Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Zavier

“I’m going to be a Boar. It’s my first choice, where I’ve wanted to go for a long while for the fit.” He was full of shit and he knew it.

“I’m so excited for you, I think you could do great things.” replied May in a cheerful tone. At least Zavier wasn’t the only one.

Zavier smiled and kept sweeping the fries into the pan. It was past closing time and Zavier was damn near ready to go home. He didn’t really need this job. He had enough of a scholarship that his parents could cover the rest. It just felt nice to have a little play money his last semester of high school. He fantasized about using it to go to clubs in Seattle or blow it on some vain girlfriend but the existing pattern of expenditures currently was just on his gaming account. There was always the possibility of next week or the summer though for things to happen. He was indeed so full of shit.

Zavier made his last round around the restaurant. He sighed and prepared to lock up. May was gone. She never stayed until the end of the shift. The manager didn’t mind as long as it was 10 or 15 minutes and not overly egregious. Zavier suspected he would get the same leniency but he did not want to bet his job on that assumption. Zavier signed out at 11:00 sharp, walked out, and hopped into his Camry. It was about a twenty minute drive through town to his home. He turned on the bluetooth, started his “chill” playlist and pulled his car onto the road. This in many ways was the best part of his day. The drive home. His job was not all that strenuous so it was not the elation of finishing. It was more about driving around the town during the night with the synthesizer beats blasting through that gave him the flowing feeling. He felt the freedoms of adulthood most during these times. His independence, not from his parents, but from the uninspired path he felt at every other moment of his life, never seemed more real than now. It was a terribly cliche feeling, but it never got old.

As he pulled up to his house, he parked his car along the curb of the front yard. There wasn’t enough room in the garage with his parents' cars. Bzzz. His phone buzzed. Text from May. 

“Come smoke.”

Zavier pulled his car back out of the lot.

He wasn’t much of a stoner or a pothead. He smoked socially which meant he did whenever someone he did not hate asked him to. May was one of those people. She was really hot. There was no way around it without being blunt. But Zavier knew he didn’t have prayer. He wasn’t a bad looking guy but he just kind of sucked. 

That's harsh. Alright he did not suck or was overtly offensively terrible. There was just not much overtly positive about him or his life. At eighteen, he was a minimal existence woefully short of anything of note. May texting him to smoke was just something he had to speed off for everytime. At the very least he could feel like he was doing something someone else wished they could. Those other wishers were primarily just an avalanche of horny guys. He got May’s invite consistently because she knew he was not about that. He was not stupid enough to run full sprint to rejection. Certain rejection.

Zavier pulled the car to the empty movie theater. Most movie theaters stayed open past midnight during the summer but this one was small and old. And it was a Wednesday. The lot was empty except for a few parked cars by the only street light. These must be extra cars or those owned by the maintenance workers. Either way Zavier went to the dark end of the lot. By the spot. He sat there waiting, surprised he got there before May.

God I hope she's not bringing someone else.

Her car pulled up. He waited for a few more moments. She wants me to come to her. So he did. The passenger door opened. Zavier glanced around inconspicuously. There was only May in the car.

The radio was off and the A/C was all the way up. May liked things way too cold.

“Are you too cold?” May asked as he settled in the passenger seat. 

“Nope. It's the middle of June. You ready to do this.”

“We’ve got to go pick up.”

“I’ve got extra in my trunk. If you’ve got 5 or 10 dollars-”

“I don’t want your stuff!” There was about 10 seconds of the A/C blowing after May yelled. She brought her voice back to pleasant to resume their conversation, “Look, I’m trying a new guy. I’ve heard the stuff is good.” It was becoming increasingly clear why he was invited.

“How far away?” Zavier asked. He slumped in his chair and stared out the window.

“Only across town. And I’ll give you half for free, I just don't know this guy very well. I’ve actually never met him.”

“Is this a good idea?”

“Oh come on, he camps out by the mall with the Nordstrom. Listen Zavee, you might be leaving me in two months but I got one more year stuck here. And another summer after that at the damn burger place before college. If he’s got good stuff it's going to make me a very happy girl next year. You wouldn’t want me to be sad, would you?”

“You know I’m only going to be 45 minutes away, I could just come back.”

“What would you come back for?” Zavier’s heartbeat beat a little harder than he would have liked.

“I guess my parents,” he said dismissively. 

“Ok, that’s… reasonable.” May trailed off and put the car in drive. 

They drove in silence the entire way there. The car finally lurched to a stop when they reached their destination. They were behind the mall they had set out for. Or more accurately they were behind the grocery store connected to the mall. Zavier had not been to this mall in years. A lot of people from his high school came out here because it had some brand stores that his side of town did not but he was not that type of consumer. His needs were met with convenience more so than variety or prestige. The back of the megastore mainly comprised service entrances and loading bays. Despite being near midnight, Zavier was shocked people got away with dealing here. Despite his own doubts, about five minutes after they arrived a car pulled up and stalled its engine on the curb.

