Good Lord I thought as he approached. I just don’t have the energy for this today. But it wasn’t like there was anything I could do. I was in a public place, not to mention one that he knew well. It was almost funny that I’d ended up there. Almost.
“So,” he said, standing over me now, muffin in hand. “You skipping out today or something?”
“No,” I said. “Just . . . needed some breakfast. I’m about to go catch the bus.”
“Bus?” He looked offended. “Why would you take public transport when I’m right here with my car?”
“Oh, that’s okay. I’m . . . I’m fine.”
“You’re also late,” he pointed out, nodding at the clock behind me. “Bus will make you later. There’s no pride in tardiness, Mclean.”
I looked around the room. “That sounds like something that should be needlepointed on one of these samplers.”
“You’re right!” He grinned. “Gonna have to take that up with management. Come on. I’m parked out back.”
I went, following him down the hallway, past the restrooms, and out a rear entrance. As we walked, he continued to eat his muffin, leaving a trail of crumbs behind him like someone out of a fairy tale. I said, “What did you call that again?”
“What?”
“Your breakfast.”
He glanced back at me. “Oh, right. The Freaking Everything and the Procrastinator’s Special.”
“I don’t remember seeing that on the menu.”
“Because it isn’t,” he replied, starting across the lot. “I kind of created my own lexicon here at FrayBake. Translated, that’s a muffin with everything under the sun, and a coffee that guarantees multiple bathroom breaks for the next few hours. It caught on, and now all the counter people use it.” He jangled his keys. “Here we are.”
I watched him walk around a Volvo pockmarked with dents. On the passenger seat was one of those beaded covers I associated with taxi drivers and grandmothers. “This is your car?”
“Yep,” he said proudly as we got in. “She’s been in lockdown, but I finally got her sprung last night.”
“Yeah? How’d you manage that?”
“I think it was the lives of cells that clinched it.” He turned the key, and the engine, after a bit of coaxing, came to life. “Oh, and I also agreed to work in my mom’s lab after the Austin trip, until I go to Brain Camp. But you do what you have to do for the ones you love. And I love this car.”
The Volvo, as if to test this, suddenly sputtered to a stop. Dave looked down at the console, then turned the key. Nothing happened. He tried again, and the car made a sighing noise, like it was tired.
“It’s okay,” Dave called out over the sound of the engine making ticking noises, like a bomb. “She just needs a little love sometimes.”
“I know all about that,” I said. “So did Super Shitty.”
This just came out, without me even really being aware of it. When Dave looked at me, though, eyebrows raised, I realized what I’d done. “Super Shitty?”
“My car,” I explained. “My old car, I guess I should say. I don’t know where it is now.”
“Did you crash into a guardhouse, too?”
“No, just left town and didn’t need it anymore.” I had a flash of my beat-up Toyota Camry, she of the constantly blown alternators, hissing radiator, and odometer that had topped 200,000 miles before it even came into my possession. The last I’d seen it, it had been parked in Peter’s huge garage, between his Lexus and SUV, as out of place there as I was. “She was a good car, too. Just kind of . . .”
“Shitty?”
I nodded, and he pumped the gas, then the brake. I could see a car behind us, turn signal on, waiting for the space. The person behind the wheel appeared to be cursing when the Volvo suddenly roared to life, a burst of smoke popping from the tailpipe.
“Nothing like driving in the snow,” Dave said, hardly fazed as we turned out of the lot and headed down the hill to a stop sign, flakes hitting the windshield. As he slowed, the Volvo’s brakes squealed in protest. He glanced over at me, then said, “Seat belt, please. Safety first.”
I pulled it on, grateful he’d reminded me. My door was rattling, and I was just hoping the seat belt would hold me in should it fly open at forty miles an hour. “So,” I said, once we’d gotten going, “thanks for the thyme.”
“No problem,” he replied. “I just hope you weren’t offended.”
“Why would I be offended?”
“Well, you don’t like clutter.”
“It’s one spice container,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but it’s a slippery slope. First you have thyme, then you get into rosemary and sage and basil, and the next thing you know, you have a problem.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” The car wheezed, and he hit the gas. The engine roared, attracting an alarmed look from a woman in a Lexus beside us.
“How long have you had this thing?”
“Little over a year,” he said. “I bought her myself. Took all my savings bonds, bar mitzvah money, and what I’d made working at FrayBake.”
The brakes squealed again. I said, “That much, huh?”
“What?” He glanced at me, then back at the road. “Hey, this is a great car. Sturdy, dependable. Has character. She might have a few issues, but I love her anyway.”
“Warts and all,” I said.
He looked over at me suddenly, surprised. “What did you say?”
“What?”
“You said ‘warts and all.’ Didn’t you?”
“Um, yeah,” I replied. “What, you don’t know that expression?”
“No, I do.” He eased us into the turn lane for school, then took his left hand off the steering wheel, turning it over to expose the black, tattooed circle there. “It’s where this comes from, actually.”
“That’s supposed to be a wart?” I asked.
“Sort of,” he said, downshifting. “See, when I was a kid, my mom and dad were both teaching full-time. So during the week, I stayed with this woman who kept a few kids at her house. Eva.”
