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“Drive her home,” I repeated, and the knot in my stomach got tighter, seemed like it was laughing at me. And then she stood up,actuallylaughing at me, actually winning when there was no way in the world she could win.
“You heard him. Get your ass home, let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I didn’t skip a lot of school.You’d probably think I would, being a scumbag and everything, but I kind of needed the food and the air and the heat and the grades and I guess even the socialization sometimes. But I did know the quickest way out where the fewest amount of people were going to see us, and seeing as how we were minutes away from the bell ringing and the halls filling up and god-only-fucking-knows-what happening, I led her away from the front doors and down past the art room, and out the back door to the old driver’s ed parking lot that nobody used anymore.
Except the half a dozen kids leaning on the row of crowd barricades they kept stacked back there for games and parades and shit. They all bolted head-up, shoulders-back, and tucked their vapes in their pockets until they realized we weren’t teachers, and then slouched back to stoner posture and stared while we walked out.
It was fucking weird she wasn’t talking, and I wasn’t sure if it was a psych-me-out thing or a so-out-of-it-she-forgot-the-point-of-coming-here thing or a hold-it-together-and-act-like-a-respectable-parent thing. Could have been worse. Had been worse. If I could just get her home and dump her off, I could pretend none of this had ever happened.
I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to Caleb. Just in case, I guess, although I wasn’t going to form real thoughts about what that case might be.
Have to take her home. Back soon.
I shoved it back in my pocket before he texted a response I couldn’t handle looking at right now. Not taking follow up questions at this time.
Technically I’d been driving since I was thirteen, since my mom showed up at Ellis’s in the middle of the night, spinning on something I’d never seen since. It was back when his dad still drove weeks at a time and I’d sleep over for stretches in the summer, playing Star Raider and Dust Bowl and Madden, and we’d live on Mountain Dew and thirty-three-cent burritos his dad packed into the deep freeze by the hundreds.
She’d scared the shit out of us, banging on the door at three am, rolling on some paranoid delusion shit and I just bolted her out to the car as quick as I could, acting like everything was cool. She’d left the lights on and the keys in it, parked half on his dead lawn, and when she slid into the passenger’s side and passed out, I didn’t see any choice but to fake my way through it and drive home, going about ten miles an hour in the dark, sure I was going to kill us or get pulled over, shaking the whole time.
Honestly, I wasn’t a good driver, then or now, and I was shaking just as bad and driving about as slow as I took her piece of shit car out onto the street, listening to it grind when I turned the corner.
“Jesus Christ, Logan, you drive like an old lady,” she snapped, bolting back into bitch mode like I’d suddenly woken her up, and yeah, I remembered this, remembered being treated like garbage like it had never stopped. “Do you even have your fucking license?”
You’d think she’d know the answer to that, but I bet she didn’t.
I ignored her and focused on the road the best I could, but she didn’t make it easy. She didn’t make anything easy. I could feel my phone vibrating in my pocket over and over, definitely had to be Caleb asking what the fuck I was doing, and hell if I knew. Somehow in a building full of adults, I was the designated driver. Because why not. Why shouldn’t this be my life.
“Are you listening to me?” she asked, reaching over and smacking me hard on the back of the head. She was like Ellis with fingernails. Except I just wanted to punch Ellis when he did that shit, not run off the road into a tree. Plus as shitty as it was, as funny as it wasn’t, he really was joking around when he did that stuff. She was trying to draw blood.
“Jesus, fucking stop, I’m driving,” I told her, ducking to the side too late.
“This is not driving. You’re pedaling like this is a goddamn tricycle. Drive like a man or get out. Or do you even know what a man acts like? I really fucking hope, at the very least, you’re not the girl in this little romance you’ve got going on. You’re embarrassing now, but Jesus Christ.”
I stopped at the intersection in front of the school, took a breath and closed my eyes and thought about stopping here with Caleb. His hand on my knee and him sayingI want you, fuck everybody else. Believing for a second that maybe I’d never go back the other direction, but here I was because fucking obviously.
That hadn’t seemed real then and it didn’t seem real now, but somehow this did. I slipped right back into thisshe’s your mom, you deal with herrole, just taking the hits over and over like no one had ever plucked me out. I was roasting with humiliation and freezing at the same time, shivering and so sick my stomach hurt. It was like being exposed to something you thought you’d gotten immune to, except you were so wrong and now you were going to die.
“I’ll tell you one thing, wherever you picked this up, it wasn’t from me. This isn’tmyfault. I broughtrealmen around you. Enrolled you in football. None of that pussy boy scout shit feeding birds, I taught you to be a fucking man. And this is what you do. Run away like some spoiled fairy princess like you have any…” She swung her hands around, banging into me and into the window, barely coherent and getting spun out when she couldn’t think of the insult she wanted.
I could only understand her because I spoke about sixteen different versions of fucked up. This one was speedy shit and booze, easy to spot— slurry and manic and absolutely reeking of perfume to cover up the adrenaline sweat and vodka, and some sickly sweet mixer, probably fucking fruit punch, and just thinking about that made me gag, bringing up memories I really didn’t want.
“Permission,” she finally said, finding the word she was searching for, filling the whole car with it. “Like you have permission to leave my fucking house, like you have any rights.Igive you rights.”
“You don’t give me shit. I don’t need your permission to leave.”
“We’ll see. We’ll just fucking see. You heard your teachers. You come home today.”
I didn’t even know if she thought that had happened or thought she could make me believe that happened, but the fucked up part was that I could feel it taking hold in my gut like it was the truth. Like it didn’t matter that I had half a closet and half a dresser and a new toothbrush and new underwear and a snack in the fridge with my name on it, the whole world knew where Ireallybelonged.
Like maybe York and Coach T really had said that. Maybe if I checked the phone in my pocket the texts from Caleb would sayGood, take her home and stay there. I didn’t really believe any of that, but at the same time, I couldn’tstopbelieving it.
Turning onto my street was some of the same triggering deja vu shit, and I saw the last few weeks spilled out all over— getting home too early, getting home too late, getting locked out and knocked around, and everything getting worse and worse until the day Caleb showed up and then refused to leave without me. I didn’t know who the fuck lived here, but it couldn’t be me.
I needed to go back to school. I was missing my last study hall, I was missing everything, and this so wasn’t fair. Why did I have to deal with this? Why did I have to come here again? Why was this my responsibility?
I pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine, yanking out her keys and handing them to her as I shoved open the door, pushing hard against the metal groan and climbing out. “Okay. You’re home. I have to go back to school.”
