“They already are,” Tracy said.
Both cars rolled side by side with increasing speed. The next light seemed as distant as an airplane in the sky. The two cars accelerated at a wreckless pace, dipping into the first hill and rising up the next.
“Get down.” My mechanic pressed my head beside him. “Cover your face.” I grabbed the seat belt and braced my feet under the glove compartment. Bobby swerved out into the opposite lane like he had lost control, but then whipped the car back and punched the front end of the deathcar. My legs banged against the door. Bobby slammed on the brakes and the car spun around in a half-circle, then came to a stop. I leaped up and saw the deathcar jump the curb and veer into someone’s front yard. It seemed to swerve slightly to avoid the house, but then slammed into a massive oak tree. There was a huge explosion of shattered glass as the car wrapped around the tree, flipped over, and rolled into the other end of the house, finally coming to rest upside down in the next driveway.
“Oh my God.” Tracy crawled up from the backseat.
“Are you all right?” Bobby asked.
We both nodded. I was speechless. I cut a quick glance across the yard but couldn’t really see anything. A house light went on and then the porch light. My mechanic turned off onto a side street and drove steadily away from the accident.
“I hope he’s happy with himself,” Bobby said.
“Thrilled, I’m sure,” Tracy responded.
GRADUATION DAY
MOM sat in the grandstand with Grandma and my brother, snapping pictures with her Instamatic camera to glue into the family scrapbook, proof this really happened.
I wore a white dress under my blue graduation gown and threw my flat cap into the sky like everyone else, but that’s where the similarity ended.
ALCOHOL BLAMED IN THE DEATH OF THREE TEENS, the headline said.
“It’s so perfect,” Tracy whispered. “The world will never know.” Her slippery kitty-cat face smiled ear to ear. “And who could have known that Skyler Dickerson was on board?”
It turns out Skyler was some minor football guy who ended up in the wrong posse at the wrong time. He was my age. He was in my class. Nobody else will ever know him, but nobody in my class will ever forget him.
I was relieved the curse had been fulfilled, but I wish I hadn’t witnessed it from the front row. It could have just as easily been me. Whenever I close my eyes I see flashbacks of my valentine and then the crash. I still feel trapped in the moment. I never liked him, but I never wanted to see him die.
“They always seemed a little shifty to me,” I heard one teacher say to another, “but almost all the kids give me the creeps these days.”
Most of my classmates were stunned. Parents hovered close to their children. Everyone seemed overwhelmed by the collision of grief and joy. An eerie quiet descended over the football field when the principal bowed his head and asked for a moment of silent prayer. Speeches floated by like painted wind. I couldn’t hear any of it, my ears were still buzzing with accusations from the corners of my guilty conscience.
Tracy said not to worry, that the story would fade as quickly as soap bubbles in the bathtub, but when the memorials and testimonials began about the “three promising young men” I felt an overwhelming compulsion to run up to the microphone and confess everything. Some girls were crying, some were holding flowers. It was very upsetting to think people my own age were dead. I could feel sweat gathering in every pore of my body. The ceremony seemed to go on forever and ever. Nobody really stuck their neck out for them, besides some cheerleader who recited a cheeseball poem about them waiting for her in the sky. Some kid down the row started cracking up and then a few others did too, and that made me feel a little better. I felt sorry for Neckbrace and his hooligans, but life spills, and it’s every marble for itself. When those two cars kissed, my heart just about exploded with terror. I thought for sure I was gonna pull a Princess Di.
“You know we’re going to hell for this,” I told Tracy as we marched out of the football field.
“We have time to make up for it.” Tracy took off her sunglasses, cleaned them with the sleeve of her graduation gown. “Think of it this way. It was a test. We passed.” She put her glasses back on. “I have to go deal with my grandparents. Call me later.”
I stumbled around the tipped-over folding chairs cluttering the football field and wound passed the crowd clogging the entrance to the parking lot, scanning my peripheral vision for guys with sunglasses and walkie-talkies, still certain that the county sheriff would be waiting with a paddy wagon, that handcuffs would be strapped to my wrists any moment now. I looked over at the school, then back across the football field. A queasy wisp of nostalgia tidal waved through my jaded system.
That’s when I saw my mom’s old Ford at the far end of the lot and my mechanic standing beside it. I felt a lump in my throat, ran over, and kissed him a good one.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I expected you to be long gone by now.” I glanced around the parking lot, more paranoid than ever. Bobby looked as if he hadn’t slept all night. He was gaunt and shaky, sucking a cigarette as if it were his only source of nutrition.
“Wouldn’t want to miss the big day,” he said. “Did they give you your piece of paper?” he asked.
“Got it.” I waved it up in the air. “Where did you get my mom’s car? I thought it was a goner.”
“The guys at the station gave it to Danny. It needed a ring job, but he got it running. I had no idea it was your mom’s old car, that’s really bizarre.” Bobby opened the door.
“It’s cleaner than I’ve ever seen it,” I said. “What happened to your car?”
“It was pretty messed up. Danny put it in deep storage. I probably should have ditched it anyway. I’m sure the cops are looking for it by now.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to make sure you were all right,” he said.
“I’m all right,” I said, lifting my gown to show him the bruise on my leg.
“Nice souvenir,” he said.
“Did you hear they all died?” I asked.
He nodded. “Did you know them?”
