No Right Turn (10 page)

I explain, “She was asking about Dad, about stuff I didn't want to talk about.”

Mom nods that she understands and then says, “I know how hard that is for you, sweetie. It's hard for me, too.”

“You didn't see him like I—” I stop myself.

But Mom finishes my sentence for me. “You're right, Jordan, I didn't see your dad right after he died—I didn't go through what you did. You were incredibly brave that day, trying to help him.”

I'm starting to feel crummy again, even talking this much about it. My hands are shaking a little bit. Mom notices and stops talking.

After a few seconds, she says, real softly, “I know that my seeing Don has brought a lot of stuff back up for us.”

I say, “I like Don.”

“I know you do, honey. You can like him, and it can still be hard. Let's face it; we've spent the last three years in survival mode, nothing more than that. I see it all the time at the hospital—people curling up and making every breath count, just hanging on and fighting for their lives—in a lot of ways, that's what we've had to do.”

“I guess,” I say, but I'm thinking about Becka and me, wondering why this had to happen
now
, when things were finally starting to get good.

Again, Mom kind of reads my mind. “When you push things down inside yourself, try to ignore pain, it never really disappears—it just hides out and waits, then it comes up again.”

I kind of get what Mom's saying; I know because I felt the same way, when I argued with Becka, that I used to feel anytime I thought about Dad killing himself, the same fear and anger followed by going all numb and stupid.

Mom says, real gentle like, “Do you think that maybe this fight with Becka is a way for you to start dealing with some of this?”

“Yeah,” I say, but then I get up to leave the room. “Yeah, maybe.”

I can't talk about this anymore; even though I get what Mom's saying, I just can't do this now. Not yet.

Mom says, “Whenever you want to talk, Jordan, you know that I'm here, right?”

I nod.

Wally is at my house after school hanging out. I still haven't heard from Becka. But Wally is good at collecting school gossip.

He says, “I guess she's having a hard time—she must have really liked you or something.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask.

“Yeah, she goes home every day and just hangs out with her brothers and sisters … they've got like ten kids in their family.”

“Five.”

“I heard ten.”

“You heard wrong—I went out with her. She's got two brothers, Billy and Brian, and two sisters.”

Wally says, “The youngest kid is all messed up.”

I say, “The youngest is Lori and she's got Down syndrome. She's not messed up.”

“What would you call it?” Wally asks.

He really isn't an asshole; he just acts like one sometimes.

I try to find the right words. “Developmentally … handicapped or delayed … something. I don't know, but messed up isn't right.”

“Okay,” Wally says. “Anyway, I guess Becka's taking your breakup pretty hard.”

I feel myself getting pissed, not at Wally really, but just pissed off generally. “You think
she's
messed up,” I snap at him. “What about me? She just wanted to talk about stuff that I don't talk about. She thinks like a regular person, but you don't lose a parent and have things be the same—it changes
everything
. How do you talk about that? How do you explain something like that?”

“Yeah,” Wally agrees—like he'd know. His parents are still together, with Wally and his sister, Claire, who is twelve. How the hell could Wally understand what I've gone through? I almost say something but bite my tongue. It isn't Wally's fault, any more than Becka's, that the world is such a crappy, unfair place.

Suddenly, out of the blue, I ask, “You wanna go for a ride in the 'Vette?”

He looks at me like I'm crazy. “Do I want to become an accomplice to grand theft auto? Gee, tempting … but … no, thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” I say.

Wally asks, “How many times do you think you can pull off that shit before you get busted?”

I answer, real smart-ass, “You didn't fill out an app.”

“What?”

“When my old man died, you never applied for the vacant position.”

“I'm not trying to be your dad. I'm just—”

I interrupt. “You're just saying the same
worthless shit
that he'd say to me.”

Amazingly, for the first time I can remember it ever happening, something I've said actually shuts Wally up. I get quiet too. Although neither of us says it out loud, we both know that it's time to change the subject.

We eat some junk food and play video games for an hour or so, but the truth is I can hardly wait for him to leave so that I can go get the 'Vette. Becka may have dumped me. Wally may not have a clue. But when I'm behind the wheel of the Stingray, nothing seems to hurt anymore—everything feels okay.

Almost two weeks have passed since Becka and I broke up. I haven't tried to call her again, and she sure hasn't called me.

Wally says, “You blew it, buddy.”

“How did I blow it?”

“You shoulda nailed her when you had the chance.”

“When did I ever have a chance?”

“Yeah,” Wally admits, “I suppose. But you were so close—we both were.”

Wally is watching his one chance to move from Invisibility Street in Loser Land to the swanky neighborhood of Big Shot Boulevard in Cheerleader Heaven disappear.

“Sorry, Wal.”

“Yeah,” he says, and pauses. “At least now you can stop stealing Don's car.”

I don't say anything.

What I'm not saying to Wally, what I'm not saying to anybody, is that somewhere between Becka and the Corvette I stopped feeling numb, stopped wanting to hide out and just be invisible. Yeah, my dad is dead and that's
messed up
. But there's more to life than being a goddamned frozen, freakin' zombie. Somewhere, somehow, and some way, I've thawed out. And now it's like I'm starving for everything I've missed these last three years.

Becka has been a part of this, but she's gone now—which leaves me just one lady: the one with the NOS sticker on her ass.

