Revolution by Michael Sutherland

the open window.
A
can flew back between the seats and smacked in my crotch.
"Shit!"
"No,
Jack," Pete laughed. "It's only coke."
"What
did you have to come along for anyway?" Titch said to me.
But
I wasn't listening to him, just looking at Pete looking at me in the rear view
mirror again.
But
after a while it began to settle down. And the atmosphere went out the windows
to infect some other innocent suckers passing by as we headed for the pass.
We
started to laugh and joke around. Including Pete who should have had his eyes
glued to the road.
Instead
he kept looking over his shoulder, yelling, laughing, coked out.
Pete
the rich kid.
The
kid without worries, except for the aimless youth he should have hatched out of
years ago.
Nothing
was funny. But we laughed we did and hysterically too.
Either
politely or maniacally, because none of us wanted to be seen to be the one not
getting it, the one not getting the joke.
No
one wanted to be seen as the one that was so dumb he would be kicked out in the
cold in the heat of suburbia.
The
speed cameras tracked our way and joined up the dots of our roller ball ride
into nowhere taking picture after picture, same car, and same number.
With
Pete driving high on speed, even higher on frustration, because nothing was
ever fast enough for us.
The
setting sun blinded out the cameras flashy flicker impact anyway, so why worry?
Besides
the fines would arrive at Pete's dad's door as always, and as always Pete's dad
would pay for Petey boy's mistakes.
Only
Pete didn't see it like that.
This
was punishment.
What
was the point of his old man making all that money if it wasn't for spoiling
Pete with anyway?
So
this was revenge for his dad not giving him a decent set of wheels in the first
place.
Only
this time it was worse.
It
was the one and only time Pete's dad had actually challenged Pete to do
something, to earn something for himself for a change.
Only
it wasn't working.
It
only made Pete mad, reactor mad. Because, it is very hard on a guy like Pete to
survive on less than what he has taken for free not a long while before, for
what the whole of his life up to the pinpoint of ego impact, he has had for
free.
It
made Pete's growing up harder when he had had only nature and time to
force-grow him before.
So
now it was less dough, can only have this, can only have that, not both.
Not
like it was.
Pete
now had to make choices, downsize choices, which meant Pete had less to impress
with. 
So
Pete's solution was to act like a kid again, an angry kid.
A
kid with the savvy to know where to push all the wrong buttons on the old man
who had taken away the goodies free once for the asking.
And
there's more than one way to be an annoying dangerous Brat.
He
lit up a cigarette then tossed the pack over his shoulder into the back.
They
landed on me but this time I didn't move.
Titch
twisted his head to me and I could see the desperation in his eyes, a real
smoke for a change.
But
the smokes where in my crotch, and there was no way he would dare go for them
there.
I
could smell him sweat.
And
before he could whine at Pete if he could have one, and thus, I guess, force me
to pick them up and hand them over to him, I did it before he had a chance.
"Here,"
I said.
Man
you would think it was a pipe bomb I was offering him the way he turned his
nose up.
"Suit
yourself," I said.
And
just as I was about to drop them back to where they had landed Titch snatched
them out of my hand.
"Any
news about the new car, Pete?" Titch asked lighting up.
I
didn't have time to cringe before Pete tapped the brakes.
We
jerked forward.
That
was Pete's non verbal way of saying, "Shut it."
The
car was a sore point, a sore that, to Pete, had become infected with pain.
It
was a car all right.
It
had wheels but not quite the hot wheels he'd asked his dad for.
And
it was all too much for Pete to take.
So
he'd gone off the rails and sought solace in anything that would take away the
pain.
He
got lost in booze and sex for a while. And when that