“Not really,” I said.
“They didn’t exactly give us a lot of room to negotiate.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“You didn’t tell anybody did you?” he asked.
“No.”
Bobby seemed really freaked, and it kind of scared me to be with him now. He bounced around the car like a pinball looking for a hole.
“You sure you won’t come with me?” he asked.
I couldn’t say no, so I shook my head. He kissed me, as if that would change my mind, and to be honest, it almost did. I tried to be brave, but tears just fell out of my eyes and started dripping onto my graduation gown. It wasn’t just Bobby. It was everything. I was so exhausted. My head swung down in self-defense.
“You gotta come,” Bobby insisted.
“No, Bobby. You go if you want to. I’m staying.”
“What about the cops?”
“What about them?”
“They’re gonna piece the story together sooner or later.”
“And so what if they do? Those fuckers shot at us. We could have been killed. They lost control of their car. It wasn’t my fault. It just happened.” I stared at him, but he couldn’t really look at me. There were no words. Everything was transmitted through the electric silence that crackled between us. Bobby looked scared. I could see his teeth mashing side to side.
He got in the car and rolled down the window. I tried to memorize the outline of his hair, the thickness of his eyebrows, anything that would sustain the paint of memory and prevent it from peeling.
I took a deep breath. “If I get in that car I’ll end up just like you,” I said.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“You’re just gonna run away all your life, aren’t you?”
“I’ll stop somewhere.”
&
nbsp; “I don’t see it, Bobby.”
“You don’t see what?”
“I don’t see you stopping. I see you driving right off the edge of the world.”
“Don’t you want to see what the edge of the world looks like?”
I stared at him, but didn’t say anything. Once again Bobby had tangled me up in my own words. He looked up at me one last time, then shifted into gear. “I’ll call you when I get there.” Bobby pulled away, drove up to the corner, turned right, and disappeared. I wiped away the fresh layer of tears clinging to the corner of my eye, turned, and ran across the school lawn, already regretting my decision.
THE PEAR TREES
A small brown pear tore from its sagging branch, shut-tled through the leaves, and bounced on the ground like a baseball landing in centerfield. The yard was littered with saucy brown pears. Some whole, others squashed by shoes, the garden sweet with their lucious smell of decay. Hovering wasps and bees drilled into the moist nectar oozing from the rotting pears, then flew off and circled in drunken euphoria, wasted in the Garden of Eden.
I parked my blanket in the backyard, far away from everyone and everything. I wanted to be alone with my sins. I wanted a chance to breathe without feeling like someone was fighting me for the same breath.
Just like that my mechanic rolled off into the horizon. It was a horrible choice, but the two of us on the highway headed nowhere in particular was a recipe for disaster. Like a pair of dice rolling across a long green table, sooner or later we’d have to stop and deal with the consequences. And for better or worse, I wasn’t ready to take those kinds of chances. I’m glad he’s driving Mom’s old Ford. It makes me think he’ll be okay. It makes me feel like I’m still there with him, that he won’t forget about me. I’m glad he got out of here without incident. I couldn’t stand the thought of Bobby in jail. He was a basket of big trouble, but he did save my life.
Our relationship had the momentary intensity of a cloudburst and I doubt I was even remotely capable of handling the potential circumstances. I already have a vagabond father, I don’t need a vagabond boyfriend. I know what it’s like to grow up with that big hole in your heart.
I cracked open a Diet Coke and looked up into the sky. It seemed a lot clearer since the oil fire was put to rest. The clouds were whiter than white, the sky bluer than blue. A raven on the top branch of the pear tree pushed off, swung its big black wings and sailed over the lilac bushes, high above the willow tree and beyond the power lines.
I got a call from the manager at the DQ and he said I could start as early as Monday. Hopefully I’ll save up enough money to get an apartment with Tracy in the city next fall. It’s going to be a whole summer of sticky red smocks, but at least there will be air-conditioning. And one thing is for sure, my social life will not suffer.
Meanwhile, my career in publishing continues to blossom. Ad revenue for the fanzine doubled and then tripled, and it looks like distribution will spread to record shops in Lombard, Hinsdale, and Lisle. People are already saying the first issue is a collector’s item.
Mom’s still in denial about Starman, but I have a feeling she’s just hesitant about jumping into round two without more training camp. She’s still driving his car and he still pays for her dinners, so I figure she must be doing something right. I have a feeling she’s just waiting for a bigger slice of pie.
David decided to keep the band together despite ominous threats from our neighbor, and I’m glad, because he finally has something to focus his attention on besides his bug zapper and gin rummy. They even got a gig at that club in Chicago, thanks to Tracy, who is now acting as their manager. If she can’t have him, she’s at least going to keep an eye on him. Grandma is continually locked away in her basement rewiring the forces of nature, and Dad is still absent as sunshine at midnight.
The world keeps spinning faster, and I’m still looking for a handle to hold on to, the alternatives aren’t exactly a pail of cupcakes. My heart beats backward when I think of the mechanic, but I know deep in my heart that what burns today will still flicker tomorrow, and if he shows up anywhere on the map I’ll find him. I’ll buy the lipstick and he’ll buy the beer and what happens after that is none of your business.
In the meantime, I’ll be maintaining a very low profile. No sense in kicking dust in the eyes of God or anything. I’m sure She’s got it out for me already.
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