Along for the Ride (18 page)

We were both so filthy, standing there, beans in our hair, food all over our clothes. It was the last moment you’d think would mean anything, and yet somehow, it did. Like only in all this chaos could it finally feel right to say the one thing I’d wanted to, all along.

‘I’m really sorry about your friend,’ I told him.

Eli nodded slowly. He kept his eyes right on me, not wavering a bit, as he said, ‘Thanks.’

Outside, I could hear someone still shrieking, other battles going on. But in the bright light of the kitchen, it was just us. The way it had been those other nights, yet suddenly something felt different. Not like we’d changed so much as that we could. And might.

I was looking right at Eli, thinking this, and he was staring right back at me, and it was suddenly so easy to imagine myself reaching my hand forward to brush his hair from his face. It was all there: how his skin would feel against my fingertips, the strands against my palm, his hands rising up to my waist. Like it was already happening, and then, suddenly, I heard the door bang behind me.

‘Hey,’ Adam called out, and I turned to see him holding up the camera again, the lens pointing right at us. ‘Smile!’

As the shutter snapped, I knew it was likely I’d never see this picture. But even if I did, it wouldn’t come close to capturing everything I was feeling right then. If I ever did get a copy, I already had the perfect place for it: a blue frame, a few words etched beneath. The best of times.

      Chapter

      TEN

‘Boot cut or boyfriend fit?’

There was a pause. Then, ‘Which do you think looks better?’

‘You know, it’s not an either/or kind of thing. It’s more about how you want your butt to look.’

I sighed, then put the deposit book into the safe and pushed the door shut with my foot. Another day, another opportunity to hear Maggie go on about the gospel of denim. I liked her and all – surprising as that was – but I still had trouble stomaching the seriously girly stuff. Like this.

‘See?’ I heard her say a moment later as the customer emerged again from the fitting room. ‘The boot gives you that nice flow from thigh to ankle. The upturn at the cuff draws your eye right to it, rather than other areas.’

‘Other areas,’ the woman grumbled, ‘are my problem.’

‘Mine, too.’ Maggie sighed. ‘But the boyfriend fit has its strengths also. So you should try them and we’ll compare.’

The woman said something, although I couldn’t hear her over the front door chiming. A moment later, Esther came into the office. She had on army pants and a black tank top, and her expression was grave as she flopped into the chair behind me without comment.

‘Hey,’ I said to her. ‘Are you –’

Maggie suddenly appeared in the open door, eyes wide, her phone in one hand. She glanced at it, then at Esther. ‘I just got your text! Is this for real? Hildy is… dead?’

Esther nodded, still silent.

‘I can’t believe it.’ Maggie shook her head. ‘But she was, like, one of us. I mean, after all this time…’

I opened my mouth to say something, offer some kind of condolence. But before I could, Esther finally spoke. ‘I know,’ she said, her voice tight. ‘She was a great car.’

Outside, the fitting-room door swung open again. ‘Car?’ I asked.

They both looked at me. ‘The best Jetta ever,’ Maggie said. ‘Hildy was our sole source of transportation in high school. She was one of the girls.’

‘Such a trooper,’ Esther agreed. ‘I bought her for three thousand bucks with eighty thousand miles on her, and she never let us down.’

‘Well,’ Maggie said, ‘I wouldn’t say that. What about that time on the interstate, on the way to the World of Waffles?’

Esther shot her a look. ‘Are you really going to bring that up? Now? At this moment?’

‘Sorry,’ Maggie said. Outside, the fitting room door swung open again. ‘Oh, crap. Hold on.’

She disappeared back down the hallway. A moment later, I heard the customer say, ‘I just don’t know about these. Now I feel like my ankles are huge.’

‘That’s just because you’re used to the flare,’ Maggie assured her. ‘But look at how good your thighs look!’

Esther tipped her head back, looking at the ceiling. I said, ‘So what now? You’re walking?’

‘Not an option,’ she said. ‘I leave for school soon, and I have to take a car with me. I’ve got some money saved, but not nearly enough.’

‘You could take out a loan.’

‘And be in more debt?’ She sighed. ‘I’m already going to be paying college off until I’m dead.’

‘I don’t know,’ I heard the customer say outside. ‘Neither have really looked right so far.’

‘That’s because finding the perfect jeans is a process,’ Maggie replied. ‘I told you, you have to find the ones that speak to you.’

I rolled my eyes again, picking up my pen and going back to my balance sheet. A moment later, I heard the customer go back into the fitting room, and Maggie reappeared in the office.

