The Brotherhood of the Wheel by R. S. Belcher

nerd-style glasses. She was attractive, with an athletic body, and wore a blue-and-white University of Kansas T-shirt and cutoff Daisy Duke–style jean shorts.
    â€œIf you kill Gerry, Lexi,” the blonde said, “who’s gonna buy us beer and weed?”
    The girl sitting next to the blonde by the passenger-side rear door nodded in agreement. She was brunette, her long hair pulled away from her face and into a ponytail. She wore a dark-blue-and-black striped top and old, torn Levi’s, as well as a pair of old Converse high-tops. She was slender and had less of a figure than the blonde, but her features were much more delicate and beautiful.
    â€œAva’s got a point, Gerry,” the brunette said. “Not to mention your death would probably cause the Rohypnol market to crash.” Everyone laughed again except Gerry.
    â€œFuck you, Alana,” Gerry said, and flipped the brunette off. “And fuck you, too, Ava! Last time I invite any of you assholes to a field party.”
    Alana fished her headphones out of her pocket and connected them to her phone. She was already wishing she had stayed home and binged on Sherlock on Netflix, as she’d planned. The only reason she was here was that Ava was her friend as well as her roommate. Lexi was her roommate, too, but, to be honest, she hated the whiny, self-absorbed little bitch. She saw how Lexi and Cole looked at each other and she hated it for Ava. She had talked to Ava about it several times, and Ava had laughed, saying that she didn’t intend to stay with Cole past college, anyway, if that long. What was the fucking point then, to be with someone you didn’t even like or really want? He was a means to an end, and that was Ava’s first and governing principle. He kept her warm, he was pretty, and he fucked good. What else could there possibly be, right?
    â€œHey, Cole,” Lexi, the goth girl, said. “You gonna let this ratchet old hipster talk that way to your girl?”
    Cole pulled his arm out from around Ava and fished a cold bottle of Heineken out of the cooler at his feet. “Shit,” he said, grinning as he popped the cap off the beer with the church key on his key chain. “I’m staying out of this. I open my mouth, I either lose my girl or I lose my beer and I’m suddenly bankrupt. This is a definite fourth-down scenario, baby.”
    â€œMy fucking hero.” Ava smacked Cole’s arm and claimed his beer as her own. “I skipped on coding for my midterm programming exam in Python this weekend to go watch Cole get drunk and piss on a cornfield, then pass out.”
    â€œBaby, anything you want to know about the python,” Cole said, pulling Ava and his beer close to him, “ole Cole here can teach you with some hands-on experience.”
    â€œI know we’re doing, like, sixty,” Alana said, grimacing at Ava and Cole as the couple began to kiss. “But I think I’ll take my chances with the asphalt; I’m bailing.”
    â€œMe, too,” Lexi said, but her eyes were fixed on Cole and, for an instant Cole’s eyes flicked to hers and they locked, holding the look a second too long. Lexi looked away quickly, and a thin smile came to Cole’s lips. He kissed Ava deeply and took a furtive glance at Alana’s chest as he did it. “How much longer till we’re at your buddy’s place, he of the shitty indie music?” Lexi said a little too quickly to Gerry.
    â€œI can’t get the damn GPS to work out here,” Gerry said. “Like being on the moon. Look, Evan told me his folks’ place was on thirty-six, about forty miles after you get off eighty-one. He said look for a bunch of mailboxes—one of them with a little windmill on it—”
    â€œFabulous,” Lexi said.
    â€œâ€”and then a dark green grain silo on the left,” Gerry continued, undaunted. “The gate for the access road is about five miles past