THEY MUST HAVE BEEN TWINS. If they weren’t, it would mean that one of the Connelly boys actually tried to look like the other. I would have at least shaved a gap between my eyebrows. And they were hairy. They looked like they were maybe sixteen, but they already had gross wispy beards and probably weighed a quarter-ton combined.
I could tell just by looking at them they were football players.
I hate football players.
Also—and all teenage guys know this—there is an unspoken message you get from other boys sometimes, and it rings as loud as a sonar ping in a blind bat’s ears, when another dude is preparing to start shit with you. I’ve gotten that vibe before from maybe a half mile away, and it’s always been spot-on accurate.
So Nico held up too when he saw the Connelly boys standing beside Seanie’s car.
“Shoulda known some Pine Mountain rich-boy piece of shit not even old enough to grow pubes would be driving a car like this,” said Connelly on the left, who I only imagined was the coagulationvat twin.
And for a moment, I pictured hairless and peach-assed Sam Abernathy driving Seanie’s Land Rover, and then, for so very many reasons, I decided to add that to my Things-I-Never-Want-to-Think-About-Again List.
I also made a mental note to myself to never wear my Pine Mountain sweats when driving a borrowed Land Rover through the untamed wilds of western Oregon.
Curd Cutter Connelly nodded and scratched his balls.
What nice boys, entering the dignified cheese-making profession.
“Look, we don’t have any problems with you guys. We were just leaving,” I said.
Coagulation Vat Connelly looked at his brother and then spit on the driver’s door of Seanie’s car. “I’d sure like to sit in that. I never sat in one of those things before. I’m just wondering—did the car turn you gay, or were you already like that before your daddy bought it for you?”
Nico grabbed a bottle of Boob Juice from my hands, opened it, and took a long drink.
“This is good shit,” he said.
Then Curd Cutter Connelly said, “Yeah. I feel like sitting inside it too. And maybe taking a shit in the driver’s seat.”
Then both future cheese masters laughed. Coagulation Vat Connelly nodded enthusiastically. And I was terrified that I was, indeed, going to “fuck up” Seanie’s car, that Nico and I were about to get into a dreadfully mismatched fight, and that Curd Cutter Connelly really was determined to make poo on the driver’s seat.
Shit.
Nico calmly drank the entire bottle of Boob Juice. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his (my) hoodie sleeve and stepped onto the macadam of the highway and yelled, “FUCK!” as he smashed the bottom half of the bottle onto the road.
It startled the Connelly boys, but not as much as what happened next. Nico stomped up to the nearest twin (Curd Cutter) and grabbed the bigger boy’s shirt at the collar, pushing him back against Seanie’s car.
Don’t dent it. Don’t dent it. Don’t dent it. For Christ’s sake DO NOT dent Seanie’s car!
Nico held the broken neck of the bottle in front of Curd Cutter’s face. He said, “I will dig your fucking eyeballs out and carry them home from here inside my underwear if you don’t back the fuck off right now.”
Coagulation Vat Connelly was stunned.
I was stunned.
Also, I fucking needed to pee again.
Coagulation Vat Connelly ran back to the pickup, and I thought, oh, God, he’s going to get a gun; he’s going to get a gun and kill us, and I totally blew my opportunity to have sex with Annie Altman on my final day with a pulse. But he didn’t get a gun. He started the truck and drove away.
“Wait! Wait, fucker! Wait!” Curd-Cutter-Who-Needed-to-Poo Connelly was practically in tears. I actually started to almost feel sorry for him.
Nico let go of him, and the big redhead took off down the road after his brother.
So much for the teen unemployment rate in Oregon.