Chapter 14
Clint's giant truck is in the middle of the driveway, as usual, so Felix parks on the curb. I'm on the verge of tears. Felix follows me into the house, even though I tell him he should just go home. I fall onto the living room couch and bash my head into one of the pillows.
“Now that I'm definitely not in the musical, it's back to the drawing board,” I say.
“Have a little bit of faith,” he says. “You were awesome up there, and everybody enjoyed it.”
In the silence between us, a rhythmic bouncing shakes the walls. The sound of pleasurable moaning follows.
“Pecos, baby!”
I look at Felix, whose eyebrows are reaching for his hairline.
Oh. My. God.
Without hesitation, Felix and I are up and running out of the house like we're fleeing a fire. We cram through the door at the same time, leaving us stuck until Felix squeezes out ahead of me and sprints to the driveway.
“Get in the car, get in the car, go, go, go!” I yell.
Felix plugs the keys into the ignition and plows in reverse so quickly that he knocks over my garbage can.
As we're speeding down the street, I cup my hands over my eyes. “IT BURNS!”
It's official: I was evil in a previous life, and now I'm paying dearly for it in this one.
“That was almost as bad as the time we caught Coach Holman looking at porn in biology class. Almost!” Felix says.
“Can you keep going until we drive into the ocean?”
“I have a better idea,” he says, then rounds the corner at the stop sign.
The world around me blurs like that painting of the guy screaming with his hands attached to his cheeks. I roll down the passenger window and hang my head out, wailing so abruptly and loudly that I startle a group of girls jump-roping outside their house.
Felix, angel that he is, has brought us to Whataburger.
“The stars at night are big and bright!” Felix sings into the drive-thru speaker with a clap-clap-clap-clap.
“Can I take your order, please?” the lady on the speaker asks.
“You're supposed to sing, deep in the heart of Texas!” Felix says in a Brandon Barton Buckley voice before ordering two boxes of french fries. He knows Whataburger french fries are my emergency comfort food. Dip them in jalapeno-flavored ketchup and taste the glamour of heaven.
He grabs the bag from the cashier at the window and nestles it between my legs, then pulls back out of the parking lot toward a back road that leads to the woods where Ruby's Lake is located.
It's not really called Ruby's Lake, but we call it that because it hosts the local alligator my drug dealer neighbor raised and then abandoned.
He named her after his late mother, who died during a burglary when the gun safe she and her boyfriend were trying to carry downstairs fell and crushed her. RIP Ruby Milner.
He parks in the empty gravel lot by the lake and tries shoving a few fries between my lips. I'm still in a catatonic state, and the fries drop into my lap. It takes a few minutes for me to gather myself and leave the car with him.
At the lake, we sit on the flimsy boardwalk and dangle our legs above the water. We used to ride our bikes out here frequently and take pictures because there was a rumor about it being haunted, but I think even ghosts have more sense than to stick around in Oyster Pit.
“Who could have imagined that stealing a lawn gnome would have led up to this,” I say. “It's like I summoned a demon and it's following me for eternity.”
Felix stares at the murky water like he's hypnotized.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Felix says.
“You know, you don't even have to live with her!”
“I'm not thinking about that.”
“Then what are you thinking about?”
“How Byron can live so free,” he says. “He got up there today and did what he loved, and there in front of him was the person he loved. And neither of them were afraid to be themselves.”
Aghhhhhhh. Fucking Byron again.
“There are better people out there than Byron Murphee,” I say. “Speaking of things that bite, I haven't seen Ruby once since we got here.”
“My dad taught me how to call an alligator,” Felix says.
“What? Do you dial 1-800-GATOR?”
“Pretend you're a baby alligator.” He mewls rhythmically the way a sad puppy would, but more like the sound of lasers from a Star Wars movie: pew-pew-pew-pew-pew.
Not what I would expect a baby alligator to sound like.
Not long after, ripples form in the water as something moves toward us in a straight line.
“And here she comes!” I squeal.
“I saw a video of an alligator doing a death roll to another gator once,” he tells me. “They spin like a fan and rip their prey into pieces that way.”
Ruby's buggy eyes stick out of the water and peer at us. “There she is!” I tap Felix on the shoulder. She moves closer to the shore, warning us with a belchy, reptilian rumble.
“Time to go before she death-rolls us,” Felix says, and we flee the log before Ruby gets any closer. “She probably has babies this time of year.”
Seems like everybody's getting laid except us.