school to become a mechanic before I joined the service but I’d gotten kicked out. I could fix bikes and shit like that, though, and I liked them. So, I just sort of fell in with the Jokers.”
“Cool,” I said. I didn’t really know what else to say.
“What about you? Why the fuck did you run away from home?”
I blushed.
“I… It’s stupid.”
“Fight with your parents?”
“No. Not really. There’s this teacher at my school and he’s… He’s a real creep. He started touching me after school and I just got the hell out of there. I started running and I didn’t stop till I got to the woods.”
Blade laughed. “So, you just bugged out. You really didn’t plan this running away thing, did you?”
I shook my head.
“Why not go to your parents’ house?”
“They’d never believe me. They don’t pay any attention to me. They don’t give a shit unless I’m getting good grades or winning a trophy or something like that.”
“It’s nice, having parents, though. I never really knew my folks.”
Again, I fell silent.
Why did he have to remind me of what a privileged life I had?
Sure, maybe I wouldn’t get a recommendation from Mr. Wilson but what would be the worst thing that could happen there?
Maybe I went to a state school around here instead of an Ivy out East.
Who the hell cared?
We came to a clearing. In the center stood a bonfire and around it were arrayed ten or eleven motorcycles.
“Blade!” someone called out. Two or three bikers, big men, older and not as good looking as Blade, started over towards us, lazily. “Who the hell’s the kid?”
“She’s cool,” Blade declared, putting a hand in front of me. “She’s just needing a place to stay tonight, is all. I caught her poking around in the woods.”
“What the hell was she doing in the woods?”
“She ran away from home. Someone tried to rape her.”
The bikers fell silent. Their faces were stony and hard but gradually, they softened as they took me in.
“She’s cool. She won’t talk. She just needs somewhere safe.”
Finally, one of the bikers, the one in the middle, who wasn’t all that bad looking now that I got an eyeful of him, despite his beer belly and greying hair, smiled at me.
“You hungry, kiddo?”
My stomach growled suddenly. I realized that I hadn’t eaten since lunch.
They brought me to the fire and sat me down, fixing me up a plate of chili. Blade passed me a can of beer. I took a sip and made a face. This was the first beer I had ever had.
“You’re not really a beer girl, are you?” he said with a grin. I shrugged.
“Nah, I drink beer all the time. My daddy just buys me the good stuff,” I said, trying to posture. The other bikers had been listening in and burst out laughing.
“Way to go, Blade. Found yourself a little princess, didn’t you? She’s gonna’ be wanting craft beef and champagne and caviar…”
Blade grinned and rolled his eyes. I liked these men. I liked their roughness and the way their roughness hid their kindness.
They shared their food with me and told me about themselves: there was Roy, a former heavyweight boxer from Wisconsin who had lost an eye in a bar fight and couldn’t box anymore.
Punk was from Mexico and didn’t speak much English, though I gathered from his garbled story that he was an illegal immigrant and had been on the run from immigration services for the last six years after he killed the foreman at a manufacturing plant when it turned out the bastard had been abusing some of the girls who worked there. Brinks, the big one who had offered me food, had been Blade’s commander in Afghanistan before joining up the Jokers.
“It’s hard, you know, coming back. This country ain’t really set up for soldiers trying to be civilians.”
I just nodded. After all, what could I say? I didn’t know