Driver's Ed

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “Lick it up,” Morgan told him.

  Mac immediately fell to his knees and began licking the sugary linoleum.

  Remy said, “I of course will adopt rather than have children of my own. No need to touch the Marland family genes.”

  She doesn’t know, he thought. If she knew, she couldn’t joke. So what do I do? Tell her myself? Hope it all goes away?

  He wondered if that was actually a possibility. That it could all go away.

  “What are you two so intent on?” demanded Starr, wedging in.

  Like he was going to tell Starr anything. “The pageant,” said Morgan. He hurried to dig up Mrs. Willit.

  What’s the matter with me? he thought. Death doesn’t all go away. I might not get caught with the stop sign, but Denise Thompson will always be caught dead.

  People said Nickie Budie was pond scum. Nobody had ever said it of Morgan Campbell. But it was true now. Morgan had just turned into the definition of scum: one who forgot the dead woman and thought only of getting away with it.

  In what sounded like a perfectly normal voice, he informed Mrs. Willit that he wanted to run the pageant this year.

  Mrs. Willit was overly thrilled. “Ooooh, it’s so difficult to find people to do that,” she cried. “The pageant is such a nuisance really. I’d skip it, but people don’t think it’s Christmas without a pageant. Nance, you have such fine children. I mean, really. What a splendid dear dear boy.” Mrs. Willit hugged him. Morgan remained calm, only because he could see his father being hugged by someone equally unfortunate, and handling it fine.

  “I get to be a king,” said Starr, shoving up against her brother.

  Everybody laughed. People patted Starr’s hair, as if she were a sweet little thing, instead of the meanest kid in junior high.

  I’m a splendid dear dear boy, Morgan told himself. Even if it came from Mrs. Willit, it’s true. I’m a nice person. I have not killed anybody. It was just a sign.

  CHAPTER 6

  Monday came, as Mondays do. Relentlessly.

  It was a beautiful morning, surprisingly warm for so late in the fall. A morning on which nobody could be dead. But Denise Thompson was.

  Remy had looked in the newspaper, unusual for her, and read the obituary. The funeral had been Sunday afternoon. Denise Thompson was underground.

  “Come on,” said Mom. “I cannot be late for work. Move it.”

  Remy strapped the baby into his car seat. He was still eating his toast, which occupied him too much to fight the seat belt. Henry’s kiss smeared her cheek with butter and jam and for some reason she didn’t want to wipe it off; she wanted to take it to school with her, a shiny little mark of love.

  Mom backed fast out of the drive. Remy couldn’t begin to back up that smoothly. She glanced for traffic, training herself, and saw that every single mailbox on their road had been smashed.

  “The third time in two weeks!” yelled Mac. When Mom stopped at the bottom of the drive, he opened his door, as if to vault out and find a clue at the base of the splintered post. “I’m gonna sue ’em! Why, those little—”

  Mom cut off Mac’s favorite noun. “Don’t say it. Just get back in the car, Mac. Once Remy gets her license, you’ll have another forty-five minutes every morning, but not today.”

  I don’t want a license now. I don’t want to drive. Once it was funny, going over a cement divider. No big deal, we said. Nobody died. But somebody died.

  Mac went on and on about the mailboxes. “I have to dig out the stupid hole! Buy another post! Sink it in cement!” He’d have played mailbox baseball, too, if he’d had friends with cars. But since it was his job to replace the box, the hobby was less attractive.

  How could she fake it through Driver’s Ed? Morgan had trembled in church, as if she were a threat. She had babbled her way through coffee hour. Could she babble her way through school? Should she pretend to be sick and stay home?

  But skipping school would be an admission.

  I have to act normal. I can’t let them pick up on anything. It has to stay a secret. I cannot let anybody think I’m the kind of person who does things like that.

  “Forty-three,” said Mom grimly.

  “Forty-three what?” said Mac.

  “Mailboxes. I could sit up with a shotgun and nail those worthless little delinquents.”

