Crash and Burn

by Zoe Carver (January 2026)

The day Mrs. Shatner Number Three moved in was the day Meena decided it was finally time to blow up her father’s Rolls-Royce. Mrs. Shatner Number Three, whose real name was Ashleigh, had flawless tits, rock-hard pilates abs, and a completely unused degree from the University of California Davis, where she’d graduated just five years prior.

“We’re gonna be friends,” Mrs. Shatner Number Three smiled.

“Yeah,” said Meena, as she’d said twice before. “Best friends.”

Mrs. Shatner Number One had been bitchy, Mrs. Shatner Number Two had been bratty, and Meena’s mother hadn’t been a Mrs. Shatner at all, but instead a Ms. Hernandez, who’d worked in Mr. Shatner’s office and ended up in a family way without so much as a ring. There was nothing to worry about, though, as Meena had grown up with all the privileges of being the daughter of Mr. Shatner, Battery Mogul Extraordinaire. It had been a wonderful childhood, or so Meena had been told, but was turning into a slightly awkward twenties as his wives inched closer to the ages of her peer group and Meena’s own professional luck had started to rot.

Meena had recently entered a new tax bracket: unemployed and, like the newly rich, was terribly ashamed of it. She’d moved back into her childhood bedroom right around the time her father started seeing Ashleigh- ever benevolent in his gifts to America’s youth. Mrs. Shatner Number Three was also unemployed, but instead of hiding away in the pool house, she dubbed herself TROPHY WIFE! and wore it with pride.

“Meena,” her father’s voice rose from their chalk-white mansion, sleek as Silicon Valley software. “Go help your, uh… Ashleigh with the bags.”

It was clear to Meena that Mr. Shatner was unable to decide what sort of relationship he wanted between his new wife and his old daughter. They’d graduated high school just one year apart from each other, and the air between them felt thick with that knowledge. To be Ashleigh’s lover was to be Meena’s peer. To be Meena’s father was to be Ashleigh’s elder. To be everything at the same time was deeply uncomfortable. Mr. Shatner seemed to decide they should all just be friends. California modern. If you’re rich enough or beautiful enough, the lines are allowed to blur.

Meena leaned against the doorframe of their not-quite-beachside Orange County Mansion, realizing it was not Mrs. Shatner Number Three unloading the Rolls-Royce, but instead Fernanda, their maid. The Rolls had been in the Shatner family since sometime after Mrs. Shatner Number One. Meena had been thirteen, though Mr. Shatner seemed unsure exactly what that meant, to be suddenly full-figured and round with discomfort. He’d bought her the car as a practice vessel. Learning all too late that he was three years early for her to be placed behind the wheel, the vintage masterpiece became a courting vehicle for a slew of women, then Mrs. Shatner Number Two, then another slew, and at last, Mrs. Shatner Number Three.

As if remembering this very thing, Mrs. Shatner Number Three looked longingly at the Rolls-Royce, “Oh Meena, won’t this be wonderful? Maybe we can go for a ride later. You can show me around the neighborhood.”

Meena kept her expression even, “Sure.”

The newlyweds had driven the car to Baja for their honeymoon, where they holed up in a private villa, enjoying the Mexican food, shopping, and staff without ever having to speak a word of Spanish. The Rolls-Royce had seen it all, its waxen skin a lovely, earthy shade of green, its interior the red leather of real organs. It unnerved Meena in its ludicrousness. It looked especially perplexing next to Mrs. Shatner Number Three. Preserved in a way she could never be. Meena’s stepmother had turned an unnatural bronze in the Mexican sun, and the Rolls’ trunk was chalk full of colorful dresses, bottles of tequila, and handcrafted leather. In the heat, Fernanda hefted, breathless.

“We bought you something,” Meena’s father’s voice echoed across the long stretch of driveway. He reached into one of the bags Fernanda had brought into the front walkway and pulled out a white t-shirt. Unfurling it from its crumpled stance, Mr. Shatner revealed the words I Heart Mexico, with the heart patterned after a traditional serape.

“Thanks,” Meena replied dryly. Mr. and Mrs. Shatner stared at her expectantly. With a tempered flare of unquenchable, bowel-moving, gut-wrenching, fiery rage, Meena pulled the shirt over her tank top. It was two sizes too big.

