The Crew

Untitled Part 1

Chapter One

It was Demon DeLorean—D.D.—who led me to Cannonball.

D.D. and I met up in the parking lot of St. Andy's after the last bell at 2:30. We got into his busted-up Saturn and drove to my parents' so I could change clothes before heading south to Oxnard, near Ventura, where D.D. and Cannonball lived. Spiky black hair, tight black Levi's, pasty white skin and an attitude that bordered on insanity, D.D. was this wild anarchist-punk-rock-rebel who took no prisoners.

Backing out of my driveway on Del Norte Ave—my mother thankfully not home yet—he screeched in reverse and did that balls-to-the-wall, Back to the Future, hair-raising rocket shot down my street. My heart pounced like a baseball bat smacking the ball, ba-boom, ba-boom, and we shot down Del Norte. I was nervous about the neighbors telling my mom but there was no stopping this guy.

My mom had warned me about these kinds of kids. "Trouble with a capital T," she always said. She just wanted me to be safe and happy, the opposite of her haggard, brutal childhood growing up in Pacific Palisades in LA in the 1960s. Her mom had run off with a Catholic priest, leaving her father and their whole family. The thing with my mom was: She hugged me constantly, told me "I love you" like five times a day. It was oppressive.

"Hey, could we maybe, like, slow down just a bit?"

He smiled, shifting the manual gear, stepping on the gas, speeding down Highway 33 in the direction of the Pacific Ocean. "The first rule of Fight Club is...you don't talk about Fight Club."

"What?" I said, confused.

Looking concerned, he eyed me sternly. "You've never seen Fight Club?"

Shrugging, I said, "No."

He shook his head like a madman. "Jesus Christ, kid!" He sighed loudly. "Ok, this is going to be a whole reprogramming. A big project. Starting from Square One. Shit. You probably still think you need parents, that we need cops...you do don't you... c'mon, Dog, admit it!" He'd already nicknamed me "Dog" due to my last name: Donnigan.

"Um...well...doesn't everyone need parents? Wouldn't our society fall apart without police?"

D.D. slammed a palm against his head, swerving, nearly losing his lane completely. "Oh, man, this is gonna be a lot of work. Amateur alert! The first thing you're gonna do is read '1984.' And then 'A Brave New World.' And you need punk education. It all started with a band called The Ramones, in 1974, hailing from Manhattan's Lower East Side of New York City. Before them were Iggy Pop and Jim Morrison. You've heard of them haven't you?" His tone dripped with caustic sarcasm.

"Yeah," I said, feeling like a total idiot.

It was sophomore year. The truth was, freshman year, I'd been relegated to hanging out with the terrible, dreaded nerds. That had felt like having a rusty screwdriver jacked into my guts, piercing the viscera, slashing my soul. "You'll make new friends," my mom had promised.

"Alright, Dog, shut your mouth and listen to me and you'll be okay. But don't tell anyone else how stupid you are."

We landed in Oxnard, off Highway 101. I was about to meet Mexican Johnny. He lived in a squat house where 16- and 17-year-old kids existed in their own filth and squalor, according to D.D. The city had abandoned the house and there was no landlord. Rent free, these kids were dropout runaways.