Quick AN: I didn't proofread all of it and had no spellcheck. Sorry about any mistakes and I'll try to fix them when I get back to a better computer...and I'm just messing around with different kinda style-ish things.

Rated for language.

My life is summer nights, spent on the hoods of cars and the beds of trucks, staring up into the endless, swirling sky above. Seemingly always with me even when I close my eyes are Jazzy-girl and Owen, dim shadows sometimes and others screaming neon colors that make my eyes water but I swear to Satan that I'm not crying.

My summer nights life smells distinctly of pot smoke and cigarettes, sometimes coffee and other times those sickly sweet energy drinks that Jazzy-girl buys all overlaid with hot, cooking asphalt that burns my toes at sunset.

I have lullabies of cars speeding down the highway and Jazzy-girl humming and Owen playing his old cassettes in his truck, promising that they're classics, man, really, they're classics. So I sleep curled up like a cat between Owen and Jazzy-girl as they exchange chaste kisses above my head and stroke their fingers through my hair and up and down the almost-girlish curve of my sides.

Sometimes there are others with us. There's WannabeVampire and her fake, clicked in teeth that she constantly licks and slurps on because they make her drool and so I always look away when she talks, and then PreTeen who sits and watches Jazzy-girl, Owen, and me with wide eyes and eager-to-please smiles and offers that make me almost like him although inside I know I hate him and his attempt to fit in.

Overall, at this exact moment with the smell of rain drying and spreading over the asphalt and the sound of Jazzy-girl giggling and sitting cross-legged on the roof of my hand-me-down-and-down-and-down car with her arms raised over her head and Owen telling PreTeen that he can go and pick up a Twinkie for him from the 7-11 across the street, I am content and maybe even happy.

I'm sitting propped up against the front, right tire of my car, staring at my bare feet and flexing toes that are stained a light greyish black because I haven't showered in three days and spend my nights running back and forth across this parking lot. I watch as PreTeen trips as he tries to dodge to silhouettes traveling toward us and bite back a laugh as Owen snickers and turns to face the highway.

The figures get closer, closer, closer and I roll my eyes to see WannabeVampire coming, her black boots clacking against the asphalt as she slouches and slides her way over. I hope that she trips too. Tips over. Bashes her head against the ground and her blood leaks out to blend into the reflection of the setting sun hiding halfway behind the highway. But she makes it to us with MysteriousStranger at her side.

MysteriousStranger wears sunglasses at night and I bet Corey Hart would be oh-so-proud right now. Don't mess around with a guy in shades, because Owen's told me again and again and maybe one too many times that that song is a classic, man. A classic. A leather jacket's on MysteriousStranger's shoulders even though it's a hot night and his jeans are ripped so much that they're hardly there. A finger push and his sunglasses are now nestled in his thick, dark, forest of hair as he stares through deep midnight black eyes.

"Hey, guys," WannabeVampire greets before slurping up drool. I hope she chokes. I hope that spit goes down the wrong way and she chokes right here. I'd leave her. We'd drive away and leave her and PreTeen would come back with Owen's Twinkie to find her, blue in the face and stiff, cold dead and he'd be so scared he'd drop dead too. What a tragedy. "This is my cousin. His name's Cole and he's staying with my family for some of the summer. Cole, these guys are Jasmine, Owen, and Ray."

Jazzy-girl begins to giggle one of her staccato, arpeggio giggles and the car shakes beneath her. "Cole. Ol' king Cole?"

"Was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was he," I add and her laughter grows, booming crescendo echoing over the bare blacktop.

Cole is cool, calm, still the MysteriousStranger and smirks at Jazzy-girl first and then me. I decide I don't like him and then promptly think that once WannabeVampire chokes and dies, I'll find a way to make him die too...maybe poke star-holes into those midnight eyes of his with the ends of his sunglasses till I find his brain.

"Funny," he comments and walks over, leaning against the hood of my car.

