The Chance You Won't Return (2 page)

Then I heard something else — hissing, like someone using a can of hair spray. I held my breath. Someone was probably behind the boulder. But I was still too pissed to realize it was too early for stoners or couples.

A branch snapped under my clunky boot as I strode around the rock. “Hey,” someone said.

I hadn’t expected anyone to notice me, and my mind was still clouded by my mom and obnoxious senior guys. “What?” I snapped.

A crown of a close-cropped head popped up on the other side of the boulder. Jim Wiley stepped into view. I still wasn’t used to seeing him with his hair cut so short. Last year he wore it long, kind of shaggy. But the shortness worked; it made his cheekbones seem more carved and his lips softer. I’d spent the last few weeks admiring his cheekbones and lips during gym, the one class we shared. He’d already been one of the best-looking guys in school, and now he looked like some kind of Greek statue. He was tall like me and had startlingly light-blue eyes. Staring into them was like getting an electric shock, and I felt the hairs on my arm stand up.

In his hand was a can of spray paint. He stared at me for a second. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” I said, a little too eagerly. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here.” I wasn’t sure if he knew who I was. Most likely he recognized my general shape as someone he probably went to school with, or even more generally as someone who wasn’t going to bother him. But of course I knew who he was. Everyone at Oak Ridge did. Last year he became a school legend when he drove his parents’ car into the side of their house. After that, he disappeared for the rest of school year. Then in September he showed up, a junior again and kind of an icon.

He tried to hide the spray can behind his back, although I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like this was the principal’s car or anything. The boulder was already covered with decades of couples’ initials and swears.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” Another problem with not having a cell phone. “The bell’s probably going to ring soon.”

“Thanks, ah —”

I wasn’t sure if he was searching his memory for a name, but I put it out there anyway. “Alex.”

“Alex?” he said. “You’re a junior, right?”

“Yeah. We have gym together.”

He nodded and leaned against the boulder, shoulder jabbing the middle of someone’s spray-painted heart. The handwriting was sloppy, so it might have been lk loves sp. Some declaration of love. As far as I knew, Jim wasn’t dating anybody. Before he drove into his house, he always had a girlfriend. Now either girls didn’t know what to make of him or he wasn’t interested.

It was too quiet. “What’s with the spray paint?” I asked. “Did you write your initials?”

“Oh.” He glanced at the can like he was surprised to find it in his hand. “I was just messing around.”

I looked behind him to see if any of the graffiti matched the color on his can. One part did. I’d expected something quick and catchy like
FUCK YOU
or
OAK RIDGE SUCKS
, but it wasn’t even a word. It didn’t really look like anything — a bunch of sharp edges, curves, all in phosphorescent orange — but it felt deliberate.

“What does it say?”

He clicked the cap back on the aerosol can. “My initials. It was supposed to be this tag thing. But I can’t really do anything good yet.”

In the woods, with so many of the leaves fallen already and the ground bright with reds and yellows, his graffiti fit. The other names and colors faded into the rock. “It’s like a phoenix,” I said. Once the words were in the air, I wished I could grab them and stick them back under my tongue. Who said stuff like that, especially to Jim Wiley?

“A phoenix?”

“It’s this mythical creature —”

“Yeah, I know what it is,” he said.

I felt myself blushing. “The orange. It reminded me of fire.”

Jim nodded. “That’s actually what I was thinking about. The shape, I mean, not just the color, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s got this movement to it. There are edges, but they still have a kind of flow.”

“Right. Like watching a flame.”

“But with more control.”

“Yeah, that’s totally it.”

I’d barely heard Jim talk before, and now we were having this conversation about color and movement. Did he talk this way with everyone? I could have been the only person Jim Wiley talked to about this. My heart was beating fast. “You did a good job.” In the distance, I heard a shrill buzzing. “First bell.”

“Right. Thanks.” He picked up his backpack from the side of the boulder and slid the can of spray paint inside. “I probably would have missed homeroom if you hadn’t told me.”

“Oh, tragedy,” I said, and he smiled.

