Molly, pt. 7, FINALE

“Everybody grew up, but not really.”

First, Molly, pt. 1: “Just paint, guys, this is a Fun Day. Just paint.” Previously, Molly, pt. 6: “It was gonna be over sooner or later.”

The door slammed, the bells jingled against the trembling glass as Tyler and Jo-Jo took off on foot, sprinting about three blocks. Stressed wads of cash in hand, bills dissolving behind them in flight. . .

Before a swinging car door clotheslined Jo-Jo to the pavement, and Officer Krupke hopped out the seat, stood over him, boot conquering chest, taunting, “Son, do you know why I’m stopping you for?”

No, not exactly.

But that’s how Tyler recalled it, in a haze as thick as his drawl, as thick as the cool tart syrup lining his throat. That’s how the chase played in his head. Ten minutes after he’d slipped away, catching his breath in a grim constricting alley just a few blocks further uphill from where shit went south.

Summer.

Corey wondered how Molly was doing. Not that he did anything to chase his curiosity to conclusion. But he wondered. Whether Molly was still hanging out with old grimy white boys in garages.

College would be someplace new and full of promise, so Corey tried wondering about that instead.

Summer spent to the end of its wick. Molly left for Stanford, Caprice left for Howard, Corey left for UVA, and Tyler was just chilling on Monument Ave, graduating from weed and over-the-counter fare to more complicated sedatives. For a couple months. Intensive intravenous. Until wherever Tyler was, he was likely shuddering in the dark.

Tyler pressed the barrel of a .38 snub to his temple and flashed his brains into thick matted splay against a bystanding dumpster.

No, not really.

But that’s what his delirium often presaged in all shades of day, waking or sleep: cold blunt steel pressed firm and feeling actually quite tender-loving against his scalp, massaging him dull; and Tyler thinking he’d be fine with that as his ecstatic exit. In any case he’d acquired the gun and kept it handy in his Pathfinder’s glove box with the latch that always jammed.

Mal had plowed her mom’s Accord into a traffic pole on Cumberland Ave and was hobbling on crutches in and out of stale courtrooms, though no one from Tyson High knew this. Damn near all of Franklin County had given on Molly Pastira—a name now muttered or else barked in the communal shower, reeking of mildew and urine. Downtown lockup was a drab grey jumpsuit and life without piercings or buttons, which left Mal feeling naked in a drafty cell. No piercings, no buttons meant two ginormous gapes in the flaky creased skin of her earlobes, which were pretty gross and made her look much older than she was.

Eighteen.

Everybody grew up, but not really.

Winter break was Caprice coughing crescendo into a phone receiver, pretending to her mother that she was quite ill so she wouldn’t have to go home for Christmas. A holiday apart from her loud-ass family’s mean shrieking in a cramped kitchen proved less liberating, more boring than Caprice had anticipated. Alone in her dorm hearing police sires all night. Reading Harry Potter finally to see what all the fuss was about, and because her roommate owned all seven books, and because Caprice had nothing better to do. In this marathon boredom the Internet served its ends: first and last refuge of kids digging for distractions, especially when bitter, especially when shut in by malicious ice spilling from scowling clouds.

Caprice wasn’t Facebook friends with Molly, but she could still see some of Molly’s photos. Prompted by stray and indelible curiosity, a timeless spite of that one weird bitch who smelled like onions, Caprice did indeed check.

Molly’s cheeks were no longer splotchy and fuzzy; or else she’d mastered the art of makeup after zero years prior trying. Molly wore plaid skirts and sunny yellow tops. Molly had gotten a little pudgy, you could tell. But somehow her tits had swelled even larger than they were in high school, and they cast a mirage contrast with her waist that made her look thinner than she probably was. Molly’s tits. Bulging, dangling, scrunching proud; glistening by the flash of all the photos in which she happened to be leaning forward. Which was all of them. Like her tits were coming after you and you’d better watch out. Like she didn’t give a shit if you stared.

As if Molly ever gave a shit.

One day Caprice friended Molly on Facebook just to see what would happen, whether she’d accept or decline or send some characteristically weird message in response.

Ten minutes later Molly accepted without a word.

Caprice browsed her page. Watching a glitchy lo-fi video of Molly on a dim dingy stage with sour crimson spotlights overhead, flanked by a few friends who were propped on stools and tuning their guitars. Molly was swinging by a mic stand and belting some violent love song with a wild grin, just practicing, with more guts than grace. The mic wasn’t even hot, yet there she was about to take a tumble in her heels if she didn’t sit her ass down.

Sorted by timestamps, the most recent photo of Molly was of her and a boy standing abreast with their arms wrapped around each other’s waists, grinning preciously ludicrous with twisted tongues and wrinkled noses, posed in front of a pebble beach with waves hurling to shore in the background. One photo previous was Molly and the boy in the same shot, but kissing earnest, Molly clenching the lapels of his pea coat and pulling him close.

Yeah, yeah.

Sure enough, Corey also scrolled these photos. He could tell that lover boy’s chest was probably quite solid, and that Molly’s hand likely glided quite smooth from lover boy’s collar on down. Corey more than kinda regretted not kissing Molly so deep that one night at the back of the bus, and every day thereafter. He’d only pecked her lips, just once. And scratched her surface, so to speak. Could’ve dug deeper, longer, for months. Maybe forever. But he’d demurred.

Which, in hindsight now, was wholly regrettable.

Not these two photos, but the ones that excluded lover boy and more prominently featured Molly’s boobs:

Every now and again in his dorm, when his roommate left for classes, Corey would rub one out at his desk to the reel of Molly’s snapshots. Always trembling silent once he’d finished soaking the paper towel in his other hand. A couple weeks of this. Until Corey found Molly’s still mirth a foot above and beyond his cock deeply infuriating.

Except for the one last time.

One afternoon in December, hunched at his desk in his old room back home. Finishing off to her photo album, Corey poked Molly, dismissed the window, wiped his palm with a stray crumpled napkin, slammed the lid, and that was that.

No reply.

White people money, Caprice thought/groaned as she sifted the coins in her palm, coming up thirty-five cents short as she waited for the bus to pitch her cross-town to Adams Morgan. Thirty minutes she waited in the cold, getting her mean cheeks whipped by the chilly wind. Where the fuck—

Bus prolly wasn’t coming.

Caprice could’ve walked. Granted, it’d be a couple miles in below-thirty, but most of the ice from the weekend had melted from the sidewalks. And Caprice had nothing better to do at 1:43pm on a Tuesday when the city was empty, bored, pretty much just waiting on her. Caprice had her thick grey coat with the frayed gaping pockets, her mismatched mittens, her mom’s old scarf hugging her neck. No earmuffs, but only white people wore earmuffs.

So Caprice could’ve walked. But for the wind, and the chill, and her having weathered long enough already. . .

Fuck it.

Caprice turned back to the dorm and unwrapped her baggage onto the back of her chair, plugged her bony ass to the seat and cast her ire back into the trivial recesses of the Internet. Order of the Phoenix sat thick at the far corner of Caprice’s desk, under the drooping balanced-arm of a lamp lacking a bulb, with Harry flexing his wand and peering through the film of dust across the hardback’s jacket. Until by Christmas Harry’s eyes were glazed over, and he could no longer see.

Tapping trackpads in humming rooms, alone.

The Internet reminded her:

The Internet reminded him:

Molly Welsh was on a full ride to Stanford.

Molly Welsh was laughing on a beach. And singing wild about love. And heaving her tits in your face. And fucking a boy with pretty hair.

And everybody was mad.

Understandably so.