Silence creeps up slowly and carefully and spreads itself over us, thick as tar and as warm as the loving arms of these nights I love. I sigh, settling down deeper in my too-big jeans and threadbare T-shirt as WannabeVampire duck her head behind her greasy, red and black dyed hair. I feel awkward and I hate feeling awkward, especially in my parking-lot-home-away-from-home. I glare at WannabeVampire till she squirms and shuffles around to the other side of the car with quiet, lumbering Owen.

I sigh as the smell of smoke drifts down from Ol' King Cole. It makes me squirm, hungry for cigarettes that I can't afford but always bum off Jeff, the kid who works at the gas station down the road. I hate Cole for coming and disturbing the even flow of my summer life and glare up at him to find him staring down at me. I'm glad I'm not the one looking down at him or I might fall into those eyes of his and never stop. Down, down, down to the bottom of everything just to see what's there, maybe, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to climb back up.

He holds the cigarette out to me, silent and smooth, his fingers long, slightly shivering, and I take it carefully because I don't want to touch him.

"I'm bored," WannabeVampire announces, breaking the silence that she created by bringing her cousin here.

"Go run across the highway. That'll be fun," I suggest, after taking a drag from Ol' King Cole's cigarette and handing it back. Jazzy-girl starts up nervous giggles and Owen snickers. Ol' King Cole smiles and I want to tear it from his face, dig my bitten down fingernails into his skin and give it a twist and a jerk. I smile back, all sugar and sprinkles and sticky popsicle sweet.

PreTeen returns with Owen's Twinkie and a few cents of change that Jazzy-girl swipes before Owen can get a hold of it, but he doesn't care. Owen's daddy's rich and he's got his Twinkie which is just as sickly sweet as my smiles for Cole are.

"Well, whatever," WannabeVampire finally slurs out from black-smudged lipstick-lips that make them look dead and rotting. "I'm going to go home. Come on, Cole." She starts clumping away but Cole stays, just standing and watching.

"I'm staying," he finally says and I groan audibly. He raises an eyebrow.

"But-"

"Staying."

Dejected, rejected, depressed, WannabeVampire nods and sweeps across the parking lot. Bauhaus lyrics creep into my skull and rattle around before they pop out of my mouth like a cheap gumball machine prize. "The count...Bela Lugosi’s dead, undead undead undead..." I chatter.

PreTeen stares at me. "Are you alright, Ray?" he wants to know. I stare up at him, my eyes tired and heavy.

"Shut up. Your prepubescent voice makes my head feel ready to split," I growl. He flinches, edges away closer to Ol' King Cole, the MysteriousStrangerSunglassesatNight-type, maybe not a good choice on PreTeen's part, but probably better than me.

“Hullo,” Ol’ King Cole says to PreTeen and PreTeen smiles nervously, and I almost expect him to get on all fours and lick his fingers like a squirmy little puppy dog begging to be petted. “What’s your name?”

I glance at them from the corner of my eye. PreTeen doesn’t have a name. PreTeen is PreTeen and it’s been that way since he came here so why is Ol’ King Cole being such a friendly cunt, acting like he knows how we work here? He doesn’t.

“His name’s Sniveling Cock-sucker,” Jazzy-girl answers Cole and slides down off the roof of my car to sit next to me, letting her head fall between her legs as she laughs some more. Owen snickers again on the other side of the car, still staring out at the highway as he licks little crumbs of Twinkie from his fingers.

“That’s an odd name,” Cole says. “So, what’s your real name? The one these guys didn’t give you?”

“He doesn’t have one,” I snap.

“It’s…uh…it’s Josh,” he mumbles, edging even farther away from me, and I’m glad because right now I want to have Owen hold him down while I run over his head a few times.

“Well, Josh…want to come sit by me?” He smiles at PreTeen-now-known-as-Josh and I glared. It’d be good to have Jazzy-girl hold down Cole and I could run over both their heads at once and it’d look like crushed watermelon across the ground and when the sun came up it’d cook it into brain-slime stew.

