Driving With the Top Down

by Beth Harbison

  “Okay, miss.” She reached her hand down, and Tamara took the help standing up. “We’ve all got shit going on, not least of which is we have a bunch of shit to pack in the trailer, so come help.”

  “Yes, ma’am. You don’t need to use that language.”

  “Apparently, I do. It’s the only way to be heard by some people.”

  Tamara’s mood shifted, like a kite in the wind. “I had a bad day, okay? It was nothing personal.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “That’s fine. But keep the storm squalls to yourself, then, got it?”

  Tamara rolled her eyes but smiled reluctantly. “I’ll try.”

  Colleen remembered trying herself. It wasn’t always easy. “Good. Try.”

  And she left it at that.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Colleen and Bitty, the past

  “Do not push me into this water, Blake Leon, or I swear I’ll—” Bitty squealed, the sound followed by a loud splash. She came up from the water, smiling but play-angry. “What did I tell you?”

  She pulled Blake into the lake by his ankles. Bitty knew he didn’t have to budge. The guy was a six-foot-two brick wall, made of lean but strong muscle. But still, he let her pull him in.

  A few yards away, Colleen was with Kevin. He was sitting, legs extended, leaning back on his palms, and she lay in his lap, her hair a long, twisting sheet of blond and brown. As she looked up at him and he laughed at something she said, Colleen thought, Yes. I finally found him.

  They met in a way she could already imagine retelling for years to come: Colleen had been walking between classes on a winter afternoon when the light was getting low early, and a guy had approached her, his hoodie pulled down low, and tried to take her purse. She’d screamed, of course, and started to fight him off, when the cute boy from her Statistics class—Kevin Bradley—appeared from nowhere and pounded the guy until Colleen begged him to let him go.

  She never told Kevin that she thought the perpetrator had been Guy Wilkins, from her Badminton class, who had arms like dental floss and who couldn’t have harmed a small, slow fly. He just had a weed habit he was trying to support, and somehow he’d decided Colleen was a good mark.

  It was a mistake he probably wouldn’t make again. With anyone. So it was a good thing Kevin had been there, really.

  And it was a good thing Kevin was there, because he had protected her—and whether the guy was a wimp or a hulk, Kevin would have done the same, and that had made Colleen giddy with adoration. He was willing to get his butt pounded to save hers.

  It was just as people always promised it would be.

  It’ll be when you least expect it.

  When you know, you just know.

  I feel like I’ve known him my whole life.…

  Then, when she ran into him and his buddies at Henley’s a week later, the destiny seemed complete. Admittedly, he and his friends had been a little toasted, but she told herself that his wild enthusiasm for her that night was because that’s how he really felt, unfiltered by some idea of propriety.

  It might have been the first time she had ever been sure of anything in her life. She knew from the second they’d started talking that he was the man she would marry. Of course she couldn’t know know. But she was pretty sure she knew.

  Here they were. Bitty and Blake were perfect, Colleen had known that too, from the start. And now she had Kevin, with whom things had been perfect and blissful for two months. No, it wasn’t that long a time, but it had been so perfect. She was always laughing. She was always having fun. They were both game for anything, so the world really felt like their oyster.

  There was talk of a recent ex-girlfriend, but she was an ex for a reason, right? Nothing to worry about there.

  And Bitty … Oh, putting Bitty and Blake together might be her greatest accomplishment to date.

  “They’re so cute, aren’t they?” Colleen said, stretching her head back and watching Bitty and Blake flirting in the water. You’d think they were newly matched or something. Not that they’d been together for over a year and a half already.

  “So cute,” said Kevin, joking. Of course, he was a guy; he didn’t think they were cute.

  “Really, though,” said Colleen, sitting up. “If they don’t get married, I’ll lose all faith in love.”

  Kevin said nothing, his joking smile fading a little.

  “Kev? What was that?”

  “What? Nothing.”

  She tilted her head at him. “Kevin.”

