Pretty Little Machine

So you want to take a ride?

He’s older. An uncle of one of the boys. He drinks the expensive beer, and waits in his car when he arrives.
Because the sound of that engine is too delicious for them to bear, it rolls through every tingling pore and they rush outside and bounce on the nature strip while he idles in this machine.

Sure.

The blush floods her skin, it beats hard in her chest.
It’s midnight blue, it’s cherry upholstery, she get’s that tremor in her thighs as he guns the engine.

C’mon hop in you little revhead, I might even let you have a drive.

And the teenage boys around her grin as she gets in.
As she closes the door, and the leather is hot on her skin and she sighs in a pleasure that’s new enough to make her blush harder.
The chevy block roars and they cruise down the beach road.
She watches them waving in the rear-view and knows that she fits in.
That they understand it’s never about the glossy magazines, the high heels and girly drinks.
She likes bourbon and boots and leaning over hot engines with a scrunched up face wanting to understand.
About the passion of Holden and the pain of Ford.
About how secretly she wants a Mustang.
So she sits and grins as he changes gears and explains the restoration, about every lick of paint.
He leans forward and turns on the radio and she nods her head to a song she’ll never forget, she holds back the whips of hair that lash her face, that keep her so wide awake.
She tenses at every corner, hoping this is when he’ll pull over and say, hey slide over it’s your turn.
She’s a long way from her license but man she could drive.
Lessons out in the back field.
In a battered bomb of a thing.
How hard he grinned when she made it roar.
When she turned into the skid without a flinch, made it dance and sing.
Her memory fades at a pressure she feels, and her hope is left like roadkill and she sees where he has put her hand.

What the fuck are you doing?

She thinks she screams.
But nothing comes out.
Just a wriggling weak thing, a noise that is muted by the rumble through the seats.

You’re a pretty little girl aren’t you?

She flinches back as his hand pushes in.
As he keeps his eyes on the road.
And she thinks she keeps screaming as the sun glints on the hood, as cars pass by on the other side of the road and she see’s herself in them.
And she doesn’t make a sound.
Except a small whimper.

Please don’t.

What’s your problem? Didn’t Shane teach you to drive?

And he grins, spins the wheel with one hand, and she feels the vomit rise, and she knows this is bad, like a dream, like maybe it isn’t even happening.
She swallows the bile and thinks yes.
A bad dream.
She shoves him as hard as he can, and his body slams into the drivers door and just like in a dream he starts to swerve, and he is screaming you crazy little fucking whore as he bats at the wheel and they begin to swerve and she is laughing as he slams on the brakes because even she knows that you should turn into the skid.
And they jerk to a stop and cars rev past with horns blaring. Drowning out the song she will never forget.

You stupid little bitch.

Are the last words she hears in the car of her dreams.
And she leans towards him and cherry upholstery, and this time she does not swallow the bile.

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cherryvanilla