Along for the Ride

‘For some of you.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Esther said. ‘Some of us got stuck with drunk dates who never made it out of the parking lot.’

  Morgan snorted. Isabel said, ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Personally,’ Heidi was saying, ‘I think prom is one of those high school things that you either really loved or really hated. Like high school itself.’

  ‘I loved high school,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Of course you did,’ Leah told her. ‘You dated the hottest guy, you had the best grades, and everyone loved you.’

  ‘You never wanted everyone to love you,’ Esther said to Leah.

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded if somebody did, though,’ she replied.

  ‘My high school boyfriend broke my heart, remember,’ Maggie told her.

  ‘Mine, too!’ Morgan sighed. ‘God, that sucked.’

  ‘He was a tool,’ Isabel told her. ‘Way too much hair gel.’

  Now Esther snorted. Leah said, ‘Shut up.’

  ‘See, though,’ Heidi said, ‘this is why this is such a good theme! People who loved prom can relive the experience. People who hated it get another shot. Everyone wins.’

  ‘Except the losers stuck doing three hundred favors,’ Leah grumbled. Then she looked up and saw me. ‘Hey. You decide to come be a loser, too?’

  I swallowed, aware of Heidi looking at me, noticing my red eyes, her expression suddenly concerned. ‘You bet,’ I said.

  Maggie scooted over in her chair, making a space for me, and I sat down beside her. ‘So,’ Isabel said. ‘Auden. Prom love or prom hate?’

  ‘Prom hate,’ I replied. ‘I got stood up.’

  There was a round of gasps. ‘You what?’ Morgan said. ‘That’s terrible!’

  ‘And,’ Leah added, ‘the guy is down here now and won’t stop texting her.’

  ‘You know what you should do,’ Morgan said. ‘You should ask him to the Beach Bash, and then stand him up.’

  ‘Morgan.’ Isabel raised her eyebrows. ‘Listen to you, going all vigilante!’

  ‘I think,’ Heidi said, ‘that you should find someone you really want to go with, and do it right. That’s my opinion.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think it’s a little late for that.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Leah told me. ‘It’s Ladies’ Night at Tallyho.’

  I smiled. ‘No, no, no to Tallyho.’

  ‘That’s my girl!’ Maggie beamed, then bumped me with her shoulder.

  Everyone laughed, and just like that, the conversation shifted, jumping to another topic. It was fast and furious, the talking, the emotion, the back-and-forth and forth-and-back. I realized that if I tried to focus on it too much, I got overwhelmed. So I just decided to relax into it, bumpy and crazy as it might be, and try for once to just go along for the ride.

  Chapter

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Wow. Nice road burn.’

  I looked up to see Adam standing in the doorway to Heidi’s office, a box under one arm. ‘Well,’ I said, putting down my tube of Neosporin, which I’d been applying to the latest scrape on my shin, the result of a wobbly crash that morning. ‘I guess that’s one way of looking at it.’

  ‘It’s the only way.’ He put the box down on the file cabinet, then yanked up his shirt, showing me a scar on his stomach. ‘See this? Seventh grade, wiped out on a ramp. And then here’ – he slid up his shirtsleeve, showing another shiny white spot – ‘I crashed on a mountain bike trail when I hit a log.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘But the pièce de résistance,’ he continued, tapping his chest, ‘is right here. All titanium, baby.’

  I just looked at him. ‘What is?’

  ‘The plate they used to put my sternum back together,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘Two years ago. Broke it with my full-face helmet going over a jump.’

  ‘You know,’ I said, considering my scrape again, ‘you’re kind of making me look like a wimp.’

  ‘Not at all!’ He smiled. ‘It all counts. If you’re not getting hurt, you’re not riding hard enough.’

  ‘Then I,’ I said, ‘am riding really hard.’

  ‘That’s what I hear,’ he said, picking up the box again. ‘Maggie says you’re like an animal out there.’

  I was horrified. ‘She what?’

  ‘I’m paraphrasing,’ he said easily, flipping his hand. ‘She says you’re really working hard, that you’re doing great.’