“Adorable,” Mrs. Shatner Number Three smiled. Her father gave her stepmother a quick peck on the cheek before wandering off in the direction of the pool. Mrs. Shatner Number Three smirked to herself, leaning against the glass front door, the one Meena had always been warned not to touch without the help of an adult as she was growing up. Her stepmother’s body left little smudges of handcrafted lotion on the thick glass pane. Meena noticed the woman’s nails for the first time. Painted, likely painstakingly by some woman in the Valley who looked like Meena, to resemble a serape.

With a certainty as stark as the pale, boxy mansion against the baby blue California sky, Meena knew what she had to do.

The Rolls-Royce had to die.

Meena had not been a particularly selfish or jealous child, so this sudden stir came as a slight shock. An uncertain jolt of energy, almost pleasant. She let the anger balm her skin, soothe her out like a strong espresso. How good it felt after wading so long in this Gold Coast mediocrity, how so very real. Fire was a rare privilege in the warm-toned monotony of suburbia. Lukewarm, all her life. Lukewarm experiences, lukewarm college, lukewarm apartment that she’d so ambivalently left after she lost her job at The Big Office, where she’d lukewarmly typed away day after day. She’d sighed and called her father, knowing he had the space to take her, and shrugging, she’d moved in. You need to do something with your life, he’d told her sternly, playing the occasional role of father-figure. Some sort of direction, drive. Well, this was direction, drive if she ever felt it. Drive right off a cliff. Meena’s neurons kept firing, right in the direction of Mrs. Shatner Number Three and that Rolls-Royce.

What was it about her new stepmother that made Meena twitch and steam? Maybe it was the Mormonized spelling of her first name, or her flawless artificial skin, or the way she so flagrantly threw herself at Meena’s father’s feet. Maybe it was that shameful idea Meena had had when she’d first met Ashleigh, only two months prior, an idea that there might actually be something under all that Botox. Like the Rolls, there had been some quality to Ashleigh’s beauty, some cunning, some guile, or so Meena had initially thought. Something that deserved more than to be a tacky side piece to Meena’s father. Both had no place trapped here, in the Battery King’s mansion.

But then, Mrs. Shatner Number Three had turned out to be like all the others, latching onto Meena’s father like a babe to a teat. He had always been lukewarm too, ambivalently selling his batteries to electronics companies in the Valley, creating contracts, opening new factories in Mexico. There was always someone like Ashleigh whom he didn’t deserve, so young and plastic and full of life, pep, lip filler, and whatever else she had that Meena and Mr. Shatner had not.

Sitting by the pool in her designer bikini, Mrs. Shatner Number Three’s perfectly smooth shape and dimpled cheeks beneath comically small sunglasses made Meena’s skin tingle as she viewed her from under the lawn table’s umbrella. Meena couldn’t help but stare. She’d look away, the fire would diminish. Back to the poolside and suddenly: burn.

Meena hadn’t felt this way about Mrs. Shatners One or Two, but they’d been abstract, strange women she’d see twice a month. She’d thought them glamorous, as boring as this life, and as uninterested in her as her father. She’d been civil. Their weddings had been extravagant and she’d been a flower girl in both, following their cupcake dresses down a silky aisle adorned with white tulips. They’d looked into her father’s dusty grey eyes and saw … something, Meena wasn’t sure what. His money? Certainly not his looks. Despite having the body of a forty-two-year-old car salesman, he went through women faster than he opened new factories. They thought marrying him was some sort of prize, proof of their worthiness. For him, it was just another person to live by his backyard pool.

Meena hadn’t been a flower girl in the third wedding, though. It would have been too weird, since she and Ashleigh were practically the same age. Instead, Meena was promoted to bridesmaid, shuffled like cards beside the future Mrs. Shatner’s sorority sisters, unsure if she should be drowning in feelings of jealousy or sisterhood. Meena had gazed sidelong at her now step-mother, adorned in a gauzy chiffon, surprisingly tasteful when compared to the faux-Dianas of the past. She felt herself betwixt with another emotion she couldn’t quite name. That burning fire.

But now she understood it. It was the emotion you feel before you burn a Rolls-Royce.