“Actually, I’m leaving. You’re losing your seat.” I grin and climb into my car, starting up the engine. “Who wants a ride home?” Jazzy-girl slides in behind me and I lightly step on the gas, knocking the two off my hood. “Bye-bye, boys…king and…Joshie.” I wave and Jazzy-girl sticks out her tongue at the two as I roar off, leaving Owen to lumber over to his truck and drive himself home. Ol’ King Cole watches me, shakes his head, shrugs, and slides those sunglasses at night shades back over his eyes.

-

My life’s a cigarette smokescreen, swirly grey at sunset, protecting me from the world, or at least from the battlefield that my house has become, my mother in the kitchen screaming at my dad who’s drinking in the living room, TV blared all the way up.

“HE MIGHT JUST BE THE BEST QUARTERBACK AROUND!” is clashing against “ARE YOU FUCKING LISTENING TO ME, BILL? ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME!?” and I’m seated on the porch roof, a cigarette from a pack I found on the side of the road between my lips, letting the wind blow back so it makes my eyes sting and water but I’m still not crying.

I think the walls are shaking and the windows are rattling. I think that the house will collapse and so I clamber and slide down to the railing of the porch and hop down into our overgrown yard to safety. I don’t have my keys and so I start to walk to the parking lot, not bothering to call Jazzy-girl and Owen to make sure that they’re there because I just know that they will be.

Sure enough, Owen’s truck is parked beneath the flickering light in the parking lot and I see Jazzy-girl dancing in the bed, one arm raised over her head with a can of something in her hand and a song floating over her head as Owen stares at the highway once again.

But as I walk, I realize there’s someone behind me and I turn to sneer at whoever it is, expecting PreTeen or WannabeVampire, but instead I see Ol’ King Cole with PreTeen tucked under his arm.

“What’re you doing here?” I demand, turning around to face them as I walk.

“I wanted to come out here,” PreTeen explains and snuggles closer to Cole and I want to take what’s left of my cigarette and put it out in his eye.

“Why?” I sneer. “We don’t like you.”

He frowns and I cackle and howl, turning away from the two of them and scampering the rest of the way to Jazzy-girl and Owen, the smell of sugar from Jazzy-girl’s energy drink making my nose sting.

“You look mad,” Jazzy-girl greets and then growls, narrowing her multi-colored contact eyes and baring her teeth. “Mad dog, mad dog! Oh!”

I roll my eyes at her and scramble up into the truck bed, sinking low, filled with anger that makes my skin bristle and my head pound…and I spend the next night the same way because PreTeen and Ol’ King Cole are back again and Ol’ King Cole peers into the truck bed at me, looking annoyed, his eyes sharp and pointed and shooting stars at me.

“I want to talk to you,” he tells me and Owen glances away from the rushing, screaming cars to raise his eyebrows and take advantage of the fact that PreTeen is alone. I hear him ask for a doughnut as Jazzy-girl lets out an “Ooooh! Talk. A talk a talk a talk don’t worry, Ray already knows how babies are made. I taught him.”

I smack her in the knee and she yelps giggles gets up and dances to Bon Jovi on the radio and so I climb from the truck and to Ol’ King Cole’s side, feeling pissed and slightly worried, the way I always do when a teacher calls me to the side at school to talk to me about my dropping grades.

He leads me farther away from the flickering nightlight and closer to the highway where the cars hiss over our words and all I can think is that he smells like cinnamon candies and cigarettes and it makes my stomach grumble hungrily.

“So just wondering…” he says, staring right into my eyes. “Why are you such an asshole?”

I laugh. I can’t help laughing. It bubbles and bursts from me despite the fact that I clamp my sweaty palms over my mouth. I’m doubled over between two fading white lines of the parking lot, laughing while he looks on, obviously annoyed.

Finally I look up and wipe at my eyes, still crouched down by his feet. “Why? You don’t like me being a bully to your little Joshie-kins? I know you guys haven’t known each other long, but have you fucked him yet? I always wondered about how good of a lay he’d be but I tend to go for those who’ve reached puber—” My words are cut off and I’m tumbling backwards, whimpering as I hold my throbbing, aching nose. Ol’ King Cole’s not as jolly of a soul as I thought because he just mashed his knee into my face.

