Frost Driven

by Spectra1

Chapter 5

An hour in, we were leaning over the metal framework of the chassis. Jason had the circular grinder and we were all wearing safety goggles. They were comfortable and wearing them might seem like a lame thing to do with no teacher around, but I sort of like having a matching set of eyes, you know? I just enjoy the whole being-able-to-see-and-not-being-deformed thing. There was a kid here last year with a messed-up eye. Now he was in juvie. It was a whole big thing.

Anyway, I was leaning in and waiting for the moment when Summerluck would go too far grinding off the rust and old paint and would put a hole in the tubing, so then I could call him a moron again. But before he did, we heard this clacking, banging sound that had nothing to do with the metal tubing or the circular grinder or anything else we were doing. Somepony was at the door, rattling the handle. Summerluck stopped grinding and we all shifted the goggles up onto our foreheads.

“Whoozat? said Spitshine, looking over at us. The outline of his goggles was still stamped into the skin around his eyes. He looked ridiculous, but I guess I did too.

“One way to find out. It’s not exactly a secret we’re here,” I said, the noise of the circular grinder still ringing in my ears.

“Aw, man,” said Spitshine. “I told you we shouldn’t’ve busted that thing out.”

“What?” said Summerluck. “I’ve got to grind it down before we can repaint it.”

“Before YOU can repaint it,” I said.

“Whatever; we’ll just tell ‘em Gustrock said it was OK,” said Summerluck.

We were all thinking the same thing. We figured it was Riftknob or somepony like that at the door, and we were going to be in hot water for staying after in a full-blown blizzard and using power tools unsupervised. It seemed like we could probably get slammed for either of those things and that both of them together could add up to some real trouble. Again, we weren’t the kind of ponies who went around chasing gold stars, but we weren’t the kind of ponies who thought detention was a badge of honor either.

And like I said before: I’d miss practice. That would suck and I’d be running laps for a week. Coach Cliffjumper was always yelling at me as it was. The assistant coach told me it was because I had “a chance to be something special.” But I didn’t know that for sure. All I knew was that Coach always seemed to have one-and-a-half of his two eyes on me.

Anyway, it didn’t occur to us until we got close to the door that it might be a student out there, and it definitely didn’t occur to us that it would be THAT student. From what I’d heard, he barely even qualified as one.

As we got closer to the door, the banging picked up. Whoever was out there was practically shaking the door off its hinges.

“Calm down,” I said. “Just chill.”

Spitshine got to the door first.

“Oh, crap,” he whispered back to us. “It’s Hardware.”

Hardware was bad news. He’s the kind of pony you just sort of assume is armed in some way. Maybe not with a gun or anything fully criminal like that, but with something improvised, something that a truly mean pony would find and keep, like a box cutter or a razor blade or just a hunk of metal.

Once he saw us, the door went still, and we heard him from the hallway. “Open up, ladies.” It came through the thick door at the volume of normal speech, but we knew it hadn’t started out that way. The pony was standing out in the hallway, shouting.

“Well,” I said, “I guess we should see what he wants.”

“Before he puts his hoof through the window,” said Spitshine.

We were speaking under our breath, a little more than a whisper, because we were all right by the door now, just a foot or two from the psychopath on the other side of it. I reached out for the handle and turned it.

“Hey, man,” I said, my voice deepening in some subconscious bluff. I stepped back as he pushed the door inward.

“Hey, loser,” said Hardware. “Who’s in here, just you three?”

“Yep,” I said.

Hardware stepped fully into the room, nodding at Summerluck, and said, “Hey.”

Summerluck and Hardware weren’t friends, exactly, but Hardware seemed to give Summerluck some credit for the whole royal guard thing, the novelty T-shirts and fatigue pants and all that. All the stuff we busted on Summerluck for, basically. I think Summerluck – a nice guy who sort of played at being dangerous, if you ask me – found that a little flattering. I mean, Hardware really was dangerous. He, like, radiated danger.

