Stolen Car Page 5

  I stand there for a second, my feet feeling as heavy as stones. I think about Ashley and Evan, probably still in or near the car, then I think about Reid. I flick my tongue over my bottom lip, take a deep breath, and walk back out into the fresh air. I tell myself, “You can do this.”

  “Kate’s not here,” I tell Ashley and Evan. Ashley has now come out of the car. She’s clearly uncomfortable with the scruffy-looking guys on the porch leering at her.

  “Then let’s get out of here,” she says.

  “No, let’s just hang out here for a while,” I say, all casual.

  “Are you serious?” Ashley says, her lips immediately forming a pout.

  “Let’s meet some new people, that’s all I’m saying.” I smile. “Maybe we’ll recruit some new book club members.”

  “They look like real honor-society types,” Ashley grumbles, nodding at the two chimneys on the front porch. Then she points at Reid’s car, surrounded by people in the driveway. “I’m sure that would make a great bookmobile.”

  “That’s not just any car,” I correct her. “That, Ashley, is a cold-as-hell Dodge Viper.”

  She rolls her eyes like dice.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll get you to ballet in time,” I say extra-nicely, trying to hide my frustration, not just because I want to see Reid, but because Ashley never wants to meet new people. I think she would be happiest if her whole world was her parents, her books, and me.

  Ashley crosses her arms and frowns, so I play my trump card. “Do this for me. You know why I don’t want to go home.”

  “Fine,” she says.

  Evan—in his khakis and white shirt—and Ashley—in her pink Hollister T-shirt and pre-torn jeans—look out of place among the dirty denim and long white T-shirt-wearing crowd. We walk back up the driveway, but Ashley and Evan make it no farther than the porch. The two smokers have vacated their seats, which Ashley and Evan immediately fill. “Just an hour,” Ashley reminds me.

  I nod, then head inside the house. I inch my way near the basement door, but hesitate. After a few minutes two big-haired, gum-smacking girls emerge. The door’s opening creates an impromptu battle of the bands: the rap on the main floor colliding with the heavy metal from “the cave.” I cover my ears, then walk downstairs, more unsure with each step. I tell myself again, “You can do this.”

  There’s a big-screen plasma TV that takes up nearly an entire wall. Two guys wearing black ball caps are playing one of those Nintendo Wii racing games, while two blond-haired girls sit on a fire-red sofa. The girls are passing a beer between them, and shouting both insults and encouragement to the guys in their pretend race. The basement’s filled with cardboard boxes and the smell of stale smoke, spilled beer, and sweat from the racer wannabes.

  “Do you know where Reid is?” I ask the prettier one of the girls. Even if she tells me, I’m not sure I can take another step as the dual dragons of fear and doubt drag me down.

  She snaps her gum like a gunshot. “Who wants to know?”

  The other girl giggles, then whispers something to the prettier girl, who laughs louder.

  “Is he here?” I ask again, trying to ignore them. I can tell they can’t wait until I leave so they can laugh at me even louder. I know girls like this at school: they have this look, like they think they’re better than you for no real reason. It’s more arrogance than confidence.

  “I know you,” one of the girls says, then sips the beer.

  “You work in the library at school,” the other one says, then takes her small sip. They’re dressed alike: tight black beaters, cut-off jeans, and sandals. One’s a real blonde, one’s dyed. Both are sporting too much makeup, perfume, and attitude. The only fashion difference between them is that the real blonde has a gold stud in her nose, while the fake blonde has a silver one in her eyebrow.

  “I’m Danielle,” I say politely.

  “Let’s call her the bookworm,” the fake blonde cracks. “No, wait, just Worm.”

  “Oh, snap,” the real blonde adds, then laughs so hard she almost spits up her beer. “Hey Worm, why are you looking for Reid?”

  “Is he here?”

  “You want some beer, Worm?” Real asks, offering me the bottle. I’m glad it’s so dark down here, lit only by the flashing lights of the video game. That way they can’t see how red my face is growing.

  “She’s not cool,” Fake says in a tone of unmistakable cruelty as I hesitate for a moment.