  “Nothing. I don’t know anything.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You’ve already given away that you do, just by saying that. Spit it out.”

  Colleen could see that he really, really regretted letting on that he knew something. Especially since honesty was their one and only real rule.

  “Kevin, I won’t say anything—you know I’m good at keeping secrets.”

  He seemed to consider that, and then brace himself. “Blake is leaving.”

  Colleen’s heart wrenched. “Leaving?… Where is he going, what do you mean?”

  He sat up and dusted the dirt off his hands. “His mom is sick. She lives in Georgia. She can’t make any money or anything, and she’s all on her own. He’s going out there to help her out. Clean the house, make some money, help her with the bills and all.”

  “Oh, no…”

  “He’s telling Bitty really soon. I think he’s kind of freaking out about what she’ll say.”

  “What she’ll say? I mean, she’s not going to, like, go banshee on him. But she’s going to be really upset.”

  “Yeah. Sucks.”

  “Is he … so is he dropping out?”

  “He has to.”

  “With only a semester and a half left? That is— No, he can’t do that. He can’t!”

  “Life gets in the way sometimes, I guess.”

  Colleen’s eyes shifted from Kevin’s guilty face to Blake and Bitty.

  She had never seen Bitty the way she was now. Once upon a time, her friend had worried constantly. She was hesitant. Quick to feel insulted. Shy to a fault. Always looking perfect, and trying to act perfect. But since getting together with Blake—he had asked her to be his girlfriend while they drank Coke, not Diet Coke, in the back of his pickup truck. Not anywhere special, Bitty had said. They didn’t look out at a pretty skyline or gaze up at the stars. It was just a parking lot, with other cars, people walking by. “But,” Bitty had told Colleen, “it may as well have been the top of the Eiffel Tower, clinking champagne glasses. Only somehow, it was ten times more romantic.”

  Colleen felt sick to her stomach for Bitty. Bitty was in love. Bitty was happy. Bitty was free. She had Blake, and she knew it. Once she’d had him, her worry had fell away. What did it matter if someone insulted her anymore? She had Blake. If some guy at the bar wouldn’t name her the hottest girl there, how could Bitty possibly care? She had Blake.

  But now, Bitty was going to lose Blake and be left naked, with her guard down. Colleen already feared the wall that Bitty was sure to rebuild around herself. She wondered if she’d even let Colleen see beyond it anymore.

  * * *

  BLAKE DIDN’T TELL her until the next Friday. They all ate at the diner, and afterwards, Kevin and Colleen left, and Bitty told Colleen later what had happened, in a few strangled words. She and Blake sat outside the diner in his car, and he’d told her. Told her he had to leave for a year or so. He couldn’t say for sure when he’d be back.

  He couldn’t say for sure if he’d be back.

  He was sorry.

  And that was the end.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Bitty

  Dear Stranger,

  When it comes to suicide, you’d think it was sort of a beggars-can’t-be-choosers sort of thing, wouldn’t you? Like, once you’ve decided to do it and you’re on your way to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for sedatives and you slip in the street and fall in front of an oncoming tr
uck, that’s just fortuitous, right? Means it was meant to be or something.

  That’s what I would have thought, anyway. Until today.

  We went to another auction, and I darn near enjoyed myself. But this is a tough position I’ve put myself in, it’s like every choice I’ve made has been stupid. Losing the car, losing my money, then hitting the road without a solid plan. It was bad enough becoming a barnacle on Colleen and Tamara’s trip at first, feeling like an outsider, knowing they were both unsure what to do with me or what to say. I can only imagine what they said in private. Snarky comments from Tamara about having a stranger intrude on their time to get to know each other? Apologies from Colleen for allowing the weirdo on board?

  All of the above?

  So obviously, I have been aware of needing to take care of this—the sooner, the better. But there was just no obvious way for me to do that with no money and no credit cards.

