The Night on the Rock
A teenager is desperate to be cool until he finds that he’s not like the cool guys.
Richie coasted down the hill in his Plymouth Duster and turned into the shopping center. Three cars were parked in the middle of the empty lot. Their drivers lolled against the fenders with ankles crossed, smoking and drinking from bottles in paper bags like they owned the asphalt. Richie knew them from school, who didn’t? They’d just graduated: Mark Ambriano, Lenny Wosniewski and Butch O’Brien.
Richie cranked up Lynyrd Skynyrd on the eight-track, checked the windows were rolled down and pressed on the gas. The engine rumbled. As he sped past the three guys, he glanced in the rearview mirror. They didn’t even turn their heads. Douchebags.
He spotted a parking slot under a light. He braked and spun the chrome steering wheel with the heel of his hand so the Duster stopped within the white lines. He got out and stood for a second to admire the wax job he had spent the afternoon on. The car gleamed. He had bought it three months ago with his dad pitching in a thousand bucks for his seventeenth birthday. So it wasn’t Mark’s 357 Mach II Mustang, Butch’s black-and-gold Trans Am or Lenny’s metallic blue Challenger with a white double-stripe, but that was why he had signed up to take auto shop as his senior year elective instead of art.
