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I can’t help but crack a smile when I answer, “I wasn’t going to say it, Sarah.”
She shifts her body, turning to face me. “What’s gotten into you? Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Youwantme to be mean?”
“No, you idiot. I just feel like you’re giving me whiplash. You’re either decent towards me or you’re cruel. I don’t like your mood swings.”
“It’s no picnic having my moods either, if that makes you feel any better...Although I’m sure it doesn’t.” She doesn’t respond. “I’m sorry, all right?”
“Is it me? Something I did?”
I swallow my pride and answer her truthfully. “It’s me. Half the time when I’m shooting my mouth off I’m just mad at myself, no one else.”
“Your uncle told me why you dropped out of school in tenth grade.” When I look over to her with wide eyes, she looks afraid. “Don’t get mad at him. It was me...I was being nosey.”
Fucking Danny.
Gotta say, I’m surprised. He’s not one to blab or talk behind other peoples’ backs. My dropping out was a colossal disappointment, I knew that, but it must still be eating at him if he’s confiding in a kid at the horse stable.
Mr. Pippens. Just picturing his face has me gripping the steering wheel hard. I’m talking out loud but not really even talking to Sarah once I start down memory lane. “I bet the teachers at your school would never accuse a student of plagiarizing an essay.”
“They would if it was warranted. But they wouldn’t do it without just cause. They’d get their ass handed to them if they were wrong.”
“Mr. Pippens didn’t give it a second thought before calling me a liar.”
“That’s so unfair. And I don’t know what happened, but I’d bet everything I have that you wouldn’t cheat on an assignment. You’d have no need to cheat.”
“You know the worst part?”
“Tell me.”
“He made a grammatical error in his critique. The dumb ass wrote, ‘Checking your work, this essay is nothing more than plagiarized garbage.’
When she doesn’t respond, I clarify. “Theessaydidn’t check the work. That’s a dangling participle!”
“Thatis the part of the story that got you riled up?”
“The point is, he can’t even write a grammatically correct accusation. Do you not get the irony?”
“That’s beside the point and you know it. The point is that he shamed you, and it must have hurt.”
“People look at you, they judge where you come from, what clothes you wear, the car you drive.” I look down to the console separating me from Sarah. The console that pops open if my elbow isn’t resting against it. The one with faded and torn leather marring its surface. This car is a piece of crap. “Sometimes I feel trapped, do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“And that essay he tore up in front of me? I worked on it for two weeks, edited it so many times I could probably still recite it word for word.”
“What was it about?”
“My father, and a trip he took me on when I was around nine years old.”
“Are you close to your dad?” she asks.
I keep my eyes on the road when I answer, “I haven’t seen him since that day.”
“Oh.” She looks wounded on my behalf.
“It’s fine. Don’t go feeling sorry for me. It makes me mad.” I say that last part as a joke but it falls flat.