“Oh… Sorry. Were you still talking?” He leans down and grabs me by the shoulder, clinging like those claw machine hooks, yanking me up to the surface and then letting me go and I’m fighting not to fall back down again. “So? Why are you such a jerk? Does it make you feel in control or something? Powerful?”

“Shut up.” My face hurts. I’m covering it with both hands, folded like I’m praying, but I stopped praying when my parents stopped sending me to Sunday school. “Just shut up. That’s why I don’t like you!” I drop one hand and hold it between us as a shield in case he tries to punch me. “You don’t know anything and you come here acting like you’re the king of the merry fucking world with your merry fucking soul!”

I want him to get mad… I want him to get seething mad and punch me again so I can see cartoon stars with spinning edges that leave behind glitter smears so I don’t have to look at the bright white stars of his eyes that scream across his irises every time a car’s headlights stream over them. I want him to hit me so I can hit him back and back and back until Jazzy-girl or Owen comes over and pulls us apart as I heave and sweat and glare.

But he smiles. He smiles at me, a Cheshire grin and a bat of speared eyelashes. “I feel sorry for you, Ray,” he tells me as if he’s letting me in on a secret…as if I should care about how he thinks and feels. “Being really negative…pushing people away…it’s kind of sad… Do you want to push me away, Ray? Hmm?”

I clench my teeth and bite my bottom lip. He knows nothing. He’s ruining my peaceful summer nights. I want to push him away, he's right, but I want to do it physically and maybe I'll push him toward the highway where the cars go so fast, fast, fast and wouldn't stop for a boy in a leather jacket.

"Fuck you," I grumble, taking my other hand from my face and tucking my arms into my shirt, burrowing in with my nose and mouth covered.

He smiles again and leans forward, grabbing me by my shoulders and yanking me till I'm stepping on his worn-out tennis shoe toes and staring up into those sky eyes. He dips close, nose next to mine, eyes wide, wide, and screaming and I shut my own to feel him lean forward. Something tugs at my eyelashes and I try not to laugh as I try not to cry. Butterfly kisses. I got just got butterfly kisses from Ol' King Cole, with his sunglasses at night jabbing me from his pocket.

With a whimper, I pull away and stare at him with that bashful awkwardness you get after weird kisses or at least drunken make-out sessions in bedrooms of people you don't even know. "Stop..." I say and my voice shakes more than I want it to. "You have...your...Josh, you...sick fuck..."

Another goddamned sincere, warmer than sunshine smile. "Josh and I are just friends... Don't be so hostile all the time, Ray. I think you could be a good person if you just let yourself." He turns, walks away, leaves me angry and sad and confused. I wait a moment, letting the highway tell me it's okay, you're okay, I'm okay, before I hobble back to the group, arms still in my shirt.

-

My life is dark moonless nights that make me feel lost and afraid of those creeping, stretching shadows I always see from the corners of my eyes.

Owen left. I close my eyes and he's not around. He's not there, playing his stupid cassettes that I've gotten so used to in his rumbling lullaby truck. He's not getting PreTeen to buy him food. He just left one day, got in his car with a suitcase filled with clothes and things he might've loved more than us and took off for the highway so now Jazzy-girl's curled up in the backseat of my car, crying and shaking, not singing or dancing. I've tried to entice her out with energy drinks and Skittles and candy necklaces, but she ignores me, shaking her head and hiding behind her tangled, wet hair.

"I can't I can't I can't," is all that she'll say and she screams when I touch her, so now I'm sitting on my trunk, staring out at the highway and wondering where Owen went and why he didn't tell Jazzy-girl or me that he was going.