I'd decided not to take the 'Vette again unless I absolutely had to, but losing Becka has made me feel so bad that I've been worried that I'll get stupid again. I have barely talked to anybody for the last few days, right up till about five seconds ago, when I heard Adam Scott bragging about his classic GTO.

“I can kick anybody's ass in this town,” Adam says to a few starstruck freshmen in the cafeteria at school.

I laugh, and he hears me.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“That's what you drive, right …
nothing
?”

The freshmen laugh, too.

“I've got a ride.”

“Yeah, right,” Adam snarls.

Adam isn't a tough guy, at least not a fighter or bully. He
is
a motorhead, and his red 1965 “goat” is beautiful and, within the world of our school, a legendary car.

But I can't let the freshmen laugh at me, so I say, “I borrow a friend's 'Vette once in a while.”

“Bullshit!” Adam says. “What kind of 'Vette? What year?”

“A '76 Stingray.”

Adam laughs, “A '76, huh? A gutless wonder? What's that pull, a hundred and eighty horses?”

He's right about factory horsepower for 'Vettes in '76. From the showroom, with their original crappy catalytic converters, Stingrays were rated at 180. But in Don's car, with her rebuilt engine, her tweaked exhaust system, not to mention the nitrous package, we can crank 380 hp.

Before I can explain that to Adam, he laughs again. “Even if you did have a seventy-six 'Vette, it doesn't belong in this conversation.”

“It'd beat your goat,” I say, having no idea if this is even close to true but feeling too defensive of the Stingray to let Adam talk about her in that way.

“Right!” Adam says, and laughs. “Name the time and place.”

I should hesitate; at least, I should think it over, but instead I hear myself blurt out, “The stadium, tonight, six o'clock.” Thank God it's a Wednesday!

Adam looks me straight in the eyes and says, as serious as a heart attack, “You got it.”

The freshmen are impressed, but then again, they're only frosh.

For the rest of the afternoon at school, among the motorhead population especially but a lot of other kids, too, the race is
the
big news of the day. “The stadium” is Joe Albi, on the northwest side of town, only a few miles from my neighborhood. Kids have drag raced there for years. The huge parking lot surrounding the stadium has half a dozen long, straight stretches of blacktop, some of it crumbling and cruddy but most of it fairly smooth. Every kid in town knows that Albi is the place to race.

Wally catches up with me by our lockers at the end of the day. “You're gonna race Adam Scott?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Do you have a will?”

“Don't be stupid.”

“Are you crazy?” Wally smirks.

Suddenly I spot Becka leaving the building at the other end of the hallway. “Wally, shut up,” I say, and watch Becka go out the door.

Wally follows where I'm looking.

With Becka out of sight, Wally starts up again. “Listen, I know this thing with Becka is hard on you, but there's no need to commit suicide. What the hell do you think you're doing? Shit, man, they'll throw your ass
under
the jail if you get caught.”

“How am I going to get caught? I'm careful.”

Wally laughs. “Yeah. Right. Mr. Careful!”

“Whatever,” I say.

Wally shakes his head. “Does the phrase ‘next of kin' mean anything to you?”

I ignore his question and ask, “You gonna come watch?”

“Of course,” Wally says. “Like I said, they'll need somebody to identify your body—it's me or dental records.”

“Shut up!” I say again, but I start to feel a little nervous.

Still, nervous is better than numb.

I've known since Don explained about the nitrous booster that I'll have to try it someday and that I'll probably get killed doing it. Not really
killed
, maybe, but the thought of controlling the 'Vette with 200 extra horsepower scares me; it just doesn't seem that there's any safe way to do it.

I turn on the nitrous and lift the red cover over the activator switch and click it on, too. I can't hear anything change in the sound of the car over the engine's loud rumble, or feel anything different, but then I wouldn't; the nitrous is filling the lines but won't kick in until I slam the gas pedal all the way to the floor. This will happen in a few seconds—when the 1965 GTO next to me, and “my” 'Vette, get the signal to go. I can hear Adam's big engine, 400 cubic inches and 400 horsepower, revving over and over again. He's ready.

But so am I.

It's six ten. We're idling, side by side, a dozen feet apart, on the longest straight stretch of asphalt at Joe Albi Stadium. Our engines rev up over and over. The roadway runs close to an eighth of a mile long.

Adam, having noticed the small red-and-black Edelbrock NOS sticker in the back window of the 'Vette, says, “You didn't say you had nitrous.”

It's a fair point. “I know, sorry, I should have said something.”

Adam says, “No, it's good. You wouldn't have stood a chance without it. This makes it more interesting.”

“Yeah,” I say.

He also notices the larger sticker in the middle of the back window of the 'Vette, one I bought as a present for Don and insisted that he put up. Adam, reading it, says, “‘Does not play well with others,' huh?” These are the words written over a pair of angry red eyes. I wonder if Adam can make out the smaller print below: “It seems others don't like to lose.”

He smiles. “Doesn't play nice, huh?”

I might be blushing, but I don't say anything.

Adam says, “You ready?”

I nod; my throat feels too tight to talk.

It's like a hot-rod movie. A girl from school stands between us, right in front. I don't like her being there; what if one of us gets sideways and hits her? But this is the way it's done.

She raises her arm over her head and raises one finger, another, and as she raises a third finger, she drops her arm.