micah, doubled over in laughter at the trailer park. A younger version of him, but still.

“Oh my God,” I say. “You were there, too.”

33

June 13, 1999
1:42 a.m.

The light is what Jax noticed first, bright and blinding and sudden, so sudden it made his eyeballs ache. A blazing light that turned night into day, like someone flicked a switch in the yard and inside that meth-head mother, turning her shirt and her skin see-through. Next, he noticed her face, the way her mouth went round and her eyes wide with fear. Then finally, he heard country music and the roar of a souped-up engine, a sound that had been there all along now that he thought about it, but that was the whole damn purpose, wasn’t it? The tequila was so that he wouldn’t have to think.

Jax swung around, shading his eyes with an arm.

“Mama, look out!” the girl screamed.

The woman dived for the dirt, but Jax didn’t move. He just stood there, squinting into the headlights, thirty feet away and closing fast. He spread his arm wide, welcoming it.

At the very last second, the tires cut right, sending a blur of shiny yellow carving a fat arc around him, kicking up dirt that rained on a trailer’s metal siding like pellets from a BB gun. He watched the car fly past, clocked it skidding across the yard until it came to a messy stop at the far end, parallel to the lit-up trailer. It was shockingly loud, a noise that bounced off the trees and ricocheted through the trailer park, shrill in Jax’s ears.

Through the open windows he spotted Micah, laughing it up with the driver.

Bobby, that was his name. The loser who flunked out in tenth grade. The freak who sold drugs under the bleachers. This was his car, his crazy Christmas trailer. He killed the engine and lit what Jax thought was a cigarette, until Jax noticed the way Bobby held in his breath. The pothead sampling his own wares.

Micah unfolded himself from the passenger’s seat in a cloud of smoke, his movements slow and syrupy.

“Where’s Paul?”

Micah tapped a finger to the Camaro rooftop. “Passed out cold. Dude can’t handle his liquor.”

That was because Paul drank like the teenager he was. Jax, too. But Micah... When it came to booze, he was light-years ahead. Drunk and high on who knew what and still relatively steady on his feet. Not like Jax, who couldn’t seem to stop swaying.

The woman pushed past him, bare feet churning up the dirt. “Hey, Bobby. Gimme some of that. Just one little hit. That’s all I need. Just something to tide me over.”