by Nancy N. Rue
He got on and revved up the motor. It purred like a lion who rocked the world–and I squealed.
“Did that scare you?” he said. His voice was all concerned.
“No!” I said. “It’s just sick!”
He nodded like he actually knew what sick meant and said, “All right. Get on.”
I swung my leg over the seat and sat down, feet on the pegs.
“Where do I hold on?” I said.
“You can lean back,” he said. “You’ve got a sissy bar. Or you can hold onto me if you want. Just remember, you have to pay attention. Okay?”
It was a promise I couldn’t usually make, but I said, “Okay.”
The engine snarled, and we were suddenly going down the driveway and turning onto the street. The bike leaned and I grabbed the back of Lou’s jacket.
“Just lean with me!” he said through the visor that covered his face. “You’re not going to fall off.”
So I leaned, and then when he straightened back up, I did too. The air floated around me, and the bike growled beneath me, and Father-Man drove us straight ahead with nothing around us but sunlight. It was loud and crazy and I felt the whole world on me. I could even smell–
“Are we near the beach or something?” I yelled through my own visor.
“When I tell you, look to the right,” Lou yelled back. “Now!”
I turned my head and I saw it. Blue water that stretched all the way to the sky and splashed it with its waves.
And then it was gone, swallowed up by a giant building– a hotel or condos or something.
“Was that the ocean?” I said.
“That was it. You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?”
“No. Not for real. Only in movies.”
His helmet nodded, and it seemed like his shoulders got bigger.
“We’re going to get into some traffic so I have to pay attention, ” he said. “We’ll talk when we get there.”
I wanted to look back to see if I could get another glimpse of the ocean, but I was afraid of not watching the road. It was a little freaky when cars passed us, and I found myself curling my fingers around the sides of Lou’s jacket. But then we came to a bridge, and I forgot I was even on a motorcycle.
We had to be flying. I mean, we were in midair except for a strip of concrete. “Ha–I laugh at your bridge,” I wanted to shout. “I have wings!”
Lou pointed toward the other side of the water–at a building that looked like something out of a Mel Gibson movie where he wears armor and jabs a big spear at people on horses.
“Is that a fort?” I said.
“Castillo de San Marcos. I’ll tell you all about it.”
“I want to go there!” I almost blurted. But for once I caught myself. I couldn’t be showing all this interest. I wasn’t letting him think I was staying. Harley or no Harley.
Still–that fort. It looked so real, guarding the bank with its thick stone walls and lookout towers like it was expecting a band of pirates to attack any minute. They probably did build it for a movie. Either that or I was in a time warp.
We turned in the direction of the place, and I smothered a, “Yes! I can get a better look!” But when we drove right along the road that passed beside it, I couldn’t help it. I blurted out, “Dude, it’s real!”
“It’s almost four hundred years old!” Lou shouted over his shoulder.
Too bad I wasn’t going to get to go inside. There was no way I could get to it on my own, and I was still determined not to let him know how completely cool this all was to me. Still–
I chanced a glance back over my shoulder before we rounded a curve. We immediately slowed down, and then stopped.
“You go ahead and get off,” Lou said, “and I’ll park him.”
“We’re there?”
We’d pulled into what looked like it used to be a big gas station, only it had been turned into something else and now looked better than a filling station ever did. There was a mob of scooters on one side of us and a whole row of motorcycles on the other, staring us down like a gang.
“Jess,” Lou said. “Go ahead and hop off.”
I was still staring at the scooters as I stood up on the pegs and tried to swing my leg back over the sissy bar. For some reason it was harder to get off than on. My foot got caught on something, and the next thing I knew, I was lying on my back on the ground.
“That’s one way to do it,” somebody said.
I opened my eyes to a boy-creature with a grinning mouth. All I could really tell about him was that he had a space between his two front teeth big enough to drive Lou’s Harley through.
Above me, Levi’s engine died.
“Is she okay?” Lou said.
“I don’t know,” the guy said. “Are you okay?”
“Hello–yes,” I said. “I’m only still down here because you’re in my way.”
Boy looked at Lou. “Yeah, she’s okay.”
He put down a hand, but I batted it away and scrambled to my feet. My head barely came to the dude’s armpit, which meant he could look down at me with one of those smirky grins that goes all the way to the eyes–glitter-green in his case– and say, “Are you a ditz or what?” I already couldn’t stand him, even if he was tall (way taller than Lou) and muscle-y in a skinny kind of way and probably old enough to drive.
“That’s why you wear a helmet,” he said.
“Let me have it, Jess,” Lou said. “You go ahead and look around. I’ll catch up to you.”
I yanked the helmet off and thrust it at Lou, but he too grinned. “Maybe you ought to keep it.”
Very cute. Hilarious. I pushed the thing into his chest until he took it, and then I stomped off. I could hear Boy-Creature hissing through his tooth-gap behind me.
There was definitely more to see where Lou worked than where he lived. Not that I cared. But checking it out was better than standing there letting some skinny boy with sun-bleachy hair laugh at me like I was an idiot. The fact that I felt like one made absolutely no difference. It was one thing for me to point at myself and say, “I am such a loser!” and make everybody else laugh with me. That’s how I handled being a complete klutzairhead-motormouth. That’s how I had friends and a reputation for being a blast at parties. That’s how I got some teachers to cut me slack.
