Beatless (3 page)

Voted “The Class Distraction” three years running in middle school, he developed a bit of a reputation for being a trouble maker. And that was when we’d started to grow apart. I liked school and I certainly didn’t want to be labeled as a deviant, so the distance between the two of us had grown into a grand divide, and we’d stopped speaking all together. I never thought of him until I saw him walking the halls, humming loudly to the music through the headphones he constantly wore. I'd heard that his dad wrote a note to the school at some point that Tucker needed them in order to concentrate. I never really saw what the point was. He didn’t pay attention in class and he never did his homework from what I heard.

Tucker was already going to Perimeter and my heart raced at the thought. It was a long shot that we’d have any classes together, but maybe I could find a friend in him. It had been so long since we’d actually spoken, though . . .

I glanced down at the bracelet in my hand and smiled, because I’d suddenly remembered the exact day he’d given to me.

I was in seventh grade, he was in eighth. It was right after school had started, before he’d gotten in so much trouble. Beneath one of the Bradford pear trees that he claimed smelled like
spunk
when in full bloom (to his credit, I thought they smelled like warm piss but I wasn’t exactly familiar with what spunk smelled like). I still remembered the way he’d dipped his head a little, to look at my face from an angle. He’d sprouted over the summer, hitting a growth spurt that made him a good two inches taller than me. Leaning against the tree, he’d smiled, not caring about any other person around us.

“I made this.” He’d laughed and presented me with the bracelet.

“Are you sure? It looks like your little sister did.” I’d never met her and he rarely spoke of her, but at seven years old she sounded like a bad ass. I took the jewelry, noting the multi colored hearts along a piece of bright red yarn. Three beads that spelled out MAL were in the middle.

“Well, it was from her kit. But still. I made that.” He was smiling so big that I couldn’t help but do it, too.

“I like it.”

“Good.” He adjusted his backpack and looked around like he was going to start a sentence, but our bus showed up and he lost whatever he was going to say.

The next day was the first time he was suspended from school for fighting with someone during P.E. It occurred to me that this particular incident was when we’d lost touch.

I tacked the bracelet to the cork-board above my desk, and blushed a little at the trinket now hanging there like a little rainbow reminder that I wasn’t always the in-between secondary girl I felt I was now. I’d been wanted once. Even if it was just by a fourteen year old boy. It had happened.

Grabbing my iPad, I slipped down the hall to the kitchen, passing by my aunt as she sat with her fingers on her keyboard, her eyes trained on the television and a spoon held between her teeth while she clicked keys without looking. She had a penchant for yoga pants, and I made a mental note not to be so sloppy when I got old like her. I mean, they did look comfortable. But
still
.

“Morning.”

“Afternoon,” she garbled around her spoon.

“Whatcha watchin’?”

“Cinematic history. You?” Her ponytail swung in an arc as she turned to appraise me and slid the spoon out of her mouth. Ever since she’d been back, she started watching all of these movies from her high school years. Nostalgia had crept in on her faster than I could blink, but I chalked it up to her being back in her childhood home.

I tilted my iPad in her direction. “Kardashians.”

“I blame O.J.” She stretched and hit the remote to pause the movie, freezing the scene on the big screen T.V. above the fireplace.

"It's like you speak an entirely different language sometimes, you know that?"

"Your generation saddens me." She sighed.

I looked over her shoulder at the television and Sam caught me staring. “Want to join me?”

With a wave of my hand, I shook my head and grunted. “I’ll pass.”

She moved to where I was standing and drummed her fingers on the countertop. “Funny story, Mal. I found something today.”

I froze, unsure of exactly what
something
could be. My aunt was cool, and probably the only grown-up I felt I could really be open and honest with, but the words I found
something
could never be a truly good thing when coming from an adult’s mouth.

“Oh, yeah?” Nerves tickled my tummy and I straightened my shoulders. I didn’t even look her way, just grabbed a granola bar. Unwrapped it. Kept not looking at her.

