Bro Wars V: The Empire Drives Back

It was a total mess.

What had started out as an exciting game of chance quickly devolved into an excruciating, party-sized version of Russian roulette. The initial pairings had been scintillating. Sensational, even. Both Trissie and Wendy were taken within the next few rounds after mine and Brian’s. More than a few pairs had run off to get more privacy elsewhere in this endless mansion. Like a roulette wheel, the gendered odds were a clean fifty-fifty. But unlike a roulette wheel, not everyone played for both black and red.

Patience was starting to run thin.

With a good half of the crowd still remaining, and no signs of Anne-Marie or Moe, I make a judgment call.

“What’dyou say we shake things up?”

Collective relief comes in the form of feigned disappointment.

I give them my showman’s smile.

“Drown your attitude in your drinks, you pansies.”

And they laugh. Even Drake, who’d narrowly avoided kissing the ratty shortstop he’d obliterated in beer pong in favor of the notoriously shy brunette that won Southwest Elm’s bid for student body president. But Brian and I have them all right where we want them. This game might be off our home field with no benchwarmers, but there’s no one a teenager trusts more than someone who can throw a good party. And if we’ve made the night so far, there’s still hope for part C of our plan.

I clear my throat, and reach into my pocket.

Brandishing my car keys, I ask: “You ever heard of truck chicken?”

The crowd doesn’t believe my words until I’m clambering into the cabin of my dad’s rickety red truck. Stares abound as I explain the rules—which are as simple as they are insane:

Two sides barrel at each other in vehicles along the big garden lane by the pool. The coward turns away and loses. The braver one stays and wins.

“Sounds dumb,” Drake remarks. “My dad just let me get a new Mercedes, bro. I’m not wasting it on this shit.”

“That’s fine,” I reply. “You don’t have to use your own car.”

All eyes turn to the two-story obsidian monster that pulls onto the gravel before them with a thunderous crunch. A freckled hand gives a thumbs up out the driver side window, and a fiery red afro glints through the purple tint of the windshield.

Brian calls out. “You ready, Og-dog?”

I give a two-handed thumbs-up.

“Bro,” Drake says, coming up to my driver-side window. “You guys aren’t really doing this, right?”

“You hear that, fellas?” I ask aloud. “Sounds like someone doesn’t wanna have any fun tonight!”

Boys and girls alike swarm us with buzzedly-wavering boos.

Drake clenches his teeth as he stares at me, but his eyes are soft with—intimidation?

“Well, you heard the folks.” I start rolling up the window. “See you on the other side, pretty boy.”

I prepare to leave the emasculated leader of the jocks in my exhaust, but there comes a knock on my window. Drake’s still there, but he’s looking just a tad braver.

“I’m coming with,” he announces, with his full chest.

Our peers, “Ooh!” affirmatively. Following their leader, a few brave volunteers sidle up to pile into our respective vehicles. And once each respective cabin has enough musk and testosterone to fuel an oil rig, Brian and I set off for our respective jousting positions. My opponent’s steed rests beneath an ornate shed that looks like a mausoleum. To my right is a hedge row, above which rises an imposing verdant facade of trimmed horses and armored riders. To my left is the glass wall of the olympic-sized pool beside Drake’s ridiculous house.

There aren’t more than two car-lengths of breathing room in either direction. And with the sheer size of our vehicles, the path ahead is little more than a blue and green tunnel. I clear my throat, and pull on the collar of my hand-me-down tight, designer jacket. Teddy walks out into the middle of the concourse, readying a banner bearing the Drakkenson family’s orange and black checkered coat of arms. Both her attire and prop are strangely appropriate for what’s about to go down.

I feel Drake’s eyes boring into the right side of my head. Glancing over to the passenger seat, I find him oscillating between confident breaths and ragged exhales. Knowing there’s no way in hell he ever could be, I ask:

“You good, man?”

He nods. Slowly.

“Yeah, bro.”

The three freshmen sandwiched into my backseat watch us with transfixed expressions, ducking their heads below the wire-frame rendition of that one poker-playing dog painting that takes up the truck’s rear storage. I realize only now that perhaps I should’ve unloaded some of the cargo before undertaking this ridiculous mission. So I offer:

“You kids want out?”

