[Fiction] The Miller Angle, Chapter 2

Tires hugged the road like two fingers running along a girl's breast.  Biff had the radio on low.  Yeah, this was in the old times.  Biff's crew would have had the lighthouse running, but it was a clear night, and they were a chillin for a spell anyway.  Biiff drove until the sun went down and he caught glimpses of stars when he dared take his eyes off the road.  He had a two day stubble and a growing need to take a shower.  His eyes were duller than usual, and drooping with fatigue, but he couldn't sleep.  He pulled his car into Wilson's tire garage.  Jason was there.

"What's up, boss?"

"I don't know."

"You get spotted or just felt like driving around aimlessly all night?"

Biff nodded.  "Got something in my head and I can't get it out."

"Something?"  Jason smiled.  "Or someone?"

Biff shook his head.

"You know girls are trouble."

"I know."

"You said that."

"I know."

"And then you slept with like five hundred of them."

"...I know."

The boys came over.  They were working on another car and arguing over the exact set of circumstances that required one to break up with a girl in person verses over the phone.  One of them had the, you know, audacity to suggest that sometimes you didn't even need to call.  Bullshit, but it was distracting.


Rewind.  Back to the sunset.  Change location to Watershed Drive.  Now we're on to Christine.


"Christine!  Fuck!"  That was her brother's polite way of telling her that someone was at the door.  He'd just left the door hanging open with the deliveryman on the porch.  The wrong kind of deliveryman.

Christine's maps usually came via the post, but this was an express carrier.  He was holding the familiar cardboard tube though.  Was it a ruse?  For a second she was worried that the police were about to storm in and blow in the windows and slam her face in the ground and scream in her hear that they were going to blow her fucking brains out if she moved.  But there was no one else in the driveway.  No cars, no vans, no swat team gearing up for a knockless warrant.  Just a guy in a uniform.

Christine signed for the package and realized it was too heavy.  She wanted to pry it open right then and see what was inside, but the watchful gaze of her mother was bearing down on her from the kitchen.  Every discussion with her was just more questions, more judging.  Christine dropped the package with the other cardboard tubes.

Later that night, she snuck down stairs while her family watched a gory horror film, the kind that was like porn but with death instead of sex.

Christine sat on her bed to open the package.  Above her head was a large pictures of jagged cliffs rising out of the surf on some far away beach.  At least, thats what they looked like a first.  Those cliffs were painted to resemble a girls legs and arms.  Such posters were completely unnaceptable in that house.  Christine had left it up just to see if her mother or brothers would ever realize what it was.  They never did.

Christine opened the package.  Indeed, it was no map, nor of any relation to her known hobbies.  It was a sword.  It was sharp.  There was a dirty, cloudy jewel at the bottom on the hilt.  Christine held it in her hands, admiring it for a second.  Who would send her a sword?  There was a note attached like a price tag.  In fact, it was a price tag, with this message written in ink:  "So that you can fight your own battles."  Oh.  Him.  Christine pictured Biff in her mind, squaring off against her taller, stronger brothers like a wildcat.

She closed her fist around the handle.  It felt good.  Surprising.  She never had an interest in swords.  She turned it over in her hands, contemplating what kind of hilt she could sew, and what colors to add, what it would go with.  What it would go with?  What, a dress?  She couldn't wear this in public.  Christine hid the sword under her bed.

Christine opened the window in her room.  It made her room cold, but the window was noisy and she had to do it while they were still watching the movie.  She poked her head outside and listened.  She couldn't hear anything--anything other than crickets.  When the movie ended, Christine was poised and ready.  She was waiting with one boot on the sil, staring at the patch of light on the ground that came from her mother's bedroom on the first floor.  The moment it went out she climbed and dropped.  The ground outside her mothers window was soft, and she pulled her legs in at the last second, making a nearly soundless landing.  She'd done this a hundred times, and was an expert at it.

She slid around the side of the house and took off in a soft run at the exact angle that would make her invisible to the bedroom windows of the remaining occupants of the house.  Then she was in the corn field.  Her corn field, regardless of whichever farmer was legally renting it.  There was a movie they had seen when they were kids, involving a monster in a corn field.  Her brothers had been kept wide awake with nightmares.  She could still remember her mother scolding her father, saying "why did you show them that?"  But she had no nightmares.  Any monster in this corn field would have to deal with her.

On the other side of the field, there was a tarp-covered pink sportbike hidden in a grove of trees.  The tarp itself had branches and leaves glued to it.  Christine's mother had often complained about the noise their "reckless neighbor's" motorcle made, having no idea it was actually Christine's.  It was only her mother's passive aggressiveness that prevented her from discovering that her neighboor had no sportbike, and in fact himself wondered why his neighboor let her daughter ride one in the middle of the night.

Christine uncovered the sportbike.  She had painted it herself, but you wouldn't think a professional had done it if you saw it.  She dug into a bag and stripped off her jeans.  A beam of moonlight glanced of a white thong as she hopped on one foot, trying to get the tight riding suit on.  She hoped the neighboor couldn't see her.

Christine started the bike and watched 45 seconds tick by on her watch.  Then she was off.




Back at the garage, Jason was interrupting Biff.

"No way," he said.

"Huh?  You were there," said Biff.

Jason didn't answer.  He and everyone else were all staring behind Biff.  Biff turned around.

Christine--sportbike Christine--was strolling in through the open garage doors, pink jumpsuit and all.  None of them had heard her approach.  The boys whistled.

"Hell if it ain't the pink ranger," said one of them.

She stopped in front of Biff.  "You sure do a lot to get a girl's attention.  I don't think I ever gave you my home address."

"I don't think you've ever said more than five words to me."

"I was probably too busy rolling my eyes."

Biff grinned.  "Is that what you do inside that helmet?"

"Well I also make faces."

Someone burst out laughing.

"What kind of faces."

"Oh, you know...happy faces...sad faces...boys-are-dumb faces...boys-are-dumb-cause-they-think-driving-fast-impresses-girls faces, boys-are-ridiculous-and-try-to-hard-faces."

"So I guess you didn't like my sword."

"No, I liked your sword very much."

Now everyone burst out laughing.  Everyone but Biff and Christine.

Biff grinned a little to widely.  "Maybe you'd like to-"  Christine slapped him.

"Don't be inappropriate with me.  I want the full deal.  Whatever you do for all the other girls.  And don't be dirty."

"What other girls?"

"Listen.  I know you're a whore.  But I understand.  You're disadvantaged that way, because you're a boy."

Biff was speechless.

"Are you going to take me out or what?" asked Christine.

"What, now?"

"This is your one chance kiddo.  I turn into a pumpkin by sunrise."

Biff stuck his elbow out.  "Right this way, m'lady."

Christine took it.  "Much better.  Where are we going?"

"The backseat of my--hey you wanted the full treatment.  Ok the front seat.  My car."

Biff turned the key and they listened to the engine growl to life.  Then he pushed a button on the dashboard with a first aid icon on it.  The glove box opened in front of Christine, spilling out cold carbon dioxide gas from dry ice over her legs and exposing two chilled cans of mountain dew.  They clinked cans like they were wine glasses, and the adventure began.

Christine fiddled with the radio.

"What the fuck is that?" asked Biff.

"Your new favorite song."

I'm gonna call when you're alone
I'll be your angel on the phone
I'm gonna save you tonight
The way you're barely getting on
All you gotta do is listen to my song

"This isn't conducive to my driving."

"Like you need encouragement to drive fast."

"You're one to talk.  I need to haul ass just to keep up with you."

Christine looked out the window and smiled.