Read Between the Lines (11 page)

When she left, I came out here and stood. I waited and wondered what it was she got out here.

And I wondered if she would come back.

I waited in the dark and hoped. I looked up and down the street, catching my breath every time I saw headlights. But every time, the headlights floated past or turned before they got here. One year. Then two. Then five.

I breathe in deeply again. Feel the familiar sting.

Come back.

I wait.

Our yard is all picked up now. We have nice cars. The house is freshly painted. Everything is in its place. No clutter. I know how to be quiet. I know how to be good.

Come back.

I wait some more.

I wait for the headlights.

I wait for the car, pulling into the driveway.

I wait to see the face I’ve missed and longed for, even though it hurt me.

Even though she treated me like
nothing.

I wait.

And wait.

And breathe the air just like she did.

And fear that, maybe, this situation is not temporary after all.

CAL, DYLAN, AND I CRAM INTO CAL’S BAKING-HOT SUBARU
Forester during lunch. Cal bangs his hands against the steering wheel to pound out the rhythm of the music that’s blasting through the speakers and making my teeth vibrate. Dylan juts his head out the passenger-side window and pants like a dog thrilled to be going for a ride, except he doesn’t actually look very happy. He tries to copy Cal by pounding the dash to the beat, but the glove compartment keeps popping open when he does it, so he finally stops.

Cal’s car is kind of falling apart. It’s a hand-me-down from Cal’s mom and is a total mommy car in every way. First, it’s white. Second, it still has the
PROUD PARENT OF AN IRVING MIDDLE SCHOOL HONOR STUDENT
bumper sticker on it from three years ago, the last year Cal showed anything resembling promise.

Poor Cal. He’s already a year older than us because when he was little his parents read in some child psychology book that they should wait a year to have him start school because it would give him an academic advantage. I guess it did, up to a point. Cal claims the sticker is too old and stuck on and won’t come off. But really, I think he’s the one who’s proud. Lucky for us, an unexpected advantage of Cal being one year older is that he has his license one year sooner. It’s probably the one and only thing anyone envies about us.

Whenever we go out with Cal, we sit in the same seats. I am always in the back. I make a point to sit behind the passenger seat so I don’t have to see myself in the rearview mirror. I made that mistake once and spent the whole ride being able to see my acne (or, as Dylan would say, my crater face), my bad haircut (or, as Dylan would say, bed head), and, worst of all, my gigantic nose (no one comments on the nose, out of respect for the fact that there’s nothing I can do about it). Since then, I’ve always avoided the Look How Ugly You Are seat. But I’m still in the back. These have been our assigned seats since Cal got his license and the keys to the Great White Beast all in the same day. Damn, his mom is generous. Dylan and I aren’t likely to see our first cars until we graduate from college, if we even make it that far.

My parents share one car. It’s a silver Prius that sits in the driveway collecting dust like a proud monument to my parents’ dedication to Going Green. I mean it just
sits
there. And it’s already the greenest car you can get around here. The only time we ever drive the thing is when my parents have to go someplace on business, or if one of us has a doctor’s appointment or some other appointment we can’t walk, ride bikes, or take the bus to. My parents literally cringe when Cal shows up to get me for school in the Great White. But I continue to point out to them that with three guys in the car, we make a pretty respectable carpool. They just sigh.

Two years ago when they bought my twin sisters a tandem mountain bike, the girls actually burst into tears. “But it will be cute!” my mother insisted. It was not cute. My sisters spent a year hiding the bike in an alleyway on the way to school and hoofing it the rest of the way, to avoid humiliation. No one stole the unlocked bike. No one was surprised.

At the traffic light, Cal rolls the windows down and pumps the volume so the bass changes the rhythm of my heart.
Bam
bam-bam.
Bam
bam-bam. The late-fall air wafts into the car. The smell of dried leaves always reminds me of Halloween for some reason. Walking through neighborhoods with the guys, dressed as hobos, kicking fallen leaves as we trudged along with our pillowcases stuffed with candy. Sometimes I wish we weren’t too old to do that anymore.

There’s a Ford Taurus next to us. Cal signals for us to check out the driver. He has on a brown suit jacket. His window is down, too, and there’s a trickle of sweat dripping from his temple, even though it’s kind of cold out. He looks like the kind of guy who always smiles, even if he’s just severed a limb. Polite to the point of agony.

I know what that’s like, not wanting to make waves. You’d never know it by the guys I hang out with, but I do. I hate conflict. I hate awkward situations. I just want everyone to get along and go with the flow. My mother says she doesn’t know how she and my dad could have raised such a passive child. Seriously? She and my dad are so loud and obnoxious, there isn’t any room left in the house for my words. My friends think my parents are cool because they’re hippie activists. In reality, they’re just annoying. I’m not complaining, not really. I’d rather have annoying parents who care about something important than absent parents who don’t care at all.

“Get ready,” Cal says. It’s hard to hear over the music, but we see his lips move and know what’s coming.

When the light turns green, Cal guns it and pulls in front of Taurus Man. Then, when we get to the next set of lights, he slams on his brakes. I almost can’t hear the tires squeal, the music is so loud. We sort of rock to a stop. Then there’s a crunching sound.