‘Okay, so let’s talk options,’ she said to Esther, who was still staring at the ceiling. ‘What about a loan?’

‘I’m already going to be paying off college until I’m dead,’ she repeated, her voice flat. ‘I guess I’ll just have to cash the savings bonds my grandparents gave me.’

‘Oh, Esther! I don’t know if that’s a good idea.’

I knew this really didn’t concern me, but I felt bad for Esther. So I figured someone should jump in to clarify. ‘She doesn’t want to be in more debt,’ I explained to Maggie, wishing there was a way to draw a parallel between this and jeans, somehow. ‘If she takes out a loan, she’ll owe more.’

Outside, the fitting room door banged open again. ‘I don’t know about these…’ I heard the customer say. ‘Are my legs supposed to look like sausages?’

‘No,’ Maggie called down to her, shaking her head. ‘Try the other boot cuts, the ones with the embellished pockets, okay?’

The door shut. Esther sighed. I said to Maggie, ‘More money borrowed is more money owed. It’s basic.’

‘True,’ Maggie agreed. ‘But a car is a consumable item, not an asset. Esther’s not investing the money she puts into it, because it will automatically begin to depreciate. So while it’s tempting to liquidate her savings, and cash in the bonds, the better bet is probably to take advantage of the rate you can get from the local credit union on a loan.’

‘You think?’ Esther asked.

‘Absolutely. I mean,’ she continued, ‘what is the rate right now, like, 5.99 percent or something? So you do that, and keep your bonds in savings where they retain their full market value. It’s a more cost-effective use of the money.’

I just looked at her. Who was this girl?

‘What about these?’ the customer called out.

Maggie glanced down the hallway, her face breaking into a big smile. ‘Oh, man,’ she said, clapping her hands. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think,’ the woman said, ‘that they’re speaking to me.’

Maggie laughed, and as I watched her head back down to the fitting rooms, I sat there, trying to process what I’d just seen. It wasn’t easy. In fact, later that night, when she came in before locking up, I was still thinking about it.

‘That financial stuff,’ I said to her as she slid the cash drawer onto the desk. ‘How did you know all that?’

She glanced up at me. ‘Oh, mostly from my riding days. My mom wasn’t exactly supportive of it as a hobby, so I had to finance my bikes and equipment and stuff.’

‘It’s pretty impressive.’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Too bad it’s not what impresses my mom.’

‘No?’ She shook her head. ‘What does, then?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe if I’d agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of riding jump bikes with a bunch of grungy boys. I’d always tell her, why can’t I do both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty, or into girly stuff or sports? Life shouldn’t be about the either/or. We’re capable of more than that, you know?’

Clearly, she was. Not that I’d seen it, really, until now. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That does make sense.’

She smiled, then grabbed her keys off the desk, sliding them into her pocket. ‘I’m going to go clean up the denim section while you finish up. Finding those slim boot cuts for that woman was work. But it was so worth it. Her butt looked
great
when she left here.’

‘I bet,’ I said, and then she was gone back down the hallway to fold. I sat there for a minute, in that pink and orange room, thinking about what impressed my mom, and the either/or I’d been stuck in for so long. Maybe it was true, and being a girl could be about interest rates and skinny jeans, riding bikes and wearing pink. Not about any one thing, but everything.

Over the next couple of weeks, I fell into the perfect routine. Mornings were for sleep, evenings for work. My nights were for Eli.

These days, I didn’t have to make it look like I was bumping into him accidentally. Instead, it was understood that we met each evening after I got off work at the Gas/ Gro, where we fueled up on both gas (coffee) and gro (you never knew what you might need) and planned our evening’s activities. Which meant errands, eating pie with Clyde, and working on my quest, one item at a time.

‘Really?’ I said, one night around one as we stood outside Tallyho, Leah’s favorite club. There was a neon sign in the window that said
HOLA MARGARITAS!
and a beefy, bored-looking guy sitting on a stool by the door, checking messages on his phone. ‘You think I need to do this?’

‘Yup,’ Eli said. ‘Hitting a club is a rite of passage. And you get extra points if it’s a bad club.’

‘But I don’t have an ID,’ I told him as we walked closer, passing a girl in a red dress, puffy eyed and stumbling.

‘You don’t need one.’

‘Are you sure?’

