The ride down the hill on bike with the evening coming was business as usual for him and it was at least downhill stuff. He cut through some woods on a trail and came out to near route 168, the Sierra Freeway, though he didn't get on the freeway itself.

That's when he noticed a truck, one set up for off-roading, had been following him for some way since he left Ricki's, and so he decided to just take some sharp turns and see what happened. It was vaguely familiar.

Still following. In fact, when he started moving to try to avoid the truck, the brights came on and the engine started roaring. When Jared got the bike onto dirt, the truck followed. Jared wasn't sure what the hell was up, but he decided to run that bike toward 168 itself, but didn't account for the steep berm that dropped off suddenly, leaving the bike to sort of drop off and go airborne with him on it. He managed to land the bike, but hard and in a way that twisted the wheel, because he'd turned the handlebars a little too much, not being some sort of BMX guy. He came away with a scrape or two, but the bike? That wheel was bent.

It was the side of 168 now, but that truck came barreling through and managed, on landing, to crush the bike some more. Jared was screaming, "WHAT THE FUCK, MAN!" as Livingston put the brakes on and stormed out.

"You MOTHERFUCKER!" and came right at him. Livingston tackled to the ground, but Jared threw a punch to the fucker's nose.

It was crazy, and it seemed like Livingston was going to fuck him up in a crazy rage when the sirens howled out and a voice yelled, "FREEZE!"

--

"What was going on out there?" he was asked several times at the California Highway Patrol station, and several times he explained how he'd been riding home, and the truck came out of nowhere to start following him, he took four turns and that's when Livingston started to chase him, even as he got off the road and booked it. 

He had no idea where Livingston was.

"Am I under arrest?"

The cop said, "Not yet."

That helped. So much.

Later, a different cop, the guy that'd arrested them, straightened out a lot of that -- the guy on the bike, Jared, had been defending himself when he stopped the fight, on the side of a highway no less. The Lieutenant came through, bald head, crisp uniform, and told him, "Look, you aren't being charged for anything, because this is a clear cut self defense case. But I want to make sure you get a statement down and...well, you don't have a bike that you can ride anymore. So your mom is on the way..."

"Wait," Jared put up his hand, "you guys called my mom?" Oh, shit. What Moira was going to do when all this got back to her was something to behold and he was hoping to actually figure out what to tell her before he had to tell her.

"Well, yeah, I did." He put out his hand, "I'm Rick Masters, I'm dating Moira."

It was a weird way to meet the dude that was seeing your mom; he knew she was dating, but he wasn't around enough to meet the dude and kind of avoided it. When you were growing up as a single child of a single mom, you became protective of your mom and tended to view dudes as The Devil. Nevermind that in this case, the dude was The Man, and he was actually springing him.

"Uh, is she freaking?" Jared managed lamely.

"Well, a little, but I told her it was definitely not your fault, and that's how the report reads, because that's also what happened. But I have to ask...what the hell has a state senator's son so pissed off at you that he was trying to run you over with a truck on the side of the Sierra Highway?"

"You know," Jared said ironically, "I'm still trying to figure that one out myself."

--

Livingston got off. Of course he got off; he had football hero status as well as his dad swinging in with the local prosecutor. It smelled like an affluenza case in the making, but there was an offer to pay for medical treatment, even though a couple scrapes was nothing, and a general vibe of 'please hush up about this to the press.'

Moira was Boston Irish, she wanted to make a fight of it, "Oh, that fuckah thinks he can hush this thing up with a little money? It's attempted murdah fah cryin out loud!" but the promise that Livingston was going to have a leash around his neck, just a very soft leash, seemed to placate her. It wasn't like they were letting themselves be paid off, but the system was going to make it go away one way or another -- the local prosecutor had zero interest in charging this as an adult crime and juvie was probably not happening either.

But keeping it hushed up and out of the papers that a state senator's son went off the chain like that wasn't the same as hushing up the rumor mill. Jared's phone was hardly the center of a rumormill, but people were hitting him up, people he didn't even know, for the story. He wasn't sure what to say, except that he gave Carl the details and Carl texted back, "Dayummm that muthafucka be crazy."

What pissed Jared off was that he was down a bike, and it was a pretty decent bike that got him places. He wasn't sure to handle that. Temporarily, at least, Carl was giving him a ride. It'd work for a while.

The next day at school, Livingston wasn't there, which made life a whole lot easier -- facing people at school was not something Jared really wanted to do, but he went anyway. Gabe looked awkward in class, like he wanted to apologize or something, but Jared just gave a pantomimed fist to the chin with a smile, which was his way of saying, [i]shut up about it already and stop being awkward.[/i]

But that didn't stop it from being awkward and it didn't shut everyone else up either.