Such a Rush (14 page)

When her giggles died down, I said, “You know I’m not a whore.” I was double-checking, actually. I had a bad rep around school, but that’s because the new girl at school was an easy target. After three and a half years here, I was still considered the new girl. Molly hadn’t lived here as long, but she’d blended in better. The new girl who lived in a trailer park was a sitting duck.

Molly cut her eyes sideways at me. “I know you’re not a
practicing
whore. But Mark Simon living with you? Even for just a week? I’m so glad you got rid of him.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Did you end up doing it?”

“No.”

“Gah!” Molly exclaimed. “I’m so relieved. I tried to be glad you were finally going to get some, but Mark Simon is not the crazy I would have picked out for you. Girls were talking about you. I mean, more than usual. That was out there, living with a guy when you’re only eighteen and you haven’t even graduated yet.”

It wasn’t like that,
I almost told her. But I’d said this to her all week:
It’s not like that
. I sounded like my mother trying to explain a few of her military boyfriends to me. Why do you stay with him when he hits you, Mama?
You don’t understand. It’s not like that.

“Do you think I gave Mark the wrong idea without meaning to?” I asked. “I never meant that I would do him in
exchange for a job. Do you think Grayson is right, that I’ll look at Alec and he’ll fall at my feet?” What I wanted to ask was whether Mr. Hall had befriended me for the wrong reasons, like Grayson had said a year ago in the hangar, which seemed like a lifetime ago now. But I didn’t ask that. I didn’t want to know the answer.

She took a long breath, considering. “I do think you turn on a very sexy act around men when you need something, and you may not realize you’re doing it. Obviously you don’t realize it if you’re asking me about it.”

“Give me an example.”

“Ryan.” Ryan was the boyfriend Molly and I had argued about when we first met.

I hated it when she brought Ryan up. She didn’t know the whole truth about what had happened. The fact that I’d hidden it from her made my stomach twist even now. But my fib had landed me this beautiful friend. I wouldn’t let her go. So I continued with the tough act she loved so much. I said, “Oh, I realized I was seducing Ryan all right.”

She cackled at our oldest joke. “Okay, another example. You’ve gotten in one million fights at school, and you’ve been called to the principal’s office one million times, but you’ve never been suspended.”

“That’s because I don’t start the fights,” I said self-righteously.

“Maybe not,” Molly said, “but that’s not what those other girls and their friends are telling the principal, yet they’re getting suspended and you’re not.”

“So you
do
think I’m a whore,” I said grimly.

“No. You’re not doing the principal. The rumors about you aren’t true. But they’re not random, either. Think about it. Do you own a T-shirt that doesn’t show your cleavage?”

I put both hands over the deepest part of my V-neck.

“And then there’s Mark living with you,” she said. “You’re not a whore. You’re a chick who hasn’t exactly grown up with every advantage, and you’ve learned to use what you’ve got. You don’t do it on purpose. It’s second nature. You act girly and helpless and make men think you’re harmless.”

I swallowed.

“Leah. You look like you’re going to pass out again. I’m not helping.”

“Sure you are,” I said brightly. “You’re a candle in my window.”

I meant for her to laugh at this, but she stared out the windshield, tapping one finger nervously on the steering wheel. “So, about these Hall boys. Are you in love with Alec?”

“What? No.” As I said this, we passed the convenience store. I was always amazed how little time it took to drive here when it took forever to walk here.

“Are you in love with the one who thinks you’re a whore?” she asked.

I snickered at the way she’d put it. Then I realized I shouldn’t be amused, because the way she’d put it was pretty accurate. “Grayson. No.” My skin tingled as I said his name, which was just stupid.

“I can’t put my finger on it, but you’re in love with somebody.”

I fished in her purse at my feet, found a clove cigarette, and lit it. “I’ve been watching them from afar for a while. The twins, and their father who died, and their older brother who died. I guess I’ve fallen a little in love with all of them.” One puff and the cigarette was making me sick. Mr. Hall was looking over my shoulder, telling me to put that garbage out. I stubbed it out carefully in an empty paper cup in her cup holder.

“So you’re nostalgic for their lost family, and you feel sorry for this guy. You’re making excuses to yourself for his poor social skills. But you can’t forget he’s blackmailing you into dating his brother. Worse, he’s blackmailing you into doing this dangerous job flying.”

“Well, I don’t know that it’s a dangerous job. Before Mr. Hall died, I actually wanted that job.”

“When Mr. Hall was running the show, yes. Now he’s not. With this inexperienced eighteen-year-old dude running the place, it’ll be even more like suicide than it was before.”

“I wouldn’t call it suicide.”

“You’ve described it to me, Leah. You’re flying this little tin can of a plane pulling this long, heavy banner it was never made to pull. And you’re fighting with the controls the whole time to keep the plane from stalling and plunging you to your death.”

“Technically, all of that is true, but a pilot wouldn’t phrase it so dramatically. If we did, we wouldn’t be pilots very long. Because that sounds like some crazy shit.”

“Exactly. And you said they’ve stripped all the instruments out of those little planes so they’re light enough to carry the banners. You’re flying without instruments, and that’s not dangerous?”

“They don’t take out
all
the instruments. The ones they’ve taken out, you don’t really need unless it’s cloudy or dark. I mean, yes, they’d be nice to have, but you don’t
need
them.”

Molly turned to gape at me.

I realized what I was saying
did
sound kind of lame. “Yes, I can hear myself,” I said. “Was that your next question? Yes.”