  I shrugged, capping the Neosporin. ‘I don’t know. If I was good, I wouldn’t be all banged up like this.’

  ‘Not true.’

  I looked up at him. ‘No?’

  He shook his head. ‘Of course not. Look at me. I’m a great rider, and I’ve bit dirt more times than I can even count. And the pros? They’re, like, bionic, they’ve crashed so much. Look at Eli. He’s broken his elbow, and his collarbone multiple times, and then there’s that arm thing…’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘The arm thing? You mean the scar?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I thought that was from the accident.’

  Adam shook his head. ‘No. He was doing some tricks out on the pier and landed wrong. Sliced it wide open on the edge of a bench. There was blood everywhere.’

  I looked back down at my knee scab, small and almost a perfect circle, shiny with ointment.

  ‘It all counts,’ Adam said again. ‘And the bottom line is, what defines you isn’t how many times you crash, but the number of times you get back on the bike. As long as it’s one more, you’re all good.’

  I smiled, looking up at him. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘you should be a motivational speaker, or something.’

  ‘Nah. Entirely too dorky,’ he replied easily. ‘Hey, is Heidi around?’

  ‘No. She’s at lunch.’ I didn’t add that she was with my dad, their first formal meeting since he moved out. Heidi had been so nervous all morning, walking around the store, straightening displays and hovering over me in the office, that I’d been relieved when she finally strapped Isby into the BabyBjörn and headed off. As soon as the door shut behind her, though, I’d gotten uneasy myself, wondering what she’d have to say when she returned. ‘She’ll be back in an hour or so, probably.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I can just leave these, then.’ He put the box down on the desk to my left. When I glanced at them, he added, ‘Prom shots from my yearbook days. She said she wants them for decor for the Beach Bash, or something.’

  ‘Really,’ I said. ‘Can I take a look?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I lifted the lid. Inside was a big stack of pictures, mostly five-by-sevens, all black and white. The one on the top was of Maggie, standing with Jake by the tailgate of a car. She had on a short, dark A-line dress and strappy heels, her hair spilling over her shoulders. There was a corsage on her wrist and she was laughing, holding out a bag of Doritos to Jake, who was in a tux shirt and pants, barefoot on the sand. I flipped to the next picture: also Maggie, this time alone, the same night, standing on tiptoe to check her reflection in a mirror that said COCA-COLA across its center. In the next shot, there was Leah, in a more formal pose with a guy in a military uniform, both of them looking at the camera, followed by one of Wallace on a dance floor, cummerbund loose, in the midst of busting some sort of move. Then Maggie again, another year, in another dress, this one white and longer. In the first shot, she was walking down the boardwalk, holding the hand of someone whose shoulder alone made it into the picture. In the one beneath it, she was reaching out for the camera, fingers blurred, her mouth half-open as she laughed.

  ‘Wow,’ I said as I kept flipping through them. There was Leah again. Esther. Maggie. Wallace and Leah. Jake and Esther. Maggie. Wallace and Esther. Maggie. Maggie. Maggie. I looked up at him. ‘You’re not in any of these.’

  ‘Nah. I was always behind the camera.’

  I moved past yet another shot of Maggie, this time on a bike, her white dress gathered up in one hand, her helmet in the other. ‘Lots of her here.’

  He kept his eyes on the picture,
his tone noncommittal, as he said, ‘I guess so.’

  ‘What are you guys looking at?’

  Adam and I both jumped as Maggie herself – in the flesh and flip-flops and jeans – appeared behind us in the doorway. ‘Prom pictures,’ I told her, casually flipping back to the one of Leah and Wallace. ‘Heidi wanted them for the Beach Bash.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ She sighed, then stepped forward to lean over my shoulder. ‘I can’t bear to… look! Junior year. Leah’s date was that marine, remember?’

  Adam nodded. ‘I do.’

  ‘And I had my white dress. I loved that dress.’ She sighed again, this time happily, and reached over me to flip to the next picture. ‘There it is! Man. I agonized over that outfit like you would not believe. Kept it clean all night, even when I was on a bike on a dare. And then Jake threw up all over it on the way home. The stain…’

  ‘Never came out,’ Adam finished for her. ‘I have a shot of it somewhere.’