Instead of answering, he reached down and grabbed my hand, and I felt a jolt run through me. Since that night at the hot-dog party, we’d been closer, but this was the first real physical contact between us. I was so busy worrying about what it might mean that it took me a minute to realize how natural and easy his palm felt against mine. Like it wasn’t new at all, but something I’d done recently and often, that familiar.

‘Hey,’ Eli said to the bouncer as we approached. ‘What’s the cover?’

‘You got ID?’

Eli pulled out his wallet, then handed over his license. The guy glanced at it, then at him, before giving it back. ‘What about her?’

‘She forgot hers,’ Eli said. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll vouch for her.’

The guy gave him a flat look. ‘Honor system doesn’t fly here, sorry.’

‘I hear you,’ Eli replied. ‘But maybe you can make an exception.’

I expected the guy to react in some way, but if anything he looked even more bored than before. ‘No ID, no exceptions.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said to Eli. ‘Really.’

He held up his hand, quieting me. Then he said, ‘Look. We don’t want to drink. We don’t even want to stay long. Five minutes, max.’

The bouncer, now starting to look annoyed, said, ‘What part of no ID, no entry, do you not understand?’

‘What if I told you’ – Eli pressed on as I squirmed, worrying my palm was now entirely sticky against his – ‘that this was a quest?’

The guy just looked at him. Through the door, I could hear bass thumping, thumping. Finally he said, ‘What kind of quest?’

No way, I thought. There’s just no way.

‘She’s never done anything,’ Eli told him, gesturing at me. ‘No parties in high school, no prom, no homecoming. No social life, ever.’ The bouncer looked at me, and I tried to look adequately culturally stunted. ‘So we’re just, you know, trying to make up for lost stuff, one thing at a time. This is on the list.’

‘Tallyho is on the list?’

‘Going to a club is,’ Eli told him. ‘Not drinking at a club. Not even staying at a club. Just going.’

The bouncer looked at me again. He said, ‘For five minutes.’

‘Maybe even four,’ Eli replied.

I just stood there, feeling my heart beat, and then the guy was reaching for my hand, pulling a rubber stamp out from his chest pocket. He pressed it against mine, then gestured for Eli’s so he could do the same. ‘Stay away from the bar,’ he said. ‘And you’ve got five minutes.’

‘Awesome,’ Eli said, and with that, he was tugging me inside.

‘Wait,’ I said as we headed down a dark, narrow hallway that led to a room full of flashing lights, ‘how did you
do
that?’

‘I told you,’ he said over his shoulder. He had to yell over the music, which was just getting louder. ‘Everyone understands a quest.’

I wasn’t sure how to reply to this. Not that I could have anyway, as we emerged into the club, which was so loud I couldn’t hear anything, even my own voice. It was a single room, square, lined with booths on three sides, a bar on the other. The dance floor was in the middle, and it was packed with people: girls in tight shirts, holding beer bottles, guys with deep tans and faux-surfer gear shuffling their feet alongside them.

‘This is crazy,’ I yelled to Eli, who was still holding my hand. He either didn’t hear or just didn’t reply, though, pulling me alongside the dance floor.

I was trying to step over feet and purses, and barely succeeding, the floor thumping beneath me with every beat. The air felt thick and sticky, and smelled like perfume and smoke, and already I’d broken a sweat, even though we’d been in there for mere seconds. It was like being in a carnival fun house, but with a copious amount of hair gel.

‘Last dance!’ I heard a voice yell from somewhere overhead, filtering through the pounding music. ‘Grab someone and hit the floor, it’s already tomorrow!’

Suddenly, the song changed, in midbeat, to something slow with a more quiet, sensual beat. There was a bunch of hooting from somewhere on the floor, and the crowd there changed, with some people leaving, the remainders pairing up as new couples joined them. I was so immersed in watching this that when Eli suddenly hung a sharp left, pulling me into the crowd, I almost lost my footing and went down entirely.

‘Wait,’ I said as we brushed past one couple in mid-grope, followed by a guy and a girl totally grinding on each other. She was still holding her beer, the bottle dangling from two fingers. ‘I don’t know if I –’

He stopped walking. I pulled up short beside him, my hand still in his, and realized we were in the center of the floor, a bunch of spinning lights over our heads. I looked up at them, then at everyone around us, before turning back to him.

‘Come on,’ he said. Then he stepped forward, letting loose of my hand and sliding his arms down to my waist. ‘We’ve still got a good two minutes.’

I smiled at him, in spite of myself, and felt my feet step forward, closer. It came so naturally to put my arms around his neck, my fingers finding each other there. And just like that, we were dancing.