Redline

by Alex van Tol

  Copyright © 2011 Alex Van Tol

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Van Tol, Alex

  Redline / Alex Van Tol.

  (Orca soundings)

  Issued also in electronic format.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-894-3 (bound).--ISBN 978-1-55469-893-6 (pbk.)

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca soundings

  PS8643.A63R43 2011 JC813’.6 C2011-903430-1

  First published in the United States, 2011

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011929394

  Summary: Jenessa uses the thrill of illegal street racing to deal with the tragic death of her best friend.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover photography by Getty Images

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO Box 5626, Stn. B PO Box 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  14 13 12 11 • 4 3 2 1

  For Mum and Dad, who watched me crash

  my cars...and trusted me enough to keep

  giving me the keys to theirs.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Time for a change.

  I spin my thumb around on my iPod, looking for a different playlist. I glance up at the road, then back down. The highway is quiet tonight. Must be because it’s a Monday. Everyone’s back in town. Back from a weekend in the mountains, getting those last few runs in before the hills close down for the spring.

  I used to like driving west, toward the mountains. Sometimes, if I was out late enough after work, I would see the aurora borealis. The northern lights. Usually they’re just a green fringe moving slowly across the sky. This one time they were a brilliant, crazy violet.

  No matter the color, they always take my breath away.

  But tonight, instead of heading west, I point my car south, toward McCandless Creek. The mountains hold too many painful memories.

  I drive through ranch country. Sometimes I take the hilly back roads through the huge, barn-studded acreages.

  Sometimes.

  Usually I just take it out the six-lane and punch it. It helps me outrun the pain.

  I reach for a cigarette, then pause. Maybe not. Maybe that’s one thing I should let go of. I punish my mind enough by reliving that awful day on Mount Watson. I don’t need to punish my body too.

  Without my permission, my mind drifts back. To a day that will forever be burned into my brain. Every detail of it.

  It was November, just before midterms. Adrienne and I had been about to wrap a primo day of boarding. The sun was out. Conditions had been perfect. We’d been chatted up by some sweet boys in the lift lineup and had plans to meet up with them later, back at the resort.

  It was almost four o’clock. Ade was tired. I could see that. I was too.

  We’d just come off what we had agreed would be our last run of the day. Swooping to a stop at the end of the lift line, I glanced at the clock over the lodge. Still enough time. If we went now, we could catch just one more run. I was feeling pretty flush, ready for another crack at the Terminator 2. A triple black diamond. I’d smoke it this time. I was sure of it.

  But Adrienne hadn’t wanted to. She was cold and hungry, and she wanted to go in.

  “Just one more, Ade,” I said, hoping the energy in my voice would somehow flow into her and make this possible. “Let’s run T2.”

  The look on her face told me she didn’t want to do it.

  “Come on,” I said as she started to shake her head. “You did it this morning. You killed it!”

  Adrienne snorted. “I so didn’t kill it, Jenessa. It almost killed me.”

  I shrugged. “You’ll ride it better this time. You’ve already done it. Your brain’s mapped it now.”

  Adrienne sighed. “I don’t know.” She squinted at the sun, low on the peaks. “Don’t they say that ski accidents increase by something like two hundred percent in the late afternoon? When people are tired?”

  I bent down to fiddle with my binding, pissed that she was holding out on me. “You go on in then,” I said. “I’ll catch up with you in a few.” I knew I was laying on the guilt.

  “You can’t go up there alone, Ness,” she said. “What if you get hurt?”

  I stood up and leveled my gaze at her. “You forget, my friend,” I said. “I don’t get hurt. Lesser boarders get hurt.” I tucked an escaped strand of hair back under my helmet. “I’m no lightweight,” I added. I couldn’t help myself.

  So she came.

  How could she not? I’d thrown down the gauntlet, daring her not to join me. I’d done it so many times before with Adrienne. And she always pulled it out for me. Taking that one step outside her comfort zone. To keep the peace.

  We caught the lift up, our chair bobbing on the wire, high over the quickly emptying hill. The patrols were getting ready to do their sweep runs. Ade was jittery. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I got your back.”

  We were halfway down the Terminator when an out-of-control skier smashed into Adrienne.

  She was ahead of me. I saw the whole thing. His scarecrow scramble as he tried to avoid her. Her helmet whiplashing backward on impact. Her board, sliced clean off its leash, bolting down the hill. Her body, thrown into the spruce tree at the side of the run. Her neck bending impossibly.

  Lesser boarders get hurt.

  The redness of the snow as I held her in my arms and screamed for help.

  I’m no lightweight.

  The blueness of her eyes as she looked at me, confused.

  I got your back.

  The blackness of my heart, knowing I had just killed my best friend.