  ‘Hopefully not in this box.’ She plucked out the one of her on the bike. ‘That was a great night, though. I mean, until the end. What other ones are in there? Any more of me?’

  I felt Adam glance at me as I eased the box shut, saying, ‘Not really.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, I guess that’s a good thing. I don’t think I necessarily want my prom memories up on display for the whole town to see anyway.’

  ‘No?’ I said. ‘It seems like you had a pretty good time.’

  She shrugged. ‘I guess. But I was with Jake then. The last thing I need right now is another reminder of how much of my life I wasted on him.’

  ‘You were happy at the time, though,’ I said. ‘That has to count for something.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Maggie said. ‘Lately I’ve been thinking it would have been better to have just been by myself. That way, at least all of high school wouldn’t be, you know, tinged with his memory.’

  ‘Tinged?’ Adam said. ‘Is that even a real word?’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she said, poking his arm. ‘Anyway, my point is that if I’d wised up to what he was sooner, my entire experience might have been different.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You could have spent all of high school alone, and never gone to prom at all.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she replied. ‘And that might have been good, too. Or even better.’

  I looked down at the box again, remembering all those shots inside, trying to picture myself in even one of them. What if I’d had a boyfriend? What if I’d gone to the prom? What kind of tinge could I have had, given another chance? ‘Maybe,’ I said to Maggie. ‘Or maybe not.’

  She gave me a weird look, then opened her mouth to say something, but then the front door chime sounded. ‘Duty calls,’ she said, turning on her heel, and then she was thwacking back down the hallway, her voice cheery as she greeted a group of customers.

  Adam watched her go, then leaned back in the doorjamb. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘if you want to remedy that, you can.’

  I looked up at him. ‘Remedy what?’

  ‘The whole not-going-to-the-prom thing,’ he said. ‘Eli’s at the shop right now, doing inventory.’

  ‘What,’ I said, ‘are you talking about?’

  ‘You just walk over there and into the office and say, “Hey, be my prom date,”’ he said. ‘It’s that simple.’

  I wanted to tell him that nothing concerning me and Eli was simple, especially lately. Instead, I said, ‘What makes you think I want to go with him?’

  ‘Because,’ he said, ‘you’re sitting here going on about spending high school alone, never going to prom at all… It was kind of obvious who you were talking about.’

  ‘Maggie. I was talking about Maggie.’

  He crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Sure you were.’

  I just looked at him for a second. Then I said, ‘Well, what about you?’

  ‘Me?’

  I nodded. ‘When are you planning to ask her?’

  ‘Ask her what?’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘Oh, no. We’re just friends.’

  ‘Right.’ I opened up the box again and started flipping through the pictures, taking out the one of her on the bike, and walking, and laughing, and in front of the mirror, laying them on the desk side by side. ‘Because, of course, you took this many pictures of all your friends.’

  He glanced at the shots, then swallowed. ‘Actually,’ he said stiffly, ‘I do have a lot of shots of Wallace.’

  ‘Adam. Come on.’

  I watched as, defeated, he slumped into the chair, folding his arms behind his head. For a moment we just sat there, neither of us saying anything. Outside, I could hear Maggie chattering on the pros and cons of one-piece bathing suits. ‘The thing is,’ he said finally, ‘I’ve made it this far, you know? We start college in a matter of weeks.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So,’ he continued, ‘I just don’t know if I want that tinge on the summer. Not to mention our friendship. An awkward tinge, that will then color everything else.’

  ‘You’re assuming she’ll say no.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m assuming she’ll say yes, because she’ll figure it’ll be fun. And then I’ll work it up to be this big deal, like it’s a real date, which is not how she’ll see it, which will become crushingly obvious at the prom itself when she abandons me to dance, and then leave, and eventually marry some other guy.’

  Outside, Maggie laughed, the sound light and cheery, like music.

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘At least you haven’t put much thought into it.’

  He gave me a wry smile. ‘Just like you haven’t thought about asking Eli, right?’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  He rolled his eyes.

