The twins.

Chapter Eight

The twins drove an old, muscled-up, low-riding, cherry-red Ford Mustang—not the kind of car celebrated for its handling in inclement weather. So I felt sure that they, too, would miss the curve, probably rear-ending Carla. But as the engine noise grew to a roar, the Duke pushed JP and me to the side of the road anyway.

They came roaring around the corner—the Mustang kicking up powder behind it, the back end fishtailing but somehow staying on the road—tiny Tommy Reston maniacally turning the steering wheel back and forth. He was some kind of snow-driving savant, the little creep.

So great was the size difference between them that the Mustang tilted visibly to the left, where Timmy Reston’s gigantic body had somehow been inserted into the passenger seat. I could see Timmy smiling, the dimples an inch deep on his huge and meaty cheeks. Tommy brought the Mustang to a quick stop maybe thirty feet in front of us, rolled down the window, and leaned his head out.

“Y’all run into some car trouble?” he asked.

I started to walk toward the car. “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “We ran into a snowbank. I’m glad to see you guys. Could you give us a ride, at least to downtown?”

“Sure,” he said. “Get in.” Tommy looked past me then and, with a certain lilt in his voice, said, “Hey there, Angie.” Which is technically the Duke’s name.

“Hi,” she said. I turned back to them and waved for JP and the Duke to come over. I was almost to the car now. I stayed on the driver’s side, figuring that it would be impossible to slip into the backseat behind Timmy.

I was even with the hood when Tommy said, “Y’know what? I got room in the back for two losers.” And then louder, so JP and the Duke could hear him as they approached, he said, “But I don’t got room for two losers and a slut.” He hit the accelerator, and for just a second the tires spun on the Mustang and nothing happened. I lunged for the door handle, but by the time my fingers got to where it was, the Mustang had taken off. I lost my balance and fell down into the snow. The passing Mustang kicked snow into my face and on my neck and down my chest. I spit some of it out and then watched as Timmy and Tommy sped toward JP and the Duke.

They stood together on the side of the road, the Duke flipping Timmy and Tommy off with both hands. As the Mustang approached, JP took a small step into the road and lifted one of his legs off the ground. Just as the Mustang passed, he kicked its rear quarter panel. It was a small kick, kind of girlish. I couldn’t even hear his foot making contact with the car. And yet, somehow it upset the delicate balance of the vehicle just enough—and all at once, the Mustang turned sideways. Tommy must have tried to gun the engine while turning into the skid, but it didn’t work. The Mustang shot off the road and into a pile of plowed snow, disappearing entirely except for the brake lights.

I scrambled to my feet and ran toward JP and the Duke.

“Holy crap!” JP said, looking at his foot. “I am so frakkin’ strong!”

The Duke walked purposefully toward the Mustang. “We gotta dig them out,” she said. “They could die in there.”

“Screw that,” I said. “I mean, after what they just did? And plus they called you a slut!” But for a moment, I could see her blushing even over the windburn on her cheeks. I always hated that word, and it particularly pissed me off to hear it applied to the Duke, because even though it was a ridiculous and patently untrue thing to say about her, she was still embarrassed, and she knew that we knew that she was embarrassed, and . . . whatever. It just pissed me off. But I didn’t want to call more attention to it by saying anything.

Regardless, the Duke rallied almost instantaneously. “Oh, yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Tommy Reston called me a slut. Wah-wah. It’s an attack on my very womanhood. Whatever. I’m just happy that someone’s acknowledging the possibility that I might be a sexual being!”

I looked at her quizzically. I kept walking toward the Mustang with her, and finally I said, “Nothing personal, but I don’t want to picture anyone who’s into Billy Talos as a sexual being.”

She stopped, turned, and looked up at me. Very seriously, she said, “Will you just shut up about him? I don’t even really like him.”

I didn’t understand why she was so upset about that of all things. We always ragged on each other. “What?” I said defensively.

And she said, “Oh, Christ, forget it. Just come help me save these retarded misogynists from carbon-monoxide poisoning.”

And we would have, I’m sure. If necessary, we would have spent hours tunneling out the Reston boys. But our efforts, as it happened, were not needed, because Timmy Reston, being the world’s strongest man, just pushed aside thousands of pounds of snow and successfully opened his door. He stood up, only his shoulders and head above the snow, and shouted, “You. Gonna. Die.”

It wasn’t entirely clear to me whether Timmy meant “you” singular, as in JP, who had already started running, or “you” plural, as in a group of people that included me. But regardless, I took off, urging on the Duke. I kept behind the Duke because I didn’t want her to slip without my knowing or anything. I turned around to check the twins’ progress and saw Timmy Reston’s shoulders and head make their way through the mass of snow. I saw Tommy’s head pop up in the space where Timmy had initially exited the car, and he was shouting an angry, incomprehensible flurry of words, the words so smushed in on each other that all I could really hear was his rage. We got past them while they were still trying to get all the way out of the snowbank, and then kept running.

“Come on, Duke,” I said.

“I’m . . . trying,” she answered, breathing between words. I could hear them shouting now, and when I glanced back, I could see that they were out of the snow and running toward us, gaining with every stride. There was too much snow on both sides of us to run anywhere but on the street. But if we continued much longer, the twins would catch us and, presumably, proceed to feast upon our kidneys.

I have heard it said that sometimes in moments of intense crisis, a person’s adrenaline can surge so much that for a brief period of time he experiences superhuman strength. And perhaps this explains how I managed to grab the Duke, throw her over my right shoulder, and then run like an Olympic sprinter across the slippery snow.

I carried the Duke for several minutes before I even started to get tired, never looking back and never needing to, because the Duke was looking back for me, saying, “Keep going keep going you’re faster than they are you are you are,” and even if she was talking to me like she talked to Carla on the way up the hill, I didn’t care—it worked. It kept my feet pumping beneath me, my arm wrapped around her waist and the small of her back, and I just ran until we reached a small bridge over a two-lane road. I saw JP lying flat on his stomach on the side of the bridge. I figured he’d slipped, and slowed down to help him up, but he just shouted, “No, no, keep going keep going!” And so I kept going. My breathing was quite labored now as the Duke’s weight bore down on my shoulder. “Listen, can I put you down?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m getting kinda queasy anyway.”

I stopped and let her down, and said, “You go ahead.” She took off without me, and I just slumped down, hands on knees, and watched JP running toward me. In the distance, I could see the twins—well, I could see Timmy, anyway; I suspected Tommy was hiding behind his brother’s endless girth. I knew the situation was hopeless now—the twins would inevitably catch us, but I believed we had to fight on, anyway. I took a series of quick, deep breaths as JP reached me, and then I started to run, but he grabbed my coat and said, “No. No. Watch.”