“Let’s go.” May said quietly as she turned the key and slinked out.

Zavier quietly followed. They walked together over to the car. The window rolled down. Inside was the scruffy looking guy. He was an odd looking fellow with buggy eyes, a patchy shadow on his chin and neck, and hair that was unsymmetrical in a less than pleasant way. He looked like he was in his thirties but there were enough youthful facial features that Zavier knew he was much younger, most likely around their age. He just looked older. Truely a specimen.

“Hi, I’m May, are you the spider?” May said in a hushed voice.

Zavier was thoroughly unimpressed with this man as it was and could barely keep a straight face upon learning his name. The man did not respond to the question. He looked past May and gave a dead-eyed stare to Zavier. Something about this guy was just insulting to Zavier. He felt a growing urge to tell him to fuck himself that was getting closer to an action with each passing second.

“Excuse me, I’m May, Hi. Are you going to sell me weed?” May said again, this time rather impatiently with only a thin veneer of false kindness.

Not taking his eyes off of Zavier he replied in a low annoyed voice “I’m here to buy as well.”

“Oh so you’re not our guy,” Zavier said as he grabbed May’s arm, “Well don’t let us ruin your night.” He turned and started heading back to May’s car with her following behind. He didn’t want to admit but May letting him guide her back was rather exciting despite the circumstances that preceded it.

“Hello May.” called out a new voice. Another man emerged from behind one of the truck bodies. This man was clearly an adult dressed in a nice suit with his hair slicked back. “I apologize for being late.” Now here was someone who looked like they sold weed to high schoolers! This American Psycho knock off was most definitely the spider.

“You’ve brought so many friends. I thought this was a small transaction.” The spider said in an amused voice.

“This is Zavee, my friend, and I have no idea who the hell that is.” May said, eyeing the stalled car.

“Is he coming out?” the Spider asked in a friendly, mature voice.

They all looked at the car. Nothing.

“I need to talk to him then, it isn’t a good practice for me to have people just hanging out while I deal.” The Spider’s smile had washed away to a scowl as he sighed, tensed up, and walked towards the car. As he approached it he knocked on the window and motioned for the other man to roll down the window. He had a smile like with May but this one was pretty deliberately unfriendly. The window did not roll down. The Spider knocked on the window a little harder, “If this dude doesn’t…”. His temper began to flair as the inconvenience had become too much for him. Suddenly the door flung open and a brilliant flash of yellow light bloomed out of the door knocking the Spider flat on his back.

Zavier’s reaction was nearly instantaneous. He grabbed May and almost dragged her into her car. She was clearly shell shocked and didn’t say a word and Zavier grabbed the keys out of her clenched hand and started the vehicle. Zavier made every maneuver with speed in mind, expecting to be fired on at any given moment. As they sped away, he nervously looked in the rearview mirror. The car was stalled, its driver seat open. The man known as the spider was lying on his back about ten feet from the door. He was unconscious at best. The other man was nowhere in sight. This was incredibly concerning but Zavier felt like his best choice of action did not change. He quickly turned around the bend to the front of the grocery store, gunned it to the mall lot exit, and turned on the main road. He nearly doubled the speed limit as he raced back to their side of town.

“Slow down!” May suddenly screamed. It was like she had broken out of suspended animation. Zavier toed the gas and brought their speed down to just above the legal limit.

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“We can’t let ourselves get followed.” Zavier spoke in a panicked voice. His initial reaction to the immediate threat had blunted his emotions until now but his voice was fairly revealing to himself. What the hell just happened?

“What do we do?” May looked at Zavier in desperation, hoping that he had some idea on how they could normalize the events this evening.

Zavier slowed to a stop at a red light and tried to piece together a plan that shielded May and him from any type of fallout.

“Zavee.” May shrieked impatiently. She was now crying. Zavier had to give her something or she could screw them if she panicked.

The light turned green and Zavier slammed on the gas and cleared his throat. “We do nothing.” Zavier made a special effort to avoid showing as much panic as he did moments earlier. “We go home. We were never there. There’s no cameras behind that mall or people wouldn’t deal there. They’ll find the body, they’ll investigate. We’re innocent so even if they track back to us somehow, we’ll just cooperate and say the truth and that we did not come forward earlier because we were scared. Otherwise we stay out of whatever that was.”

“You don’t think he's dead? The spider.” May said in a hushed voice.

“That was point blank and it had to have been a firearm.” Zavier replied. He could feel his heartbeat slowly coming down as he approached the movie theater where his car was parked.