  ‘No, really. We had a falling-out… We’re not even talking right now.’

  ‘Well, then. You know what you need to do.’

  I said, ‘I do?’

  ‘Yep.’ He pushed himself to his feet. ‘Get back on that bike.’

  I just looked at him. ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘Sure it is,’ he said. ‘Just takes one more time. Remember?’

  I considered this as he started for the door, sliding his hands in his pockets. ‘On the same note,’ I said, ‘there’s a worse thing than an awkward tinge.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  I nodded.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Always wondering if it might have gone the other way.’ I nodded at the prom shots, still laid out in front of me. ‘That is a lot of pictures. You know?’

  He glanced at them, then back at me. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I guess it is.’

  My phone beeped then, and I glanced down at it. Jason.

  Are you free for lunch? I’m en route to the Last

  Chance, have an hour.

  ‘Gotta go,’ Adam said. Then he pointed at the scab on my knee. ‘Remember. Back on the bike!’

  ‘Right,’ I replied. ‘Got it.’

  He flashed me a thumbs-up, then was gone, whistling – always so damn cheery, how was that? – as he headed back toward the front of the store. I looked down at Maggie’s pictures, end to end, and then at my phone, where Jason’s text was still on the screen. I knew I’d really screwed up with Eli, turning away from him the way I had, but perhaps it wasn’t too late to have a tinge of my own. Maybe good, maybe bad, but at least it would add some color, somewhere. So I picked up my phone and gave Jason his answer.

  Okay. On my way.

  When I got home that evening, Heidi was on the back deck, looking out at the water. Even from a distance and through the sliding glass door, I recognized the tenseness in her shoulders, the way her head leaned a little sadly to the side, and so was not surprised when she turned, hearing me, to see her eyes were red and puffy.

  ‘Auden,’ she said, reaching to brush back her hair, taking a breath. ‘I didn’t think you’d be home until later.’

  ‘I finished up early.’ I slid my keys into my bag. ‘Are you okay?’

>   ‘I’m fine.’ She came inside, shutting the door behind her. ‘Just doing some thinking.’

  We stood there for a moment, neither of us saying anything. Upstairs, I could hear Thisbe’s waves, crashing. ‘So… how did it go?’

  ‘Good.’ She swallowed, biting her lip. ‘We did a lot of talking.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And,’ she said, ‘we agreed that for the time being, it’s better if we keep things as they are.’

  ‘With him at the Condor,’ I said, clarifying. She nodded. ‘So he didn’t want to come back.’

  She walked over to me, putting her hands on my shoulders. ‘Your father… he thinks he’d be a hindrance more than a help right now. That maybe, until the Beach Bash and summer is over, it’s better if I just focus on me and Thisbe.’

  ‘How could that be better?’ I asked. ‘You’re his family.’

  She bit her lip again, then looked down at her hands. ‘I know it doesn’t sound like it makes sense.’

  ‘It doesn’t.’

  ‘But I understand what he’s saying,’ she continued. ‘Your father and I… we had a whirlwind courtship and marriage, and I got pregnant so fast. We just need to slow down a bit.’

  I put my purse down on the table. ‘So this is a slowing. Not a full stop.’

  Heidi nodded. ‘Absolutely.’

  To be honest, I wasn’t fully convinced. I knew my dad and how he operated: if things got complicated, he extricated himself, somehow managing to make it seem like it was the most selfless of gestures, instead of just the opposite. He wasn’t abandoning Heidi and Thisbe: he was simplifying their lives. He hadn’t left my mom over professional envy: he’d stepped aside to give her the spotlight she needed. And he certainly hadn’t basically ignored the fact that I was his child all those years: he was just teaching me to be independent and a grown-up in a world in which most people were too infantile. My dad never got back on the bike. He never even let himself crash. One wobble, or even the hint of one, and he pulled over to the side, abandoning the ride altogether.

  ‘So,’ Heidi said, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table, ‘enough about me. What’s going on with you?’

  I slid in opposite her, folding my hands on top of my bag. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it looks like I have a date to the prom.’