  “Thanks,” I reply as I fight to control my shaking hand and grab the Budweiser. One beer just to show them I’m cool, but not enough to get drunk and humiliate myself in front of Reid yet again.

  “Wait, I bet the Worm would prefer tequila,” Real says as she pulls the bottle back.

  “It’s a mistake to waste good booze on little children,” Fake says.

  “Never mind,” I mumble, thinking how this—and my life—is all one big mistake.

  “So Worm’s gonna slither away!” Fake shouts, then laughs, a drunk’s loud laugh. I start up the stairs, trying not to fall and embarrass myself even more.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I hear Reid’s voice say from the top of the stairs.

  I don’t say anything. I just point at Real and Fake. Reid acts as if he understands me.

  “Danielle, don’t worry about their shit,” he says softly, almost whispering in my ear.

  “I don’t belong here,” I confess.

  He puts his arm around me, pulling me toward him. “Hey, you’re always welcome, unlike some people.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, but he releases me with a kiss on the cheek, then heads full-throttle downstairs. I follow two steps behind him, then stay put at the bottom of the stairs.

  “You and you,” Reid says, pointing at the blond twins. “Get the hell out of here.”

  “What?” Fake says, her blue-caked eyes shooting daggers my way.

  When they don’t move, Reid walks over to the game console and unplugs it. “Dude, what’s going on?” one of the gamers says to Reid.

  “All of you, get out!” Reid’s voice roars like a lion over the crashing music.

  “Reid, man, come on, relax,” one of the guys says, offering up his hand, but Reid slaps it away. The two blond girls remain frozen on the sofa. Fake guzzles down the remaining beer.

  “Tony, Nick, get out. And take these skanks with you,” Reid says, staring them down.

  The two guys run upstairs in an instant, leaving the blondes behind. They move from the sofa and start stumbling toward the stairs, but Reid blocks their way. “Apologize first,” he says.

  “We didn’t—,” Fake starts.

  “I said apologize.” Reid cuts her off, pointing at Real.

  “Reid, I’m sorry,” Real says.

  “Not to me, to Danielle,” he replies. I’ve been standing by the foot of the stairs, but I take this as my cue to come closer.

  “We were just kidding around,” Real says to Reid in a flirtatious voice. She pushes back her blond hair and leans in to put her brown-lipstick-covered mouth next to his ear.

  “Now.” Reid shuts her down.

  “Hey, we’re sorry,” Fake says. “Right, Angie?”

  “Right. Sorry,” Real adds. I take a step toward them, but Reid pulls me next to him. He quickly locks two fingers of his left hand around one of my belt loops. Angie seems like she wants to cry as they walk past us. Reid stares at them while pulling me closer to him.

  “Reid, let me make it up to you,” Angie says softly, but loud enough for me to hear.

  “Get out,” Reid says, then points to the top of the stairs. After Real and Fake are long gone, Reid whispers, “You okay?”

  I shake my head. My brain and heart are firing like pistons in a hundred directions.

  “Some people who hang here,” he says, “well, they’re kinda immature.”

  “It’s okay,” I mutter.

  “They just come to play with my toys,” he says, flashing that crescent-moon smile that reminds me why I loved him
back in eighth grade. “I have the best toys.”

  I nod. Words can only get in the way.

  “You ever play Race Car Hero?” he asks.

  My yes nod turns into a no shake. If I don’t say anything, then I won’t blow this again.

  “This game is cold as hell,” he shouts, then walks over to plug the console back in. He hands me one of the players, straps it on, explains the game, and then turns on the action. He quickly sees that I’m not that good, having poor coordination, no driving skills, and even less video game experience. After we play for about twenty minutes, I’m exhausted, from concentrating, from laughing, maybe even from smiling too much in one day.

  “You’ll learn,” Reid says as he unstraps the player from my wrist. “You just need a good teacher.”

  “Okay,” I mumble. I can feel the rough texture of his fingers over my softer skin; I can almost trace the nerve impulses down my arm to my heart. He takes my hand, leads me over to sit on the sofa, and then gently pulls me toward him.

  “Reid, I—” But he stops my words by putting his fingers on my lips.

