Gone-Girl-by-Gillian-Flynn

hopped in the back, planted himself on the wheel cover with surprising ease,
and handled the introductions like he was the host of his own mobile talk
show.
‘I’m really sorry about Amy, Rand,’ Stucks said loudly, as we hurtled out
of the parking lot with unnecessary speed and hit the highway. ‘She’s such a
sweet person. One time she saw me out painting a house, sweating my ba –
my butt off, and she drove on to 7-Eleven, got me a giant pop, and brought it
back to me, right up on the ladder.’
This was a lie. Amy cared so little for Stucks or his refreshment that she
wouldn’t have bothered to piss in a cup for him.
‘That sounds like her,’ Rand said, and I was flush with unwelcome,
ungentlemanly annoyance. Maybe it was the journalist in me, but facts were
facts, and people didn’t get to turn Amy into everyone’s beloved best friend
just because it was emotionally expedient.
‘Middlebury, huh?’ Stucks continued, pointing at Rand’s T-shirt. ‘Got a
hell of a rugby team.’
‘That’s right we do,’ Rand said, the big smile again, and he and Stucks
began an improbable discussion of liberal-arts rugby over the noise of the car,
the air, the night, all the way to the mall.
Joe Hillsam parked his truck outside the giant cornerstone Mervyns. We
all hopped out, stretched our legs, shook ourselves awake. The night was
muggy and moon-slivered. I noticed Stucks was wearing – maybe ironically,
possibly not – a T-shirt that read Save Gas, Fart in a Jar.
‘So, this place, what we’re doing, it’s freakin’ dangerous, I don’t want to
lie,’ Mikey Hillsam began. He had beefed up over the years, as had his
brother; they weren’t just barrel-chested but barrel-everythinged. Standing
side by side, they were about five hundred pounds of dude.
‘We came here once, me and Mikey, just for – I don’t know, to see it, I
guess, see what it had become, and we almost got our asses handed to us,’
said Joe. ‘So tonight we take no chances.’ He reached into the cab for a long
canvas bag and unzipped it to reveal half a dozen baseball bats. He began
handing them out solemnly. When he got to Rand, he hesitated. ‘Uh, you want
one?’
‘Hell yes, I do,’ Rand said, and they all nodded and smiled approval, the
energy in the circle a friendly backslap, a good for you old man.
‘Come on,’ Mike said, and led us along the exterior. ‘There’s a door with a