Southampton Spectacular Read online

  SOUTHAMPTON

  SPECTACULAR

  M. C. SOUTTER

  Copyright © 2011 M. C. Soutter

  Also by M. C. Soutter

  Charcot’s Genius

  Undetectable

  this is for my parents

  Earlier

  One night in late July, when Devon Hall was just fourteen years old, she abandoned her friends on the side of the road, seduced a group of older boys, and stole a car. But all in the nicest possible way.

  She and Florin and Nina were on their bicycles, riding back from the movies. They were on First Neck Lane, which, like most of the roads in Southampton, was wide, well-maintained, and pitch-black at night. Southampton folks did not like streetlights outside of the town proper; they ruined the scenery.

  The girls had gone to see the early showing of the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which had not been nearly as good as they had hoped. The movie had been nearly three hours long, and afterward the girls had taken their time strolling down the brightly lit walkway outside the main street theater, stopping into the Haagen-Dazs shop next door for ice cream, and sitting on one of the green wooden benches outside. The air was warm and bug-free, and they had no responsibilities. Their parents knew where they were; Devon had called her parents to say they would be home in forty-five minutes.

  When they finally unlocked their bikes from the stand outside the theater and began the half-mile ride home (Florin and Nina were sleeping over at Devon’s that night, as was often the case), it was already past 11 PM. They pedaled away from the town center, and the light faded gradually to nothing. Riding single-file, they could not even see each other on the road.

  They did not hurry. They were veterans of this kind of night riding, since bikes were generally the best and easiest way to get around during the summer. Parents sometimes didn’t want to drive you where you needed to go, but a bike was always ready. A bike was very patient. And everyone lived within biking distance of the clubs, and of town, and of one another.

  There were almost no cars traveling along First Neck Lane at this hour; the few that did come along provided a welcome respite from the dark. The headlights created brief periods of incredible brightness, and then the girls were left in the red of receding taillights. Once a car was out of sight, it left a darkness that seemed even more total than before.

  The group of boys who had seen them outside the ice cream shop that night had tried calling out to them earlier. From their car, while the girls were sitting on the benches, eating their Haagen-Dazs. But Devon and her friends had ignored them. Or perhaps had not even heard them, since their shouts were cautious, and self-conscious in the public arena of that well-lit town center. In any case, shouting across a lane of active traffic wasn’t worth the effort.

  Stuck-up girls anyway, they thought.

  But when they caught up to them on First Neck Lane, these five boys in their rumbling, smoke-belching car felt suddenly much more bold. Now they would have relative privacy. Time to work.

  Devon saw the light of an approaching car on Florin’s back, and on Florin’s pedal reflectors, and she wondered at first why the shadows created by these headlights were moving so much more slowly than the others.

  In another moment, the car had pulled up alongside them.

  “Look who it is,” called the boy in the front passenger seat, as if greeting an old friend. He was wearing a smudged white tank top and a hat pulled down low, so that it was difficult for Devon to see his face. All of the boys were wearing their hats this way. “The princess and friends,” the boy said. They were all 18 and 19, and the car they were riding in was an old convertible with a cheap custom paint job. There were three of them crammed into the back. The car’s engine was shuddering, as though the driver didn’t quite know how to manage it at slow speeds.

  “Just keep going,” Devon said firmly, in case either Nina or Florin were too distracted to concentrate on pedaling. “They’re drunk.”

  “That’s no problem,” called one of the boys in the backseat, in a tone of voice that said he was glad to be found out. The other boys laughed as if he had said something very clever. They were elated; at least Devon had acknowledged their existence. “Drunk is good,” the boy in the back seat went on. “Drunk is just right. You should try it. Loosen you up. For later.”

  More howls of approval, louder now.

  Devon rolled her eyes and said nothing.

  “You want to take a ride with us?” said the boy in the front passenger seat, with a confidence that was growing.

  The driver joined in. “That sounds good,” he said, and he leaned over to rattle the shoulder of his passenger encouragingly, as if the suggestion of Devon getting in the car had been a small stroke of genius.

  But the driver was not concentrating. As he leaned over to congratulate his friend, he was careless with the hand that still held the wheel; suddenly the car was veering straight at Devon. Like a cat, she sprang off her bike, over the large gutter that ran the length of First Neck Lane, and onto the grassy side of the road. The boys shouted at their driver in alarm as the car’s right wheel rolled lazily over Devon’s bike frame with a crunch, then down into the gutter and up against the high curb. The boy behind the wheel finally managed to snap out of his shock and step on the break, but by then the car’s engine had stalled out.

  The engine pinged and ticked at them in the silence.

  “Nice,” one of the boys in the back seat said, very quietly. All five were turned toward Devon now, against their will. Under their low caps, their expressions were pained. If they could have twisted around in their seats without seeming foolish, they would have. None of them looked at her.

  They wished they could speed away into the night.

  “Holy shit,” said Nina and Florin together, as if suddenly realizing how close their friend had just come to being seriously injured. “Nice jump,” Florin added.

  The boy in the front passenger seat seemed to agree. He raised his eyebrows a fraction of an inch and gave a small, grudging nod.

