CHAPTER ONE
The tiny car icon in my Uber app twists around in circles, its location three blocks from where I stand outside Evelyn’s house in the Catalina Foothills. Like all houses in the neighborhood, Evelyn’s modest three-bedroom sprouts unobtrusively from the Sonoran Desert. Each residence up here is a different take on ancient Pueblo architecture—stucco exteriors in various shades of sand and dirt, perpendicular lines that disappear like a mirage in the right light. I take in the expanse of Tucson stretching endlessly to the south—by most standards, a truly killer view. But I know better. The most killer view of the city can be found on its west side—at the top of Tumamoc Hill—and it’s this view I’m chasing this evening. If my driver ever finds me, that is.
My driver, Reynold (red Toyota Camry, 3.8 stars), turns around, idles, turns again. My driver’s test can’t come soon enough. Two more weeks.
The car on my phone reminds me of those plastic cars Evelyn and I used to fill with blue and pink peg children in the Game of Life. He’s two minutes away—no, now it’s three. I think about running inside for one more swig from the massive Costco-sized bottle of vodka I’ve hidden beneath the heating vent in my old bedroom.
Maybe Reynold is as buzzed as I am. But of course that’s not it. I’m used to waiting twice as long for an Uber as I should. The streets in the foothills are mazelike, and when I lived here with Evelyn, I’d often have to walk halfway to River Road to meet up with my buddies, their parents apt to give up and drop them off just north of the Zinburger near Campbell.
I wipe a bead of sweat from my temple—feeling moisture in way too many other places—and grin as the flash of red comes around the corner. I wave. Wish I’d stored some extra deodorant at Evelyn’s house—summer in the Old Pueblo means short shelf lives for showers. I pop open the passenger-side door and hop in, energized by the blast of air-conditioning. My head feels light from the alcohol, and the friendly-dad look on Reynold’s face makes me sure he’s about to become my new best buddy.
Reynold says, “I thought my phone was going to have an aneurysm trying to find you. These foothills. Pretty up here, but…” He flips a U-turn on the lane—more an asphalt driveway. A single zombie apocalypse is all it would take for the cacti and desert brush to reclaim the road for nature.
“Yeah, man. My friends’ parents have gotten lost a thousand times. Thanks for persevering, though. This is a nuggs emergency of epic proportions.”
“Why don’t you just DoorDash?”
Some sober part of my brain thinks I shouldn’t be so forthcoming with this stranger, that I should get a new Uber from Wendy’s—and another new one, and another new one after that. That I should only talk about what I’m doing right now with Ms. Finch at school because she’s the only one I ever talk with about what I’m doing right now, and even then just barely. But Reynold is a cool dude. I can tell.
“Actually,” I say, “I’m going drunk drive-thru’ing. It’s no fun if you don’t go through the drive-thrus.”
“Drive-thrus? Plural?” Reynold gives me parent eyebrows. I don’t like those eyebrows. “Aren’t we a bit young to be drinking?”
Can Uber drivers snitch? Is there such a thing as driver-rider confidentiality? I recover quickly just in case. “Not too young if you’re just drunk on life and a six-pack of Monster, bro!” I’ve brought shame upon seven generations of my offspring, but my committed performance was probably worth it. My backward cap, flip-flops, and the neon-green Wayfarers hanging from the neck of my tank top should win the costume department an Emmy.
Reynold’s sidelong glance suggests he’s not convinced, but he doesn’t press. He navigates out of the foothills and zooms down Campbell Avenue. I love how the streetlights strobe when I try to concentrate on them. I love the warm feeling in my cheeks, the part of me the air-conditioning can’t cool off. I poke at my belly, not caring that it’s softer than those of my buddies. My favorite part of drinking is not caring about stuff. I whisper, “You ready for some nuggs, bruh?” My laugh comes out more like the giggle a little kid would make, which makes me laugh some more.
I say, “Okay, Reynold. Let’s go over the itinerary so we don’t make any mistakes. First stop, Wendy’s.” I’m ticking off our agenda on my fingers. “Then we’ll punch through McDonald’s even though they’re painfully pedestrian. All those delicious chemicals, though, am I right?”
Reynold opens his mouth but I’m talking too fast.
“Then we’ll hit Taco Bell. Actually, no.” I’m shaking my head. Evelyn would be bummed if she knew I was eating an Anglo facsimile of Mexican food. Mexican is kind of our thing, a cooking-as-a-family thing, and we do it up right because Evelyn wants me to be proud of my heritage. I revise on the fly. “Screw that no-nuggs noise. Third stop: Jack. We’re getting chicken for days. You can even get some if you want. My treat. Then you can drop me off in the medical center parking lot across from Tumamoc. You know where everyone parks illegally?”
“No clue, kid. You’ll have to program each stop into the app. You know that, right?”
“Hell yeah, buddy. I’ve got my Uber game down. You’ve never done Tumamoc? Put it at the top of your list. The U of A has an observatory up there or something, but you can hike up the hill whenever you want. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to the Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky.”