“Well,” she said, “since you love these guys so much, and you swear the job isn’t ‘that’ suicidal”—she took her hands off the steering wheel to make finger quotes—“I don’t see what
the problem is. I mean, I understand your concern about the good moral character thing and your mother finding out that you forged her name. You’re just trying to keep your head down and your nose clean until you can get out of Heaven Beach.”

“Right.” We passed the grocery store. The few times I’d walked here to shop, the bags had pulled my arms out of their sockets, just like the heavy chocks on the tarmac, as I hiked back to the trailer. But if I could have driven here, I would have plopped the bags in the trunk and forgotten about them until I reached home. Yes, I was amazed at this miraculous invention called a
car
. On pretty much every drive Molly took me on, I was tempted to ask her to stop and let me get a few groceries. I never asked, though, and it never occurred to her.

“And maybe you have a little problem with authority—” Molly said.

“Who, me?”

“—so Grayson telling you what to do gets on your last nerve, especially when it involves whoredom.”

“Correct.”

“But if his business is going to be as short-lived as you say, can’t you just ride it out and then go back to your airport job on the ground? I don’t see why you’re so upset at losing the crop-dusting job with that jerk. You’ve flown before but you’ve never had a
job
flying. Why do you need one now?”

“Because every type of pilot’s license has an age requirement, plus a requirement for the number of hours you’ve flown.”

“And a pesky requirement for good moral character.”

“That’s only for the airline pilot’s license. But yeah, that’s exactly what I’m up for next. For my commercial license I had to turn eighteen years old and log two hundred and fifty hours.
At first I had to rent Mr. Hall’s airplane to get those hours. Airplane rental isn’t cheap. If he hadn’t started letting me use it for free, I wouldn’t have that license by now.”

“I see.”

Now we were passing the library. I checked out one or two books per visit so they wouldn’t be too heavy or bulky on the walk home. That way I always had a stack. I’d seen Molly check out a whole stack before. At once. And put them in her car.

“For the airline pilot’s license,” I said, “I have to be twenty-three years old, and I need to log fifteen hundred hours. Now that Mr. Hall is gone, that’s another twelve hundred and fifty hours of renting an airplane. Plus, if any airline is going to hire me, I need a college degree. How am I going to pay for all that in the next five years, Molly?”

“Hell if I know.”

“I’m going to get a job flying. Then I fly for free. I fly a
lot
and log a lot of hours. And I get paid more than minimum wage.”

“But if you
can’t
get a job flying,” she said, “maybe you keep your airport office job, work on your hours and your degree, but do it more slowly, as you save up your money. You don’t
have
to get that license the day you turn twenty-three.”

“True.” But if I didn’t get it at twenty-three, I would never get it. That life was too hard, always looking to the future and never living in the now, saving for an impossible goal. Thirty years later I would
still
be working in the airport office for minimum wage. There would be a rumor that I had been a pilot once, but most people wouldn’t believe it, looking at me.

“Yeah, I understand now,” Molly said.

Really?

“Maybe Alec and Grayson’s company won’t go under like
you so gleefully expect,” she said, “and you can keep your job with them for a long time.”

“And continue to be the airport whore.”

“It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.”

We’d reached the beginning of the motels. Because we were still on the flophouse end of Heaven Beach, the signs out front boasted ridiculously low room rates, and the pools were small and stained and green.

I said, “Tell me the rest of your story, which is not nearly as interesting as my story. You finally connected with a guy at the café, and he had to go to bed. Aw.”

“Aw.” She poked out her bottom lip sympathetically.

“Will you see him again?”

She took in a slow breath and exhaled before she spoke, as if considering her answer. Which was not like her. “I think he’s going to be really busy this week.”

“But you were all excited about him a few minutes ago. You drove over to my mansion at eleven o’clock at night to tell me about him.” As I uttered the words, I realized they probably weren’t true. Maybe the boy didn’t even exist. Molly always had an excuse like this—she
had
to see me so she could tell me about a cute boy, or a dorky thing her mom had done, or something she’d seen on TV—but a lot of times when she came over, she was really checking on me, or getting me out of the trailer for a little while. Or casually driving me back to the café and feeding me, as if I didn’t know what was going on. I played along.

“I
was
excited about him,” she said, “but he seems awfully vanilla next to your whore story.”

“He does. Let’s trade places.” Now
I
was the one speaking before I thought. I sounded ungrateful and jealous and bitter. Which I was, but nobody wanted to hear that. I opened my mouth, thinking hard, forming a genuine apology.

She opened the console between us, brought out a white paper bag, and set it in my lap. “Warm chocolate croissant.”

“Oh!” My cry of ecstasy at a pastry was so heartfelt and genuine that I burst into laughter.

She glanced over at me with her eyebrows raised like she was worried about my sanity.

“Shut up.” I tore off a big bite of flaky croissant filled with gooey chocolate sauce and stuffed it into her mouth, purposefully smearing it across her cheek. “Mmph,” was all she said. Her mouth was full, and her dad’s chocolate croissants were that good.

And we were right to silence each other with food. It was better that we never apologized to each other. Then we’d be admitting that we were wrong and we owed each other something. That’s where people got into trouble.

“Look, genuine whores.” She nodded out the window at a couple of teenage girls crossing the street in front of us, both with bad blond dye jobs, both in ill-fitting, low-cut T-shirt dresses exposing the real or fake tattoos on their chests. One girl wore cheap heels and one was barefoot.

“How do you end up like that?” Molly asked me, not the whores.

I didn’t know whether they were really whores. There
were
plenty of whores on this end of town. But there were also lots of trailer park girls from farther inland, vacationing at the beach. Those girls and the whores looked about the same. Peering at these specimens, I decided they were tourists because they seemed happy.