Author's Note: I was tempted to use MonochromeLovers' collaboration with me on this one as my actual chapter. Thanks again. September 7, 2008.

update: Uh. Iris rules. September 23, 2008.

Nine

"Passport!" I spat as I sat up in bed.

I looked around my room, trying to locate the sounds of demonic, slow-talking, skipping music I was hearing, and I realized that I left Sparkle Horse on all evening. I popped open the tray. The belly of the CD looked like an oil puddle after the rain. Cutty had bought me this CD back in grade school and here it was, totally ruined. I waddled toward my study desk and placed it face down before I snatched at my stomach. It felt like an anvil was ready to plummet past my cervix and rip out my vagina. I went to the bathroom and realized I was just on my period. I always say weird things like "passport" during my period and I have fucked up dreams. I think I might have woken up from a semi-lucid dream where I was a baby in a stroller ready to be mauled by a bear or something, and the bear had some odd resemblance to that New Years' Chinese dragon thingy on sticks.

I gargled and gave myself eyes in the mirror for about half an hour, and I kept stretching out the corners of my eyes to look more Asian and less tired. Eventually I got tired of doing this and went to check my cell phone to see if Jesse might've left me a creepy message. I wanted one even though I knew I didn't really want one.

I was both relieved and disappointed that there wasn't any religious sermonizing in my messages, but there were three from Iris asking if I wanted to go out, but I was too lazy to call and let him know what my other plans were for the day.

I tried calling Cutty about it but he didn't pick up. Fag.

Oh, well. He'd get over it and come riding on his bike in the middle of the night to wherever I was. He's always like that. I left him a message letting him know that he was a complete fagmo and that I didn't know when Iris was going to pick me up and then went downstairs. I poured myself some Cocoa Krispies and went into the living room and saw that Art wasn't there being slow and creepy. He was usually there in the mornings, oversleeping with the television on.

I was too lazy to see if he was in his room and instead, I sat in his spot and turned on the tube and watched two hours of Emeril making some red bean soup and a Peacemaker and some kind of flat cake before I got angry and decided to call Cutty again. This time it didn't ring and it went straight to his voice mail. I didn't leave a message. Emeril yelled "Bam!" and I changed the channel five times, two brothers fighting because one caught the other practicing ballet moves in the cellar, that one commercial with the old English dude holding a huge red umbrella, some people backstabbing each other for money, Jerry Springer pacifying an irate midget, Emeril again.

I left the TV on and painstakingly made it up to my room, holding my stomach, and I flopped into the blue beanbag. I closed my eyes.

It was Sophomore year, I think, the last day before summer vacation, and Cutty and I were chosen for flag duty because the person responsible for it (Pimple-faced Peter) was suspended from school for indecent exposure. I mean, he showed his tater and tots to one of the Chemistry teachers. After we crumpled the flag together, we headed for the store room, and I tossed the flag on the shelf when, suddenly, Cutty closed the door.

I started and turned around, shoving the flag more and more into the shelf, as if to get rid of the evidence. "Oh, shit. Is Principle Spits out there?"

"No," he smiled, leaning against the door. Small, gentle light came in through the display window.

I smacked him in the arm. "You ass. Why'd you close the door like that then?"

His smile widened as he caught my hand and held it in his, dry and slender.

I naturally held onto it. We used to do things like that back then: hold hands, cuddle, sleep in the same bed together in the evenings or on the couch together in the afternoons, mud-wrestle.

"I'm going to Vegas again this summer, 'Rene."

He used to call me 'Rene all the time.

I swung his hand and swiveled back and forth. "All right! Where're we going to stay this time?" I said that because we used to go everywhere together, especially on summer trips. We still do, it's just that "everywhere" is now a little less than what "everywhere" was back then.

Cutty's smile fell. "You can't come."

I let go of his hand. "Okay. Whatever! When you get back, you're gonna buy me so much ice cream this summer, you'll become a credit to your race!"

Now Cutty started to frown, and I automatically began to frown, too.

"I'm going to be staying in my uncle's condo... all summer."

I retreated into the darkness and bumped into a box full of spare hoses. He followed me there and stood right in front of me.

"All summer?"

He held onto my hands and tugged at me a little. His small, gentle smile hummed so close against my cheek that it warmed my skin. I almost closed my eyes. I looked at his shoulder so I didn't have to look into his eyes.

