Hold Still (19 page)

Taylor and I hang our huge map of Europe up in front of the chalkboard.

He looks at me for the cue to begin. I nod. He clears his throat and looks down at his notecard.

“Jacques DeSoir,” he begins, “was many things: a mathematician, a citizen of France, a lover of snails, and a pirate.”

The class laughs a little. In a good way. I look down at my notes and say, “Born in the port town of Nice, he was always fascinated by water. In fact, he began his first mathematical pursuits by timing the seconds that passed between each wave on the beach that was close to his house. He got so obsessed that his mom had to come get him by the water after dark all the time, and the people of Nice nicknamed him
garçon de l’océan,
which, translated, means, ‘boy of the ocean.’ ”

I glance at the class and everyone actually looks pretty interested. Mr. James gives me a grin and a thumbs-up.

Taylor says, “We have this map of Europe, and all the tacks here represent the places that Jacques DeSoir went on his travels. His travels began innocently. He would just work on the boats that people sailed, mostly cargo boats, and do his crazy experiments at night.”

“But then,” I say, “he fell in with the wrong crowd.”

Everyone laughs.

We go on, with Edith Piaf singing French songs in the background, and Taylor and I telling little stories about Jacques DeSoir as we get to each tack on the map. We don’t talk too much about actual math, but Mr. James seems okay with that. After about fifteen minutes, we end and people clap, and I turn off my iPod, and Taylor takes the map down. We go back to our seats. Then other people start going up, and most of them just have these hurried-looking poster boards. A couple people have sloppy PowerPoint presentations. It takes them longer to get their computers set up than it does to go through all of their boring details about their mathematicians’ lives. By the time everyone else is finished, I realize that no one spent nearly as much time on their presentations as we did. Actually, I’ve never spent as much time as we did for any other assignment for school.

After class, Taylor says, “So do you want to hang out later?”

And even though the idea of just hanging around with Taylor sounds really good, I say, “Actually, there’s something I need to do.”

6

The DMV is a squat, plain building, but to me it looks like a shiny brochure of some distant tropical place, like it’s saying,
Just peek inside and see all the good times you’ve been missing
.

I made an appointment for a driving test a few weeks ago. I didn’t know if I would show up, but here I am, walking through the glass double doors, passing the security guard and all the people lined up who didn’t make appointments. The driving instructor’s name is Bertha and her hair is an orangey-pinky-red—a color that definitely does not exist in nature. She hardly glances at me from over her clipboard, just says my name and starts checking little boxes. She leads me out a back door to a little car and gestures for me to get in the driver’s seat. I settle in as she slams the door to her side.

Just then I realize: I probably should have practiced.

Besides driving with Taylor that one day, I haven’t driven for months, and back when I did, it wasn’t very often. My dad took me out to the Safeway parking lot early in the mornings on a few weekends, and my mom took me on the freeway one time and said, “You’re doing great!” But for the whole ten minutes I was on it, trying to go exactly sixty-five, she was holding on to her seat cushion like it was a life raft. And then there was Sal, my driver’s-ed teacher. He was what you might call an underachiever. He took me out one morning and we drove around Los Cerros, and once he saw that I stayed within my lane for the most part, and used my turn signal and all that, he said, “Looks like you can drive, dear. Why don’t I just sign off here that we’ve done our fifteen hours and we’ll call it a day.”

So I guess it’s understandable that I feel a little nervous sitting here with Bertha, as I try to remember how a three-point turn works, and when it’s okay to turn at a red light, and probably most importantly, which pedal is the gas and which is the brake.

“We’ll just drive up along here,” Bertha says, gesturing with her clipboard toward a perfectly empty, straight street. “Then we’ll hang a right, you’ll do a three-pointer for me, and we’ll head back along this way.”

“Okay,” I say, but I don’t move. I’m wondering:
gas or brake? gas or brake?
I try to remember what my dad taught me in the parking lot. I can remember that most of the mornings were clear and warm, and that he was wearing his tennis jacket, and afterward we got hot chocolate from 7-Eleven, but I can’t remember which side the brake is on.

“You can start the car now,” Bertha tells me.