Reynold gives me the type of face Evelyn would call quizzical or flummoxed. Before she became my mom—which happened when I was six years old—Evelyn had a whole career as an English professor at the University of Arizona. She’s forever telling me to employ mature diction. Never use just any word, Brett. Not when only the right word will do.
I explain. “The Great Cool Ranch Dorito…” I crane my neck to find it through the windshield. Here in the city proper, dusk’s hold is still acting like a gray blanket over the stars. “That big-ass triangle constellation? That’s Captain Condor’s headquarters in the cosmos. He chills up there with Kid Condor, and they save the universe from the evil Archer von Adonis and whatnot. I mean…” I lean in like I’m about to tell Reynold a secret. “I’m pretty much Kid Condor.” I shrug like it’s no big thing. “You know what I mean?”
“Uh-huh. Kid Condor, got it.”
Wendy’s is fast approaching on our right. Reynold gestures toward the familiar freckled girl on the signage. “All this is a little pricey for a kid your age, isn’t it?”
Damn it, Reynold. Don’t be such a buzzkill. Reynold’s question reminds me why I have enough money to do stuff like drunk drive-thru’ing, and suddenly the storm clouds are gathering inside. Not cool, Reynold. Not cool. It’s weird how drinking can make you the happiest guy in the world in one minute but make you want to cry your eyes out in the next. I wish I’d thought to put some booze in a water bottle. I’m only just learning the ways of the drunkard. It appears I have a long way to go.
I blink away the feelings I don’t want to have, put a fat smile back on my face, shrug, and say, “Big allowance,” which is true enough.
Reynold pulls into the Wendy’s, the one in the Safeway shopping center on Prince, where I get a ten-piece nuggs meal with Dr Pepper. Next, we’re across the street at McDonald’s. I get another ten-piece—ba-da-ba-ba-baaah, I’m nuggin’ it. And then we’re heading to the Jack in the Box on Grant. Reynold pulls up to the menu and turns to me, my Wendy’s and McDonald’s bags warming my feet. “Nuggets?”
I shake my head. “No, no, no, no, no. You want the chicken tendies here. Jack is basically the Ritz-Carlton of all the fast-food places, and you want to order the filet mignon of processed chicken products.” When the speaker crackles to life, I lean over Reynold’s lap and say, “I’ll take a number twelve, please—with curly fries and an Oreo shake.” I’m thinking I might mix all the nuggs together in one bag and surprise my mouth when I eat them in the pitch-black atop Tumamoc. “Oh, and lots of ranch. And some ketchup. Please. Oh! And give me another Oreo shake for my buddy Reynold here. He’s a stand-up guy, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“That’ll be $21.48 at the window.”
I turn to Reynold, nod at the Dr Peppers I’m holding in each hand. “The shake is a bit of an extravagance, I know, but I’m trying to limit my soda intake because diabetes and all.”
At the window, I pass my debit card to the nugg slinger, who takes it with a hand bedazzled in glitter nail polish. Her wrist is heavily accessorized in plastic rainbow jelly bracelets. I recognize her—she’s in my earth science class and is hard to forget because you have to scoot your chair in whenever she needs to walk behind you to get to the door. She has this purple-and-blue hair—mermaid hair, I once heard it called. What’s her name? Something you’d name your grandma. Marjory? Mildred? She recognizes me, too. She tenses, as if losing her anonymity as a faceless, nugg-slinging corporate drone—even for the span of a fast-food transaction—is painful. “Hey, Brett.”
From somewhere in my memory come the taunting voices of the jerks at school. Mallory, Mallory, Miss Ten Thousand Calorie. “Hey, Mallory.” Sometimes when I’m at school, I try not to look at Mallory. I especially try not to make eye contact. I don’t know why. I’m not one of the jerks, I swear, but something about her, maybe everything about her—the redness of her face on sweltering days, the way her clothes strain to hold her inside, the tiny scabs on her arms from where she picks at her skin when she thinks no one is looking—makes me uncomfortable. I know my avoidance is uncool. Evelyn would give me a lecture on being the kind of guy she expects me to be. I take a breath and try for some small talk. “You got your dirt report done yet?”
She makes a sour face, passes my debit card through the reader. “It’s going to be an all-nighter. You?”
“Yeah, I’m done, so I’m treating myself to a hike up Tumamoc. Ever been?”
Mallory hands Reynold our shakes, no longer bothering to wear her Jack-approved smile. “Why would I want to do that?”
Reynold takes a sip of his shake, kindly ignoring that I’m basically lying in his lap.
I say, “It’s hella rad. You can see a three-sixty view of the city, plus you feel almost close enough to outer space to touch the Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky.”
Mallory rolls her eyes. I grin anyway because her recognition means she’s at least stumbled upon my comic book, Kid Condor: Cadet First Class of the Constellation Corps, several dozen copies of which I hid throughout the school library last semester in a stealth operation. Forgive the bragging, but Kid Condor is kind of going to be a big deal someday.
Mallory delivers my food.
I use my sweet voice. “Extra ranch?”
She grabs a handful of ranch cups, drops them into the open bag, which I’m still holding extended from the car. Reynold lifts his foot from the brake. I cry out, “Wait!” The car lurches.