"I mean, if you don't want me to go with my uncle, we could do a lot of things over the summer. It'll be cool."

I frowned harder.

"Do you want me to stay?"

I heaved a hard, angry sigh and shoved him into the rack behind him. Balls exploded and bounced all over the storage room.

Cutty sputtered a laugh.

"Fuck you, dude, do whatever you want!" I spat and ran the hell out of there, bursting through the door right in time for Lucy, the resident gossip (responsible for the pedophilic rumors about Pimple-faced Peter and rumors about Cutty and I being together), to see and yell for everyone in the hall to hear:

"What happened, Irene? Did Cutty break up with you?"

I flipped her the bird even though she was being pretty sincere. I don't remember if I cried after that or not. All I remembered was that I was being a big baby about it and I decided to not be a baby about it and found things to do to pass the time, and I never answered my phone and I let Art answer the house phone and refused to speak to Cutty. He called everyday and tried writing a couple of letters ("I won a stuffed monkey for you. It's brown.") and I just ignored him and tried to have fun on my own. I decided I'd explore Piedmont, and the city after Piedmont, Hickers, and the city after that, Tottle. Talked to people everywhere I went, watched a lot of old movies, figured out that Scorsese and Herzog were among my all-time favorite directors, went around with Art and Iris. I took public transportation, biked, walked everywhere and by the time the summer was over, I wasn't super chubby anymore.

Cutty returned home few days before school. Said he didn't do much while he was there. I didn't know what the hell he meant by that, but that, more than anything, made me hate him a little.

I woke up to my cell phone singing me "Bended Knee" by Boyz II Men and after listening to it a little, I picked it up.

"Irene. Come out, now."

"All right. Hold on," I said, groping in the dark for my strawberry purse.

Eight, according to my alarm clock. I checked my phone for messages but found nothing from either Jesse or Cutty. I decided that Cutty could just go fuck himself or Miss KKK and that Jesse could pray the rosary with his mom or whatever and headed out the door in a sweater and my pink polka dot pajama pants and ratty white house shirt.

Iris popped open the passenger door.

Two of the Asians from last night were in the back seat and another car blasting loud hip-hop music revved its engine.

I made a face and sat down, slowly and carefully, before slamming the door. "All right, fags. Where to?"

The Asians sputtered some laughs and greeted me.

"We're going to get some back fat ramen and then go racing just outside of the city borders, right in Gordis Desert."

"Whoopty-do," I said dryly, and we sped off into the night.

-

"This ramen smells like rotten egg!" I announced and scarfed down all of mine and half the Paul look-alike's. The backfat was good. All jelly-like and thick and yum. It put me back into a good mood. It was like miracle soup. My period suddenly didn't feel like aliens were trying to rip out of my stomach and I was able to sit easy. Iris looked up at me from across the table with his cat-like green eyes. He slurped on his ramen, and I could've sworn he communicated something at me with his gaze.

I raised my eyebrows.

He went back to meekly eating his food.

All the Asians were talking about some game I wasn't familiar with and I thought it was pretty nerdy, but they're all good people. I wonder if Iris is hanging out with these people because they're not as hard to deal with. I remember his old set of friends (who looked a lot like him) and they were really into hanging out near museums and reading and chilling at home with music or going to parties. They spent a lot less money doing stuff and Iris was happy.

Well, he's always happy. I think.

He wrapped his arm around me as we headed back out.

"How come you didn't invite your girlfriend, Iris?" The ends of my polka dot pajama pants dragged along the sidewalk.

Iris looked into my eyes sweetly before he kissed me on the cheek. He hopped into the driver's seat, and away we went.

We were now in pitch black desert roads going at incredible speeds for no reason. I started to get that shitty feeling in my stomach. Iris was an impressive driver. Smooth, sleek, trustworthy. He practiced his drags and I kept slamming into the car door. Some weird German techno was playing and the Asians in the back were yelling in Chinese over the music, laughing about this and that.

"There's going to be a rally tonight," Iris said, his eyes focused on the road. "Some of my favorite racers from P-mont and Tebbo are going to be in. Ten thousand at stake."

"Sounds intense," I said, and felt stupid. I didn't know anything about cars and racing except for fast...

... and furious.

