Nervous or not, I had the truck in drive.
“That’s it, kid,” Metal Pete yelled as I turned the wheel at the end of the row.
Driving wasn’t all that hard. Everything from my months of training with Mom and Dad came back in that first lap around the row. I could have walked faster than I was driving, but I knew, even at ten miles per hour, that not driving was just another one of those things I’d built into a fortress of impossibility. After I took a few loops around the rows, I shifted to neutral, and wrote the original list in the dashboard dust.
1. Wear a tank top in public (Check-ish)
2. Walk the line at graduation (Not yet)
3. Forgive Gina (Check) and Gray (Not checked). And tell them the truth. (Double check)
4. Stop following. Start leading. (?—If I pulled this off)
5. Drive a car again (Bonus points)
6. Kiss someone without flinching (Hell yeah)
7. Visit the Fountain of Youth (Maybe Thursday)
Holy wow, this was serious progress. Feeling slightly confident from my successes, I added one more thing:
8. Confront Gray and Max about Big
Number eight needed to be on the list, regardless of the consequences. I finally knew I was strong enough to handle the truth, even if it was Max. I wanted it to be Gray, but I had a gut feeling it wasn’t. This had not been a year of getting what I wanted.
I drove cautiously back to Metal Pete, honking the S-10’s horn as I approached.
When I put the truck in park, Metal Pete leaned through the window, his eyes moist with pride. “You look like an old pro out there.”
“Yeah, a regular NASCAR goddess,” I joked. “I need to do this.”
“You need to try it on the real road. The interstate is a far cry from the yard.”
Fear descended on me.
Metal Pete turned his head and whistled. From under one of the old school buses, Headlight appeared. She loped lazily for two steps and then broke into a full gallop toward the truck.
“Take Headlight here over to Ferry Park and let her run around,” Metal Pete said. He gave me the assignment the same way he’d sent me on scavenger hunts in the Yard, with the confidence that I could do anything.
I leaned across the cab and opened the door. Without being told, Headlight hopped onto the bench beside me and lay her head down on my lap. Her foxlike ears pointed at the sky as Pete told her to be good for me.
“I’ll be right back,” I told him.
He nodded. “Call if you get stuck.” He tapped the hood twice, granting permission for me to leave.
I had to call.
I had to call the next day too.
The road and I were not yet friends, but we had more than ten hours on Thursday to get acquainted.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Some Emails to Max in El Salvador
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Date: May 29
Subject: One year
Max,
One month from today it will be a year.
Love,
Sadie
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Date: May 29
Subject: RE: One year
Max,
No, I think we should do something he’d love.
Sadie
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Date: May 29
Subject: RE: cemetery visit?
Max,
Honestly, I haven’t been back to the cemetery. I haven’t driven by the scene. I haven’t even been out to see the plaque they put up at Coast Memorial. But if you want to go, I will go with you.
Love,
Sadie
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Date: May 29
Subject: Willit Hill
Max,
It’s not the places that scare me. It’s letting him go. That sounds so stupid, because I know he’s already gone. But he isn’t. Not to me.
Love,
Sadie
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Date: May 29
Subject: the music of Trent
Max,
I miss his voice. I wish I didn’t have that “Hold on. Hold on. Hold on” chorus in my head.
Love,
Sadie
From:
[email protected] To:
[email protected] Date: May 29
Subject:
Max,
I’m sure your call cost a million dollars, but for tonight, I have your sweet voice stuck in my head now. This year took away many things, but it was generous, too. I have you, and I’ll never be sorry about that.
Sadie
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The morning of the anniversary I woke up with a tank on my chest and shrapnel in my brain.
I’d spent most of the night flipping over and over in bed, unsettled and restless, so tired my eyes wouldn’t close. Four hundred games of phone solitaire later, I’d fallen asleep and awakened with a jolt an hour later. Anticipation and sleep were sworn enemies.
I turned on the light, thinking I might read. With all my tossing and turning, I’d knocked Big out of the bed. When I leaned over to pick him up, a piece of paper fell out.
Gray Garrison is my one true love.
The timing on that one was from early sophomore year. I remembered how sharp and focused that feeling had been. He’d sent me a whole bunch of YouTube links to Peter and the Starcatcher. It wasn’t a huge gift; it was the way he understood me and my passions.
Gray had agreed to go road-tripping with me today for the same reason.
I removed the next piece from Big and then the next and the next until he was empty, and I’d worn memory lane into a dirt path.
These paper memories were a time machine, but they weren’t for a time I wanted to revisit. I’d come through them, and I didn’t want to go back. Because Gray’s vase was a relic from the same time period, I put the papers inside and set Big on my shelf, not quite ready to let an old friend go. It felt wrong to keep the vase in my room, so I padded down the hallway to the closet and put it inside.
That wasn’t far enough away. I wanted the papers gone-gone, and I knew the perfect place to put them.