The snow was really picking up now, giving the wipers a workout. Just two small arcs of clarity, with everything blurry beyond.
“She had a granddaughter who was the same age as me and stayed there, too. She and I napped together, ate glue together. That was Riley.”
“Really?”
“Yep. I told you, we’ve known each other forever. Anyway, Eva was just, like, straight-up awesome. She was really tall and broad, with a huge belly laugh. She smelled like pancakes. And she had this wart. A huge one, like something you’d see on a witch or something. Right here.” He put his index finger in the center of the tattoo, pressing down. “We were, like, fascinated and grossed out by it at the same time. And she always made a point of letting us look at it. She wasn’t embarrassed at all. Said if we loved her, we loved it, too. It was part of the package.”
I thought of Riley’s wrist, that same black circle. The sad look on her face when Deb pointed it out.
“She got cancer last year,” he said. “Pancreatic. She died two months after the diagnosis.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. It pretty much sucked.” We were turning into the school parking lot, going past the guardhouse. “The day after her funeral, me and Riley went and got these.”
“That’s a pretty amazing tribute,” I said.
“Eva was pretty amazing.”
I watched him as we turned down a row of cars, slowing for a group of girls in track pants and heavy coats. “I like the sentiment. But it’s easier said than done, you know?”
“What is?”
I shrugged. “Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It’s a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.”
He found a spot and turned in, then cut the engine, which rattled gratefully to a stop. Never had a car seemed so exhausted. Then he looked at me. “You think so?”
I had a flash of my mom on the phone that morning,
her wavering voice, the words I’d said. I swallowed. “I think that’s why I like moving around so much. Nobody gets to know me well enough to see any of the bad stuff.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. We both just sat there, listening as people passed by us. The ground was slippery, and everyone was struggling to stay upright, taking tentative steps and still busting here and there anyway.
“You say that,” Dave said finally, “but I’m not sure it’s actually true. I’ve only known you a month but I’m aware of plenty of bad stuff about you.”
“Oh, really,” I said. “Like what?”
“Well, you have no condiments or spices, for starters. Wled just plain weird. Also, you’re vicious with a basketball.”
“Those aren’t exactly warts.”
“Maybe not.” He grinned. “But seriously, it’s all relative, right?”
The bell rang then, its familiar tinny sound muffled by the snow on the roof and windows. We both got out, my door creaking loudly as I pushed it open. The ground was icy, immediately sliding a bit beneath me, and I grabbed on to the Volvo to support myself. “Whoa,” I said.
“No kidding,” Dave said, sliding up next to me and barely getting his balance at the last minute. “Watch your step.”
I started walking carefully, and he fell in beside me, pulling his bag over his shoulder. His head was ducked down, his hair falling across his forehead, and as I glanced at him, I thought of all the times I’d found myself with boys over the last two years, and how none of them came anywhere close to being like this. Because I wasn’t. I was Beth or Eliza or Lizbet, a mirage, like a piece of stage scenery that looked real from the front with nothing behind it. Here, though, despite my best efforts, I’d somehow ended up being myself again: Mclean Sweet, she of the messed-up parents and weird basketball connections, Super Shitty and a U-Haul’s worth of baggage. All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.
We were almost to the curb when I felt Dave begin to slip again beside me, his arms flailing. I tried to secure my own feet, with mixed results, as he tipped backward, then forward. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Going down!”
“Hold on,” I told him, sticking out my own hand to grab his. Instead of steadying him, however, this had the opposite effect, and then we were both stumbling across the ice, double the weight, double the impact if we fell.
It was the weirdest feeling. As my feet slid beneath me, my heart was lurching, pounding with that scary feeling of having no footing, no control. But then I looked over at Dave. He was laughing, his face flushed as he wavered this way, then that, pulling me along, equally clumsy behind him. Same situation, two totally different reactions.
So much had happened that morning. Yet it was this image, this moment, that I kept going back to hours later, after we’d made it safely to the walkway and gone our separate ways to classes. How it felt to have the world moving beneath me, a hand gripping mine, knowing if I fell, at least I wouldn’t do it alone.
The snow kept coming down, piling up into drifts, leading to school being cancelled a little bit before lunchtime. As I pushed out the front door with everyone else, all I could think was that I had a whole free afternoon, a ton of laundry that needed doing, and a paper to hand in the next day. But instead of taking the bus straight home like I planned, I got off two stops early, right across the street from Luna Blu.
The snow had killed the lunch rush, so the restaurant was mostly empty, which made it easier to hear my dad, Chuckles, and Opal, who were in the party-and-event room just off the bar area. I could see them all gathered at a table, coffee mugs and papers spread out all around them. My dad looked tired, Opal tense. Clearly, the magic wand hadn’t materialized.
I walked through the dining room, to the door that led to the stairs. As soon as I opened it, I heard voices.
“. . . totally doable,” Dave was saying as he came into view. Deb, still in her coat, scarf, and mittens, was standing beside him, both of them studying the boxes of model parts. “Complicated, yes. But doable.”
“All that counts is the doable part,” she said, glancing around the room. When she saw me, her face brightened. “Hey! I didn’t know you were coming!”
