I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle

boyfriend who had done something awfully wrong and was so sorry even though he wasn’t certain what it was he had done.
    And then: “Lisbee!” he screamed, slamming both fists on the car hood, like a guy who was too coked up to wait three seconds to see if the first strategy worked.
    Beth responded by easing the brake and tapping the gas, causing the vehicle to gently lurch into her boyfriend.
    INSIDE THE TUNNEL, Denis crawled over to Rich. After being yanked to and fro and having his head slammed into a durable plastic enclosure a few dozen times, Rich was a bit discombobulated.
    â€œI’m a shaken baby,” he said.
    A hairy hand continued to grip Rich’s shirt, but was only halfheartedly whipping him back and forth in a distracted manner. Denis got the hand’s attention by biting it, hard.
    Sean yanked his arm out of the tunnel, yowling.
    Denis nudged and shoved and finally shoveled his semi-conscious friend out the tunnel. With Treece’s help, he folded Rich into the backseat of the Cabriolet. Beth threw the car in reverse, and Denis hurled his torso over the front door as it backed away.
    The Cabriolet was doing minus 40 mph when Bethspun it 180 degrees and Denis’s lower body did an impressive demonstration of centrifugal force as he clung to the interior door handle. The car tore forward down a grassy incline with Denis struggling to remain attached, and then hit the curb, throwing the boy aboard.
    BETH SWUNG on to Arlington Heights Road without stopping or signaling in accordance with the Illinois Rules of the Road, or without yielding the right of way to the Volvo XC-90 that was already on Arlington Heights Road. This resulted in some sudden brakeage on the Volvo’s part.
    Rich bounced around in the backseat, more than dazed.
    â€œYou okay?” Treece asked. “Is your brain dead?”
    â€œIs blood coming out of my ears?”
    â€œNot a lot.”
    Denis was up front, in a position that might unfortunately be described as fetal, on top of Cammy, who did not appreciate it. She shoved the boy mass off her lap and down into the passenger legroom space that the Cabriolet wasn’t known for.
    Denis rocked from side to side on the floorboards as Beth swerved around any object doing less than twice the speed limit.
    â€œWe got away,” Denis pointed out from his cubby. “You can stop escaping.”
    Cammy shrugged at him. “She always drives like this.”
    In the back, Rich stared into infinity.
    â€œI was in driver’s ed with her.”
    DRIVER’S ED WAS TAUGHT by Coach Raupp, who resented having to do it and was incensed that physical education class time was wasted on such an ass-spreading activity . This was reflected in his teaching style, which was screaming. He screamed on the test course, If that cone was a BABY GIRL, you would have KILLED it! He screamed on the road, Pull over NOW so I can SLAP you! The only time he wasn’t screaming was when he was showing Wheels of Tragedy (1963), and its sequel Highways of Agony (1969), two films that had been dropped from most driver’s ed curricula because their incorporation of real accident footage of dead, mangled and dismembered teens led to more crying than learning. But every time that imprudent hippie was scooped off the roadway and his stoned brain casually slid out onto the pavement, Coach Raupp could be heard cackling in the back.
    He only screamed at Beth Cooper once.
    Rich was in the backseat then, too, with Victoria Smeltzer, when she still weighed over a hundred pounds. Coach Raupp was in his typical instruction pose, one fist balled in his lap and the other rhythmically pounding on the dashboard. Beth was driving with blissful confidence, as she always did, unaware she was about to kill them all.
    â€œYo, Munsch,” Coach Raupp snapped, “what is the speed limit on Illinois highways?”
    â€œSixty-five,” Rich answered, for once almost certain he was