The Thing About the Truth (13 page)

“By riding the bus home with you?”

“You don’t really want to do that.”

“No. I don’t really want to. But I will. As penance.” I start to hop up the stairs. “Hello,” I say to the driver. He’s actually getting kind of annoyed because he wants to get on his way, and he can’t with us just standing there.

“On or off,” he says. And he’s pretty grouchy about it too. Which makes a lot of sense, since he’s a bus driver. They’re always in a perpetual state of being pissed off. The dude probably needs to get laid.

“On or off?” I ask Kelsey, holding my hand out to her.

“Off,” she says emphatically, and my heart sinks. “Because you’re driving me home.”

I smile.

•  •  •

“You want to drive?” I ask as we make our way over to the student parking lot.

“You’d let me drive your car?”

“Sure,” I say. “Why not?” Normally, I wouldn’t let anyone touch my car. It’s a black BMW, and I love it. I used to call it “baby” when I first got it, but that’s pretty corny. So I stopped. Plus chicks used to get really pissed off because I never called
them
“baby.” And then they’d be all, “Why do you love your car more than me?” and blah, blah, blah.

“Because you love this car,” Kelsey says.

“How do you know I love it?”

“It’s obvious,” she says. “You’re always staring at it adoringly.”

“I am?” Huh. “Well, whatever. Do you want to drive or not?”

“Sure.” She holds her hand out for the keys, and as soon as they’re in her palm, I’m kind of regretting it. But I push my trepidation down and head over to the passenger side. It’s weird, opening the door on the passenger side of my own car.

“You were really going to let me drive?” she asks, looking at me over the top of the car.

“Yeah. What, you don’t want to anymore?” I’m kind of relieved. In fact, if she says she doesn’t, I’m not even going to try to convince her to do it. I’m just going to take the keys back.

“No, I do,” she says. “It’s just . . . I can’t.”

“Why not? I already said you could.” So much for not trying to convince her. It’s just that she looks so forlorn, like she
really wants to drive and is really going to be upset if she can’t.

“I know,” she says. She walks around to the passenger side of the car so that she’s standing right in front of me. It’s all I can do not to reach out and pull her close to me. That’s how freakin’ cute she looks. Which is a very new feeling for me. Usually when I have the urge to pull girls close, it’s because I want to have sex with them. I want to pull them close and get them naked. Not pull them close just to have them close, the way I want to do with Kelsey. God, I must really be losing it.

She’s holding the keys out to me and I almost don’t trust myself to take them. But finally I do. Her fingers brush against my palm, and it’s like a burst of flames rushes up my hands and through my arms.

“I don’t have a license,” she says.

“You don’t have a license?” I cannot comprehend this. Everyone has a license. It’s, like, a rule that you get a license when you turn sixteen. “Everyone has a license,” I tell her.

“Not me. I failed my test twice.”

“You don’t know how to drive?”

She shakes her head.

“Why not?”

“Dunno.” She shrugs. “I guess I never really had anyone to teach me.”

“Your parents?”

She shakes her head again and then stares down at the pavement, which makes me think it might not be the best idea
to delve into that. Shit with parents is the last thing I want to talk about, anyway.

“Well, we need to fix that,” I say. The words are out of my mouth before I even realize what I’m saying, and I kind of want to take them back, but mostly I don’t. I hand the keys back to her. “I’ll teach you.”

“You’ll teach me how to drive?”

“Yup.” I’m opening the passenger door now, and I drop down into the seat. Definitely better buckle up for this one. Girls are horrible drivers. I know that probably sounds sexist, but it’s true. I’ve been in two accidents, both of them in the parking lots of my old schools, both of them with girls who weren’t paying attention and/or just didn’t understand anything about spatial relations.

Kelsey leans down so that she’s looking at me through the open window. Her hair brushes against the bottom of the window frame, and she’s so close it would be easy to just pull her toward me and kiss her.

“I can’t drive!” she says, and opens my door.

“Yes, you can.” I shut it.

“What if I crash your car?”

“You won’t.”

“But what if I do? This car looks superexpensive.”

“It’s actually not as expensive as you would think,” I lie.

“Still.” She looks doubtful. “What if I crash it? I can’t pay for it.”

“That’s what insurance is for.”

“But I’m not on your insurance.”

“No,” I say, “but I am. And if you crash it, then I’ll just say I did it. Now, are you going to get in or not?”

She starts to shake her head, but then she catches my eye. And I want her to go for it. I want her to drive my car. And not just because I want to spend more time with her. I mean, yeah, I do want to spend more time with her, and I have to admit that suddenly something about the thought of her behind the wheel of my car is pretty sexy.

But more than that, I just have this weird feeling that it would be good for her, that if she can drive and be good at it, she might get a little of her confidence back. I don’t know how I know her confidence is down, or how I know it would be good for her to get it back, but I do.

“Okay,” she says finally, nodding.

And the next thing I know, she’s in the driver’s seat next to me.

Kelsey

This is not good. This is a horrible disaster just waiting to happen. I can’t drive Isaac’s car! I’ve hardly ever even driven. Like, ever in my life. I have my permit, but that’s only because all you have to do to get your permit is study this little booklet and then go down to the DMV and take a written test. A multiple-choice written test, where they basically ask you things like what color light means caution. Seriously, you pretty much have to be an idiot to fail.

But being behind the actual wheel of an actual car? I’ve only done that a few times, when my dad took me out to try to teach me how to drive. Which was definitely not the best time
I’ve ever had, mostly because I’m a really bad driver. My dad was nice about it (this was before I got kicked out of school, and before he thought I was a total failure), but I would still get really frustrated. And then I would come home and cry. I tried to take my road test anyway, mostly because by the time I realized I was a horrible driver, it was already scheduled. I failed it. So I took it again. And failed it again.