I thought he would walk ahead of me, but he kept pace, even though his strides were longer than mine. We didn’t talk until we passed through the front doors of the school. Then Jim said, “Later, Alex,” and headed down another hallway.

I tried not to notice kids looking at us. Tried to pretend this was a totally normal thing, Jim and I coming to school together. He was a legend, and I was barely anyone. I rushed to my locker, wondering if people were already inventing some kind of scandal about us.

When I told my mother I was the worst student in driver’s ed, I wasn’t lying. I’d driven over more cones than anyone else in our class, or anyone in any class before ours, as our instructor, Mr. Kane, liked to remind me. Two weeks earlier, I’d blown out a tire while driving over a curb. Instead of letting us have a free period, Mr. Kane had made us spend the last half hour of class learning how to change a flat. I hadn’t been allowed behind the wheel since.

“It’s your turn today,” Theresa told me as we climbed into the backseat of the ’97 Volvo station wagon that served as our student-driver mobile. Someone’s parents had donated it a decade ago, probably after their children refused to be seen in it. The dents I’d put into the fender weren’t the first. Even though Mr. Kane vacuumed the vinyl interior, there were still crumbs between the seats. After an hour, we’d smell like old skin and damp, stale bread.

“He’s not going to let me drive,” I said. It wasn’t fair, anyway. Most high schools cut driver’s ed ages ago, but our principal insisted that proper instruction could make for safer teen drivers. It obviously wasn’t doing anything for me. I slid into the middle seat, Theresa on my left and Caroline Lavale, in her First Presbyterian Ministry T-shirt, on my right. In the driver’s seat, Edward Baker was texting wildly.

“Mr. Kane has to let you,” Theresa said. “It would be like not giving you a test in math. You’d think,
Hey, great,
but then he wouldn’t pass you and you’d fail out of school and be stuck at home for the rest of your life. Do you really want that?”

“You want to see me drive through the fence.”

Theresa ignored me. “So you broke a tire. So what? You helped us learn a valuable lesson about car safety.” She leaned across me. “Isn’t that right, Caroline? Did you know how to change a tire before Mr. Kane showed us?”

“Not exactly,” she said.

“There you go.”

Mr. Kane eased himself into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut. He was six foot four, so his head scraped the ceiling of the car. He scribbled on a clipboard, probably giving Edward points for not having destroyed any part of the car yet. “All right,” Mr. Kane said. “Start ’er up. Seat belts, everybody.”

Theresa ignored him. She grasped the driver’s headrest and hoisted herself forward, her chin practically on Edward’s shoulder. “Hey, Mr. Kane. Alex gets to drive today, right?”

Mr. Kane was telling Edward to put away the phone already and pay attention. Today was three-point-turn day. “Now you’re at a dead end. Visualize the street,” he said once Edward’s path was blocked by a line of orange cones. “What are you going to do?” Edward didn’t hesitate, possibly inspired by Mr. Kane’s voice. When he wasn’t teaching driver’s ed, Mr. Kane was also the theater teacher, coaching drama queens through the chorus of “Sunrise, Sunset” with his powerful tenor. Apparently he’d played various understudies on Broadway a decade ago but had to give it up because of his mother’s heart disease. She was still dying, and he was directing
Oliver!
this spring.

“Very good, Edward,” he said as Edward checked his rearview mirror and eased the car into reverse. Smiling into his clipboard, Mr. Kane was probably complimenting himself on using theater techniques in driver’s ed.

“Yeah, you’re a regular car god,” Theresa muttered at the back of Edward’s head. “When is Alex going to drive?”

Mr. Kane sighed. “After Edward’s done, it’s Alex’s turn.”

“I don’t have to. Edward needs more practice,” I said.

“Edward’s a champion,” Theresa said. “You can be one, too.”

“I can drive if Alex doesn’t want to,” Caroline said, her quiet smile directed at me. A small part of me wanted to throw my arms around her and claim her as my new best friend. But mostly I wanted to tie her up and repeatedly run her over with the Volvo. As if I needed her pity.

