"Bobby's Girl"

“You can do that?” I ask as I follow Bobby through the parking lot. “Hotwire a car?”

He doesn’t look back. “...well, no. But we just gotta find a running car and we’ll be in business. Maybe we’ll find a few kids who couldn’t wait for Makeout Point and are, heh, parking here.”

Not sure what he means, but it don’t matter, since we find a running pickup truck at the back of the lot, its headlights shining out into the fields and trees and neighborhoods surrounding the stadium.

I stop him. “Bobby Wood, you’d really hijack a truck for me? Wouldn’t that get you in trouble?”

“I’m sticking it to the Man!” Bobby answers. “One day, I just know this for sure, we’re all gonna wake up from our suburban sleep and realize we oughtta make the world a better place. You can feel the wind coming. I bet the Sixties will be one hell of a decade! And I hope to spend them with you, Mary Lou.”

I can't help but look away. “Hehe…let’s get a chocolate shake first, hehe…”

Bobby sends me to the passenger side while he opens the driver door on the unsuspecting victim. “Sorry, but aliens are after us, so we gotta…Connie?”

Yes, head cheerleader Connie is sitting in the driver’s seat, sniffling, holding her knees. She glares. “Bobby, the hell you doing? This is my father’s truck-”

“No time!” Bobby says, tossing her in the backseat. Connie cries out, then she deflates entirely when she sees me enter the passenger seat.

“Mary Lou Sunday!” she exhales, sobbing. “You ruined everything! The announcer had Brad make a speech after the game, and he dedicated the win to…to…Susan! Oh, Brad, how I love you, I just couldn’t, I went back here to cry the night away, ‘cuz Mary Lou, you…you…”

Connie takes a big whiff of the new scent in the car. Her face goes as white as a ghost.

“No…no…DOPE FIENDS! MY DAD LET ME BORROW HIS CAR FOR JUST ONE NIGHT, AND NOW THERE ARE DOPE FIENDS IN HERE SMOKING THEIR DOPE!” She starts hyperventilating. “I can’t, I can’t, I wanna go to college, I can’t be around DOPE FIENDS-”

“Quiet!” Bobby orders. He twists around in the driver seat to face her. He pulls his fingers and thumbs up in a peculiar formation. “I learned this Oriental mental technique from the back of Super Science Monthly. Don’t make me use it on you!”

“DOPED UP YOUTH! Please don’t sell me your twisted drugs-”

“Alright, that does it!” Bobby raises his hand and starts chanting. “Scccccccchmmmmmm-bbobdaha-scccccccccccchmmmmmmmmmmmm-”

“Bobby!” I cry out. “Let’s get out of here.”

“You’re a lucky girl, Connie,” Bobby warns. “I was this close to putting your mind in a pretzel.”

When it becomes clear we’re not trying to sell her dope, Connie goes from hyperventilating to just sobbing.

Bobby peels out of there, the red pickup truck hitting the quiet streets of Salem Slot. Orange streetlights illuminate the way through suburbia, identically white-painted houses with autumn leaves swirl across the asphalt. It’d be quite idyllic, if it weren’t for the tail-finned black-colored cars that follow us out of the parking lot.

“We got company,” Bobby growls.

“What, you got more dopers for a dope session?”

“Connie! Bobby!” I say. “We gotta focus. Like - look, there’s a roadblock up ahead!”

Several concrete barriers block off the rest of the street. A few black cars idle behind it, smoke rising from cigarettes.

“Shoot, ‘course there’s barriers,” Bobby realizes. “It’s Halloween night. They don’t want trucks coming along and hitting the kids. But those aren’t cops at the roadblock, those are grays!”

Several suited men open their jackets and pull out Tommy Guns. I gasp and Bobby cuts the wheel right as they start firing; we rumble down a side street right as bullets slam into the truck bed.

“That’s my daddy’s truck!” Connie snarls at us.

I take one of Bobby’s funny cigarettes and toss it at Connie. “Take this and be quiet!”

“I’m not taking this! You ruined my love and stole my daddy’s truck-”

“MARY LOU SUNDAY!” a familiar voice yells out. In addition to the tailfin cars of the grays, several motorcycles peel out of an alleyway. “Sue was gonna be my date to Homecoming!” Rocket-Man screams at me. He and his gang of greasers weave in and out of the grays, all trying to catch up to our truck.

“Careful, Bobby!” I warn. “We’re heading into a crowded area.”

We’re in a well-lit street, at least, which reveals all the trick-or-treaters. It looks pretty neat - little girls and boys dressed up like monsters and ghosts, big sacks of candy in their hands, ushered by parents, or those tweens off on their own for the first time, a boy and a girl hand-in-hand, teenagers enjoying the last vestiges of youth, people just hanging out on the streets, music they’d later call oldies playing freshly from the radios on the porches…

Rocket-Man pulls up to the passenger side door. He tries to open it; Bobby can’t swerve away to the left, since there’s a flock of little girls dressed as pumpkins on the street nearby. The greasers gain on us, with the grays cruising steadily behind us all, content with pouncing once the greasers do their dirty work for them. Streetlights, kids enjoying the car chase spectacle, a big scarecrow, on a freshly-cut lawn-

“Sorry, Rocket-Man!” I kick open the passenger door. The impact makes Rocket-Man swerve, right onto the lawn, right into the big scarecrow. The motorcycle revs and whirs as they collide, and then suddenly the entire lawn explodes as fireworks apparently hidden inside the scarecrow go off. Then Rocket’s Man motorcycle explodes, and then apparently the military surplus grenades kept inside the house explodes, and then the new car in the driveway explodes, until the entire suburban plot is one big exploding fireball.

“I’m okay,” a soot-covered Rocket-Man mumbles as we leave the street behind. The greasers peel off to help their leader, while the explosions confuse the grays into a halt.

The commotion knocks me into the radio. “Newsflash - chaotic ending to the Salem Slot - Armitage football game tonight. Based on eyewitness testimony, an unknown agent, most likely of communistic origin, tried to sabotage the ending of the game in order to strike a blow against one of America’s finest institutions. We call upon all citizens to report any suspicious activity regarding this marauding mauler of Moscow.”

“You alright?” Bobby asks.

“I’m fine. And you?”

“I think we’re in the clear now. But not for long. I got an idea, Mary Lou.” Bobby keeps his eyes on the road while the radio switches to something sad. “The grays and greasers are after the truck. I’ll drop you off somewhere, and they’ll keep following me, while you make off to freedom.”

“Bobby, you can’t do that!”

“Why not?” he sez. “All my life, I’ve just been listening to conspiracy radio and watching monster movies. Now’s my moment to actually do some good in the world.”

He holds my hand again. “Mary Lou Sunday, if we ever meet again, let’s spend the Sixties together.”

“I’ll find you, Bobby Wood.” I think girls are supposed to give fellas a peck on the cheek at moments like this, so I do. His face feels warm, a little rough. “You oughta shave sometime.”

Bobby lets out a crimson chuckle. “Heh…guess I’ve been lazy…”

When he pulls his hand away, his lighter remains in my palm. I tighten my hand around it, feeling its warmth.

Headlights appear behind us. More grays. “We’re approaching a bend,” Bobby explains. “Mary Lou, I’ll slow down right at the darkest spot of the bend, and you jump out.”

“Thanks for everything,” Bobby. I turn backwards. “And Connie, I’m sorry-”

“You, uh…you got any hamburgers or sodapop?” Connie sez, smoke rising from her. “I could eat a whole buffet right now…”

Bobby hits the bend, and I jump out, into the bushes, into darkness.