A journey; helicopters in the heat; a decision is made

With a shudder and the sound of gears grinding, the old Suburban leaped into action. Well, at the very minimum, the behemoth started moving down his aging father’s long driveway. Giggles escaped from the back of the SUV as one of the two sets of girls whispered to each other about the only male, besides the driver, a young boy, who was sitting in the passenger seat, oblivious. Eight people bounced along the final unfinished gravel section that terminated in the local highway on their way to the mall.
There were to be found six sets of shrill, high voices set to giggle, while one pair, deep or soon to be, lay silent. It seemed, to the young boy, as if the two sets of three girls were competing for his attention, but he could not be sure.
It had not been until earlier that week, when he had been playing with action figures at the side of the pool with some of his younger cousins, that he had first become aware of a certain pull, a subconscious shame and arousal that came upon him when he glanced over, from time to time, at the gaggle of bikini-clad girls his age diving and swimming in the noon sunshine.
Now, sitting next to his uncle, shifting on the hot leather of the seat, he realized his ears were again turning red, and felt his shoulders scrunch forward, to act as walls against the attention he was getting from the rear of the vehicle.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, saw the boy’s shoulders bunch up, felt tension rise in the car at the same moment that the girls’ giggles soured, and they shut up. I’d better have a talk with this boy, he thought, run some things past him about what I think I know about females. Glad those girls shut up, there’s only so much I can take, and the mall is still a half hour away, he thought.

Sweat poured off of his brow, through the stubble on his chin, to indiscriminately bombard his loose cotton shirt. The air conditioning had decided to quit about ten minutes into the traffic jam. Smoke rose ahead, and an ambulance had roared past, sirens blazing, a few minutes before, so he guessed they were coming abreast with whatever was burning. Based on the speed of the ambulance, and the helicopter he was just beginning to hear, over the din of the latest pop diva, played at high volume on insistence of the princesses in back, he surmised that the accident was indeed serious, and that lives were at stake. He figured they had about another fifteen minutes until they cleared the ‘jam, then another fifteen until they reached the mall.

The boy relaxed more as the sun heated up the car and the heat sapped the girls’ energy reserves. After a few minutes, he hazarded a glance back at Her. She had not spoken to him since they arrived for the family reunion, unlike all the other girls, who wanted to know living in California was like. Just like anywhere else, was his answer, which, without fail, caused minor swooning and fanning of the face, and sent girls turning their heads together and whispering.
But She had not seemed interested in the least, had not even apologized when she accidentally kicked his GameBoy into the pool. Her nose turned up into a riot of freckles, and her chestnut hair shone like kelp when it was wet and ohmygod she is looking right at me, he thought, and jerked his head back around to stare forward, awkwardly pointing at something ahead of them, hoping to draw attention from his ruddy ears.
“I see it,” the driver said. “It’s a Huey. Looks like someone got pretty messed up.” The older man looked over at the boy, smiled quickly, then turned to check on the girls in the back.
“You ladies doing alright? I know it’s hot, but we should be there soon.” Only one of the girls, the one his young friend had been checking out, looked directly at him, and smiled weakly.
That’s the girl I would have picked, too, to have a crush on, he thought. Can’t they just hurry it up and shovel up whoever they managed to drag out of that burning heap and fly him off in that shiny new ... He sighed. The heat was getting to him, sapping his patience along with his humanity. Deep breath, there we go, let the body cool itself down.
“Only a few more miles to go, ok guys?” Nothing. Silence from the back, from shotgun.

The girls beat them to the entrance, for the most part because the two weren’t running. The driver yelled across the shimmering heat of the parking-lot for them to wait, asking them to regroup once they got inside the door.
“So, which one is your favorite,” he asked the boy, heat seeping up through the soles of his sneakers, “which one has got you by the balls?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Uncle T.”
“Once we make sure everyone knows the meeting times and areas, let’s you and me go for a walk, cool?”
“Cool,” replied the young Californian.

They sat, at the only bar in the whole mall, looking at each other over frosty mugs of beer, real and root. The older man polished off a glass of water, slamming it down carelessly on the table.
“Let’s get right to the heart of this thing. I couldn’t help but notice that every single one of those girls in the car on the way here was dying for you to talk to her, for you give her the slightest bit of attention. Yet you sat up front, scrunching yourself up, and pointing out of the window. But at one point, you seemed more embarrassed than anything. What does a kid your age have to be embarrassed about?” Shit, I asked him too many questions, he thought.
Seeing confusion cloud over the kid’s face, sensing fear rising in the lymph-nodes where the boy’s jaw turned toward the skull, saw his mouth moving as a dozen different answers fought for approval and vocalization. He decided to start over, keeping it simple.
“Alright. You know what? Forget everything I just said. Let’s keep this simple. Do you like any of the girls you’ve met so far?”
The boy smiled a big smile, and said ”I really like Angelina. Is she your girlfriend or is she your wife? Are you going to marry her?”
“I like her too, but I’m not sure if we’re getting married. Ok, so you like the girl I brought, but what about the ones a little more your age, huh? What about the girls sitting in the back of the car today, you like any of those girls?”
“Well ...” the boy began, looking off to the side, his shoulders slumping. After a moment, he looked back, briefly meeting the older man’s eye before buying his face in the sweet foam of his float.
The older man sat patiently, took a sip of his beer, and checked out a waitress walking by.
“Well ...” the boy continued, setting down his drink, foam caked in the corners of his mouth, “the thing is, there’s this one girl, she has freckles, and she doesn’t like me, plus she kicked my GameBoy into the pool, and she never even looked at me until today, and ..”
“Slow down, champ,” the man said, ”what’s this about her not liking you? Did she say so?”
“Not really,” the boy responded, looking down at his drink. Mumbling, he continues “but every other girl has been asking me all kinds of questions about where I live, and been really excited about talking to me, while this girl, she’s so pretty, and seems nice, and I’d really rather talk to her than all the other girls, I just know it, but she hasn’t come over yet.”
“I think I understand. One time, there was this girl, named Lynn Crumbling, who I was crushing on like a motherf ... anyway, she was hot, and the day before my birthday party, I handed her a note on the bus, but she didn’t come to my party. I think it still affects me today.”
The kid had been looking off in the direction of a gaming store, and didn’t notice I had stopped talking for a few seconds after the fact.
“Look, kid, I didn’t bring you here to lecture you, but maybe what you should do is make the first move, just go in guns blazing, dazzle her with, well, with ... do you have anything you can dazzle her with?”
“I can play the piano, sort of,” the kid said.
“That’s better than nothing, but doesn’t really help us right now. Tell you what, let’s go track down the girls, and then you can talk to her, right?”
“But won’t the other girls get upset,” the boy asked, panic sneaking into his voice, “what if they don’t talk to me after that?”
“That is what it boils down to, kid. What do you want more, to have all these girls all over you, or do you want to make it happen with the one you really want to talk to? Your call.”
For a moment, the boy sat, watching the remnants of his drink settle in the mug before him.
“Want another,” The older man asked, raising his had to flag down a waitress
“No!” The boy said, loudly, more so than he had hoped. “Let’s go find them. I’ve made my choice.”