  The memory runs its course. It leaves me slowly, like a cold blade being eased out of my chest. My teeth are hurting, and I try to unclench my jaw. My knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

  I press my foot to the floor, my eyes unblinking as I watch the speedometer climb. Seventy miles an hour. Eighty. Ninety. A hundred.

  One twenty. The engine roars its pleasure. The needle climbs.

  I crack my window and spark up a smoke. What the hell.

  Tonight’s a good night to die.

  Chapter Two

  But I don’t.

  Three hours later, I pull into the driveway of my dad’s new house, deep in the suburbs of our city. I’m exhausted, spent, shaking.

  Adrienne died six months ago. Half a year. But in my mind, it feels like yesterday.

  Ade was my only
real friend. I never considered that I might ever need more friends than her. I don’t have anyone else. I didn’t think I needed anyone else.

  I lift my chin. I don’t need anyone else. Dad’s right when he says we’re all alone in this world. It’s best to figure out how to be on your own. Not depend on other people for things. For favors. For friendship. For love.

  Back when Adrienne moved onto our block, I had tried to keep to myself. But she just wouldn’t give up. She saw something in me that she liked, I guess. I was twelve at the time. She just kept dropping by the house to talk. I got tired of trying to push her away. So I let her in. I let her like me. And I let myself like her.

  Which I should never have done, because look how it turned out for her.

  And look how it turned out for me.

  God, look how it turned out for my dad. Fifteen years of marriage, a ten-year-old kid, and boom: Mom just up and leaves.

  I don’t need anyone else. I don’t want anyone else. It just complicates things. Because as soon as you let someone in, you’re done. You’re not standing on your own anymore.

  I went to my mom’s place over Christmas break, shortly after Ade’s death. I spend my vacations with her at her place in Palm Springs. It was good to go away this time. I needed to put some distance between me and what had happened. Between me and all the whispers that erupted as soon as I’d pass people in the hallway at school.

  At first, Mom tried to help me sort through some stuff. But in the end, she just gave me space. It was all I could handle.

  When I came back in January, I started looking for a car. You would think that as the only child of an oil baron, I’d have gotten a free ride. That my father would have just bought me a car with the wads of money he’s got lying around. But there’s no sugar coming from this daddy. He grew up in a regular family. He says hard work got him to where he is now. Calls himself a self-made man. And no self-made man is going to buy his kid a car if he knows that she can do it herself. He’s all about self-reliance. He “sees the value” in making me work for what I want. Or something like that.

  Obviously, I don’t see quite as much value in it. But arguing with my dad over money is like bashing your head against a brick wall. It doesn’t get you anywhere, and at the end of it, all you’re left with is a headache.

  I’d been saving for two years for my car, working at the tutoring agency. I help kids with their math. I’m no nerd: it’s grade-five stuff. Anybody could do it. And the money is pretty good. There’s not much else a person my age can do that brings in $25 an hour. Not much that’s legal anyway.

  I knew I wanted a Mustang GT. My dad and I looked on the AutoTrader website until I found the perfect one last week. Low mileage. Recent year. A nice loud yellow.

  Varoom.

  Dad offered to come with me to help me buy it. “Close the deal” were his words, I think.

  I said thanks, but no thanks. Standing on my own two feet and all.

  A few days ago I went to meet the guy who was selling the car. Dmitri. He had beautiful eyes. He was handling the sale for his older brother, who was away on a navy mission in Somalia, where all those pirates have been hijacking cargo ships.

  We took the car for a test drive. I was totally well-behaved behind the wheel. I wanted him to see that his brother’s baby was going to a good home.

  Dmitri and I talked for a long time. Mostly about cars and pirates, but also about our jobs and school and stuff like that. He goes to Geoffrey Marshall. It’s pretty close to my school, Margaret May. But Marshall’s a lot bigger. And their teams always kick our teams’ asses, so nobody talks them up too much.

  I could see the car was in amazing shape. I bartered him down by a thousand anyway. I think he was surprised.

  I surprised myself by holding it together under that gaze of his.

  As I drove away, I glanced in my rearview. He was standing in the middle of the road, watching me.

  My phone pinged five minutes later, while I was making a left onto Leach. I grabbed it—forget those stupid new laws—and keyed in my password.

  My stomach performed a full front flip.

  It was a text from Dmitri. How…? Then I remembered. I’d put my contact information on the bill of sale.

  My thumb hovered over the Reply option. But in the end, I didn’t answer him.

  There’s no point. There’s nothing left of my heart. Nothing left to give. Nothing left to receive.

  Nothing left to break.

  I’ve got 260 “horses under the hood,” as car freaks would say.

  But I’m not a car freak. I don’t care about its torque or its compression ratio or even its fuel economy. I just care that it’s fast as a lighting bolt, and can carry me away from my living nightmare for even just a little bit.