I'm lost and sad and wanting to smoke so badly that my fingers tingle. I can hear Jazzy-girl's sobs and there are no classics to cover them up. I see a shape coming toward us and I can't help getting that thrilled up Christmas-morning-hope that it's Owen and the news we heard from Jeff the gas station guy. But as it gets closer, I see he's not wide-shouldered enough. PreTeen maybe. I wonder if he'll be sad. He never seemed to mind doing things for Owen and I think he looked up to him in a brotherly kind of way because whenever I got too mean Owen'd step in. But it's too tall for PreTeen and it's Cole.

I slide off my trunk and walk around to the side of the car, crouching down beside it as a wall between Cole and me. I don't want to look at him and I don't want to talk to him, but he looks down at me suddenly from around the headlights, smiling softly.

"Anyone home?" he asks and I rapidly shake my head no, feeling my brain rattling around till I expect blood and brain chunks to stream from my nose and drip down into the back of my throat and roll from my lips. "What's going on...? What's Jazz doing back there...?"

"Owen left," I mumble. The words sting and make my tongue swell so big I think I might choke on it. I open my mouth and stick it out to taste the asphalt air.

"Where?"

"Away..."

He stares for a long time, still crouched beside the front wheel of the car and I still don't like him much but don't hate him anymore since I'm getting used to him...but even so I wouldn't mind getting in the car and knock him over right now. "I'm sorry, Ray," he tells me. "I'm sure he'll be back."

"He left us. Jazzy-girl won't stop crying..." But I won't cry because I don't cry but the heat is making my eyes hurt. They water. I'm not crying.

"I'm sure everything'll be okay." He reaches out and his hand falls on mine. I stare at it and heave a loud sigh as I turn my hand over and let my fingers curl around his.

-

My life is autumn with everything crashing down around me like falling leaves. Summer's coming to an end and Jazzy-girl's gone to live with her dad because she's pregnant with Owen's baby and she couldn't she couldn't she couldn't do anything else without him.

I wonder how it happened...how I missed so much. I realize that nights when he drove her home must've ended differently than I thought. No good-byes at the curb but good morning's beside each other. As I slept between them those chaste kisses weren't as chaste as I thought and as I tagged along in my car I'm sure they wish I wasn't around.

I'm in the parking lot alone, plugging my nose because it smells like the coolness of autumn nights that are sweeping in closer and closer every night. My car putters and I have the country station playing on the radio because it's far from Owen and Jazzy-girl always hated it. I almost even wish PreTeen were here just so I have someone to talk to, but no one comes.

The highway's too loud tonight and the flickering light above my car finally goes out. Halfway through the night I get cold and just as I'm about to scream, about to get into my hand-me-down-and-down-and-down and drive it the wrong way on the highway or down-and-down-and-down a cliff, there's something warm at my side and I jump to see Ol' King Cole sitting beside me, a cup of coffee in his hands. He hands it to me, the white Styrofoam shrieking out from the dark night around us and I sip from it, my nose running.

"Did I push them away?" I ask and my teeth chatter and rattle, trying to block out my doubts. "You were right. I push people away. Did I do it to them?"

He shakes his head. "Sometimes people just need to leave..." he tells me, standing up and walking till he's standing in front of me between my knees. He takes off his leather jacket and drapes it over my shoulder, cinnamon and cigarettes sliding up my nose and warming me immediately.

"What about you?" I don't think I hate him anymore and the thought of someone else leaving makes my head spin. "Will you leave me too?"

"Shh..." He leans forward. Butterfly kiss, Eskimo kiss, warm nose against cold, and then soft kiss to the lips that taste of cigarettes and coffee and I am crying, crying, crying as I lean forward and put my forehead on his shoulder and my arms on his shoulder-blades. He holds me back, whispering to me but I don't know what he's saying and he's kissing my neck, my wet cheeks that leave star-tail-trails down to my lips that he kisses again. The coffee cup slips and hits the pavement and I can smell it strong and heady and I feel shaky, weak, submissive, calm, and laid back for the first time in a long time.

We're in my car and the country's playing, sad melancholic slurring. There are stars in Cole's eyes, stars in his eyes, and I make a wish, a wish, a wish. I grip onto Cole so tightly I think he might snap in half and he still whispers and kisses until I feel like I will never be alone again.