I expected a lot of hot racer guys like my brother to be there, but there weren't. Everyone gathered in a remote spot in the desert and there were a lot of old guys there with their black-framed glasses with new cars and hot girls, and a whole lot of pimple-faced nerds. Iris was explaining how the whole event was going to work, but I was watching this dude who looked like a sixty-year-old version of my history teacher sucking face with this young girl in a black skirt and I think I threw up in my mouth a little.

Soon, that guy from the grocery store popped up next to me talking to this really hot Asian chick.

Iris was in mid-sentence when I trotted over and outstretched my arms. "Tom!"

"Hey!" Tom looked over at me from his hot Asian porn star chick. It took him about a minute to recognize who I was before he wagged a finger. "Yeah, hey - Art's sister, right? You're hilarious." He turned to the Asian. "This is Art's sister, er,"

"Irene!"

"Irene. So. Is Art racing, too?"

The Asian goddess smiled her elegant, sophisticated Geisha smile as her Eastern voice flew into my ear canal.

"I rike you(r) hai(r)."

"Why, thank you. I did it myself." I primped my do and sported my pajama pants. "And Art's not racing, my cooler twin brother Iris is!"

Iris approached with his hands in his pockets. "You summoned? - Hey, Tom. Hey, Bernadette. It's nice to see you here tonight."

"Whoa! I didn't know Art was your brother, Iris!" Tom gave Iris a handshake.

"He's not," Iris smiled secretively.

Tom and Iris started talking about the old days and Katie's name popped up once but I really wasn't paying attention. Iris was racing even before he met these Asian nerds? I tried to hone in on the conversation but my mind kept blanking out. Tom started off with admonishing Iris for not telling him he had a twin sister. Then they looked at a couple of teenagers next to them, sort of young-looking. Iris apparently had been racing in secret since he was fifteen, using someone else's car. Tom was talking about his reflexes during "that one time against Borky" and how "ninja" they were. Iris continued smiling his secretive smile, looking off into the dusty distance as Bernadette watched him and nodded and smiled during the conversation as if she didn't understand a word they were saying.

Some hippy-looking dude got on a bull horn and called all the racers to assemble.

Tom clapped Iris on the shoulder before wrapping an arm around Bernadette.

"So, like, I guess I should wait here with the rest of the pervy old men bystanders," I said.

Iris took my hand. "I want you to come with me."

"In the car? While you race?"

"You don't trust me?" he asked, with a gleam in his eye.

He asked this the same way he asked me when we were kids and Iris had the brilliant idea of sneaking into Mrs. Palmer's house while it was open. He wanted to go up to her room and take out one of her dresses and smooth it against the bed like a creepy killer and get out of the house. I thought it was a great idea in theory but she had dogs and her husband had guns. 'You don't trust me?' Iris had asked, as if he were impervious to dog bites and bullets. 'I do,' I had said. And it turned out great. Mrs. Palmer moved away from our neighborhood, without her husband. Apparently, the dress that Iris laid out on the bed was her mother's dress, a red, pretty dress, and she had gone to a palm reader just a week before that and the palm reader announced that her mother would come back to haunt her or something like that.

I didn't say anything this time.

"Toby's my navigator. He usually comes in his own car - all right, there he is."

"Navigator?"

"Yeah, Tom's is Bernadette, did you catch everything I was explaining to you?"

"Um..." I paused, bringing a finger to my smugly cat grin. "Lalala!"

We got into the car and purred to our place in the line. Thirteen cars.

Ours was situated between an old guy with an old guy navigator and Paul look-alike's. Paul L.A. rode alone.

Engines revved.

I started to get a headache from all the noise. Toby rocked back and forth before he slid his seat all the way back and nearly crushed my knees. He didn't apologize. He was really quiet. He put on his seat belt and Iris and I did, too.

"... set. Go!"

Every car suddenly rocketed from their places; some engines roared straight into the dead of the night, and for a minute we all looked like we weren't moving because everyone was matched up with the other.

Toby and I watched the car beside us disappear quick.

Us and three other cars pulled ahead and were going straight down the dark, empty desert.

Toby barely spoke. Some navigator he turned out to be.

I looked beside us and Paul L.A. was getting ahead of us.

I saw Iris' face in the rear view mirror. Drowsy, impassive. He violently shifted gears, the engine roared, the car lurched forward, and Toby said something about being careful that Iris didn't misfire.

