Devon Mahew knew how to get girls off. Nobody in their small town of Bradford had
fingered as many girls to orgasm as he had—feeding the pony, he called it. It was the
only thing he enjoyed more than minor vandalism and whippets. He liked pranks too.
One time, he emptied a whole thing of Dawn dish soap into the fountain on Main,
creating tidal clouds of suds that stopped traffic—that was back when Bradford still had
traffic, before they built the highway. He was known locally as the black sheep, a bad
seed, trouble, at least until the night he wrapped his truck around a telephone pole and
died. Nobody said a bad word about him again after that. Suddenly, by all accounts,
Devon had been a bright and promising young man and not just a horny miscreant who
could hotwire old cars.
“What a shame,” Jenna’s mother said over breakfast the morning the news broke. “That
poor family. I can’t even imagine. You didn’t know him well?”
“No, not really.” Jenna stared into her Cheerios, and thought back to the one night in
May, behind the baseball diamond when Devon had slid his hand down her jeans and
brought her to a trembling mess.
The accident was big news for a small town and yet people didn’t talk about what
actually happened. Nobody mentioned the speed he’d been driving or how many empty
Fireball bottles were found in the wreck. No one seemed to remember the boy with the
devilish grin who’d do anything for a rush or a reaction. Instead, people said things like
he really had so much potential and he had a real shot at making state next year and it
could have just been a popped tire, the asphalt out that way is rough. Jenna was
grossed out by it, the way it felt folks were wiping the whole thing down with Clorox. It
was like nobody really knew him, or nobody would admit to really knowing him, and she
wasn’t sure which was worse.
She and Hailey sat cross-legged on the large ice box outside Joe’s Garage & Gas eating
Otter Pops, which was how they spent most of their summers. Lucas who worked behind
the counter would knock on the glass behind them and point to the No Loitering sign,
and the girls would roll their eyes or stick out their tongues, all red and blue. Back when
the busses passed through, they used to come here to watch folks pile out for pee breaks,
the tourists, they called them, not that Bradford was ever the final destination. Who’d
want to end up here? The highway was the end of all that, but the girls still hung out and
annoyed Lucas and occasionally convinced him to sell them a scratcher. There wasn’t
much else to do.
Hailey had brought the death notice with her today, torn from a local paper.
In memory of Devon Mahew.
It was jarring to see it in print. He finally had a permanent record.
The girls recognized the accompanying picture as a crop from his prom photo. That was
the night he’d brought Megan Archer as his date, and she later found him out back with
his hand up Megan Miller’s dress.
The notice read generic. It could have been about anyone, anywhere.
A shining star, taken from us too soon… Beloved son, brother, and classmate…
Eternally missed… Now reunited with his heavenly father.
It struck Jenna as bleak, how you could seemingly bury an entire life in under a hundred
words, and that would go down in history, how something so far removed from a real
person could persist over time.Hailey shrugged. “What do you expect them to say, Jenna? In memory of our dear Devon. He loved petty crime and heavy petting. He once ate a banana, skin-and-all,
for a five-buck bet. May he rest in peace. I mean, come on.”
Jenna chewed on the freeze pop’s plastic and said nothing. She wondered what
revisionist drivel they’d write about her.
When summer break was over, Principal Heller held a school assembly. He said nice,
bland things about Devon that weren’t true. Then Coach Filmore got up and did the
same. They both insisted he’d had a bright future ahead of him. There was a minute’s
silence. Boys who Devon had raced dirt bikes and tagged buildings with stood squarely,
hands in pockets. Girls who’d had the pleasure of his acquaintance dabbed at their eyes
with Kleenex. Megan and Megan exchanged somber nods.
She woke at five thirty am, dressed quietly and made her way down to Main while the
streets were still dark and nobody was around. Just before sunrise, she pulled a half-full
bottle of Dawn from her backpack and emptied it into the fountain, then stood back, out
of view for a bit and watched the bubbles start to form, and froth up and overflow and
billow down the empty streets of a town that was slowly fading from the map.
Amanda King lives and writes in Berlin. Her work has appeared locally in Berlin Flash Fiction.
Lost Balloon 