  Devon took a deep breath, let it out, and shook her head slowly. She did not look scared. Or even particularly upset. The driver of the car stole a glance at her, glad for the opportunity to see this girl so close, and lit up like this, with the headlights directly on her. She was glaring at them as if she couldn’t believe, could not believe that yet another group of drunk teenagers had run over her bike. As if this happened to her every Saturday night. As if she were regularly forced to leap clear of randy young men and their banged up cars, like a rich governor trying to walk through a shanty town, set upon by vagrant children and their prying hands. She looked tired of it all.

  She probably has a collection of old bicycles in her garage, the driver thought. For drunk guys to run over. Replaces them once a week.

  Fourteen-year-old Devon Hall ran a hand through her shoulder-length, dark brown hair, and she seemed to make a decision. “Florin, Nina, put down your bikes and come over here for a minute, please.”

  They came and stood next to her on the grass, and they waited. The boys waited, too. As if hoping for lenient treatment from an angry parent.

  “Florin, please read that license plate out loud.”

  “New York, 398K-442D.”

  “Great. Nina, you too, please.”

  Nina read out the same information, and then Devon asked them both to repeat it. When that was done, she took another slow breath. “Can you both remember that number?”

  They studied the plate for another moment, then nodded at her. The boys began swearing under their breath. They didn’t like where this was going.

  “Excellent,” Devon said. “Now get back on your bikes and get back to my house, and let my parents know I
’ll be back in about fifteen minutes.” She hopped off the grass and onto the road, and she walked toward the driver’s door.

  “Fifteen minutes?” Nina said. She hesitated. “And you’re going… where?”

  “I’m driving these idiots home,” Devon said. She flipped her hand impatiently at the driver. “Shove over,” she said. “Cozy up with your friend there. You’re all going to get yourselves killed.”

  The driver gave her a protesting look. “You can’t drive this car,” he said, not sounding very sure of himself.

  “You can’t,” Devon corrected him. “And if you don’t get out of that seat right now, my friends and I are going to call in a DUI with attempted vehicular assault on a minor.”

  The driver’s face fell. The boys in the back looked nauseated. The one in the passenger seat turned away. These rich kids with their lawyer parents, they all thought to themselves. It’s not fair.

  Looking beaten, the driver climbed slowly over the gearshift and wormed his way onto the edge of the passenger seat next to his friend. The two of them now looked very uncomfortable. Physically and emotionally. “It’s a stick,” the driver noted lamely, hoping this might slow Devon down.

  “No, it’s not,” she said, climbing in and closing the door behind her. “It’s a standard four-on-the-floor with a Porsche-type cone synchronizer.” She glanced at him with something that looked like pity. “And you’re killing it.”

  Lawyer parents who also restore old cars in their spare time, the boys corrected themselves. Son of a bitch.

  “He’s a pilot, not a mechanic,” Devon said, as if reading their minds. “But close enough. And my mother’s the lawyer. Retired. Teaches grade school now.”

  Right. Got it. Thanks very much.

  “Devon,” Florin called out to her. “Are you sure about this?”

  Devon bent forward and found the lever without looking, adjusted the seat to a position where she could reach the pedals comfortably, and started the car. The engine responded with a grateful rumble, as if rejoicing at the touch, finally, of a practiced hand at the controls. “Back in fifteen minutes,” Devon repeated, when the engine had settled down to a reasonable volume. “And you’ve got the license plate, right? You guys are my insurance policy against these ruffians.”

  Nina and Florin nodded, and they each put a hand up to wave goodbye. They felt almost sorry for the boys in the car. Bigger, older, and drunk to boot, and yet Devon had now commandeered their car. Not only that, but she had also somehow managed to refer to them as “ruffians” in a way that stated quite clearly that they were nothing of the kind. That they were hapless, harmless imbeciles who needed to be driven home by a high-school freshman who was still two years away from getting her own license.

  Devon put the car into reverse and freed them from the gutter. “Okay,” she said, without turning to look at any of them. “Where are we going?”

  Her tone did not invite jokes, and they considered for a moment. Finally one of the boys in back spoke up. “Over past Toylsome,” he said. “On Wickapogue.” The others nodded in silent agreement. That was the right house to pick, the one where there would be no parents tonight. They could split up from there. “Just after the corn fields,” the boy finished.

  She nodded, put the car in gear, and pulled away with a roar. The three boys in the backseat fumbled hurriedly for their seat belts.

  They sped along First Neck Lane for a minute, Devon working her way through the car’s gears like a jockey feeling out a new mount. She downshifted and made a hard right onto Great Plains Road at the last minute, and the two boys in front had to grab the side of the car to avoid tumbling into the gearshift. She glanced at them, and then she patted the steering wheel as they roared off toward Cooper’s Neck. “Quicker than you look,” she said to the car, congratulating it. “Too bad about the paint job.”

  One of the boys sitting in the passenger seat glanced at her. “This isn’t the way to – ”

  “Quiet.”