The leftmost shakes his head. The middle one is still. And the one on the right nods.

“Last chance,” I say, as my grip tightens on the wheel.

I unlock the doors. And the rightmost freshman books it out of the backrow. The middle one follows suit, and then so does the left one.

“Just the two of us then,” I exclaim.

The doors seal our fates with a final click. Brian’s truck looms in the distance, its height surreal like a fata morgana on a horizon’s tidal wave.

“Bro,” Drake says.

My eyes are on the road. “Yeah?”

“Were you always like this?”

“What do you mean?”

“So-” he cuts himself off.

Alpha? Macho? Cool?

“You’re like full crazy,” Drake concludes.

I look him dead in the eyes, rev the engine, and say:

“Nah. Only half.”

And the checkered flag goes up.

Our two cars soar like the Drakensson family dragon atop its black-and-orange field. My dad’s truck is an older model—like before I was born older— so the extra time it takes me to accelerate gives me plenty of chances to regret my life’s choices. At first, I thought it was good that I had refrained from drinking anything for the entire night so far. But total sobriety has a way of preserving your higher reasoning. And, as the blue-green tunnel starts to blur around the cabin, I can only wonder:

Am I really doing this?

Is Drake really potentially worth my life? Will I never see Anne-Marie again just because of some stupid pissing contest? Brian and I didn’t exactly have the chance to rehearse this part, either—a single mistake might have cost us more than just half my dad’s mortgage in car repairs. But I see Drake’s eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. And their shrunken, steel-blue irises awaken some kind of beastly instinct in me.

Brian’s truck crosses the midpoint of the half-mile well ahead of me.

It’s my trusty rust-brown ass up against his gleaming black stallion. The former is half the size of the latter and would probably crumple under its hooves without leaving a scratch. But I know the ins and outs of my crappy truck—from the way the wheels get surprisingly slippery past the five-o-clock turn position to the exact amount of force needed to stop it in its tracks on an icy road while carrying an extra six-hundred pounds of granite and rebar.

If there’s one person that can pull off a miraculous maneuver in this hunk of junk, it’s the guy whose love for his dad’s car lasted longer than his dad’s marriage. Our engines roar on. Mine chuckling, his growling. The mingling of their sounds creates a frightful constructive interference as I draw near enough to see the glint of red afro in the driver’s seat. Surely, Brian’s going to stick to the plan, right?

I don’t mind losing. In fact, I took the L for both wood-swords and spin-the-bottle. I was all meant to boost my credibility with the jocks, that I would suffer from my own ideas for their amusement. With little more than ten car lengths between us, my hand shoots for the clutch. I’m going to turn off in six, five, four,…

I can see Brian’s face apparate through his window. He has that placid cow’s stare on him, meaning I’ve never seen the guy more focused save for the time he double-dosed his Ritalin. We’re going at seventy miles an hour apiece, and there’s only five car lengths left. I might just bite through my tongue.

Four, three, two..

I pull the clutch, push the brakes, and start to steer away.

Two, one. I veer the wheel left-

Only for a hand to grab onto it and jerk it back to the right.

In exactly one split second, my eyes widen to soak in everything around me. From the absolute, pants-shitting terror in Drake’s eyes as he’s grabbing my wrists to the swing of Brian’s massive shoulders as he throws himself into his steering wheel. I smell the singed popcorn butter of gasoline and hear the banshee screech of tires. My little red hood crawls in half-time toward the undercarriage of Brian’s shadowy beast.

Is this it?

I expect my life to flash before my eyes. For the light to find me. But reality is as disappointing as a three hour movie that ends with a to-be-continued. As if time lurches forwards to make up for how much its slowed, I find myself having jumped into the future. I’m shooting off straight down the blue-green tunnel, my tinnitus flaring up with each of Drake’s piercing cries.

And the road ahead is empty.

Snapped awake by a sickeningly loud crunch at my rear, my legs jump into motion. I kick the breaks hard enough that I instantly feel myself sprain my ankle. We lurch to a screeching stop not ten feet short of the marble white mausoleum that Brian started in front of. My senses come to me like a brick to the head, and I rip off my seatbelt. I leap from my truck and scream:

“Brian!”