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“You couldn’t have waited, like, two more minutes for me to wake up?” Goby says, their voice whiny and grating over the phone speaker. “I wanted to go too!”
“Sorry, Goob!” Malcolm shouts over the wind. Jazz insisted on rolling all the windows down in the truck for maximum ‘queer coming-of-age short-film’ energy. “I would’ve waited for you!”
“No time!” Jazz says. “This is an official Malcolm emergency, we had to get on the road ASAP!”
“What kind of emergency?” Mona’s voice crackles over the phone. “Is everyone alright?”
“We’re fine!” Malcolm says.
“No, we are not,” Jazz says dramatically. “Our dear Malcolm has forgotten his true self! We’re on a mission to find it again!”
“Oh, a journey of self-discovery!” Goby says with excitement. “Good luck!”
“Thanks,” Malcolm says blandly, before hanging up the call. “I’m pretty sure I already know my true self, man. I didn’t grow that awful testosterone mustache my first year of college for nothing. Where are we even going?”
They’re flying down the highway with seemingly no set destination in mind. The GPS is off, and Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” threatens to blow out the speakers.
“I dunno, you tell me,” she says with a shrug.
“What?”
“This is your trip!” Jazz says. “You decide where to go.”
“There’s no plan,” Malcolm says, more of an incredulous statement than a question.
“Don’t need one. This is about doing what makes you happy in the moment,” she says. She digs into the glove department and pulls out a sucker, shoving it into Malcolm’s chest, all while keeping her eyes on the road. “Don’t think, dude. Just do.”
Malcolm hesitantly unwraps the sucker and sticks it in his mouth. Strawberry.
“I’ve always wanted to go to New York.”
Jazz whoops and bangs on the ceiling of her truck. It’s covered in years worth of doodles and writings from their group, marking their places in her life. He can see where he wrote his name in big block lettering the day she bought this truck, right at the front for all to see.
Malcolm laughs and hollers, his shouts drowned out by the fury of the wind.
***
Malcolm feels younger with every minute that passes inside the truck. He feels 18 again—newly adult and unstoppable. He feels 16—sneaking into abandoned parks with Jazz after curfew. He feels 12—just on the brink of learning about the cruelty of the world, but not yet crossing that boundary. The world is good here, singing along too loudly to The Cure with his best friend. The world is kind.
The sun is high above the horizon, blinding white in a canvas of clear blue. Malcolm forgot how beautiful the sky can be when it’s not painted in the gray of storms. What few clouds there are in the sky are sculpted to perfection, not a single wisp to be found, only flawless cotton candy mounds.
Malcolm’s stomach growls and he remembers quite suddenly that the only thing he’s had for breakfast is a coffee. He makes Jazz pull into a McDonald’s before they go any further, and they make it just before breakfast ends.
“So,” Jazz says, gulping down a bite of hash brown. “What’s in New York?”
“Hrrm?”
“You said you wanted to go to New York,” Jazz explains. “What do you wanna do there?”
Malcolm thinks for a moment, pulling off a stray corner of cheese from his McMuffin and sticking it in his mouth. He sucks the grease remnants off of his thumb with a shrug. “I dunno. Just seems crazy that we live a few hours from there and yet I’ve never been.”
“Fair point.”
“D’you ever think about that, Jazz?” Malcolm says, turning to stare out the car window. “There’s a whole world out there to see, and we just decide on one place to stay forever. Why don’t we go out and see things? We have feet. We have cars, we have bikes. You don’t even have to go that far to see something new.”
There’s a pair of siblings in the minivan next to them who seem to be arguing over an iPad. The older one sticks their finger in the younger one’s ear, and the younger one’s mouth opens in what Malcolm assumes is an ear-splitting screech. Malcolm turns back to Jazz, only to see her staring at him with an odd look on her face.
“What?” Malcolm says.
Jazz shakes her head, her eyes returning to the road. “Nothing, man. I’ve just missed you.”
He’s not entirely sure what she means by that. They see each other practically every day. But she’s turning up the music before he can ask her, and his thoughts are drowned out by the thrum of the bass.
When he reclines his seat to take a nap, Jazz smacks him on the arm and switches the music to ‘Wake up sleepyheads’ by the Modern Lovers, blasting it to max volume so every inch of the car is vibrating. He glares at her and gives her the finger, and she laughs as she shouts along to the lyrics.
They’re halfway to New York when Jazz finally turns down the music.
“Hey,” she says, poking him as if there was anyone else in the car she could’ve been talking to. “Do you remember that field trip in sixth grade? To the aquarium?”
Malcolm blinks up at the ceiling, searching his brain. He finds the memory and his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Holy shit, yeah. Yeah! With Ms. Duran?”
“Yes! Ms. Duran!” Jazz starts laughing, and he can’t help but join her. “We got into so much trouble that day.”
“I would’ve been fine if it weren’t for you!” Malcolm says, beaming at Jazz with an open smile. “You’re the one who dragged me into shit!”
“Oh, come off it, you liked our adventures more than I did.”
“‘Adventures’ she says. Sneaking into the otter exhibit is not an adventure, that’s a crime.”
“A misdemeanor, at most,” she says dismissively.
Malcolm throws his head back and laughs. It fills up his body, into the tips of his fingers and the top of his head. When he settles again, his body relaxing back into his seat, he feels as if he’s had a drink. His cheeks are warm and he can’t seem to stop smiling, even when he accidentally makes eye contact with the motorcyclist passing by. He likes to think they smiled back underneath their helmet. (They probably didn’t.)
