My First High School Shootout
We’re doing sixty miles an hour in the parking lot of ‘John’s Incredible Pizza.’ Luckily there are no speed bumps. Also lucky that there are no children present to vehicularly manslaughter. I’m in the passenger seat of my friend’s Celica. His name’s Justin. Justin drinks tequila and has high blood pressure. We don’t have a death wish per say, but we’re in high school, invincibility hasn’t been beaten out of us yet.
Neither of us is drinking at the time. We’re just two kids, speeding through a parking lot, pursuing another car full of kids. The other car is black and dirty. The tires are bald and the back window had been shot out, accidently with a pellet gun. Squished behind the wheel of the lead car is Larry. He’s six-foot four, laughing hysterically, and evading us with surprising skill. There are two other kids in Larry’s car. One is in the passenger seat, the other is turned around in the back seat, shooting, action movie-style, out the back window.
He shooting Larry’s pellet gun. It’s the same real-looking handgun responsible for blowing out the back window, probably in another high speed shootout. Justin, my driver, is chasing them. With what intention – I don’t recall. I’m watching most of it, seatbelt-less, crunched behind the dashboard, waiting for the windshield to explode.
The maneuvers are wild. The adrenaline is high. Pellets are ticking off the hood of Justin’s car, encouraging him to be more reckless. The pursuit figure-eights around the parking lot a few times leaving skid marks and hubcaps in our wake. Larry and his shooters somehow end up behind our car. The pellets are really digging into the paint now. Justin makes his first intelligent decision of the evening, he exits the parking lot. On the streets, the odds are in our favor. Justin’s car is much faster and we lose them.
We get to the first red light and slow to a stop. The Celica engine exhales a thin breath of smoke. I look over at Justin. He’s frothing with adrenaline, smiling like an idiot. This sends us both into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
The light turns green. It still smells like oil and burning rubber and sweat. The hood is still smoking, but we’re close enough to Justin’s house to ignore it. Within the three block drive, the thickening smoke has brought about a subtle haze of anxiety. Justin pulls not into his driveway, but across his driveway into his lawn. I’d later find out the reason for this was “better lighting.”
Justin pops the hood and we both get out. There’s trouble and it’s apparent. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I don’t know exactly what that saying means, but at that point it was absolutely true. Justin desperately tries to get the hood to open. It’s stuck. The seemingly innocuous smoke, was actually a fire, hot enough to melt the manual lever needed lift the hood. We can see tiny yellow flames dancing behind the car’s grill, but we can’t do a thing about it.
The excitement of the chase is completely gone now. It’s been replaced by fear, uncertainty, panic. Neither of us has ever dealt with a car fire. Also, the car is on the lawn, parked dangerously close to the house. If the car goes up in flames, chances are, the house will go with it.
As a last ditch effort, Justin remembers the fire extinguisher that his dad keeps in the garage. He rips through the front door. I stand with my hands on my head, seriously trying to calculate the mechanics of a car engine and how long it can handle fire before it explodes and kills everyone.
Justin comes back out, sweaty, with an industrial-sized, dusty fire extinguisher. He pulls the pin, aims, pulls the trigger. A trickle of white powder comes out. He puts the nozzle right against the car’s grill and pulls the trigger again. It doesn’t respond. Now he’s shaking the fire extinguisher, pulling the trigger relentlessly, pausing to stare at the instructions, sweating, cursing, pulling the trigger, pulling the trigger, nothing is happening.
I step in to break the cycle of insanity. We’ve got to get the car away from his house. We put it in neutral and let it roll off the lawn until it’s halfway in the street.
The fire truck arrives. The flames are poking out from under the hood now, licking at the windshield. Justin and I sit helplessly on a brick wall, far enough away to not get blown up. Aside from the visual pandemonium in front of us, the street is calm. The sun just melted into the horizon. The sky is purple. Justin’s mouth is open. I don’t have any words of condolence.
One fire fighter assesses the situation. Another comes up in full gear. He’s carrying some type of chainsaw made for cars. Justin squints. He looks as if he feels the pain as his car’s hood is ripped open. Sparks fly from the metal blade.
The fire is extinguished within seconds of the hood being sawed and pried open. Maybe the firefighters questioned us. Maybe they just got back in their truck, shaking their heads, and drove away, leaving us with the charred remains of our getaway car. All I remember is the sad look in Justin’s eyes and the way the moonlight hit the pitiful, expired fire extinguisher that remained on the lawn. The damage was done. I made sure to leave before Justin’s dad got home.