“It’s okay — I’ll do it.”

Edward parked the car neatly by the curb so we could switch places. (Of course it was easy for him to drive; he had two older siblings.) In the front seat, I felt like Alice in Wonderland, shrinking to nothingness. Could I even press the pedals from here? Even after adjusting the seat and mirrors, I didn’t feel like I fit. Which pedal was which again? I remembered smashing into the curb, the sudden bang and hiss of the front right tire exploding. In classrooms, students had leaned toward rows of windows. Dozens of eyes watched as we got out of the car to assess the damage. How could that have happened? I thought driving would be easy, natural. Even the idiot senior boys could drive.

When I tried to focus on the dashboard, my vision blurred and I couldn’t remember how to count. The veins in my throat throbbed. Maybe if I had an anxiety attack, I would be excused.

“We’ll start out with something simple,” Mr. Kane promised. “You don’t even have to visualize anything. This is only a parking lot. All you have to do is pull away from the curb and make a left turn up there.”

I could feel everyone’s fingernails dig into the vinyl.

My hands groped for the key, already in the ignition, and I yanked it the wrong way a few times before starting the car.

“What are you doing?” Edward laughed, hyena-like. In the rearview mirror, I could see three fillings in his unnaturally large mouth. His cell phone was pinned to his ear as he told his freshman girlfriend what a spaz I was.

“Shut the fuck up, Baker,” Theresa snapped.

Mr. Kane whirled around in his seat, straining against the seat belt. “Hey, settle down back there. And shut the phone off, Edward.” I hoped he would add “or else everyone’s out of the car,” but he didn’t. Instead he looked at me, his forehead suddenly huge and gleaming. “Ease your foot onto the gas and gently turn away from the curb.”

I’d only seen one of Oak Ridge High School’s plays, last year’s
Annie Get Your Gun.
It was painful to watch — screeching sopranos and boys with no rhythm doing the box step. Buffalo Bill Cody kept forgetting his lines. Meanwhile, Mr. Kane smiled as he directed the orchestra, hand waving gracefully over the violins. Maybe he was a better actor than director. Right now his teeth were welded together.

“Come on, Alex. Just like riding a bike,” Theresa said.

Yeah,
I thought.
I’ve done that before.
I placed my foot on the gas, applied the smallest amount of pressure, and in a second, we were gliding over the asphalt. My hands rested at four and eight. Orange cones passed like troubled thoughts in a clear mind.

Beside me, Mr. Kane’s breathing steadied. “Very good, Alex,” he said. “Can you picture a road? This is how easy it’ll be.”

Easy. We were moving and not dying. It was just like riding a bike.

Except with more numbers and dials. Suddenly I was imagining people on bikes getting hit by people in cars. Accidents like that happened all the time — screeching tires, mangled arms, heads cracking against pavement. Cars didn’t even have to be going very fast to kill someone; we learned that in the written classes.

“Be careful,” Edward grumbled. “I think we hit five miles an hour.”

My arms felt heavy and rubbery, like they were filling with water. The windows were all up, all manual. I wanted to ask everyone to roll theirs down, but the words shriveled in my throat. Somehow it had gotten overcast since I started driving. Clouds pressed against the windshield.

Mr. Kane was making swift checkmarks on his clipboard. “Now you’re going to turn the corner there. Watch out for the corner. The left.”

“Alex, the left,” Theresa said.

I yanked the wheel toward the left. My arms were so heavy, I couldn’t correct myself. Then my knees were locked and I couldn’t take my foot off the gas.

“Wrong side of the road,” Mr. Kane said. He reached for the steering wheel, but it was too late. We careened through the cones, over the curb, and, barely missing the goalpost, onto the trimmed lawn of the football field. Everyone in back clasped one another and braced their feet against the front seats. The word “left” was stuck in my brain, so I tried turning again, but by the screams, I could tell that wasn’t the right answer. Mr. Kane kept shouting for me to stop. Finally the word registered and my foot smashed the brake. For a moment, everything was quiet. We were still alive.