“Mallory, what is that hulking metal beast under a tarp in the building to the left of the fence back there?” Her arm was pointed to the backyard, but I didn’t bother to look. I knew.

Swallowing was painful, but I did it anyway. “That? Oh. That’s just. Ya know. It’s a . . .”

“A what?”

“It’s a car, Aunt Sam. Why do you ask?” Feigning innocence was my best bet in this scenario. I could feel it in my bones. The school was close to my house and I’d had my friends offering me rides so much that I hadn’t really taken full advantage of the car my dad had left for me before my parents split and he high tailed it to Boston. Mom let me take hers if I needed to go anywhere, anyway. Plus, if I was being honest with myself, I was scared to drive it for one other very important reason: I valued my life.

She gripped the upper part of my arm so hard I let out a squeak. Pulling me forward, we marched into the blazing triple digit heat, inhaling raggedly as the humidity hit full force.

I’d always liked air conditioning.

Now I was in love with it.

My cold Freon lover.

We went beyond the fence, over more than one ant hill, under a grove of trees and straight to the small leaning structure she’d been talking about.

I thought I heard a wolf howl in the distance.

“They bought you a car. And you don’t drive it.”

“But it’s a stick shift.”

“It’s a car.”

“And . . . it’s a rusted old VW Bug from 1972. The tires are entirely unsafe. There’s no roadside assistance on a death trap, Aunt Sam. And I’m pretty sure there’s, like, an oil leak or something because black smoke appears as soon as you turn the key.” I pleaded with my eyes but her face was appalled.

“Do you know how to drive it?”

“I know how to
drive
. I drive Mom’s car. I have a license. I’m nineteen, for all that’s holy. I just don’t want to die before I can legally vote in the next formal election.”

Sam crossed her arms and looked me over like she was seeing me for the very first time. And that she wasn’t quite sure she liked what she saw. “But you have a working vehicle sitting right here in the shed. I’m confused, Mallory. Do you just not care? Or did you think that your mom would magically buy you a new one with all the money she doesn’t have?”

My shoulders slumped and I leaned into the shade provided by the overhang. “Look, we’ve had a lot of people from school die in car wrecks in the last few years—”

“Your point is irrelevant if you’re not taking public transportation everywhere and you’re driving another vehicle.”

I was scared.

“I’m scared,” I said. Because, really, it was all I could think to say.

Sam passed both her hands through her hair and muttered under her breath. “You should be. Because you’re not going to sleep all day and mope around the house watching
Real Housewives
reruns . . .”

“But I’m almost caught up on
New Jersey
,” I whined.

“Or checking your phone and Instagram every second to stalk your friends,” she railed right over my words. “Or eat all day and play
Farmville
or
Angry Birds
or
Draw Something
or whatever else someone my age came up with to make your brain less stellar than it should be in the bright light of the sun.” She was hyperventilating and turning red in the face. “Your mom left me in charge of you. And I’ve screwed up for the past week, but nope. No more.” She looked up quickly, her eyes narrowing to slits.

“You’re getting a job. And once you get enough money for tires . . . you’re gonna start driving this piece of crap. Everywhere. Because I’m the adult. And I said so.”

“Did you just turn into Mom?”

“Maybe. Maybe I’m having a midlife crisis.”

“Planning on only living to eighty four?” I joked, hoping to lighten the mood.

She shrugged. “Eh, after that, it’s like, what’s the point?” She finally smiled. A little. And the tight bubble-knot in my stomach started to loosen just the tiniest bit.

“I’m staying out of trouble and I’m not doing anything bad, isn’t that enough?”

Sam shook her head violently. “No. You’re not
doing anything
. I want you to
do something
, Mallory. I’d rather you get into trouble, than sit in a solitary existence and not experience . . .” she looked momentarily frightened. “Anything.” The last part was a whisper and it caused my heart to clench because I felt it, too.

“What does this mean?”

“Tomorrow I’m dropping you off at the Waffle House and you’re getting a damn job.”

Mal,

You probably hate me right now. And I understand why.

