Read Online What We Do Is Secret by Thorn Kief Hillsbery - Free Book Online Page B

always act in unexpected ways, he did it for everyone he came in contact with, even cops.
    Darby said.
    (To the cop who pulled us over going seventy in a thirtyfive zone in Amber’s car on the way back to Hollywood from the Middle Class gig at the Fleetwood.)
    We’re sorry, officer, but we’re late for our NA meeting, you know,
Narcotics Anonymous, and there’s nothing more important in our
lives right now, we’re fuck-ups and it’s all we’ve got, I know you understand.
    And he let us go.
    He didn’t ask where the meeting was or whose car it was or who we were or why we had a stolen Fender bass amp in the backseat beside me.
    He didn’t ask anything, just let us go.
    Mind control.
    Hellin Killer hypnotizes people into letting her pierce them with safety pins, and it won’t bleed or leave a scar.
    I think Darby must have taught her.
    David asks what’s the most different thing I’ve ever done, and I don’t know, I don’t have that much a clue on what exactly’s regular. So I just tell him about the night I drove, somewheres down in HB after a gig at the Cuckoo’s Nest, and I sort of made a name for myself in the scene because of it, I guess I do have an identity, there’s youth of today I don’t know from Adam Bomb who know me from hearing the story.
    Which started isn’t that amazing with all of us being extremely fucked up, but especially the Crash Trash chick whose car it was, she was frying on a six-way hit of that windowpane that was going around really hard then, and she just lost it on one of those main streets down there, out of the blue navy blue she screamed that everything was too fuckin bright and the only way she could see to keep driving was with her eyes closed.
    And there were four of us sardined in the back of this little two-door, Hellin and me and Gerber in Rory Dolores’s lap, Darby riding shotgun, fully wasted, and we all yelled back at her, no no no, keep ’em open, keep ’em open, and then she slammed on the brakes, screaming it was even brighter with her eyes closed and she couldn’t take it anymore.
    But it was like three in the morning and there was no other traffic, so we fishtailed over enough pavement to cover Road Island till finally we skidded to a stop in the name of push comes to shove and Darby said, “All right, who’s gonna fuckin drive this thing?”
    And one by one everyone said there was no way they could deal till Hellin finally said, “Let Rockets drive!” and they all took it up like one of those hairy Krishna chants.
    And I’m all, Hell fuckin na, I’ll drive this thing, and next thing you know I’m behind the wheel, completely zoned on Tuinals, with everyone in back frying and Darby next to me on Quaaludes washed down by a twelve-pack, faced as a plumber after a disloyal flush, swigging from a bottle of Jack in his hand and giving me a driving lesson.
    But not the best one, obviously. And the car’s like a fivespeed I guess it’s called, with that extra one to shred in, and Darby’s got his hand around mine on the shifter to show me where the gears are and that’s where he tells me to gas it instead of in first or whatever, so I end up laying a gnarly patch and then sideswiping three parked cars and knocking down a sign before Darby grabs the wheel and we hit a utility pole and the windshield smashes into a million tiny pieces that pelt us like hail and even get inside our clothes, Rory said he was picking glass out of his pubic hair like two weeks later.
    So there was this creepy silence afterwards when we all sobered up a little, before we conned the dot dot dots to find no one wounded in traction, and then we just roared, even the chick whose car it was, we staggered down the middle of the street laughing like hyenas from the hot place, yelling, “Let Rockets drive!” all the way back to the Cuckoo’s Nest, where the bored boys with nothing to do still kicking it on the tiles outside started yelling it too once they heard the story, “Let