Even though it was four in the morning, I walked outside in my bare feet, clutching the vase, and started the scooter. The drive to the foot of Willit Hill took me ten minutes.
No one had ever put up a cross or a sign that said what happened here, but the pine trees bore the evidence. Even the trees had scars. I froze on the side of the road, realizing I hadn’t been back here in a year.
Mom had avoided this road.
Dad had avoided this road.
I had avoided this road.
I wasn’t avoiding it anymore. I left the scooter by the rumble strip and hiked down to the site of the accident, the ground punishing my feet. Balancing myself against the tree, I kneeled down as if I were in a cemetery, and I talked to Trent.
“It’s been a year. It’s been a really hard year without you. Losing you felt like jumping off the bridge and forgetting which way was up. I don’t think I’ll ever be over it, but I’m starting to find my way through it. Mom said when a person dies, you don’t get over it by forgetting; you get through it by remembering. I’ve been remembering everything lately.
“I told Max and Gray and Gina about you. They’re dealing. And you know, I think they would have dealt if you’d told them. You were worried about that, but they love you. Same as me. Max even spent some time with Chris. I thought you’d want to hear that. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find myself. Exploring. You were supposed to be with me for searches like that. Sometimes I can’t handle the injustice that you’re not. Sometimes, I stand still
while the world moves. You’d hate it. You’d hate this version of me.
“So I want you to know . . . today, I’m starting over. Without you.
“I’m going to leave something to keep you company. You were the first one to stuff a fortune inside Big. And practically everything in him is what you loved about me and our friends. I’m going to leave them here, with you.”
I dug down into the pile of pine needles and made a place for the vase.
I covered it up with needles.
I covered it up with tears.
And I told my friend good-bye.
When I listened for his voice, for that chorus of last words, there was only silence.
I guess he’d finally said good-bye too.
The stars were still out as I climbed the ditch to the Spree. I gazed up at the constellations, allowing myself a moment of observation and, perhaps, hesitation. I remembered a conversation Trent and I had when we were kids.
He’d just come back from space camp in Huntsville, and we were lying on the dock for an hour of Star Time.
“Sadie, did you know we can see nineteen trillion miles with our eyes? Nineteen trillion miles.”
This clearly impressed him. He went on about it, pointing out the stars and telling how far they were from Earth. One week at space camp hardly made him an expert, but he didn’t know that.
Space camp or no, I wanted to show him it mattered to me. That I’d done my own space camp that week with Google and books from the library.
“Cool. Watch this,” I told him.
I lifted my thumb into the air, closed my left eye, and made Orion disappear. “Did you know Neil Armstrong did this after he got into space?”
“Did what? Gave Earth a thumbs-up?” he asked, interested.
I loved that I knew something he didn’t.
“Yeah, so Armstrong said he realized that from where he was in space he could lift his thumb into the air and make all of Earth disappear. He said he didn’t feel like a giant, though. I read it in a book while you were gone.”
Trent lifted his thumb into the air, closed one eye, and blocked out the Big Dipper.
“Crazy,” he said. “Sometimes a small thing is bigger than a big thing.”
The wisdom of Neil Armstrong, Star Time, and a thirteen-year-old came back to me as I stared up at a perfect sky, balanced with equal parts light and dark.
I held my thumb out to the past until I couldn’t see it anymore, and then I drove home.
Sometimes a small thing is bigger than a big thing.
I’d just done a small thing.
CHAPTER FORTY
Max knocked on my window at six thirty a.m.
I’d come home from Willit Hill and napped.
“Hop to it, Kingston,” Max told me when I raised the window a crack.
“I’m coming. I’m coming.”
I rushed around for five minutes doing the necessary things—like putting on clean underwear and deodorant, and packing essentials—and five minutes doing totally unnecessary things, like changing clothes and hairstyles several times. I shoved Big, what was left of him, deep in my bag.
“We’re not going to the third world,” Max said from his perch in the window when he saw my bag.
“Cut me some slack. I rarely leave my street.”
He kissed my cheek and said, “Speaking of. You’d better tell them”—he pointed toward my parents’ room—“where we’re going.”
I wrote Mom and Dad a note that could warrant either a high five or a What the hell? and left it on the bar. They wanted my driving status out of neutral, but St. Augustine wasn’t exactly one city over. As far as they knew, I hadn’t even made it to the bridge by myself, and that was only down the street. So in a moment of overkill, I added a big smiley face to sell them on my mental state.
I’m happy. I’m good with this. I can drive ten hours round-trip.
I expected a phone call in T-minus soon.
As Max and I drove the Spree down our street, the first hint of sunbeams struck the pale-gray sky in a brilliant effort. The houses glowed like color cards at a paint store in shades of peach, tan, blue, and aquamarine. There was a white stucco house shaped like a dome that had been rebuilt several times. Some places still had blue tarps secured to the roof with two-by-fours, the aftermath of the storm that tackled the dome.
But they were all still here.
So was I.
