Page 3 of Crew Girl

“Thanks, Mom.” They had just reached the ninth circle of hell.

CAM

“You stay here, Dad,” Cam insisted. “I’ll get the tires.” He pushed himself up and out of the mechanic’s well. “He’ll never know the difference.”

Cam’s dad, Oren Dillinger, wasn’t so sure. Taking off his cap and giving his chestnut-brown mop of hair Cam had inherited a scrub was the giveaway. “He was pretty insistent that he wanted me to pick them up.”

Before his dad could say the customer was always right, Cam jumped in. “The fact you’re able to fix that idiot’s car in two days is a miracle in and of itself. Any other town on the coast and he’d be stuck in a rental for weeks. It’s not your fault he was stupid enough to try bunny-hopping speed bumps in a sports car.”

Cam’s dad gave him a sharp look. It matched his tone. “They’re customers, son. Not idiots.”

“I know. Their mistakes keep us in steak.” It was a refrain his dad had been saying since he was a kid. Cam never pointed out the obvious: The Dillinger family dinner table wasn’t exactly groaning under a platter of grilled tomahawks every night. But he got it. Dissing a rich person with an income that sounded like a once-in-a-lifetime lottery win for making a mistake was no better than a rich person belittling a mechanic for having grease under their nails after fixing a car. They were all human. He sure as hell wasn’t perfect.

Either way, when this guy paid his bill, they could pay theirs.

He shrugged off his coveralls, remembered he was wearing his ankle-high steel toes when they were halfway down, debated taking them off, ruled it out, tied the arms around his hips. It wasn’t like he was going to run into someone from school. Everyone was away for the last few days of break and his social life was as nonexistent as the dodo bird. Between the shop, training, and finishing the books on his summer reading list, the only other thing he had time for was sleep.

He drained his water bottle, refilled it at the water cooler, then popped it in the fridge alongside the energy drinks he was going to bring to the lake. If, that is, he got to the lake. He wasn’t allowed to take boats out after eight and if he was going to get a two-hour rowing session in, he needed to get his butt in gear.

“Dad.” Cam held up a can of ginger ale, his favorite. “Want one?”

“Only if you don’t throw it like you did the last time.”

They shared a laugh. Working with his dad full-time had been great. Not that he’d thought it would be bad or anything. It was more that he’d wanted his dad to know he could handle the responsibility, and over the summer had proved it.

He walked over to the pit, squatted down, and handed the soda to him with a flourish, like he was presenting a fine wine.

“Thank you, son.” Oren took the drink and popped the top, draining most of it in one. “Right,” he said, after finishing the rest. “Better get back to it.”

After squishing the can, he shot it at the recycling can, which had a basketball hoop over it. He missed.

“Should’ve put the pit closer,” they said in tandem.

A running family joke.

The pit, which let the mechanics walk underneath cars safely, was the one upgrade Cam’s mom had made nonnegotiable when she and Oren had started talking about getting married. “I don’t want to come in one day and find you flat as a pancake.” She’d even insisted he use the money he’d been saving for her engagement ring.

“The only thing of value to me is you two,” she said whenever Dad tried to put a bit aside to get her one instead of paying a bill. “Besides,” she would say, “do you really think a diamond is going to make our lives better?”

“Not in the slightest,” Oren had said once, giving her an innocent smile. “There’s only one thing that could make my life better.”

“What?” Cam’s mom had demanded.

“We should’ve moved the pit closer to the recycling can. I keep getting rim shots.”

It had taken her a beat to figure out he was kidding, but when she had, it was like always. They’d laughed themselves silly and he’d pulled her onto his lap, which even young Cam knew was his cue to get the hell out of there. It was cool his parents were still madly in love, but he had no interest in watching them mash on each other. Gross.

He scooped up his dad’s can and slam-dunked it on his way to the office, where he punched the code into the office phone that forwarded calls to his cell. The fewer distractions his dad had the better. “You got Walt’s keys, Dad?” The shop truck was called Walt after the guy who gave it to them ages ago when he’d switched to a mobility scooter.

“On the board.”

The peg board was under the wall-mounted Rube Goldberg clock Cam had made from old car parts in his engineering class last year. His dad had thought it was genius. Cam only saw the things he’d do better if he did it again, but still, it did what it was supposed to. Tell the time.

His dad was always bragging about it to any customer stupid enough to mention it. “Cam’ll be the first Dillinger going to college,” he’d tell them. Mortifying. But also kind of cool. If it happened. “I’ll be back in half an hour, Dad. Okay? Forty minutes, tops.”

Oren looked at the clock and frowned. “It’s four o’clock. I thought you were going down to the lake.”

He started unwrapping the oil-stained blister tape on his right hand. He probably wouldn’t make it. Lying about it wouldn’t work. Especially if there was eye contact. “Lake’ll be there after I get the tires.”