  “Danielle, when did you get so hot?” Reid whispers before he kisses me on the lips. His eyes aren’t seeing some stupid junior-high kid. His lips aren’t touching the lips of some immature girl. When I came over to the house, I didn’t know what I’d do. Now, as Reid pulls me closer, I’m not sure what I’ll do next—other than just about anything he wants.

  “Danielle, are you down there?” I hear Ashley’s voice yell from the top of the stairs. “We have to go!”

  I remove my mouth from Reid’s, but before I can answer, Reid whispers into my ear, “Who is that?”

  “My friend Ashley; she came with me.”

  “She cool?”

  Ashley is many things, including my BFF. But cool, as Reid defines and represents it, she’s not. I don’t want to lie, so I don’t answer.

  “You’d probably better go,” he says softly, then plants a small kiss on my forehead.

  “Okay,” I say, as I run my hand through my make-out-messy hair. I used to be a silly eighth grader he’d rejected, but now I was a hot girl he’d defended when others made fun of me.

  “If you ever want, you can come hang out with me,” Reid says in parting. I head toward the stairs, then make my way out toward the porch.

  “Evan’s in the car,” Ashley spits out the second she sees me.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “You mean other than you ditching us?” Ashley replies. She’s almost running toward the front door. With her long legs, it’s a struggle to keep up. As I pass through the house, I see more faces I recognize from school, but they’re mostly people I don’t really know. There’s maybe a dozen people inside—Fake, Real, and their boyfriends no longer among them—and another four standing on the porch. Everybody’s laughing, or at least smiling. The weather outside is early-summer sizzling, but the temperature inside is as cool as can be.

  “Look, Ash, I’m sorry,” I say when we finally reach the sidewalk. She’s standing, arms crossed in impatience and eyes flashing with anger.

  She stares back at me, then heads to Evan’s car. The Beatles song “Helter Skelter” is turned up full-blast when I climb in the backseat. Ashley puts herself next to Evan in the front.

  “Why did you get in the car?” I ask Evan, but he says nothing. I sit in the backseat, arms over my chest and eyes pointed at the floor. Evan peels out, as well as a person can in a Mom car.

  “Evan, please turn down the music,” I finally say once we’ve pulled onto Ashley’s street. Evan lowers the volume and I say, “Look, I’m sorry about what happened over there.”

  “We tried to call,” Evan says. I thought it was odd how he’d used the word “we,” like he and Ashley were a couple, which has been my goal for some time. I figure if he and Ashley hook up, then everybody will be happy, but they refuse to cooperate.

  “My cell’s dead,” I lie. Truth is, I traded time without my phone instead of a grounding for making that Dad comment yesterday. My cell’s doing thirty days locked in Mom’s trunk.

  “Where did you go?” Evan finally asks.

  Ashley shuts off the AC, then turns to face me. I hesitate before answering, which gives her time to fill in what she thinks she knows. “She was in the basement getting high.”

  “I was not, I was just playing Race Car Hero,” I mumble.

  “I thought I was your hero,” Evan jokes, and I crack a smile. I guess when you really like someone, you can’t stay mad at them.

  “Always, Evan, every day,” I joke back, then gently kick his seat. He laughs and hands Ashley her Beatles CD as we pull into her driveway.

  When the car comes to a stop, I quickly exit. I wait for Ashley to say something or shoot me a cross look, but instead she gets out and starts toward her front door. I circle around to the driver’s side and motion for Evan to roll down the window.

  “What?” he asks. I lean over, which is sure to distract him from any lingering anger toward me.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeat, then return his wet cheek kiss from the other day. He tries to turn his lips toward my mouth, but I hold him in place.

  “It’s cool,” he says, not that Evan really understands what the word “cool” means.

  Ashley waits for me by the front door. We both wave goodbye to Evan, then go inside. “Quick, into my room,” Ashley says the second we cross the threshold.

  She runs up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I get her bedroom door shut behind me just as I hear footsteps coming toward us. Seconds later, there’s a light tapping on the door.

  “Ashley, you’re late. We need to leave in five minutes,” her mother announces.