And in a few minutes, I’d sit behind the wheel and drive to St. Augustine. When I was a kid, I marveled at airplanes and space shuttles. I watched fighter jets from Eglin Air Force Base run routes out to sea, leaving white traceable contrails against bright blue skies. Dad had even taken me to Cape Canaveral once to watch a launch. Those crafts seemed like impossibilities hurling through space. Cars had never dazzled me. They didn’t look like miracles with their wheels, engines, and speed. They were made of logic.
Until the accident.
Every day, the people around me got into vehicles and hurled their bodies down the road at high speeds. Didn’t they know that more people died in cars than in airplanes? Didn’t they know Trent was one of them? That Max and I almost were? I didn’t think they did. They texted and talked on the phone and ate take-out and changed their iPods from one song to another.
Driving needed a little more formal dining room and a little less backyard toy box. That fear was what started me running. My feet felt pretty damn safe.
But I couldn’t walk to St. Augustine.
“You’re quiet,” Max said.
“So are you.”
“Might be a quiet sort of day,” he said.
Gina and Gray were parked outside Metal Pete’s gate when we arrived. I’d left it to Gina to explain the day to Gray, and she’d promised me he was on board. We greeted one another cautiously. There was none of the humor of chicken-fighting and camping as we walked into the yard.
“Why can’t we just go in Gina’s car?” Gray asked.
“Because I want to drive.”
Everyone stopped in the middle of the dirt lane. Even Max.
“Why did you think we were here?” I said, jangling the keys as I walked my friends down the first row toward the S-10.
“No idea,” Gray said.
“Ritual,” Max said cautiously.
I read his mind. He clearly thought I was making the other two see the Yaris before we drove off together.
“I’ve been practicing.” I left out the for two days part.
Gina wrapped me up in a hug and said, “You can do this.”
“Thanks, buddy,” I said, allowing the praise to give me courage.
My practicing didn’t seem to quell Gray’s or Max’s fears. The discomfort amped up again when I showed them the extended-cab truck that was our vehicle for the day.
“You want us to ride in that for ten—” Gray stopped himself.
If the tone had been lighter and the circumstances had been a little different, his agitation would have been funny. Here and now, it annoyed me, and he knew it. The four of us climbed into the truck, Max and me in the front, Gina and Gray facing each other in the back. The space was so tight, their knees touched. When I fastened my seat belt, Max checked on me.
You okay? he mouthed.
A posse ad esse, I mouthed back.
He nodded, and I turned the key.
“You guys ready?” I asked.
No one answered. Verbally or nonverbally. No one breathed when I backed out of the space. As I put the truck in drive, it felt as if someone had tied my throat in a knot. A cold bead of sweat slipped down my back. My knees trembled so fiercely, I was terrified to take my foot off the brake.
Gray was the one who broke my panic. He leaned into the space between the two headrests and said, “God, I hope no one needs Gina’s tires or hubcaps while we’re gone.”
We all laughed nervously, and I put my foot on the gas.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Driving was much harder to do when other cars (that moved) were invo
lved and there was an audience. By the time I got to the I-10 ramp, I still hadn’t gone more than forty-five miles per hour, and no one had said a word.
Max occupied himself by drumming out rhythms on the window. Gina sang along to the radio, and Gray sat so close to the window that I couldn’t see him in the rearview, which was probably a good thing. Mostly, I gripped the steering wheel for dear life and prayed every prayer I knew. Fear was awkward. It was hard to be scared of something that everyone else was comfortable with.
“You’ll have to go faster on the interstate,” Max said carefully.
I knew that.
I just didn’t know if I could.
Every time I accelerated, we lurched forward so fast that I took my foot off the pedal altogether. With all the starts and stops, we moved like a broken ride at the county fair.
“I’ll try,” I told him.
Mom chose that moment to call.
“Want me to answer?” Max asked.
I nodded, and he rummaged through my bag until he found my phone in the bottom. His eyebrows rose at the sight of Big. On what must have been the last ring, he hit the button and said, “Hi, Mrs. Kingston. This is Max.”
Mom said something. I couldn’t hear what, but Max told her, “She’s driving right now.”
I heard her squeal. Bad squeal? Good squeal? Angry squeal? I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road to see Max’s response.
A semi roared by me, shaking the truck. Behind the semi, a woman driving a Hummer laid on the horn and jerked into the middle lane.
“Shit. People are crazy,” I yelled.
Max cupped the phone. “Your mom says, ‘Language.’”
I exhaled a very weak laugh, and drove over the rumble strip and into the emergency lane. Releasing the wheel wasn’t easy. My knuckles ached with the strain of the few miles we’d traveled.
Max handed me the phone. “Hi, Mom,” I said, once I had my voice at an even keel.
“Sadie, where are you guys?”
“On I-10.”
Because my mom was terrible at whispering, I heard her repeat this to Dad. He was equally bad, so I heard my dad say, “Ask her if she’s okay.”