I definitely do not
22
MACKIE
April is goingto be the reason I break.
I’m sitting in the parking lot of the arena with the engine off, chewing my thumbnail down to nothing. I just spent forty-five minutes inside pretending to interview the equipment manager about stick tape brands because I needed a reason to be in the building. The reason is six-one and pretends I don’t exist.
The regular season ends in six days. Then playoffs. Then we tell him. Every time I think about it my brain fast-forwards through the conversation and lands on my dad’s face and I can’t get past that part. I can imagine the words. I can’t imagine what his eyes are going to look like.
My mom knows. She’s known since Vancouver, maybe before. Even though she hasn’t said anything directly since the midnight comment she’s started doing this thing where she doesn’t ask where I’m going on weeknights and once, exactly once, she looked at me across the kitchen and said “he seems like a sweet boy” and then went back to chopping onions.
Kara’s been my alibi forty-three times since January and I’m pretty sure she’s keeping a spreadsheet with columns for date,excuse used, parent the excuse was given to, and a scoring system for how much I’m going to owe her depending on my dad’s reaction.
“You look like garbage,” she tells me on FaceTime. She’s lying on her bed eating chips and I’m still sitting in the arena parking lot with my seatbelt on like a person who has her life together.
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. Bags under your eyes. Hair situation. And you’ve been biting your nails again.” I look at my nails. She’s right. They’re destroyed. “How many more games?”
“Three regular season. Then playoffs start.”
“And then you tell your dad.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Mackie.” She props her phone up, which means I’m about to get the Kara Court treatment. Hands together, full prosecution mode. “You need to do something that has nothing to do with him, the team, or the secret. You need to go do something stupid and fun and completely pointless that has nothing to do with any of this. Go to a concert. Get a tattoo. Drive really fast somewhere.”
I’m barely listening because she just gave me permission and she doesn’t even know it yet.
I textZach from the parking garage of his building.
He comes downstairs in sweats and a hoodie and stops when he sees me leaning against the driver’s side of his Mustang. “No.”
I watch him run the probability of his car being damaged (low, I’m an excellent driver), of him having a heart attack in the passenger seat (moderate to high), of me dropping this and suggesting something safer (zero).
“You said ‘maybe some night.’ It’s tonight. I’m cashing in.”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere you can’t say no.”
The Mustang rumbles under me when I turn it on and I feel it in my entire body, a low vibration through the steering wheel and up my arms and into my chest. This car wants to move. It’s been wanting to move since he bought it and he’s been driving it like a grandmother on the way to a doctor’s appointment.
I pull out carefully, obeying every traffic law, both hands on the wheel, checking every mirror, because the first five minutes are about trust. I need him to stop bracing himself against the center console with his hand, which is adorable and also insulting. We take the route toward the industrial district I’ve been to twice before with Kara and her brother in his Civic. The road is the same: straight, flat, and empty enough to breathe.
“Where are we going?” Zach says. He’s trying to sound casual but his hand is still gripping the door.
“You’ll see.”
I turn down the access road and that’s when he sees it. Two cars launch at the far end of the strip and the sound hits us a second later, engines screaming, as one pulls ahead and the crowd erupts. I watch them blast past us and disappear around the curve and my hands are tight on the wheel and my heart is already going.
The strip clears. People drift back to their spots along the sides. A car rolls up to the starting line—some modified hatchback, low and loud, revving in place. Nobody pulls up next to it. The spot is open.
“Mackie, no.”
“Zach, yes.”