Iris nodded.

"It was a good idea to get the anti-roll bars attached," Toby said after Iris ninja'd in front of Paul look-alike's car.

"Yeah," Iris said. He throttled forward with another downshift. I didn't even realize that we were going up and down any hills.

"Remember. This angle left is also going right up the ramp."

"Yeah," Iris said. The car dragged as he made a smooth turn along the ramp, but not as strong as some of the cars behind him did, where their tail ends looked like they were running on separate wheels from their front ends. Iris' car moved as one, sleek unit, and started to rocket up the ramp. We made another sharp turn and wrapped around the side of the mountain.

Yellow reflectors were our only friends. Headlights behind us were small.

"Two point five miles, then we got another hair pin. Two lane convergence right after that. It's going to get pretty tight."

"Yeah," Iris said. He suddenly smiled. His eyes flashed at me, for an instant, the green in them glowing eerily along with his purple LCD lights that kept the driver's side perfectly lit.

Then, he looked away, quickly shifted gears, and the car screeched.

My seat belt choked me. The turn felt like it was going forever, and as I looked out the window, I saw impressions of shadows.

"We're pretty high up," Toby said noncommittally as Iris successfully completed the turn.

The headlights behind us had disappeared from view. I expected three sets of them to emerge once they snaked around the mountain, but when I turned and craned my neck behind me, there were only two sets of lights.

Now there was only one lane, and the mountain was becoming tricky and zig-zaggy.

"Time for adrenaline. The exit ramp's got a sharp turn," Toby said, and he suddenly popped in a CD.

"Vivaldi's Summer, if you don't mind," Iris rasped.

Toby flipped through the tracks and suddenly, quaintly intense ballroom music filled the car.

I furrowed my brow.

"Point five miles."

"Yeah," Iris said.

The two sets of headlights were picking up speed, and suddenly, I could see the frames of their cars. Paul look-alike's car rocketed past us.

"He's an idiot," Toby muttered, pushing up his black framed glasses. "Just coast. It's going to get messy."

"Yeah," Iris said, and the other car was pulling up beside us. It was Tom and Bernadette. They didn't look our way. They were about as stony as Iris and Toby were.

Iris violently shifted gears and boosted.

"What are you doing?"

"It's cool," Iris said, and suddenly, we were making a fast, sharp, hair pin, and the yellow reflecters were flashing by, and we cut off the Paul look-alike who veered out of control, wobbling at first, then snaked until he crashed against the cement divider. Tom's car veered to a halt at a weird angle, and soon, their cars grew smaller and smaller.

"You crazy son of a bitch," Toby whispered. He didn't even look behind him.

"Yeah," Iris laughed a short laugh.

He rolled down the windows and Summer from Vivaldi's Four Seasons filled the night air with its violent, unruly buildup.

"Shouldn't you go back to see if your friend is okay?" I asked.

Iris didn't say anything. Toby didn't say anything.

I piped down after that, following the monotonous whizz of mountains and lights on the home stretch.

We made it to the finish line without much ado. Toby cut the music.

Iris stepped out, his Chucks crunching against gravel. I followed, fanning away the billowing dust. I pulled my sweater tighter around me. We were greeted by the hippy who was sitting with two old men and their group of women.

"How was it?" the hippy asked as one of the old men wrote up a check in the light of a camping lantern held up by one of the girls, guffawing and saying, "Bravo, bravo!"

"Seven-k, three-k split," Iris said.

"It's cool. I'm good for two," Toby clapped him on the shoulder.

The old man looked up.

"Seven-k, three-k," Iris said again.

The old man nodded and wrote up the second check.

"It was fine," Iris said to the hippy before he turned to me.

Toby sniffed and took his check, handing Iris the other. "Car Three spun out right by the offramp."

The hippy nodded before checking his wrist watch. "We expected a lot of damage for this one. Did you see Tom at all? There were a lot of bets on him."

"He stopped to help Three."

The other old man groaned.

"Stupid son of a bitch," the hippy said.

Iris stood beside me and we watched for the rest of the cars to come rolling in. I didn't even know I was shaking until Iris hugged me close and said I was.

"Oh," I said.

He's always brought me into these private, dangerous worlds. We've always managed to get out of them well enough, but why we got into them in the first place is something I can't answer.

Iris hugged me closer, and that secretive, distant smile returned.