We all knew him, in any case. He took shop too.

“What are you guys doing here? Early dismissal, you know.”

“Working on Summerluck’s stupid cart,” I said. I gestured toward the back of the room, where little bits of paint and rust still hung in the air. It occurred to me then, just a random thought that skittered in and out of my brain, that we probably should’ve been wearing masks to keep that stuff out of our lungs.

Hardware sniffed the air. Even over here, it smelled of burnt paint. “Yeah,” he said. “Heard the grinder.”

“What are you still doing here?” said Spitshine. He sounded friendly, almost casual. I’m sure he had to work hard to get the tone right, but the tone turned out not to matter. Up to this point, Hardware had been almost friendly to us, but that wasn’t his style and he seemed to remember that now.

He answered the question with a grunt and a shrug. When his shoulders came back down, nice Hardware was gone and we were once again looking at the only sophomore the seniors were legitimately scared of. This was a guy who, according to one story, had been suspended for throwing a chair through a window in second grade. Who does something like that in second grade? Who’s that frickin’ strong? The most trouble I got at that age involved rubber cement.

Something about Spitshine’s question had triggered the change in Hardware. I was thinking, what’s wrong with asking “What are you still doing here?” And then it occurred to me, and I had to try hard not to laugh out loud. I probably would’ve been knocked out if I had, but it really was funny.

He wouldn’t come right out and say it – it’s not the kind of thing you’d admit – but the reason he was still here was that he’d gone to detention. Even though there was none after early dismissal. I mean, of course there wasn’t; there were no late buses. He’d probably been going for a week and had gone again out of sheer force of habit.

I kept the smile off my face and looked off to the side.

“How you guys getting home?” he said, his voice cold now.

Long story short, he was looking for a ride. The main problem – apart from the fact that Hardware was a psycho and none of us exactly wanted to cram in next to him for a long, slow ride through a storm that seemed to get worse every minute – was that Hardware lives in Soudley. That was a long haul, and Summerluck told him, as politely and delicately as possible, that there was just no frickin’ way. If it had been Spitshine or me, Hardware might’ve killed the messenger, but he accepted it from Summerluck with nothing more than a few F-bombs. And really, what could he do? It was all true. We lived where we lived, and he lived where he lived. And, man, it was really coming down out there.

“You might, uh,” I began. I was wading back into the conversation because I was a little scared of Hardware – I’ll admit that – but I also wanted him gone. And there was one other thing that was true: There were three of us and there was one of him. “You might want to go ask Goldlash. He’s over by the gym or something. Riftknob says he’s in charge of all that stuff, coordinating the rides or whatever.”

“Yeah?” said Hardware.

“Yeah,” I said. “He might be able to hook you up.”

We were all quiet for a few moments. Hardware was standing there, thinking. I shifted my weight from one hoof to the other.

“This blows,” said Hardware, and left.

We listened to his hoofsteps fade away down the hallway, and then I reached out and swung the door closed.

“Total psycho,” said Spitshine.

“Yep,” I said. It was like you could feel the atmosphere in the room returning to normal, like in a movie after they sealed the air lock. “He’s right though, it’s time to get out of here.”

“Wow,” said Summerluck, looking out the window. It was just white out there. It looked like a thick fog, but we knew it wasn’t.

“That is not good,” I said.

There was a little shuffling around as Spitshine and Summerluck checked their cells. Still nothing. Spitshine’s text was still in the UNSENT/PENDING folder, along with a second one from him and a new one from me to my mom.

“Think your dad might show up early anyway?” said Spitshine.

“Yeah,” said Summerluck. “Can’t imagine they’re doing much work in all this.”

“Maybe we should get over there,” I said, “in case he shows up.”

“Yeah,” said Summerluck. “In case he shows up early.”

In case he shows up at all.

Comments

[ancientdragonduelist]

This is a well written and enticing story. :) I can't wait for the next chapter!

[Spectra1]

2580221 I'll post a new 1 every day or two. ill post chapter 6 today :D