Neither did I, I thought. “I had a hankering to serve my community,” I told her, just as Dave turned around to look at me as well. “What are we doing?”
“Just getting together a game plan,” Deb said, pulling off her mittens. “Did you have any ideas about the best way to proceed? ”
I walked over, standing beside her, feeling Dave watching me. I thought of that morning again, the solid circle on his wrist, the same one I’d been holding on to for dear life as we slid across the ice. He’s not my type, some voice in my head said, but it had been so long, I didn’t even know what that meant anymore. Or if this girl, the one I was now, even had a type at all.
“Nope,” I said, glancing at him. “Let’s just start and see what happens.”
Fifteen minutes later, a meeting was called.
“Okay, look.” Deb’s face was dead serious. “I know I just joined this project, and I don’t want to offend anyone. But I’m going to be honest. I think you’ve been going about this all wrong.”
“I’m offended,” Dave told her flatly.
Her eyes widened. “Oh, no. Really? I’m so—”
“I’m also joking,” he said.
“Oh, okay. Whew!” She smiled, her cheeks flushing. “Let me start by just saying that I’m so glad you invited me here. I love this kind of stuff. When I was a kid, I was crazy for miniatures.”
“Miniatures?” I asked.
“You know, dollhouses and such. I especially loved historical stuff. Tiny re-creations of Revolutionary War cottages, Victorian orphanages. That kind of thing.”
“Orphanages?” Dave said.
“Sure.” She blinked. “What? Anyone can have a dollhouse. I was more creative with my play.”
“Dave was, too,” I told her. “He was into model trains.”
“It was not trains,” Dave said, annoyed. “It was war staging, and very serious.”
“Oh, I loved war staging!” Deb told him. “That’s how I ended up with all my orphans.”
I just looked at both of them. “What kind of childhood did you people have?”
“The bad kind,” Deb replied, simply, matter-of-factly. She slid off her jacket, folded it neatly, and put it with her purse on a nearby table. “We were always broke, Mom and Dad didn’t get along. My world was messed up. So I liked being able to make other ones.”
I looked at her, realizing this was the most she’d ever volunteered about her home life. “Wow,” I said.
Dave shrugged. “I just liked battles.”
“Who doesn’t?” Deb replied, already moving on. “Anyway, I really feel, from my experience with large model and miniature structures, that the best approach in construction is the pinwheel method. And what you have going here is total chessboard.”
We both just looked at her. “Right,” Dave said finally. “Well, of course.”
“So honestly,” she continued as I shot him a look, trying not to laugh, “I think we need a total re-approach to the entire project. Are those the directions?”
“Yeah,” I told her, picking up the thick manual by my feet.
“Great! Can I see?”
I handed them over, and she immediately took them to the table, spreading them out. Within seconds, she was bent over the pages, deep in thought, drumming on her lip with one finger.
“Can I tell you something?” Dave whispered to me. “I love Deb. She’s a total freak. And I mean that in a good way.”
“I know,” I said. “Every day she kind of blows my mind.”
It was true. Deb might have been a spazzer freak, speed-metal drummer, tattoo expert, and constructor of orphanages. What she wasn’t was timid. When she took something over, she took it over.
“Think wheel,” she kept say
ing to me as I stood over the model, holding a house in one hand. “We start in the middle, at the hub, then work our way out from the center, around and around.”
“We were just kind of putting things in as we pulled them out of the boxes,” I told her.
“I know. I could tell the first moment I saw this thing.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “But don’t feel bad, okay? That’s a beginner’s mistake. If you kept it up, though, you’d end up climbing over things, houses piercing your knees, kicking fire hydrants off accidentally. It would be a serious mess. Trust me.”
I did, so I followed her direction. Gone were the pick-apiece, put-it-together, find-its-place days. Already, she’d developed her own system and fetched a red pen from her purse to adapt the directions accordingly, and by an hour in, she had us running like a machine. She gathered the pieces for each area of the pinwheel—she termed them “sectors”—which Dave then assembled, and I attached to their proper spot. Create, Assemble, Attach. Or, as Deb called it, CAA. I fully expected her to make up T-shirts or hats with this slogan by our next meeting.
“You have to admit,” I said to Dave when she was across the room on her cell phone, calling the toll-free-questions line at Model Community Ventures for the second time for clarification on one of the directions, “she’s good at this.”
“Good?” he replied, snapping a roof on a building. “More like destined. She makes us look like a bunch of fumbling idiots.”
“Speak for yourself,” I said. “She said my approach was promising, for a beginner.”
“Oh, don’t kid yourself.She’s just being nice.” He picked up another piece of plastic. “When you were in the bathroom, she told me your sectors are sadly lacking.”
“That is not true! My sectors are perfect.”
“You call that perfect? It’s total chessboard.”
I made a face, then poked him, and he poked me back. He was laughing as I walked back to the model, bending down to inspect my sector. Which looked just fine. I thought.
“. . . of course! No, thank you. I’m sure we’ll talk again. Okay! Bye!” Deb snapped her phone shut, then sighed. “I swear, Marion is so nice.”