But when somebody else took it upon his jerk-self to tell the world I was a klutzairhead-loser, that was something totally different. I stayed away from people like that–just so I wouldn’t rip their lips off. The only time I ever got in real, serious trouble was when one of them refused to leave me alone–and then I figured he had it coming to him.
Which was why I put as much space between me and Boy-Creature as I could in thirty seconds. I left him and Lou–who wasn’t innocent in this as far as I was concerned–to their grinning and marched down the driveway we came in on until I found myself in the wide-open doorway of a garage-looking thing where some guy was taking a piece off a motorcycle that was even bigger than Lou’s. Black with fenders that curved up at the edges. It reminded me of Darth Vader.
So–Lou was a motorcycle repair guy.
When the man looked up I said, “Sorry” and took off for the next thing I could find, which was a long office kind of place that was all windows across the front. It was sort of inviting, actually, as I looked through the glass–palm trees in pots and red couches and a counter where a short line of people was standing but not looking grouchy the way people usually did when they were waiting in a line. A white sign with red letters on the wall read Scooter Rentals.
Oh. So Lou was a rental agent. That must have been why he’d gone out of his way to be decent to the man at the car rental place when we returned that pickup truck at the Birmingham airport. My mother wasn’t usually that nice to clerks and salesmen and other people who waited on you. Of course, when she was in a No-Bed Phase, she wasn’t that nice to anybody.
I didn’t go in there. I was still too prickly to talk to anyone– and I had to be pretty prickly no
t to want to run my mouth. I went to the end of the building and found a garden–one of those kind with trees cut in shapes and little statues like you see in a kung fu movie. There was even a tiny stream with a bridge over it about big enough for Chelsea’s Chihuahua. It was the last thing you’d expect to see at a we-fix-motorcycles-and-rent-them place.
So Lou was a gardener? Uh, no. Even I couldn’t imagine that.
What I also couldn’t imagine was me hanging out here for two weeks doing nothing but watching other people take off on scooters like the man and woman who had just come out of the office and were climbing onto a pair of matching yellow minibikes. When they started them up, they sounded like sewing machines compared to Lou’s roaring Harley, and it only took the guy about ten seconds to explain how to ride it before the lady was peeling out of there, laughing back at him with her hair flying out behind her.
Another couple came out and then two guys and then a pair of women who were the coolest yet. They got pink ones, not my favorite color, but who cared if it meant scooting away, free as–
Free as I needed to be.
As soon as the two chicks on pink scooters were out of there, I made my way over, straddled a red one, and turned the key. It didn’t occur to me to wonder why it was sitting there in the ignition. I was too busy figuring out what was the gas and what was the brake. When turning the handle like Lou did on Levi hurtled me forward, I did it again and broke from the pack.
I squealed with delight when I sailed off the curb. I landed on both wheels just in front of a red blur that blew its horn at me. Leaning like Lou, I rounded the corner and belted down the same street we’d arrived on. A cemetery shot by me on the right. A couple and their kids jumped back onto the sidewalk to let me pass, which was a good thing, because I still hadn’t figured out where the brake was. All I knew was that the huge pair of stone pillars ahead of me weren’t going to be as helpful. The pavement turned into a wide sand path. I turned the handle on the other side, but that wasn’t the brake. The scooter surged forward even faster, and the back wheel flipped sideways like the tail of a fish. A man walking toward me with a little boy grabbed the kid and jumped up on the low wall that bordered the path, just in time for the scooter to lay down with me on it and slide–forever–in slow motion, until we hit a pillar. I didn’t need the brake then.
“Are you all right?” somebody–probably the terrified dad–called to me.
“I’m fine,” I called back, although I had no idea if I was. I added a laugh so he wouldn’t come over and try to help me.
Seriously, though, I couldn’t wriggle out from under the scooter. Footsteps were pounding toward me from several different directions, but I couldn’t see who they belonged to. All I could see was the front of the red scooter, crunched into the wall, six inches from where I thought my head might be.
When I heard the growl of a motorcycle, I closed my eyes and prayed that I would die immediately. Not until it stopped and those footsteps headed toward me did I realize that I had just accomplished what I’d set out to do. Lou was going to have a meltdown of his own, and I was as good as on my way home.
Yes.
I even had a smile on my face when the footsteps stopped next to me.
“Oops,” I said–and opened my eyes–and saw a face with a space between its teeth, smirking down at me.
Hadn’t I already had this nightmare?
He squatted beside me. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” I said.
“I can’t say the same for the scooter. Dude, that’s totaled. You’re gonna be too when your dad finds out.”
“He’s not my dad,” I said.
I gritted my teeth as he got on the other side of me and pulled the scooter so I could get my legs untangled and stand up.
“He told me he’s your dad.”
“He’s my biological father,” I said, examining the large hole I’d ripped in the sleeve of the jacket that wasn’t even mine. One more reason for Lou to put me on the next plane.
