The Education of Hailey Kendrick - Eileen Cook [42]
“You can sit up now,” Drew said.
I pulled myself up and clicked the seat belt. The vinyl seats of the truck were patched here and there with duct tape. The truck was old. It had a tape deck. My legs were bare and covered with goose bumps. I pulled my socks up to cover as much real estate as possible.
Drew slammed his hand against the dashboard. “Sorry. The heater is kind of dodgy.” He slammed his hand again, and then a rush of hot air whooshed out of the vent. “Are you freezing? There’s a sweatshirt in the back somewhere.”
Without looking he hooked his arm over the back of the seat and started fishing around in the pile of junk that was in the back of the cab. There seemed to be an array of books, sporting gear, and clothing. Like a magician with a rabbit, he yanked a sweatshirt out of the middle of the pile. There was a Boston Bruins logo across the front. He handed it to me. I held it pinched between two fingers.
“It’s clean,” Drew said, looking over at me with a smile. “At least, there’s no Ebola on it or anything.”
“Of course. I wasn’t thinking that.” I gave it a quick sniff test. It didn’t smell funny. In fact it smelled nice, like pine trees. I pulled it on over my sweater. I pulled the length of it over my knees. “Where are we going?”
“Your first skip day.” Drew shook his head as if he were overcome by the enormity of it all. “We have to do something good. You can’t waste something like that. We’ll get some breakfast at Denny’s and come up with a plan.”
“Who’s Denny?”
Drew laughed. “You’re joking, right? Denny’s? As in Denny’s restaurant?”
“Oh, right. Of course.”
Drew stopped the truck in the middle of the road. “You’ve never been to a Denny’s, have you?”
“I have been to a Denny’s. My family stopped at one once when we were driving to New York.”
“You didn’t eat there, did you? You went there for the bathroom.”
“Don’t make a federal case out of it.” I pulled my hands up into the sleeves of the sweatshirt.
“Where does your family go for breakfast?”
“Will you just drive? God. We go out. We just don’t go to Denny’s. There are other places to eat, you know.”
Drew put the truck back into drive, and we headed toward town. “Where do you go? Four Seasons?”
“You have some sort of obsession for Denny’s, don’t you? Were you raised by wolves in a Denny’s parking lot?” I shifted in the seat. I wasn’t going to tell him, but we did used to go to the Four Seasons for Sunday brunch. My mom used to love their smoked salmon eggs Benedict.
“Your first Grand Slam and your first skip day. I feel like we should get a picture taken or something. You could frame it later for your fireplace mantel. A person never forgets their first Slam.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I’d thought a grand slam had something to do with baseball. Was he planning to take me to a game? Did anyone even play baseball this time of year?
We pulled into the Denny’s parking lot, and I followed Drew inside. The restaurant seemed to be decorated in orange and yellow surfaces that all could be cleaned with a power washer—vinyl seats, tile floors, laminate countertops. Given the amount of grease that seemed to be in the air, it probably took a pressure washer to get this place clean. Drew walked right past the WAIT HERE TO BE SEATED sign and grabbed a couple of menus out of the server’s lectern, waving at the cook as he walked by. The cook waved back with a spatula. Why was I not surprised he was a regular?
“Hey, darling! I’ll bring you some coffee,” a waitress called out. Drew slid into a booth and motioned for me to take the other seat. He began to pore over the menu as if it contained the secret of the universe. I sat down and touched the tabletop carefully, looking for any random sticky spots. There were a few places where cigarette butts had burned