  But the last thing in the world I can do is go crawling back to Lew and kill a little time before Plan B. Or am I on Plan C now?

  The auction was in a large, cold building that was like a mixture of half barn and half elementary school gym. Big, flat, formless building with no climate control but ugly scuffed linoleum floors. One wall had large wooden shelves in front of it, holding, among other things, a wheel of fortune they probably used for game nights. Another wall had large, heavy curtains pulled back like a young girl’s ponytails, and a low platform that must have been a stage, though honestly it was only about five inches off the ground.

  I wondered how often they held activities here, what kind of people came. We were in South Carolina and the accents were thick. Would a northerner like me be at a disadvantage playing bingo here? Was the caller saying A or I? How embarrassing to stand up and yell, “Bingo!” (1) at all, and, (2) if you were wrong.

  This is the kind of thing I think about. The many ways to be publicly humiliated. I don’t know why, but I’ve always been like this, always afraid of something embarrassing happening. It usually does too.

  You’re probably thinking self-fulfilling prophecy, and you’re probably right about that.

  While Colleen was busily looking over the inventory with a notepad, writing down all the things she wanted to bid on and what her maximum bid would be (she writes it down so she doesn’t get competitive in the moment and overspend just to beat some fat-gutted farmer in a contest over who wins a rusty scalding tub), and Tamara was outside under a shady tree, obsessively checking her phone in private, I went and got a hot dog and Coke.

  I’d forgotten how good hot dogs are. Not that this is relevant, but, seriously, if you’re reading this, go and get yourself a hot dog. Don’t live a life of lack—enjoy the simple things. A hot dog with ketchup and mustard and relish. I could do with the raw onions too, but this rinky-dink place didn’t have them. It was just plain generic store-brand hot dogs in buns so cheap, they wrapped around the dog as thin as paper, and little packets of condiments. I put on three of each. I could not have ordered something more delicious from Morton’s.

  When I was young, my friend Pam Slade had this thing called a “hot dogger,” and it was this probably dangerous device that had electric probes set up so you could spear six hot dogs on each end and push a button, and in sixty seconds you’d have an electrocuted meat product smelling vaguely of burning rubber, dripping with buttery grease, and ready for the party. I wanted one so badly, I can still remember the ache. My mother, of course, said no way. She didn’t want to encourage me in any way to eat more junk. Eating, she said, was “unlovely” and it was the responsibility of a proper young lady to be lovely. For her family and, someday, for her husband. Implication: Eating will screw you out of a fine prospect and a happily-ever-after.

  I’m here to tell you that’s bunk. On every single level. Eat what you want, drink what you want, enjoy every bite, every sip, every breath you take doing what you want to do. Don’t listen to the naysayers. They will always be there to promise doom and gloom. Ignore them.

  Do it. You’ll thank me.

  After the hot dog (well, hot dogs—I had to get another one), I went back into the barn-a-teria and was looking for a clock to see how much longer before this infernal thing started and therefore ended, when I saw a corner full of ladders and other equipment. The reason I saw it was the best part: There was a little girl with black hair and a bright pink T-shirt standing there alone, crying and looking up at a gray and white cat up in the rafters in the “stage” area.

  I’m such a sucker.

  Assessing the situation in one quick moment, I rushed to her to quell her crying.

  Everyone else was all wrapped up in the potential acquisition of moldy leather tack, rusty band saws with frayed electrical cords from the ’50s and, if I’m not mistaken, a set of Volumes 1 through 20 of Nancy Drew Mysteries with the old blue covers with a black silhouette of Nancy being sleuth-y with a magnifying glass.

  I asked the girl what was wrong, and she pointed to a cat high up in the rafters. She was worried he was going to fall. I don’t know much about cats, I’ve never lived in a home that allowed pets, but you didn’t have to be Jack Hanna to know if the cat did fall, it wasn’t going to be pretty. I asked her if it was her cat and she said no, and my first, uncharitable, thought was that she was a little too hysterical over this cat that wasn’t even hers.