I’ve always really wanted to be able to drive, though. I mean, who doesn’t? Driving equals freedom. Of course, even if I got my license, it’s not like I have the money for a car. But if I’d still had my after-school job, who knows if I could have saved up enough to get one? At least some kind of junker. It would have been amazing.

Even though I’m supernervous, I have to admit that driving Isaac’s car is kind of a rush. At first we just circle the student parking lot. A couple of times he reaches out and grabs the steering wheel while I’m driving, which you’d think would be annoying, like he’s trying to take over, but it’s not. It’s more like he’s just looking out for me. Plus every time his fingers brush against mine, my stomach explodes with butterflies.

We’re going around the traffic circle in front of the school when it happens. I kind of, um, crash against the curb. There’s a scratching sound, and I slam on the brakes. “Ohmigod,” I say, feeling the blood drain out of my face. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

“It’s okay,” Isaac says, but he looks nervous, and even though he’s
saying
that it’s okay, he sounds scared.

I get out of the car and rush around to the other side so I can check the damage. Isaac’s out too, standing there and looking down.

“Is it bad?” I ask, not waiting for him to answer before I look myself. There’s a small scratch on the bottom of his car, on the passenger side near the tire. It’s not tiny, but it’s not big, either, and it’s just a scratch. No big dent. No smashed-in metal. I breathe out a huge sigh of relief.

“See?” he says. “No big deal.”

I don’t know why, but I’m holding my breath again, and I’m so, so happy that it’s nothing, that there’s nothing wrong with the car, that I start to cry.

I know. Lame. I don’t even know why I’m doing it. Maybe it’s because I’m so thankful that I won’t have to figure out how to pay for something superexpensive on top of everything else I’m dealing with. Maybe it’s because Isaac is being really nice to me, and I didn’t want to do anything to screw that up. Maybe it’s because my dad has been so hard on me lately that anytime I think I might be in trouble, it’s a huge relief when I’m not. Or maybe it’s just because for the past hour, while I’ve been driving around with Isaac, I haven’t thought about getting kicked out of school, or what happened with Rex, or me and Rielle, or anything else. I’ve just been having fun.

“Hey,” Isaac says. “Are you crying?”

“No.” I wipe at my eyes with the back of my hand. “I’m just relieved.”

“Come here.” He pulls me close to him, and I press my cheek against his chest. I can feel how hard his muscles are. Damn. The boys at Concordia Prep never had chests like that. At least, I don’t think they did. I wonder if Isaac works out a lot. He must. No one’s that muscular naturally. I bet he looks amazing with his shirt off. The thought of Isaac shirtless makes me catch my breath and makes my heart beat fast, and before I know what’s happening, I’m looking up at him.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “I’m usually not so crazy.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he says.

“You don’t?”

“No.” He pushes a strand of hair off my face.

“Well, I am.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” he says. And now his lips are right there, like, two inches away from mine and ohmigod I want to kiss him. The moment is perfect, with us pushed up against his car, and the late-afternoon sun streaming through the trees around the parking lot. There’s a light breeze that’s ruffling his hair, and it smells like summer even though it’s fall.

I shiver again, and he pulls me closer, and now his lips really are right there, and I’m just about to go crazy from wanting him to kiss me when he finally does.

He brushes his lips against mine, keeping them there for a long beat and then pulling away. He looks into my eyes, asking me if it’s okay without saying anything, and I keep my gaze on his, letting him know, until he kisses me again.

This time the kiss is longer, but still sweet. His lips are perfect. He tastes like mint gum and strawberries, and I lose myself in the moment.

When he finally pulls away, he rests his forehead against mine. “I think I should drive home,” he says, and grins. “You know, just in case.”

“Fine,” I say. “But I get shotgun.”

Isaac

After I drop Kelsey off, I can’t stop thinking about her. I didn’t want to drop her off. I wanted to hang out with her more, but I’m supposed to be home tonight for some dipshit dinner that my dad has planned. My dad’s always scheduling dipshit dinners at the worst possible time, like when I’ve just kissed a girl I really like. He has some kind of ability to know exactly when I’m having fun.

Anyway, these dinners are usually with people who are big campaign contributors, or people who are in charge of some big cause that my dad is about to fuck over, and so he has them over to make them think that he’s taking what they have to say into consideration before he votes for some measure that’s going to cut their funding.

Technically, I don’t really have to be at these dinners since they have nothing to do with me. But my dad likes to have me there because it makes it seem like we’re one big happy family.

“Isaac,” he says, all smiles when I walk in the door. Our guest is there already. Some douche bag wearing a suit and tie. They’re both holding glasses of scotch, which my dad thinks is really impressive. Seriously, the dude loves to pull out his expensive scotch and be all,
“Would you like some of this expensive scotch that’s meant to make you think I’m cultured and refined?”

“I’d like you to meet George Donahue,” my dad says.

I reach out and shake George Donahue’s hand, giving him a smile. It’s not his fault my dad’s a shit. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” he says. “You might know my son, Kevin Donahue? He’s at Taft.”

“Yeah, I know Kevin,” I say. “He’s a good dude.”

My dad gives me a sharp look, I guess because I used the word “dude.” But honestly, if this guy is Kevin Donahue’s dad, he’s not going to care. Kevin Donahue and I were never close while I was at Taft (I got kicked out after a couple of weeks because of a fight—they have a zero-tolerance policy for fighting there, which is ridiculous, especially when most of the guys there are assholes who deserve a good beat down), but he was always really friendly to me and seemed like a really chill, laid-back guy.