  Even Mac took a second look at their mother. Mom actually sounded as if she would empty a shotgun into teenagers playing mailbox baseball. Remy had the nightmarish sense of somebody pouring water down her throat without letting her swallow; filling her up; drowning her. If Mom hated somebody who hit pieces of metal that much, how much would she hate somebody who …

  Remy grabbed her own hair. Literally holding herself together.

  Forget Mr. Willit. It’s Mom who can’t know! Mom would kill me. Or herself.

  The baby blew bubbles. This was his great artistic achievement—covering his tiny chin with saliva, giggling softly while the bubbles slid down and kept his chest wet all day. He admired the way his sister held her hand on her head, and he worked at putting his hand on his head. He accomplished it and beamed at Remy.

  “Listen to the rumors in school, Mac,” said Mom. “Find out who it is. I’m going to get hold of their parents. I just know they come from the kind of family where the mother and father don’t even care what their children are doing.”

  “Wait a minute,” protested Mac. “What rumors am I going to hear? Eighth graders don’t drive. Remy’s grade plays mailbox baseball. Remy’ll hear the rumors.”

  “Your sister does not hang out with the sort of creep who would do that,” said their mother, as if she had the slightest idea who was around Remy all day.

  Mac opened his mouth to point this out, but they had arrived at the day care, and it was his job to take the baby in. Mac undid the seat belt and harness, kissing the only person to whom he showed affection. “Come along, Matthew, my man,” he said. He lifted his little brother very carefully because diapers often slipped and Mac didn’t want to go to school with wet hands.

  Henry wrapped loving arms around Mac’s neck, reached under his brother’s unzipped jacket, and tried to take the Bic pens out of Mac’s shirt pocket. Once this kid got his fingers wrapped around an object, you had to saw it free. Mac twisted hard to keep the pens safe.

  “Bye, Sweet Prince,” said Remy.

  “Bye-bye, darling,” said Mom to her baby. She kissed his little cheek when Mac held him down to her face, and murmured softly.

  “What kind of person will he grow up to be with you two calling him Jesus or Sweet Prince?” shouted Mac. “Try to imagine junior high, will you?”

  Remy would never willingly imagine junior high.

  There was only one good thing about junior high: eventually it was replaced by senior high.

  She prayed to the God of High Schools that he would turn her invisible for the day. Let nobody look at her, let no teacher call upon her.

  Sometimes when she asked for things like this, she could feel warmth, as if her current god was listening, at least. Today there was nothing.

  The fear of being found out puddled in her lungs.

  School was simply school.

  Accidents were not mentioned. Teachers taught. Homework was collected. Morgan didn’t run into Nickie. Was Nickie home pretending to be sick? Would he lie low till it was over? How would they know when it was over?

  At eleven o’clock Morgan walked carefully into the library, balancing himself, imitating his mother’s wonderful smile and his father’s cool. He smacked hands with Taft and Chase and opened a Car and Driver to memorize, just like always. He felt Remy’s presence but did not look up.

  Better nobody should realize she had gone along. Best if nobody realized Morgan had been there, either, but at least he could do his part to keep Remy safe. The thing was to pretend he had never known her.

  Driver’s Ed filled up. Was it his imagination, or were they all uncharacteristically quiet? Was he self-conscious, or were they a
ll looking at corners or shoes, anywhere but at each other?

  “Today,” said Mr. Fielding, “nobody will go driving. A police officer is going to meet us out on the school lawn.”

  Police.

  Morgan was immediately badly out of breath.

  Shock, he thought. My lungs are closing down.

  He tried to hide the quick, shallow breathing from Taft and Chase. Sequences of his life spun through Morgan’s mind as if he were channel-grazing his future. Prison/handcuffs/trials. His father’s horror blended into his mother turning away, his sister’s cruel laugh.

  “There was a terrible accident,” said Mr. Fielding. “Did everybody hear about it?”

  Accident. Morgan seized on the word. Yes. Totally accidental. Nothing to do with me.

  Christine, assuming that not everybody had heard, repeated the television commentary. It was like a rerun from a younger, watered-down Anne. The words dripped in Morgan’s ears like full sponges. He could wring his brain out.