“Drinks, chicas,” Fernanda called, bringing forth a tray of tikified cocktail glasses, rimmed with pineapple chunks and maraschino cherries. A bead of sweat traced her brow as she stepped down to the sun-filled pool deck, dripping down to her wispy upper lip. She reminded Meena of her mother, in ways she didn’t like to think about. They had that same air of quiet disappointment.

“Oh, you’re a doll,” Mrs. Shatner Number Three exclaimed, jumping up and grabbing a glass from Fernanda’s tray. The older woman smiled sweetly, though Meena recognized the ghost of a grimace underneath. Meena glowered at Ashleigh silently from the rim of her sunhat, taking a long sip of her own tropical elixir. Ferndada gave Meena a small look, just a raise of an eyebrow. Meena ignored it, returning her gaze to her new stepmother.

Ferdanda sighed, turning away from the chlorine-drenched scene.

“Tasty, huh?” Mr. Shatner called from the deck.

“The tastiest,” Mrs. Shatner Number Three smiled. Meena took another sip.

That night, as if by miracle, Meena heard Mr. and Mrs. Shatner leave in his monster of a white Jeep, its engine roaring. It was as if they knew Meena needed the Rolls-Royce all to herself. She could feel its presence in the garage, waiting for her, taunting her, wooing her. Meena thought about everything the Rolls-Royce could have been, if her father had waited three years, if he’d passed it on once she was old enough to take it. She was always the wrong age around him. Road trips, beach days, midnight makeouts, there was a world this car could have offered her. It was wrong in this garage, as wrong as his new wife. A picture of cut and glued magazine clippings. A pasted-together life.

How did the people do this in the movies? Gasoline. There was extra gasoline in the garage, her father kept a small stockpile in case Y2K decided to happen late, or if the people of Santa Ana finally got tired of the McMansions a suburb over. Gasoline, matches, adrenaline. A rush like a river. When was the last time Meena had felt this sugar high, this jolt of electricity? She’d learned at an unfortunately young age that alcohol did not have much of an effect on her. A genetically high tolerance left her the loser who could still remember the night before. Mr. Shatner drank regularly, but Meena wasn’t sure if that was for pleasure or to give others the appearance of pleasure. If Meena could go back in time, she would’ve lied every step of the way.

Nightfall descended on the California asphalt and the call of the Rolls-Royce became a roar. Meena descended the back stairs to the interior garage door, unlocking it with a click of her unpolished nail. Inside, the sliding garage door had been left open, revealing a royal blue sky freckled with satellites, ready to be choked by smoke. Meena located the gasoline easily, and, mimicking some gangster she had seen on TV as a child, doused the interior of the car with the syrupy liquid. It smelled like the road trips she’d taken with her mom to Tijuana.

A flow of liquid, a creak of stairs. Meena went to grab the matches from her back pocket and paused. Fernanda left, didn’t she? Meena had seen her run-down Chevy peeling away towards the I-5 corridor.

“Meena, are you down there?”

Fuck. Shit. Fuck, oh this alarm felt good to Meena, another course of hormones through her skin. Her lungs filled with that intoxicating panic, as Mrs. Shatner Number Three’s sugar-sweet voice came pumping down the stairs. Meena took in the luxury car. Not quite aflame, but not unsullied.

“I was thinking about making Mai-Tais or maybe– oh.”

Mrs. Shatner Number Three appeared in the doorway, a backlit angel, the killer in a horror movie. Meena was aware of the gasoline canister in her hand, the nearby fluorescent street lamp lighting revealing the car’s slick nature. Red-handed, that’s the word. She thought about old cop movies.

They stared at each other for what felt like forever, stepmother and step-daughter, young girl and even younger girl. Mrs. Shatner Number Three’s lipstick seemed caught in that comic-character O of her mouth. Time stalled. Time froze. Blood pumped. It felt like living.

Finally, Meena attempted a half-hearted. “I can explain.”

But as the words evaporated from her tongue, so did the O from Ashleigh’s face. Her eyes became steely, certain. Knowing. Maybe there was something to Meena’s father’s claims that his new wife was old for her age. Meena’s private fire felt like it might burn off her skin. The woman, perfect in her Barbie-like body, ancient in her hard-set stare, nodded. A micro movement. A fraction of a twitch. Carefully, as if not to wake a sleeping baby, Mrs. Shatner Number Three shut the interior garage door.

Meena, unsure what else to do, lit the match.

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