  Ashley performs a little ballet move for my benefit, which cracks me up.

  “I’ll get dressed before we go,” she says. “I’ll hurry. I just need more time.”

  “Okay, fifteen minutes,” her mother replies, then walks away from the door.

  “We don’t want to keep her waiting.” Ashley finishes her sentence with a plié and eye roll. Her walls are covered with pictures of ballerinas, except for a large poster of John Lennon with the word “Imagine” that hangs over her bed. “Like you kept us waiting, Danny.”

  “Sorry, but I was—” I start to talk, but then cut myself off. It’s too soon to tell her about Reid.

  “Well, thanks to your little visit, we stink!”

  “What?” I answer, still trying to catch my breath from the stair chase.

  “We smell like smoke: legal and illegal,” Ashley says.

  “Do you have some perfume or lotion?” I ask, opening up one of her dresser drawers.

  “Hey, how about a little privacy, friend!”

  “Sorry,” I mutter.

  “You’re just a sorry machine today,” Ashley says. I think I see a smile peek through.

  “Sorry,” I repeat, all flustered, causing us both to laugh.

  “I just don’t want the ’rents thinking I’m smoking or getting high.”

  “But you didn’t, right?”

  Ashley finds a perfume she likes, uses it, then hands it to me. “No and never.”

  “Sorry for asking,” I say, spraying the perfume. It gives me a reason to put my hand over my face, embarrassed for saying sorry again and embarrassed for thinking otherwise. Ashley doesn’t like that I smoke cigarettes, and hates when I do it in front of her. At school, she’s part of the Red Ribbon anti-drug club, which I joined with her as an act of friendship. For some people, Red Ribbon is just another club; for Ashley, it seems more like a crusade.

  “What was going on down there?” she asks as she gets her ballet bag from her closet.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who were all those people?”

  I shrug my shoulders. I know one thing for sure: not only are the people at Reid’s not book club members, they’re not Red Ribbon types, either. No doubt, they all prefer the green leaf.

  “I don’t want to go back there,” Ashley s
ays.

  “But it was fun.”

  “For you,” she snaps back.

  “Well, maybe you would have liked it if you hadn’t just hung on the porch.”

  “It was the only place to hang and not have somebody pass you a joint,” Ashley replies.

  “Not everybody was like that,” I say. Reid didn’t seem stoned or drunk, but I couldn’t tell her that or even mention his name, at least not yet. Like Ashley said, a little privacy, please.

  “I don’t like people like that,” she says. It sounds like she’s grinding her teeth.

  “It wouldn’t kill you,” I tell her.

  “What won’t kill me?” she asks, still glaring at me.

  “To drink one beer or smoke one joint,” I respond.

  “It only takes one,” she says, adding, “Don’t you know, Danielle? Drugs are dominoes.”

  “Officer Ashley, why are you so melodramatic?”

  “And why are you so naive?”

  “I don’t use drugs,” I remind her as I head toward the door.

  “God, you don’t get it, do you?” she says, almost blocking my way.

  “What?”

  “People don’t use drugs, Danielle, drugs use them,” she says.

  “This isn’t a Red Ribbon Club meeting, Ashley, so can you spare me the speech? Why do you talk about things you know nothing about?”

  “Danielle, you don’t even know what you’re saying,” Ashley says, sounding not so much angry at me as frustrated with herself. I don’t answer. Instead I think about how she’s going off to her perfect world of family-sponsored ballet lessons while I’m heading back to Circle Pines. We might be best friends forever, but we’re not equals, not even close. She coasts through a lucky and luxurious life, while I’ve been pedaling uphill so hard for so long. But maybe, just maybe, Reid’s gonna be my chance to bust out of Circle Pines for the summer.

  5

  FRIDAY, JUNE 20

  “Where’s Carl?” I ask Mom, who’s sitting on the small three-step porch in the morning light.

  “Gone,” Mom answers. Her tone’s an odd mix of sorrow and satisfaction.

  “Good,” I say, maybe too happily.

  “Don’t sound so pleased,” Mom tells me. “You may not like him, and I don’t ask you to treat him like a father, but Danielle, he is part of our family.”