“Yeah, well, he’s gonna be your biological prison warden when he–”
“You know what–nobody asked you, okay?”
I reached down to stand the scooter up.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he said.
“I’m going to take this back and–”
“How are you planning to get it there?”
I didn’t have to look at him to know he was grinning that hideous gap-tooth smile.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just leave me alone and I’ll figure it out.”
“Like you figured out how to stop it?”
“Did somebody die and leave you in charge of me?”
“No. But I’m your only chance of getting away with this.”
I did look at him then. He was standing there with his hands on his hips, like he had the answer to every question before you even asked it. I hated that in a person.
“I don’t want to ‘get away with it,’” I said, making those quotation mark things with my fingers.
“So, what, you did it on purpose?”
I hoped he didn’t hear me catch my breath.
“It’s none of your business!” I said. I leaned over and tried to pick up the scooter, but it was heavier than it looked. Especially with a pain shooting down my arm.
“Yeah, well, it’s my business to take care of the scooters,” he said, “so you go make your confession or whatever it is you’re gonna do, and I’ll get this back to the shop.”
“I can–”
“Touch it and you’re toast,” he said.
“Are you threatening me?” I said.
“I don’t have to,” he said, and grinned the biggest, stupidest version yet.
Just as I suspected, the boy-creature didn’t know absolutely everything. Lou did not “total” me when I found him in an office at the cycle place and showed him the jacket and told him about the scooter. Even though I made the story as dramatic as I could–including the father and small boy I ran off the road and the red car I pulled in front of–Lou didn’t even get bulgy veins in his neck or raise his voice or in any way come close to having a meltdown. As a matter of fact, when it was his turn to talk, his voice just kept getting lower and quieter until I had to practically crawl up on the desk we had between us to hear it.
“First of all, are you injured?” he said.
I swore I wasn’t. My arm did hurt some, but a trip to the emergency room would only slow down my exit.
“The bike’s totaled, though,” I said. “That’s what that guy said.”
“What guy?”
“The one with–” I put my finger up to my two front teeth.
“Rocky,” Lou said.
“His name is Rocky? Are you serious?”
“So, you just thought you’d take a little joy ride, is that it?”
“I do stuff like that,” I said. “This one time, my mom’s assistant that she used to have came over to work on some purses, and she brought her teenage niece who wanted to be a designer like Mom–only she didn’t seem that interested in it. Anyway, her aunt said she could take her car and go to the mall, and the girl–I forget her name–said I could go with, and we stayed there ‘til it closed. And then she said since the parking lot was empty she would teach me to drive, even though I was, like, twelve. I got the brake and the gas mixed up and ran into a pole.” I shook my head. “It wasn’t good.”
I didn’t add that that was when my mother finally decided, after two different doctors had told her, that I needed medication.
Lou waited until I was done, and even a little longer than that, before he nodded and said, “All right, so, it looks like you need to have everything laid out for you ahead of time so you know what you’re dealing with–what the rules are.”
No, that wasn’t what I needed at all.
“Knowing that,” he said, “then I’d better prepare you for what’s going to happen tomorrow.”
Ah. At last.
He sat back in the chair and la
id his hands flat on the desk. Oh, yeah, this was going to be deep. He was going to say, “Jess, I think I’ve made a mistake and–”
“You have a sister,” he said. “Half sister, if you want to get technical. Her mother and I are divorced–I told you that– but I have her every weekend. She’s going to join us tomorrow night.”
I was still back on “you have a sister.” The hamster wheel was going at warp speed.
“She’s ten,” he said. “Her name’s Louisa, but we call her Weezie.” Lou leaned forward and parked his folded hands under his chin. “Finding out you have a father and a sister, and your mom’s situation–this is a lot for you to process in a short period of time, which I think accounts for stealing books and taking off with scooters and–”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s it. And I don’t want your boss to fire you–especially since you have a kid. So…what?”
He was smiling. Bordering on that chuckle thing. What was wrong with this man?
“I can’t get fired,” he said. “I own the business. I am the boss.”
“You’re not the boss of me!” I said.
All he did was tilt his head. “Then who is, Jess?” he said.
I didn’t answer.
I didn’t know.
CHAPTER SEVEN
By the next morning, the hamster wheel in my head was spinning so fast I couldn’t even think about thinking about another plan. If crashing into what Lou told me were the two-hundred-year-old city gates didn’t even get him to twitch an eyebrow, much less turn me over to social services, I didn’t know what would.
And now I was going to have a little sister to deal with. Even when I told myself she was only a half sister–even just a biological sister–it didn’t slow down the drag race that was going on in my brain. She was another relative I hadn’t known about. I wondered if Mom knew about her. I thought about Marcus’s little sister, who was also ten, and who was annoying as a bumblebee and said things like, “Ooh, Marcus has a girlfriend,” every time she saw me. Which was as little as possible if I had anything to do with it.
The thing I kept coming back to as I went around and around on the hamster wheel most of the night was that instead of getting rid of me, Lou was trying to plant me deeper into his life. I knew that for a fact when we got to the shop Friday morning–in his truck because we had to pick up “Weezie” on the way home. Weezie. What kind of name was that anyway? It sounded like she had asthma.