Shine - Lauren Myracle [84]
I WAS POSSIBLY IN LOVE WITH JASON, JUST A LITTLE. Not in love in love. It was too soon for that. But ready to be in love with everything again, or everything good, anyway. That’s what I thought about as I gazed out the window of Jason’s car, watching the many shades of green dance and cast shadows as we drove along the twisty mountain road. Also I loved my brother, and Bailee-Ann, and even squirmy Robert, just for being a kid and liking ice cream.
I loved everyone who said yes to the world and tried to make it better instead of worse, because so much in the world was ugly—and just about all the ugly parts were due to humans. I counted myself among those pitiful ranks. I didn’t slam meth or get stinking drunk or go off and molest anyone, but that didn’t let me off the hook. I hid in the shadows, but hiding had the power to hurt, too.
I hurt Patrick and Bailee-Ann by not being there for them. I hurt Christian by thinking coward in my mind and scowling at him like he wasn’t worthy of respect. I hurt everyone I came into contact with, because what I was sending out wasn’t a yes to the world but a no.
So I was going to stop that.
Jason and I were silent as we reached the outskirts of Asheville, but it was a comfortable silence. We’d talked for much of the hour-long drive, and now we were taking a break. Gearing up for whatever lay ahead.
We started to see fewer trees and more houses, and Jason watched for street signs, occasionally glancing at the map he printed out before coming to get me.
Jason was going to go inside with me when we got to Billy the Kid’s, assuming the place was open at noon. “It’s either that, or no ride,” he’d said after learning of my early morning visit to Tommy. He hadn’t been pleased when I told him I’d gone there, and all he knew about was the tongue, not the other stuff. Maybe one day I’d tell him all of it—the fire, the motorcycle, my brother’s burning courage—but not now.
Jason’s concern was sweet, but unnecessary. I was almost 100 percent convinced that Tommy hadn’t put the tongue on my pillow, and anyway, nothing had happened at Tommy’s house. Here I was, safe and sound.
“Yeah, but we’re no longer talking about Tommy,” Jason said. He glanced at me. “This boyfriend of Patrick’s, we don’t know anything about him. We may not even find him, you know.”
“Eyes on the road, buddy,” I told him, and not for the first time.
He grumbled, but the highway to Asheville was steep and twisty, and it didn’t help that Jason’s car was a twenty-five-year-old Chevy Malibu that used to belong to his grammy. The tires were cracked with dry rot. The shocks were shot, so we rebounded hard whenever we hit a pothole. The passenger side floorboard had been eaten out by rust, and if I looked down, I could see the asphalt moving beneath us.
On top of that, the Malibu’s engine was so gunked up that it could barely pull the car up the mountain. On steep stretches, Jason has to shift all the way into first gear, and our speed dropped to fifteen miles an hour, tops. Every so often, a local got right on top of us, laying on his horn as if Jason was going slower than honey on purpose. As soon as there was a hint of an open stretch, the driver behind us would roar past, honking some more and making unfriendly gestures out the window.
It was actually kind of funny. “I’m going as fast as I can!” Jason would say. “Just pass me, dammit!”
“You’re supposed to pull off and let them pass you,” I told him. I pointed to a stretch of dirt on the side of the road. “See that? That’s called a pull-off spot. It’s called that ’cause that’s where the slowpokes pull off.”
“Thank you, yes, I know what a pull-off is. But if we pull off, we’ll never get going again.”
“Ah,” I said.
He flicked my shoulder for being a smarty-pants, and I said, “Hey, hands on the wheel.”
He looked at me in disbelief.
“Hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. Two very important principles of safety.”
“You do remember