The Intuitives(11)

Not that he was trying to.

Daniel took his time packing up, giving Scott plenty of space to get the heck out of Dodge without another awkward encounter. He hated it when his friends were fighting, and this squabble had all the telltale signs of becoming an epic feud—which was stupid, since Alyssa had started liking Jared weeks ago, and Scott had never even mentioned her before. But of course, that didn’t matter. If Scott decided Jared had ‘stolen’ Alyssa from his unrequited affections, there would be no quarter for his imagined crime.

By the time Daniel reached the parking lot, just about everyone had already cleared out. He sauntered over to his truck, his mood already lifting. Daniel drove a teal, mint-condition 1975 F100 pickup. His grandmother had never much liked driving to begin with and had finally given it up altogether, offering the truck to Daniel on his sixteenth birthday the year before. He had loved it from the moment he first laid eyes on it, and even now, more than a year later, he remembered that initial joy of knowing it was his every time he slid behind the wheel.

It didn’t have any kind of sound system worth speaking of, but Daniel didn’t mind. He had several thousand songs on his phone and far more stored in his head, and he could listen to them in his memory any time he wanted. Daniel only had to hear a song once to repeat any part of it, even changing the arrangement at will to suit his mood. Although he had been known to dabble in any instrument he could get his hands on, his favorites were lead and bass guitar, and he reveled in them both with equal skill and enthusiasm.

Perching happily on the old truck’s bench seat, Daniel paused before starting the engine to take a few deep breaths and let go of the afternoon’s negativity. He had promised his father, a firefighter who had seen more than his share of horrific accidents, that he would never drive in agitation, and Daniel took his promises seriously. So he sat in the truck, breathing in the salty tang of the ocean-swept air until he felt the good mood of the morning settling back into his bones, while his empty hands played Santana’s lead guitar in the warm California sunshine.

? ? ?

“So, how was your day?” Daniel’s mother, Sarah, asked him the same exact question every afternoon. She was an artist by profession, and he found her today, as he usually did, in her home studio, in the midst of a new painting. He took a moment to enjoy the familiar scent of paint, paint thinner, and his mother’s lavender shampoo. The question began a ritual they had developed when he was small, and he answered her now in the same way he had begun answering her even then.

“Really good, then good and bad, then funny, then really bad, and now good again.”

Sarah Walker laughed. “OK, spill,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

So Daniel sat on the spare stool while she stood at the easel, painting and listening to her son’s day. He told her about the strange test in the morning, about the awkwardness at lunch, about seeing how happy Jared was in math class, and about Scott’s cold shoulder in history.

“And what was the last bit?” Sarah prompted him. “The bit about it being good again?”

“That,” he said, completing the ritual, “was coming back home. Obviously!”

“Obviously!” Sarah repeated, chuckling at their long-standing routine. She couldn’t hug him because her smock was full of paint, but she smiled at him for a long moment before turning back to her work. She was not, however, finished with the conversation.

“So, do you think Scott will get over it soon?” she wanted to know.

“I doubt it.” Daniel frowned. “Alyssa has liked Jared for months, and Jared seems to like her, too. So I think that’s probably going to happen. But you should have seen Scott. I don’t think he’s going to get over it soon at all if Alyssa ends up Jared’s girlfriend. Maybe not even before school’s out.”

Daniel’s mother sighed in sympathy. Outside of the family, Jared and Scott were about the only two people Daniel spent any time with. If those two weren’t speaking to each other, things didn’t bode well for him.

“What are you going to do if they ignore each other all summer?”

Daniel just shrugged. “Play guitar, go surfing with Marshall, bring you snacks so you don’t forget to eat while you’re working. You know, the usual.”

“Daniel, sweetheart, you can’t spend all summer by yourself.”

“I said I’d go surfing with Marshall.”

“Your twelve-year-old brother does not count as company your own age.”

“Jeez, Mom, you’d think hanging out with my kid brother was a bad thing. Most parents I know would be ecstatic if their seventeen-year-old son started driving his little brother around.”

His mother lowered her brush, turning back toward him.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she started, her tone gentle. “I’m glad you like spending time with Marshall. It’s good for him. He looks up to you, and you’re a wonderful role model. You always have been. I just think it would be nice if you had a few more friends your own age. Maybe even a nice girl to go to the movies with.”

“Mom,” Daniel groaned, “don’t start.”

“I’m not starting anything—”

“You are starting something. But I’m telling you, I’m not interested in any of the girls at school, OK? I’ve seen Jared and Scott go through this more than once, and it’s not worth it. I don’t want to end up in a fight with one of them—or with anyone else for that matter—over liking some girl who wouldn’t even be my girlfriend more than a few weeks before she started liking someone else anyway.”