Mallory glances to my feet, to the bags from Wendy’s and McDonald’s. She raises her brow. “Something else?”
I can’t say why exactly, but I was about to ask Mallory if she wanted to go to Tumamoc with me sometime. Something in that look on her face, though, something in her tone, makes me self-conscious.
My buzz has worn off, hasn’t it?
I feel that quick cramp in the gut that comes when the teacher calls on you but you have no idea what he’s asking because you’ve been daydreaming. I look to the bags on the floor, the one in my lap. Suddenly, I’m hyperaware that I’m double-fisting a Dr Pepper and an Oreo shake. Another Dr Pepper sweats in the cupholder beside me. Heat builds in my cheeks.
“Nothing. I’ll … I’ll see you at school.”
“I’ll count the minutes.”
Reynold steps on it. Mallory’s face disappears before I’ve registered what I saw on it. Now I don’t know if I want to go to Tumamoc. I wish I hadn’t gone to Jack.
I take a sip of my milkshake. Another.
Reynold and I don’t chat as we drive the ten minutes to our final stop. All the feelings I wasn’t feeling an hour ago are filling up my insides and I kind of want to start crying. I don’t think Reynold would be cool with that, so I just pull harder on my milkshake, wishing it were full of vodka.
As Reynold eases into the lot across from the poorly paved driveway that winds up Tumamoc, I gather my nuggs and my remaining cup of Dr Pepper. “Thanks, Reynold. You’ve been a real champ and I’ll never forget you.”
I’m closing the car door when Reynold catches me. “Hey, kid?”
I blurt the first thing that comes to mind before he can say what I’m afraid he’s going to say. “Don’t worry, bud. Your tip is going to be the envy of all the other drivers at your annual Uber Christmas party this year. We good?”
Reynold gives me those parent eyebrows he’s quickly becoming famous for, and I’m wondering if my face and voice are doing what I think they’re doing.
It turns out they’re not. Reynold says, “Are you all right?”
I fight to speak through the tightening in my chest. “I’m bomb as hell, bro! Better than ever, too, thanks to your next-level driving—you should go into stunt driving, for real.”
Reynold opens his mouth, but I plow forward. “Well, gotta get these nuggs in my belly while they’re warm.” I pat my stomach. “He’s growling. Later, buddy!”
I slam the door and set off in a jog across the street, desperate to get as far as possible from the face Reynold was making, the face Ms. Finch always makes when she pulls me from journalism to talk about my feelings, the very face Mallory made when she saw the bags I’m carting to the top of Tumamoc Hill.
This face chases me, and I hike a little faster than usual.
CHAPTER TWO
Reed affects a wizened and measured tone. “Wax on … wax off.” He glances over the hood of his battered Chevy pickup to be sure he has my attention. He repeats the words, louder this time, as he mimes jerking off to the sacred text from my favorite movie of all time, The Karate Kid, a kick-ass film from the 1980s in which a teen boy, Daniel LaRusso, is mentored by a Japanese karate master, the lovable Mr. Miyagi, and must defeat the school bullies in a karate championship. Basically, a save-the-world-get-the-girl sort of thing.
Reed’s fist bobs over the crotch of his swim trunks. “Wax on, wax off…” This time the words sound painful. He tilts his head back and his eyelids flutter. He’s widely known as a harmless scamp, but this performance is pure sacrilege. “Oh God, brohhhhhhh! Wax off!”
I dunk my sponge in our bucket of sudsy water, sloshing my feet and flip-flops, and hurl the water bomb. I nail him in the face. Reed drops to the ground, releases a death rattle sure to echo through the courtyards of his apartment complex. My apartment complex, too, I remind myself. I’ve been living with Reed for seven months—which still doesn’t feel real—bunking above him in the cramped two-bedroom he shares with his dad.
Reed has been my best bud since second grade, when we were the only seven-year-olds sorted into the kindergarten reading group. I guess I should be happy to be living with him, but even after all these months I catch myself longing to go home—my real home—at the end of the day. Evelyn’s words from the day I moved out spring to mind unwelcome, particularly because I hear them in her new voice, her hospital voice, which rakes across her vocal cords in a way that sounds painful. What ineffable fun. It’ll be a true boys’ club, a bachelor pad. She could see I was trying not to cry, so she pulled me close and roughed my hair. Just promise you’ll pull your dirty socks out from under the bed once a week to wash them.
In a fluid, Daniel LaRusso–like move, Reed rocks onto his shoulder blades and performs a kip-up, landing lightly on his feet. “You could bake a cake on that asphalt!”
We’re enjoying what little shade is provided by a gnarled mesquite whose roots have left this corner of the lot looking like an excavation site. Reed retrieves my sponge, dunks it and squeezes it over the back of his neck. He gives his headlights some attention, flicking mosquito carcasses off the plastic. Reed’s tank top—featuring a rendering of Andre the Giant in his famed caveman singlet—clings to his chest, which has become markedly swole in the past year since he decided to join the wrestling team. Reed’s body couldn’t look more different than Andre’s—trim and well-defined.
Copyright © 2024 by Joshua Galarza