  “Why do they always blame kids?” said Kierstin, who got belligerent easily. She was duking up for a fight.

  “And even if it is a kid,” said Taft, “it’ll be one of the scums who goes around keying cars and spray-painting buildings and breaking into vending machines. It won’t be one of us.” Taft looked to Morgan for confirmation.

  Morgan could not stop himself from looking down at the tabletop and swallowing hard. When he looked up, Taft was staring at him.

  “Everybody outside,” said Mr. Fielding.

  “It’s cold out,” said Lark, though it was not. “I have to get my coat.” Lark would not join them on the lawn. She hated the outdoors and felt it had no right to exist.

  The kids whined and complained. Why they were meeting this police officer on the lawn, instead of here in the classroom, nobody could imagine.

  Morgan knew.

  He was going to be arrested in front of his peers. They were going to make an example of him.

  He pictured the phone call to his father. He hadn’t talked to his father in years. The opening subjects would be jail and bail.

  Somehow he stumbled with the rest out of the library and down the hall to the near exit. His feet landed on pavement and carried him across the bus drop-off circle.

  He would not look at Remy. If he did, he would hang on to her, or she to him, and they would be ruined.

  There, towed onto the winter-dying grass of the school campus, close to the flagpole, displayed to all traffic on Warren Street, was the vehicle that Denise Thompson had driven to her death.

  It was so crumpled, so destroyed, Morgan did not know how they had gotten her corpse out. What parts of it had killed her? Remained stuck in her? Gone with her into the grave?

  Kierstin and Cristin began to cry. Joss yanked out a little Kleenex pack and handed tissues around. No boy took one.

  Morgan forced himself to look at the car. Taft was still watching him. Taft could not actually know, but he could guess. Morgan thought he had already guessed.

  “So what’ve we got?” said the cop.

  The steering wheel was folded in two, as if it had been made of Play-Doh.

  “We’ve got a dead mother,” said the cop.

  Remy’s sob escaped her throat, a high, awful keening, like a dying bird.

  Don’t do that! thought Morgan. You’ll give us away.

  But in the strange way of girls Cristin and Kierstin seemed to find Remy’s reaction reasonable, and they comforted her.

  “All because some teenager wanted a sign for his bedroom,” said the cop. “You know what I mean? This woman died, she’s not a whole lot older than you are, you know, and her baby’s never gonna remember his mommy, all because some teenager didn’t stop to think.”

  I was like Lark, Morgan thought. I stopped, but I didn’t stay stopped.

  “Probably the same kids that are playing mailbox baseball did this. Something to do. Thursday night, kids didn’t care about their homework, just wanted something to do. Well, you just remember this,” said the cop. “Denise Thompson is never going to have something to do again.”

  Wait.

  The cop had not come to arrest him. This was just driver education. Just another lecture. The car was a visual aid. More impact than a film.

  “How do you know it’s kids?” demanded Kierstin. Police set her off. She saw a uniform or a blue light and she took the offense.

  The cop knew her type, just as he knew the sign-stealing type. “Kids don’t think.”

  “Some kids think,” she argued.

  She was boring him. He said, “I meet the ones who don’t.” The officer explained that it was state policy now to display car accidents rather than pretend they didn’t happen. Therefore the wreck would lie on the lawn to sober the kids up. Speaking of sober, he added, the victim had been. Could have been plenty of alcohol in the vandals, though.

  Christine coughed and fussed with her hair and her scarf. She looked like a person fidgeting with small decisions before making the big one. Christine, who had objected to the sign game.

  Joss looked at Christine. Chase and Taft looked at Christine. Kierstin and Cristin looked at Christine. The eye pressure of peer pressure.

  Morgan knew he should tell first. It would go better if he admitted it before they forced him to. I could leave Remy out, he thought. But would Nickie leave Remy out?

  And the biggest but of all … would his father and mother go with him to the police station? He was no longer the kid they had in mind. The kid they had in mind did the right things.

  The policeman got in his squad car.

  The right thing would be to walk after the cop. Sir? May I talk to you for a minute?