“Oh, right,” I say.

I look down at my feet and remember how my dad told me it was hard to
describe
all the things you do when you drive, that once you start doing it, your body just does it for you and you don’t think about it anymore. I hear Bertha shift in her seat and get the feeling that she’s about to say something, and I decide just to do it. I put my foot down on the left pedal and hope that it’s the brake. I remind myself of how smooth it went with Taylor that day, how I hardly had to think about it at all. I turn the keys in the ignition and miraculously, the engine comes on and the car doesn’t move. I shift into drive, press the right pedal and off we go.

I do just what Bertha says. I drive down the quiet street; I do my three-point turn, which is really so simple, almost nothing; then I drive back to the DMV’s back door and park.

I turn the car off and remember to pull up the emergency brake.

Bertha checks more boxes on her clipboard and makes a few comments. Then she turns to me and says, “Congratulations.”

She tells me to follow her back inside, and as we walk through the building I am filled with love for the DMV with its low ceilings and dirty floors and lines of impatient people, and most of all, Bertha, who risks her life daily so that people like me can be granted access to the wide-open roads.

“You know you can’t drive with another minor in the car for a full year, correct?” Bertha says.

Her eye twitches. Is she winking at me? I think she is.

“Sure,” I say, just to make her happy.

She hands me the paper off her clipboard and tells me to go wait in line. I wait and wait, and then I get my picture taken. I catch a glimpse of it on the screen. I think I’m blinking, but who cares? Before I leave, I get a new piece of paper, a temporary license to last me until the real one comes in the mail. I go outside and sit on the curb and call my mom for a ride home.

When she shows up, I stride over to her side of the car.

She rolls down her window.

“Hi, sweetheart,” she says, looking at me quizzically.

“Close your eyes,” I say.

“What?”

“Close your eyes!”

She does.

“Hold out your hands.”

She opens her eyes, puts the car in park, then closes them again. She lifts her hands to the window. I set my temporary license on her palms.

“Open!” I squeal.

She stares into her hands, blinks, beams up at me.

“When did you . . .” she starts, but she doesn’t finish the question, just unfastens her seat belt, opens the car door, and gets out. She stands beside the open door and gestures, grandly, from me to the driver’s seat.

“Thank you,” I say in a very formal tone, and take my rightful place behind the wheel.

When I get home I call Dylan, but she doesn’t answer.

I hang up and call Taylor. He answers and I say, “I just got my license.”

“You didn’t have your license?” he asks.

“No. I told you, remember?”

“I guess I forgot. But, hey, that’s great. You’ll have to take me out soon.”

I hear a beeping, and look down at the phone and see it’s Dylan.

“I gotta go now,” I tell Taylor. “Just wanted to tell you.”

“So you’ll take me out soon?”

“Maybe,” I say. Then, “Yes.”

I click over to Dylan. “I know you think that cars are the downfall of humanity, but I got my license today.”

“That’s awesome! Congrats. You want to drive me to school tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” But then I get nervous. “But my car’s a stick. And I’ve hardly driven it. I passed the test on an automatic.”

Dylan says, “I can drive a stick. I’ll walk to your house in the morning so we can drive together. That way, if you keep stalling in an intersection, I can take over.”

“Wait,” I say. “
You
can drive a stick?”

“Well, yeah,” she says, like it’s obvious.

“But you don’t have your license.”

“Yeah, I have it.”

“But I thought cars were the downfall of humanity!”

“They are. But it isn’t practical not to have a license. Sometimes you need one, you know? So I’ll be at your house by like seven-fifteen, okay?”

7

Dylan shows up at my front door at seven, holding a thermos in each hand.

“Here,” she mumbles, thrusting one toward me from the other side of the door. “Needs milk and sugar.”

“Good morning,” I say.

She squints and takes a sip. Black coffee drips on her chin and she wipes it off with the sleeve of her hoodie. She walks inside.

My parents are standing in the kitchen, and I see them get all excited when Dylan walks in behind me. They haven’t gotten to talk to her very much and are still getting over the thrilling news that their moody daughter actually has a friend.