But morning comes and my car's quiet, out of gas. Sometime in the middle of the night Cole and I shed all our clothes and the butterfly kisses spread all over my body and I let him get closer to me than I've let anyone in the past few years. I couldn't remember ever hating him and I almost wanted to thank WannabeVampire for bringing over her cousin.

But now Cole's pulling on his clothes and is smoking a cigarette as he slides from my car, crumpled and tired with dark shadows under his eyes. I follow him, jerking on my clothes and feeling good but embarrassed.

"Ray." He says my name but he doesn't look at me. I touch his shoulder but he stiffens. "Ray, I have to go back home tomorrow."

"That's...that's okay. When we get gas for my car I can drive you." I know what he means...but I block it out. He doesn't mean it, he's joking, he's a jerk remember?

"I mean to my house... Not at my aunt and uncle's..."

Block it out he doesn't mean it he's a jerk he doesn't mean it.

"I'll come back and visit on weekends, okay? And during breaks... And next summer..."

Block it out he doesn't mean it he's a jerk he doesn't mean it.

"Ray, where are you going? Stop it! Just listen to me!"

He's leaving me he used me he made me take my guard down and now he's leaving me. I need Owen and Jazzy-girl and Bon Jovi and Bauhaus but not Corey Hart - never Corey Hart.

I'm at home and my parents are fighting, screaming, yelling. Dad's facing the TV. "DO YOU EVER SHUT UP? DO YOU?" and mom's cleaning the stove, sweating, crying, "YOU DON'T EVER TRY TO UNDERSTAND ME!" and so I join in with, "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!" before crawling up to my room and hiding out on the porch as the house settles, finally silent.

My car drives up later when my eyes are nearly swollen shut with tears and fears that made me flinch and wince. As I'm wondering how I managed to become this sniveling piece of shit, Cole steps out of my car, WannabeVampire in the backseat, staring out at me. I flip her off and climb into my room. I hear Ol' King Cole yelling my name and then my mother yelling at him to stop yelling and I jump when there's a knock on my door.

It opens with a creaking warning and I glare as Ol' King Cole walks into my room, looking tired and sorry and I hate him again and again and again.

"I'm sorry..." he whispers. "I'm sorry, Ray."

I glare and try not to listen because I don't want to hear apologies that I'm not ready to accept.

"I don't want to leave...but I have to. I'm sorry... I love you." I don't answer but I hurt all over as my head pounds and my heart pounds and my joints ache and burn. Lovelovelove's just an overused word.

I turn around finally and stare at him, floating in his midnight eyes. "Summer's over..."

---

My life is winter...cold and dark and biting. Nights come soon and stretch on forever, silent and dreary spent curled up in my bed as I grapple for warmth. It smells of snow that makes my nose hurt and burn and sometimes bleed and I'm alone, alone, alone...

Mom and dad have stopped yelling but they talk of the D word. Divorcedistrustdiseasedrelationship. Jazzy-girl calls me sometimes, sounding tired and she holds the phone to her belly so I can talk to her baby that she wants to name after me. No one's heard from Owen and PreTeen still follows me around sometimes at school, looking as lost and afraid as I feel but am too afraid to show.

Now I sit at my window, sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette with a blanket draped around my shoulders. The phone rings beside me and I wait, wait, wait then slowly pick it up, pressing it to my ear and wanting so badly to hear Jazzy-girl's singing voice It's my life, it's now or never. I ain't gonna live forever. But when I pick it up it's not a clear, bell voice singing, but a low, gravelly "hello."

"Hey..." I whisper, hugging the blanket around me tighter. "How've you been? It's been three days since you last called, Cole..."

It might be winter but at least spring's not too far away.

End!

Rushed it at the end. Ray kind of melted into gooey nothingness. -- And I normally hate when people mention bands without needing to...but I did it...

Anyway.

Happy summer vacation and thanks for reading. :D