  Christine gave a funny little sigh and put a Kleenex to her eyes.

  The cop started his engine and drove off with a sort of efficient speed, as if he could not get away from these kids and their sign-stealing fast enough.

  Morgan replayed the night in Nickie’s car. This time Good Morgan Campbell thought ahead to the consequences, because he was not a slime who keyed cars or spray-painted bridges.

  But I am a slime. I’m glad I got away with it. I want to go on getting away with it.

  He had a premonition of the headline: GOOD KID KILLS.

  Kierstin poked Taft in the butt and got a nice reaction, equal parts irritated and flirty. Joss turned a cartwheel, whether to celebrate being alive when Denise Thompson was dead, or because the dead didn’t matter, or because she was practicing for cheerleading, Morgan didn’t know. Mr. Fielding wandered back in. Remy had wrapped herself so tightly in her jacket, she might have been bandaging cracked ribs.

  He wanted Remy to be okay.

  It would be wrong to tell. It would not bring back Denise Thompson. If he told, his life would be over. It wouldn’t matter what he got on college boards. What college would take an application from a kid who had killed somebody?

  It was just a sign. I didn’t kill her. All I did was take a sign.

  He went carefully back inside, refusing to turn around and look again at the moralizing exhibit on the grass.

  “Hey, man,” said Nickie behind him in the hall.

  So he hadn’t skipped school. “Nicholas,” Morgan acknowledged. He kept walking. Kept hoping, somehow, that he was not friends with Nickie again.

  Nickie caught up to him. Morgan was on his way to Phys Ed. The halls were packed with boys leaving and arriving at locker rooms. Nickie muttered, “Weird, isn’t it?”

  The last word Morgan would have used was weird.

  “I mean, we did that,” said Nickie.

  “Shut up.”

  “I think about it at night,” said Nickie. “A person was alive and now she’s not. We managed that.”

  “Shut up,” breathed Morgan. It could not be pride he heard in Nickie’s voice. Nickie could not be proud that he had “managed” to end a life.

  “It’s sort of the ultimate cool, isn’t it?” said Nickie.

  Morgan thought he might be having a seiz
ure. The inside of his head changed colors and noises exploded between his ears. His balance shifted and he stumbled.

  “Thing is,” said Nickie, “my parents wouldn’t understand.” He took Morgan by the shoulders for emphasis. “We gotta shut up about it.” Nickie gave him a light punch in the belly. “See ya,” he said.

  See you? thought Morgan. In my grave. I never want to see you again. I never want to think about you again. If it hadn’t been for you we wouldn’t have done that! It’s your fault. You chose that sign.

  He made it to the locker room and had to sit on the long, thin wooden bench that divided the lockers. His head wouldn’t stay up. It felt as if his neck had gotten thinner, or been severed. He kept tipping.

  The gym teacher was kneeling next to him. “Morgan?”

  Morgan was afraid of speech. What if confession popped out of him? What if, when the gym teacher only needed to know if Morgan was going to throw up, and if so, would Morgan please do it in the toilet, Morgan said, “I killed her”?

  He rehearsed. Then, carefully, “I’m okay, I think.” He had never been less okay.

  “You sit out,” said the gym teacher. The gym teacher also punched him lightly.

  When Morgan finally managed to walk into the gym, and slid to the floor with his back against the wall, everybody else was doing a floor exercise. Basketballs sailed around like huge brown atoms in a science exhibit.

  If he blamed Nickie, he didn’t feel sick.

  Lark bounced from subject to subject like fizz in a soda. She must not let anybody bring up the sign thing. They might think she had taken it. She did have a stop sign, courtesy of long-gone Joel.

  The thing was, you couldn’t tell one stop sign from another. She could not risk having anybody look among her belongings.

  Lark did not want to get involved with some sort of murder thing. She was a junior. Time to think about colleges. She had a nice background. B average, high PSATs, lots of theater and dance.

  Lark eyed Remy. Her best friend was stumbling around, visibly upset, complexion pasty, hands cold, speech slow. Remy was not destined to become an actress.