Dylan manages to raise one ringed-and-leather-braceleted hand in greeting. I open the fridge and grab the half-and-half. When I turn back around, we’ve formed a little circle of four, all looking in at one another. My parents are smiling at Dylan and she’s looking back at them, sort of puzzled. She manages a weak smile. I turn around again and take the sugar jar down from the cupboard.

“So how was the play?” my mom asks.

“Play?” Dylan asks, scrunching her forehead. “Oh, the play.” She leans against our kitchen counter and takes a sip of coffee. “So good,” she finally says.

“Which one was it?” my dad asks.

“
Romeo and Juliet,
right?” my mom says.

I dump a spoonful of sugar into my coffee.

“Yeah. It was at my old school.”

I take another spoonful.

“And you had friends in the production?”

“Her girlfriend,” I say, stirring.

“Wonderful,” my dad says. “I always imagined that I would enjoy acting.”

They stare at her for a little longer, and Dylan and I stare at them. “Toast?” my mom asks.

“Sure,” Dylan says.

Dylan and I finish our toast and escape from my pleasant-but-awkward parents. Then it’s out through the back door, over the brick patio, past my parents’ tomato vines, and down to the driveway.

“Hello, little car,” I say. “Ready for an adventure?”

Dylan squints. “When’s the last time anyone drove it?”

“I don’t know. But I start it a lot, so the battery should be fine.”

I unlock my side, climb into the seat, then lean over and pull up the passenger-side lock. Dylan slides in and fastens her seat belt. As I put the key in the ignition, she picks at all the fur I ripped off the seat covers and stuffs it, piece by piece, into a pocket in her backpack.

“You have to treat your car nice,” she says. “What is all this?”

I choose not to answer, just roll my eyes.

“Hey,” she says, and points at my seat belt. “Buckle up, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I turn the ignition and the car sputters to life. The tape player blasts at full volume, but Dylan doesn’t even flinch. I put my foot on the clutch, the other on the gas, and we careen out of the driveway and onto the street. Dylan squeezes her fist shut.

“Okay, good, we’re moving, now slow the fuck down a little, okay?” she yells over the music.

I laugh, just happy that I’m taking us somewhere. I slow for a red light and turn the volume down.

When the light changes to green, I take my foot off the clutch too fast and stall.

“Shit!” I turn the key in the ignition and someone in the long line of cars behind me honks.

Dylan says, “It’s okay, it’s no problem. They can go around you if they want.”

“Shit shit shit.” I turn the ignition again and mess up again and my car lurches then dies.

“Fuck!”

“You just did it a minute ago. You can do it again.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Breathe,” she commands.

I do. I try one more time to start the car. I take my foot off the break and put it onto the gas. Slowly, I ease off the clutch while pushing down on the gas pedal and the car coughs, lurches, then accelerates smoothly. I squeal, and Dylan leans back in her seat, finally relaxed.

8

We’re broken up into groups in Mr. Robertson’s class, brainstorming about hypocrisy in
The Scarlet Letter,
when my pencil lead breaks and I have to get up to sharpen it.

“Who uses pencils like that anymore, anyway?” Dylan teases, and looks back at the book.

I slide past her chair and make my way down the cramped aisle of desks, nearing Henry Lucas and Alicia’s friends on my way to the sharpener. The girls are flirting with him as always. SPOILED traces his ear with her finger, ANGEL tugs at his fingertips. I trip over someone’s backpack and hear Dylan crack up behind me. “Sorry!” I chirp, and keep moving. ANGEL’S fingers are climbing up Henry’s arm now. He looks annoyed.

“I’m gonna bring my new boyfriend to your party Friday, okay?” asks SPOILED. “He’s older. He could supply the beverages.”

For a few seconds, the sharpener drowns them out. As I pass their desks again, Henry’s asking, “Who even said I’m having a party Friday?”

I slide into my seat next to Dylan.

“Do you like going to parties?” I ask her.

“Shh!” she says. “I’m counting how many times Hawthorne uses the word
ignominy
in this chapter.”

“Nerd.”

“I’m thinking of charting it out chapter by chapter to measure the levels of humiliation and disgrace.”

“You can’t turn this book into a mathematical equation,” I say.