  They sped along in the dark. Devon took a right onto Halsey Neck, then back onto Ox Pasture, and then all the way back toward First Neck. After another minute she seemed to have had enough. “Okay,” she said suddenly, when they came to the stop sign at the intersection of Ox Pasture and First Neck. “On our way.” She pulled back onto First Neck more slowly, and they headed off, past the Meadow Club and then the Beach Club, and then they were on the back roads, cruising with the Atlantic Ocean just to their right, on their way along Gin Lane. She kept the car at a safe cruising speed; the way here was narrower, with more turns.

  “Very good,” Devon said loudly, over the whistle of the wind passing over and through the convertible. “Let’s talk about some strategies for next time.”

  The boys stayed quiet. This girl was unpredictable, and it seemed best not to interrupt, even if no one knew what she was talking about.

  “I can’t speak for all girls,” Devon went on, “and I’m only fourteen, but if you want I can tell you what I’m looking for in a boy.”

  They waited, none of them daring to acknowledge how precious such information might be. These were not boys who had met with success in their romantic lives so far. They were brash and awkward and full of false confidence, and they had trouble figuring out what to do with a night off from work. They always tried to come off as tough – with the slouching posture and the suitably baggy, dirty clothes and the odd cigarette – but none of them would have minded an actual girlfriend one of these days. And sooner rather than later.

  “We didn’t know you were that young,” the former driver said quietly, trying for an air of superiority. And failing.

  “Right,” Devon said, without looking at him. “My friends and I are tooling along on ten-speeds, but you guys thought we were in our twenties.”

  “Well. Sixteen at least, I mean look at – ”

  She slammed on the breaks, and the three boys in back grunted in hurt surprise as their seat belts dug into them. The two in front next to Devon faired worse; they were both flung into the dashboard. They cursed and groaned as they returned to their seat, but Devon seemed not to notice. “Cut it out,” she said, her voice still light and easy. She could have been scolding a boyfriend for teasing her too much. For giving her too many flowers. “Okay?”

  She waited a beat.

  “Okay,” they all said.

  “Okay,” she said, and they were moving again. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

  All five of them, dutifully: “Yes.”

  “Good,” she said, and nodded. “First thing, very important: don’t be scary. Or weird. This business of coming up to me in a pack will never fly.” She shook her head. “It’s terrifying. Yes, you should have friends, and yes, you should let me see you with friends… but when you come up to me, do it on your own.” She glanced at the two boys next to her in the passenger seat, and she frowned with disapproval. “Look at the pair of you, with your tank tops and your biceps and your hats covering your eyes. It’s awful. I want to run away. And really, the hats are probably fine when you’re just with each other, but the way you’re wearing them is terrible. If you want to talk to me, I need to be able to see your eyes. Otherwise I end up thinking you’re either scared or hiding something, and neither one is any good. I want those eyes.”

  They tried to avoid actually nodding along; they didn’t want to seem too eager. And they didn’t touch their hats. But they were secretly pleased – deeply, deliciously, embarrassingly pleased – that she had mentioned their biceps. So they were taking careful mental notes.

  Eyes. All yours.

  “Next, be good at something,” Devon said. “It almost doesn’t matter what it is. Just be really, really good at it.”

  One of the boys in back couldn’t help himself. Maybe because his biceps hadn’t been explicitly noticed. “I’m the best card player here,” he blurted out.

  “Jackass,” said the two boys in front, at once. The others in back punched him. “Jackass,” they said to him. “Jack.
Ass.”

  Devon waited for them to settle down. They came to another stop sign, and she was able to stop and turn, and address them as a group. She spoke in a lower voice. “Finally,” she said, “you should be nice to me in some kind of risky, almost idiotic way.” She smiled for the first time. A sincere, hopeful smile. And suddenly they realized that they were not talking to a peer. That despite her confidence and her skill behind the wheel – not to mention her looks – this really was only a fourteen-year-old girl. A girl who was hoping for a boy who would someday, somehow find it within himself to act like something besides a moron around her.

  “Whatever you do, it should be something for me,” she added. “Something I’ll think is nice. Not something to impress your friends.”

  “We need an example,” the former driver said immediately. They were feeling almost good now. They were having a conversation, just chatting about something that was important to all parties involved. She was smiling at them, and she had noticed their muscles; they were practically friends. The other boys nodded, their hesitation gone. This was essential stuff. They didn’t want the lesson to end without examples. What was a good way – an impressive way – to be nice?

  But Devon shook her head sadly, and their hearts sank. She urged the car forward, and now she had to speak up again over the engine noise. “I can’t help you there,” she said. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  They knew she was right.

  But now they were thinking. Planning. They kept their hats pulled low and their neutral expressions firmly fixed on their faces, but their minds were racing. They would come up with something perfect. Some wonderful, thoughtful, ultra-risky gesture. They would find a girl their age, some girl who was in all respects exactly like this unbelievable chick behind the wheel, and they would bowl her over with an act of staggering niceness, and everything would work out.

  They drove on in silence for another few minutes, and there was peace in the car as each boy made his plans. They could hear the crash of the ocean waves to their right, just underneath the wind and the contented purring of the engine. When Devon pulled into the driveway after a few more directions from the boy in back, they were sorry the drive was over.