“ But it didn’t look like a gunshot, it didn’t sound like-”

“I don’t care.” Zavier interrupted. His anger surprised him, he was never this short with May. The situation had clearly brought it out of him. “It does not matter, that was clearly a weapon. We’re high school kids trying to buy marijuana, May. Whatever that was is something we should never be around! Ok! This Spider guy and other dude are bad news. We need to steer clear!”

“He has my number.” A pit formed in Zavier’s stomach. May just blurted it out. Even though her saying it had no effect on the fact itself, Zavier was upset that she verbalized it. He couldn’t ignore that fact with it just out there. He had hoped to drop May off, drive home, and let this wash away by the weekend. That scenario was not happening. There was no way they weren’t contacted by the police now. Spider’s phone was going to have messages from May putting her at the scene tonight. This meant the nightmare had just started. May was silent, her gaze patiently on Zavier, waiting for him to figure out what she should do. Zavier looked at the clock. 1:02 AM. It was so late, he was so tired.

“We don’t have to do anything right now.”

May was taken aback by his cavalierness. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, we can talk to the police tomorrow. We’ll go to the station in the morning. Right now let’s just go home and sleep.” Zavier felt his adrenaline begin to come down as he spoke those words. He had made his mind up on the problem. It was just not going to be urgent until tomorrow.

Zavier had reached his car and parked May’s next to his. He began to unfasten his seatbelt when May grabbed his arm rather tightly. “You’re not going to leave me alone on this, right?”

“No, I’m just going to get some sleep and clear my head. We’ll both miss school tomorrow and deal with it together in the morning, ok?” Zavier made strong eye contact with May and tried to give the most reassuring look he could. He needed her to let him leave the car. He also needed to inspire enough confidence that she wouldn’t do something stupid on her own.

May looked at him for a couple seconds. She did not break eye contact and projected a pleading look into him. Zavier felt sad that she thought so little of him to be so scared that he would just abandon her. After another second or so she let go and looked forward and spoke with a calmness that was reassuring for Zavier’s priorities. “Alright, I’ll go home and skip class tomorrow. I’m texting you right at eight. You better respond fast.”

Zavier took a deep breath and reached for the driver's side door. “I will, I promise.” He opened the door and began to walk out and over to his car. He had some trepidation about leaving May and risking her doing something rash, but he was just exhausted and could not bring himself to care enough to prevent him from getting to house, to his room, and finally to his bed. As he opened his own car door he turned back and spoke to May in a slightly stern voice, “Do not tell anyone else about this including your parents until we figure things out. We can’t undo things once we do them and we need to avoid making a mistake.”

May looked at him and nodded. That was enough for Zavier, he had given the extra effort to cover his bases and no longer felt too nervous to leave. He put the car in reverse and pulled out. As he drove away he saw May still sitting in the passenger seat, just staring out into the night. He gave a deep sigh and turned his attention to his turn out of the movie theater parking lot and went on his way.

6:45. Zavier felt a sense of relief seeing those three numbers in big block font when his phone lit up. He almost never slept past his first alarm at 6:45 on school days, much less 8:00. But the consequences of sleeping late were disastrous today. He had set numerous alarms in five minute intervals starting at 6:45 before he fell asleep when he had gotten home the night prior. He would be in the business of overkill on safety for the foreseeable future. He scrolled through his alarms and turned all the ones before 7:30 off. Now that he had woken up the first time he was confident he would not fall back into deep sleep before that alarm. Zavier was going to rest his eyes until then. He wasn’t going to talk to May or do anything else until eight anyways. It did not make sense to sit around and stress for seventy-five minutes. He needed thirty minutes max to get things ready to face the day.

He rolled over in bed and closed his eyes, reaching for the embrace of inactivity and sensation reduction. He was unable to grab it. He lay motionless for a few minutes in vain before ripping his covers off and getting out of bed. His body was covered in sweat from the night before and he had a feeling of mustiness he couldn’t shake. As he lumbered to his bathroom, he kept trying to figure out why he felt so gross. This trivial matter was suddenly incredibly important to him. As he reached the bathroom and flipped on the light, he took a good look into his mirror.

Zavier was an average height with a bit of a wide baby face. He had no real facial hair yet and kept his auburn hair short but messy. His nose was small and gently sloping and while he was not blessed with a particularly chiseled jaw or angular facial structure he had a near perfect set of straightened white teeth. He had always been told he had a beautiful smile growing up. This was sometimes a compliment in absence of another obvious one but it was true nonetheless. He stared intently and intensely into his wide green eyes, giving himself an awkward look he only reserved for when he was alone. In a split second, a realization came over him and he gave his reflection a wide smile. He had not showered at all last night when he had come home. Mystery solved. It was likely because he was rushing to fall asleep given how the evening had gone and his own exhaustion. Zavier did not have much insight as to how he had forgotten to shower as his memory of his cognitive process after he drove off from May was murky at best. A very simplistic but pleasant feeling washed over him as he picked out a towel and started up the shower. At least one issue solves itself today.