Cal turns off the music and looks around, all innocent and fake-confused, like he doesn’t know what just happened.

Taurus Man gets out of his car and straightens his tie nervously.

He’s a sad sack, that guy. I knew it the moment I saw him. Obviously, so did Cal.

He comes toward the driver’s side holding his wallet.

Some cars behind us honk.

The guy’s hands are shaking.

“I, uh . . . you stopped kind of suddenly . . . uh . . .”

He fumbles with his wallet.

Cal motions for Dylan to go take a look.

He dashes around the back and inspects, then comes back.

“Bumper’s scratched,” Dylan says. “Your headlight’s broken,” he tells the guy.

“Look,” the guy says nervously. “I, um, I’m really sorry. But . . . Do you think we could handle this ourselves?”

“Lemme guess,” says Cal, all cool. “You don’t want to deal with the cops and insurance.”

I don’t know how Cal gets these guys. How he picks them out. Sometimes it’s a lady. Tipsy. Or an old person who can barely see over the steering wheel. It’s always the same. Let’s take care of this with some cold, hard cash. Fast. No need to involve the cops. Easy money.

I rub my neck on cue. The guy sees me do it. I feel a twinge of guilt. Actually, it’s more like a long tight twist in my chest that spreads through my body. I hate this game.

“You OK, son?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I say.

Why do I go along with this?

Why.

“I have insurance,” he tells us. “But I have this very important job interview. And if we call the police, I could be late. And . . .”

Cal nods patiently.

“Here. This is all I have. I see you boys aren’t wearing seat belts.”

It’s a lame attempt to scare us into not demanding more than he’s got. Or to call the cops.

“I’m not even sure that scratch wasn’t already there,” he adds.

He’s probably right. The Great White isn’t exactly in pristine condition. But he still forks over some money.

Cal takes the cash and nods at him. “This’ll do.”

Relief floods the guy’s face, and he scurries back to his car. Cal turns the music back up and puts the pedal to the metal even though the light is starting to change.

“Squeeze the freakin’ lemon!” Cal yells over the music. The yellow light switches to red just as we pass under it. Cal and Dylan each stick their hands out the window and give the guy the finger. Then Dylan surprises me by leaning his head out the window and yelling, “Suck-ah!” at the guy. I turn and watch the poor man realize what just happened. I imagine him punching the steering wheel as we drive away, leaving him stuck at the red light.

Cal shakes the wad of money like it’s a trophy, then hands it to Dylan. Lunch money for the week and beer money for the weekend.

Dylan leans back and smiles, shaking his head and counting out the money. He’s been our treasurer since we were in elementary school and formed our secret club in my backyard. We’ve always pooled our money to buy stuff together. It started with lumber and nails for the tree house we made. Then candy we were forbidden to eat. Fun Dip was the best. We’d see who could eat all the sugar and still end up with the dipping stick at the end. As we got older, we switched to Mountain Dew and energy drinks. We’d see who could drink the most, and then we’d go spastic on our sugar and caffeine highs, racing around the yard. Later, we bought our first pack of cigarettes. Now it’s beer. And sometimes weed. Or a juice bottle half filled with liquor from a parent’s stash. Over the years, our platform in the tree grew walls, then a roof, then a door with a padlock. And even though it’s cramped with the three of us inside, we still meet up there before we go out. To get loaded. To talk. To be those kids we were all those years ago, the Three Musketeers cliché, before we head out and act like the dicks we somehow think we have to be in order to have any fun.

We stop at Little Cindy’s and get lunch. Then we cruise through town and wolf down square burgers, filling the car with the smell of French fries and greasy meat. Cal and Dylan discuss whether or not we should cut out for the rest of the day, but, like always, we wind up heading back to school. I don’t contribute an opinion on the matter. I never do. I just lean back, look out my window, eat, and enjoy the familiar banter. Sometimes “endure” is more accurate. It depends. Sometimes, I look out my window and think,
There must be more to life.

But so far I haven’t found it.

At school, we pile out of the car, and Cal yells at us for leaving our paper wrappers and ketchup-smeared napkins on the floor. He grabs it all up and shakes the pile of crap at us. “And you guys wonder why my car smells like a Dumpster!”

“It couldn’t have anything to do with Dylan’s nasty feet?” I ask.

“My feet don’t smell!” Dylan whines. “Do they?” He lifts his foot up and bends down to try to get his face close to his ratty sneaker and nearly falls over.

“Pathetic,” Cal says, walking ahead.

We follow him, like always.

My next class is English Lit. of the Twentieth Century with Ms. Lindsay. I wanted to take an easy elective, but my parents of course wouldn’t let me. I’m pretty sure every straight guy in school is in love with our teacher. She’s only in her twenties and totally hot. Well, hot compared to the rest of the teachers, anyway. But no one respects her. The boys make crude noises when she turns her back. The girls all seem to hate her because it’s pretty obvious all the single boys lust after her, and they probably suspect that even the boys who have girlfriends fantasize Ms. Lindsay’s face on them. It’s not her fault she’s beautiful. But, I suppose, she could dress a little crappier and not wear so much lipstick or whatever.