I’ve always been the one you came to when your mom wasn’t there. Do you remember the day your parents told you they were getting divorced? You called crying, asking for an explanation. You’ve always felt slightly rejected and abandoned, and I get it. But you’ve never been anything more than loved implicitly.

For as long as I can remember, you craved our approval. Maybe you wanted mine the most. I’d try to get you to branch out by saying, “Oh, Mal. You know you want to be that girl who gets rough and climbs trees.” And for days you would circle a small one and finally get the nerve to climb, only to figure out willow trees aren’t very sturdy and, while pretty to look at, are also homes to thousands of fire ants.

But you did it.

That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. To do it. To do things and be the person you’re made to be.

I remember that day you asked me about my tattoos and I didn’t have the heart to tell you the true story so I just patted your head and said something about being too young to understand the complexities of time and space and the inability to create life out of tiny bits of broken matter.

I wish I had told you the truth. But you weren’t ready to hear it at the time.

Now you are.

And someday I’ll tell you everything if you want me to.

Sam

~*~3~*~

Sam wasn’t kidding when she said she was making me get a job. She drove me straight to the Waffle House parking lot (she insisted on driving me everywhere from here on out until I learned the stick shift), biting her blue fingernails the entire way. It was a habit she’d had since I could first remember her face. The floorboard was covered in a rainbow of her anxiety.

But there was no way I was getting a job at the Waffle House.

No offense to people that work at the Waffle House. But, no.

My aunt didn’t say anything more than, “Call me when you’re employed,” before she pulled away, leaving me stranded with only a phone and the shoes on my feet. Which, according to her, was more than she used to have because when she was in college, she had to carry quarters for when her
beeper went off
.

I turned a slow circle, looked at the front of the building, and then stepped to the left and sat slowly on the curb. I was trying to decide exactly how I could make enough money to buy tires for the Death Trap without having to actually get into a Waffle House uniform. Before a plan could fully form beyond selling platelets, the front door swung open and a pair of dirty sneakers stopped next to my thigh.

“There’s no loitering here, Mal.”

I took a steadying breath and moved my hair out of the way to look up at Tucker towering over me, his chin angled down, hair swaying in the early morning breeze and a smile so big across his face that I couldn’t help but laugh. He’d done that for as long as I could remember. He smiled with his whole face.

“Well, as a matter of fact, Tucker,” I started, hoping I sounded brave and not as stupid as I felt, “I’ve been instructed to get a job in order to buy tires for my car. So̶—”

“Yeah, you don’t want to work here. I’d advise against it.” He pulled a pack of gum from his pocket and slipped a piece between his fingers, pointing it at my face. “Mrs. Moore is looking for help next door and the Fro-yo place two over needs a night manager. Otherwise, you might want to check over by Old Navy.” He unwrapped the gum, folded it in half and popped it into his mouth as I tried not to stare. But I was. “But here? You’d get eaten alive.” His voice went thin as he coughed, having almost swallowed his gum.

“You don’t know that,” I said quickly, trying to straighten my shoulders. But on the off-chance he was right . . .
Wait. What was I thinking? I didn’t want to work at the Wa-Ho.
“What’s Mrs. Moore’s place?”

He grinned. “Consignment. It’s like a yard sale every day.”

“Right. Consignment. I love that. It’s perfect.”

“She doesn’t use computers. Does everything by hand and calculators.”

“Ugh. Math.” I scowled, feeling defeated.

He tucked a piece of hair behind his ear and shrugged. “If it helps with your decision, you get a discount.”

My face grew hot and I looked down at my feet. “Well, that’s not a huge selling point.”

“You’re a girl. Of course it is.”

That did make me laugh and when I’d finally collected myself, I looked up to see him leaning against the wall, still staring down at me with an intense look in his eyes.

“What?”

“I heard you didn’t get to go to Vanderbilt. Tough break.”

“Yeah, we couldn’t afford it. I’ll apply for a grant or something after first semester when I can prove my GPA. I’m going to Perimeter. Are you still there?”