Zavier stayed in the shower for much longer than the typical five minutes he would spend on a given morning. He wasn’t going to school so he had much more time and the warm water and the hot steam it produced was particularly relaxing for him. He also hated the cold feeling of having to step out of a warm shower before he dried himself off and put on clothes. Leaving the warmth of the shower today was particularly taxing on his willpower and he was fine with indulging himself a bit. Zavier just had to be out by 7:50 or so in theory he could be in here for an hour.

He did not end up taking an hour. It was 7:25 on his phone after he dried off and checked it again. He flipped off the rest of his alarms. There was no point in trying to steal a few more minutes of sleep. He wouldn’t be able to anyway. Zavier quickly got dressed in one of his typical spring outfits: a plain white t-shirt, an orange flannel, some standard jeans, nike white socks, and plain black tennis shoes. He was very much a box checker when it came to his fashion.

He gave himself one more quick look in the mirror to make sure everything was in order and went across the room to grab his phone. As he reached to pick it up he froze. It was only 7:40 and he had a missed call from May about two minutes ago. Zavier had expected nothing until eight from her. As trivial as twenty minutes was, the disruption from expectations for Zavier had the effect of snapping him back to reality. His adrenaline spiked and the feeling of morning energy and renewal gave way to nerves and a deep sense of tiredness. He was not ready for this.

Quickly he tapped the call back option. Hopefully she just was jumpy and wanted to touch base as early as possible. The phone rang once before it was picked up.

“May.” Zavier spoke with a calmness that masked his real feelings.

“Zavee.” May’s tone was frightened.

“What’s going on? You called early, I could have been asleep.”

“Please come over now, hurry!” May maintained a frantic tone.

“What’s going on, you didn’t tell your parents did you? You told me you’d wait for-” 

“I didn’t tell anyone.” May snapped back with some palpable resentment in her voice. “I did exactly what you said. Even though you left me last night to drive home on my own. You really need to come over right now. I’ll explain things in person when you get here.”

May’s emphasis on in person sent a clear signal to Zavier. She was not going to tolerate anything else from him. He took a deep breath and collected himself. “I’ll come over now, just wait for me to get there.”

May affirmed the course of action and Zavier hung up and went into the kitchen to grab his keys. Both of his parents were already on their commutes to work so he didn’t have to worry about prying questions about missing school. They definitely saw his car still in the driveway and heard the shower in his room running way too long before they had left but Zavier was at an age where he did not get the scolding or concern he would have gotten in years past. He walked into the garage, started the car, and made his way to May’s house.

May lived across the main road in an adjacent subdivision so it only took Zavier a few minutes to reach her house. He parked on the curb and got out. Here he texted to May, slowly making his way up her driveway with his eye on their text chat so as to not miss any sudden special instructions. May’s front door swung open and May stood in the doorway and motioned Zavier inside. He obliged this request.

May’s mother sat at the kitchen table, methodically working on the morning crossword. Zavier's heart skipped a beat. Did she tell her parents?

“Mom, I’m going to the basement with my friend Zavier. He’s the guy who works the late shifts with me.” May’s mother looked up from her crossword at the sound of her daughter’s voice. Her eyes locked in on Zavier and she smiled.

“That’s fine, honey. Just let me know when you two are done so I know when it’s ok to come downstairs later this morning.” With that, the middle aged housewife returned to her puzzles and May opened the door to her basement and began walking down.

Zavier was very relieved. There was no way her mother knew. Clearly she was a much more casual parent with May than his own parents were with him as evidenced by her disregard for May seemingly missing school to bring a boy over. It would be asinine though to ignore her daughter’s activities in the same way if she knew the happenings of the prior night. Zavier’s mind then wandered to the implications of May’s mother not being fazed in the slightest by her needing the basement for a boy who May’s mother had not met prior. It definitely was not something Zavier wanted to think through further.

He would not have to dwell on these matters either way. The second he had reached the bottom of the stairs, May turned around and put her phone into his face. The light from May’s phone took Zavier a second to adjust to. He always instinctively conserved the battery on his phone by keeping the brightness down. May did not take similar precautions. Once his eyes adjusted he saw a conversation opened with an unnamed number. The most recent message had been sent at 7:32 this morning. It read: Need to meet and talk about last night. Respond ASAP.

“Who sent this?” Zavier asked in a hushed tone

May responded in a similarly discreet and quiet manner, “It’s from the Spider.”

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