Wing Jones(36)

“It’s fine! Don’t worry! I mean, I should be thanking you for coming to get me every night. I could always meet you at the track. Run down there on my own.” I’m chirping like a baby bird.

Aaron glances over at me, and for the first time since I got in the car, he smiles. “Wing,” he says, and I love how he says my name, he says my name in a way no one else does. “I like picking you up. And what kind of gentleman would I be if I let you go running down the streets of Atlanta in the middle of the night by yourself?”

“I was doing just that before you came along and was doing just fine,” I say, but I’m grinning too.

“Ouch,” he says, smile even broader. “How about this? I’ll pretend I don’t know you don’t need me, and you can pretend you do need me to get to the track. Fair trade?”

“Sounds good to me,” I say, even though it isn’t true at all. Sure, I can get to the track without him … but whether or not I need him is a different story.

“I’m just doing it for Marcus, you know. He’d have my ass if he knew I was letting you run around at night all alone.”

Of course. It’s for Marcus. It isn’t for me. He’s being a good friend to Marcus. I force a smile and turn to look at the nighttime world whizzing by.

Aaron clears his throat. “I’ve got something for you,” he says, voice overly casual. “Under the seat.”

I reach under the seat and rummage around. My fingers brush against a small, smooth bottle. It rattles like a warning as I dislodge it from its hiding place.

It’s a small prescription bottle. My eyes focus in on the small print. Antidepressants. I shake it experimentally, and the sound of the pills jumping in their bottle makes Aaron look over sharply. When he sees what I’m holding he swears under his breath.

“Oh. Not that. Not those. Sorry. I didn’t know those were in my car. The other thing. Maybe it’s stuck under the seat.”

We’re at a stoplight, and he leans over me and pops open his glove compartment. “Put those in there.”

Aaron’s name isn’t the name on the bottle of pills. It’s Annamarie. His mother’s name.

Aaron drives on. We’re almost at the track. “She’s been trying to stop drinking? After what happened to Marcus? It scared her?” His sentences come out full of question marks. He’s unsure and nervous, and he’s talking faster than I’ve ever heard him talk. “So she’s trying those.”

“I didn’t know … didn’t know your mom was taking antidepressants.”

“She shoulda been taking them a long time ago. She should be taking them more regularly too. When she doesn’t … she likes to … what they call ‘self-medicate.’” His voice is false and tinny. “Her job, down at Kroger” – he mentions one of the grocery stores near his house, where his mom works as a cashier – “the pay is pretty shit, but she’s got health insurance, and it covers this kind of stuff.”

“That’s lucky,” I say, and I mean it’s lucky that the insurance covers it, because ever since Marcus’s accident I’ve learned that there are all sorts of things insurance doesn’t cover.

We’ve been sitting in the track parking lot for the past few minutes, but neither of us makes a move to get out of the car.

“It’s hereditary,” he says, not looking at me, not looking at anything.

“What is?”

“All her shit. The depression. The drinking. Sure she’s passed down some other treats that haven’t shown their ugly faces yet.”

“There’s nothing wrong with taking antidepress—” I start, but he cuts me off.

“I know that. But there is something wrong with not paying attention to how many you’re supposed to take. And chasing them with vodka.”

“Maybe she should talk to somebody,” I say.

“She’s got nothing to say to anybody.”

The air in the car is warm; we’ve heated it with our words. I wonder if Aaron used to talk to Marcus about this. I knew … I knew a little bit about his mom, but I didn’t know it was like this.

He lets out a big whoosh, like a whale blowing air out its blowhole.

“That isn’t what I had for you,” he says, gesturing at the now closed glove compartment. He leans toward me, making me go still in anticipation. In the small, hot car I’m very aware of his smell, part boy musk and part clean clothes and part deodorant. It’s a smell I like very much, and the closer he leans the more I can smell it. He reaches under the seat, his arm brushing against my legs as he does and his head is practically in my lap and I sit as still as I can, staring straight ahead. Does he realize how close his face is to my thighs?

“Ah, here we go. They were stuck.”

He tugs on something and his arm comes up and out, between my legs (I feel like I might pass out from how close and almost tangled our limbs are), followed by a pair of gray-and-blue running shoes.

Women’s running shoes.

The laces are a bit frayed and the heels a little worn down, but they aren’t in bad shape.

“My mom got these at a sale a couple years ago and doesn’t use them, so I thought you could. I think you guys have the same size feet.”

The shoes grin up at me, begging me to try them on. I pull back their tongues to look at the label underneath and see that he’s right, I do wear the same size shoe as his mom. For the first time, I’m grateful to have feet that are the size they are.