Jazz is thankfully not a complete sadist and does let him drift off for a short nap. He remains in that state of half asleep and half awake, the music and the sun bleeding through his eyelids preventing him from fully going under. He imagines himself in scenarios to match the music playing; a passtime he’s sure that everyone does but hardly anyone admits to. When the song is loud and brash, he imagines himself running along the edges of buildings, leaping through the air like a vigilante. When the song is slower, he allows himself to indulge in something a little sweeter. Something like holding someone’s hand where no one else can see them, a badly kept secret that makes their cheeks flame and their stomachs flutter with exhilaration.
He’s grateful that Jazz thinks he’s sleeping. If she were to look at him right now he’s sure she’d read his mind and call him out on his disgustingly romantic imagination. He’s embarrassed enough that she knows about his radio show crush, she can’t know that he starts having domestic daydreams as soon as he gets warm and sleepy like Lady Governor in a sunbeam.
What was left of his pleasant daydream is interrupted when the car jostles violently over a pothole in the road, sending Malcolm’s head crashing into the door with a painful thunk. Jazz dissolves into a fit of laughter as he rubs at his skull with a mumbled curse. He starts to lean back in his seat again to try a second attempt at sleep, but Jazz stops him.
“It’s good you’re awake, actually,” Jazz says. “I need you to tell me where the fuck we’re going.”
“I told you already.”
Jazz rolls her eyes. “New York isn’t exactly specific. We’re not just gonna trek the entire state, are we?”
Malcolm pouts, but stays silent. He hadn’t actually thought about that.
Jazz continues, “Do you wanna see Times Square? That statue lady? What?”
“Did you just call the Statue of Liberty ‘that statue lady’?”
“I don’t know her personally.”
They make the vague decision to drive to New York City; if there’s anything worth seeing in the state of New York, it will be there.
“My uncle’s been there,” Jazz says. “He said after a few days in the smog you’ll start blowing black snot out your nose.”
Malcolm makes a face. “Yum.”
***
Malcolm doesn’t believe in Hell. However, if he were to guess what it felt like, he thinks it would be similar to the act of trying to drive into New York City.
“The hotel is literally right there,” Jazz growls, gesturing to the building in the distance. They could probably get out of their car and walk to it.
Everyone who has ever endured the traffic in NYC deserves a personalized gift basket, Malcolm thinks. Chocolate covered fruit. Baguettes. Maybe a Xanax.
He’s pretty sure they’ve driven eight feet in the past twenty minutes. It takes an additional fifteen to finally get to the hotel, and Jazz nearly bursts Malcolm’s eardrums when she screams in triumph at the sight of an open parking space.
They haul their shared suitcase out of the trunk, and Malcolm falters when he sees Jazz bring something else out along with the luggage. The portable radio from his room.
Malcolm squeaks. “When did you take that?” Jazz simply winks at him and marches towards the hotel lobby, radio in hand. He shouts at her back, “Stop trying to be aloof! You’re not aloof!”
Malcolm follows her into the building, grumbling all the while. She’s already checked them in at the desk and starts to lead him toward the elevators, so he gives his eyes time to wander. His eyebrows raise up, up, and even further up his forehead as he takes it all in. It’s well decorated—and clean. He’s never stayed in a hotel so spotless. There’s always at least one questionable stain on the browning carpet. This place doesn’t even have carpets. It’s all sparkling white tiles that he can see his reflection in.
“Can we afford this?” Malcolm says. “I’m fine with booking something cheaper. I saw a building that looked haunted a few miles back, maybe they’ll take us.”
“Shut your hole,” Jazz says. “I’m using my heapings of beekeeper money to land us this schmoozy place. This is your time to have fun, dude, don’t worry about anything else.”
Malcolm wants to argue further, but Jazz has stopped in the middle of the hall, pointing through a wall made of clear glass which allows them to see into the back of the hotel.
“Mal, look,” she says excitedly. “Pool.”
Malcolm glances outside, where there is, in fact, a decently sized swimming pool. There’s a family of four out there already, laughing and splashing at each other’s faces. “Jazz. We didn’t pack swimsuits.”
“So?”
“No, Jazmine,” he says, dragging her to the elevators.
They don’t spend much time in their room near the top of the building. Jazz shrugs off her jacket and takes a minute to bounce on their single bed, touching her hand to the white popcorn ceilings, and Malcolm winces when she doesn’t take her shoes off. Nearly everything in the room is some shade of white. He feels a bit out of place, with his unwashed hoodie and Jazz’s sleeveless Nirvana t-shirt. He has to remind himself that they bought this room; they’re not the intruders he feels like they are.
He heads over to the large window, looking out and down at the vast city. He doesn’t think he’d be able to live here. It would be pretty shit to have one of his episodes in such a busy place where there’s almost nowhere quiet to hide and calm down. ‘Overwhelming’ is New York’s entire aesthetic. But he can’t deny that it’s a breathtaking view.
They leave the room, and Malcolm has to drag Jazz away from the sight of the swimming pool once again. It’s a weird shift, stepping out into the city after being in that hotel. The hotel smells of citrus, the sharp scent of disinfectant and something else that’s supposed to disguise the chemical smell but does a poor job of it. The air outside the building is stark in contrast. It smells of sweat and dirt and gas. It's pretty gross, but it smells like life.
Malcolm decides he prefers it outside.