  I asked her how old she was, and she said seven. Was that too old to be sobbing away like this? I know less about kids than I do about cats. One of my earliest memories was of the end of first grade, which I think was when I was seven, and my mother had my bangs cut too short, in the manner of every hideous ad from the ’50s and ’60s. I looked like a joke. She pretended it had been a conscious fashion choice, and that I was being impertinent to question it, but I noticed that every time she took me to get my hair cut after that, she was always very quick to caution them about my “dramatic cowlick” in the front.

  I had cautioned stylists the same way for my entire adult life.

  Anyway, the secret thing about me (my secret superpower, if you will) was that I grew up as kind of a tomboy. My mother worked damn hard to “girl” it out of me, but I was not afraid to climb one of the many farm ladders that were right there and get the damn cat down so I could do something slightly worthwhile before meeting my Maker and having to give a report. If the pearly gates were anything like school, I could really play up the compassion for the crying child aspect, then give short acknowledgment to the saving of one of God’s creatures.

  I was pretty sure God would be more impressed by the compassion. He could have saved the cat Himself if He was so damn worried about it.

  I pulled a ladder out slightly to a solid angle, making sure to keep it off the linoleum and on the platform stage, which was covered with some sort of indoor/outdoor carpet. Then I made sure the rakes and other tools were out of the way of the ladder, so if it slipped, it wouldn’t send everything clattering to the floor.

  I guess the fever of bidding frenzy that makes people illogical once the auctioneer begins his spiel was contagious, and all I could think about was the feeling of accomplishment I’d have—however small—when I’d saved that stupid cat.

  So I began to climb the ladder, rung by careful rung. A couple of them shifted and rolled under my soles as I went, and the last thing in the world I wanted was to bang my way down four and a half feet to a noisy landing in a box of Christmas costumes for some live nativity scene or something. Rising slowly from the box with Balthazar’s velvet hat on my head at a rakish angle, dusty frankincense wedged up my nose, and clutching a now-headless baby Jesus.

  As I got higher, I started to feel more confident. I was getting pretty high up, and the ladder was pretty sturdy after all. They just don’t make things like they used to, do they?

  For some reason, the rungs at the top of the ladder were more stable than the lower ones, I guess because whoever owned it previously was a wimp and used it for only minor, low-lying jobs. I got to the top pretty quickly, luc
kily I was never afraid of heights, and took another look at the auction-goers.

  Would you believe not one person was looking in my direction? I mean, that was fortunate for me because of how it went. I didn’t need an audience watching the whole damn thing. Or filming, even, so I could be the next YouTube fool. But you get my point—there’s a person climbing thirty feet up over the scene, and no one noticed.

  Not even when I had to stop for a sneezing fit from the dusty curtains! Wouldn’t you think it would register for someone that those sneezes were coming from an odd place?

  Apparently, not the case in Tinytown, South Carolina. So I made it to the top, took a deep breath, said a prayer (I didn’t tell you I still had some Presbyterian left in me, did I?), and started to reach toward the cat, calling kitty kitty kitty the way everyone does, though I have no idea if it helps.

  I looked down. The tools weren’t so far out of the way as I’d thought when I moved them. This was exactly the sort of thing parents feared when their kids got around tools, and for good reason.

  I looked back at the cat, who was watching me impassively. I made little kissing sounds that left him completely unimpressed.

  Well, now what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just climb back down and tell that little girl that I called the cat twice, by a name that surely wasn’t his, and he didn’t come, so I gave up.

  I had to do something worthwhile, and this small task had presented itself. I couldn’t fail at this. I reached for him, and the ladder shifted slightly. Reflexively, my hand shot back to the rung and I cussed at him.

  I swear the cat yawned.

  Finally, in desperation, I stepped down a rung to get at a better position, and reached for the cat. There couldn’t have been more than an inch between my fingertips and its fur, but it might as well have been a mile.