  Dad took the car out for a test drive when I brought it home. He was clearly impressed. When he handed me the keys—like it was actually his car, as if he had anything to do with it—he made me promise I’d drive responsibly. I swore up and down that I would.

  I wasn’t so much lying as I was screening him from the full facts. Just like the times I’d taken his Audi out on the freeway when he was sleeping off a boozy night with the fat cats downtown at the Ranchmen’s Club.

  But now that I’ve got my own car, I don’t have to steal Dad’s keys. I can keep it on the up. Makes me feel a bit better about myself.

  For a second or two.

  I kill the engine and sit in the driveway for a few minutes, looking at the darkened house. The thought of going inside, of washing my face, brushing my teeth and climbing into bed makes me even more tired. Briefly, I consider putting my seat back and just bagging out here. Dad wouldn’t even notice I was gone. But it’s cold, and I guess I’d rather spend the night in my bed.

  Maybe, if I’m lucky, I won’t dream about Ade’s accident tonight.

  Chapter Three

  I dream about Dmitri instead. It’s a good dream. I wouldn’t mind having it again. And again.

  I wait for my breathing to return to normal, then open my eyes slowly.

  The bright sunlight of early spring fills my bedroom, making the walls yellower than they really are. My eyes fall on a photo of me and Adrienne. We’re standing in the doorway of the Palm Springs gondola. I remember that afternoon. How Ade and my mom were freaking out as I bounced the tramcar around, trying to see how much I could make it move as we rode over Chino Canyon. How my mom jumped out as soon as we slowed down, turning around to catch a photo of Ade and me as we crawled over each other to get out.

  I turn my eyes away. The pleasure of my dream dissolves.

  Shitty. I thought it might have been a good day.

  “Small coffee, please,” I say. I push a handful of change across the counter toward the tattooed, pierced barista.

  Coffee dude nods and counts the coins, his dreadlocks swinging in time to the music drifting through the speakers above us. I count nine earrings jammed into a single hole in his ear. I wonder if that hurts.

  “Medium roast?”

  “Dark,” I say. “Thanks.”

  “Nah. Go medium,” says a familiar voice. I turn to see Dmitri grinning at me. He shrugs. “The lighter the roast, the more caffeine.” His eyes are even darker than I remembered. And they’re fixed on mine. Intently. I think of my dream from this morning. Suddenly I feel hot.

  My tummy does a little rollercoaster thing under his gaze. I hope he can’t read minds.

  But then I realize if he could, we sure as hell wouldn’t be standing here making conversation about coffee.

  The barista pauses, watching me with one eyebrow cocked. I realize he’s waiting to see whether I’m going to change my mind about my coffee.

  “Dark is fine,” I say. He nods again and drops my money into the change drawer. I flip a quarter into the mug where they collect tips. I turn back to Dmitri.

  “Actually, I usual ly drink Americanos,” I say. “And you? Triple-shot espressos?”

  He laughs. The sound is warm, and
it travels through my body, making my fingertips tingle. I can’t help but look at his mouth, which was a key part of my dream.

  “No triple-shot espressos for me,” he says. “Not after dinner anyway. Keeps me up.”

  My mind grabs on to his last words, making them into something he probably didn’t intend. I suspect there are things besides coffee that would keep him up. I smile a little.

  “What?” he says, watching me.

  My smile vanishes, and I blink. “Uh, nothing,” I stumble. “It’s just…” I make a show of looking at the clock behind the bar. “It’s just that it’s only, like, nine o’clock. On a Friday night. Are you going to bed soon?” Jesus, I’m not having much luck steering this conversation out of the innuendo zone.

  “Not for a while,” he says. “Plenty of night left.” He smiles again. My stomach goes all funny. I’m not sure I should give it coffee right now.

  “But you can’t drink coffee,” I say.

  “Well, lives depend on me. I can’t be tired when I show up to work on Saturday morning.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Lives depend on you? What are you, a firefighter or something?”

  He laughs again. “No. I’m a lifeguard. At Irvine. Friday nights and weekend mornings.” He nods his head in the direction of the rec center. I’m surprised I haven’t seen him there before. I take my little cousins swimming there sometimes. Then again, it’s not like I have much time to look around me when I’m trying to keep an eye on two preschoolers.

  It takes me a second to realize I’ve fixated on his lips again. He must think I’m crazy. Or a really bad conversationalist. “Cool,” I say, pulling my eyes up to meet his. “Yeah, Irvine’s, like, just up the road.”

  Good one, Jenessa. You’re a small-talk superstar.

  I try again. “I work next door. At Campbell Learning Centre. I tutor kids in math.”

  “So, this is your after-work party joint?” he asks, motioning around us.

  “The only one.”

  “And what else do you do for kicks, besides order dark-roast coffee when you’d really rather have an Americano?” His words are teasing, but there’s a smile in his eyes.