Inevitable and Only(25)

“Raven. That made no sense.”

“Look, I got pretty tongue-tied on my first date with Max, too. But you just have to relax. Remember that he already thinks you’re cute, funny, smart, nice, whatever. You don’t have to convince him.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You really are cute, funny, smart, and nice.”

“I’m not nice,” Raven said, offended.

“True. But you’re cute.”

“And smart! And funny!”

I pretended to consider it. “Ehhh.”

Raven grabbed a pillow off the bed and clobbered me.



Friday after school, Dad came home early and took me and Elizabeth out for a driving lesson before it got dark. She’d just received her Maryland learner’s permit in the mail. Mine had taken weeks to arrive, but apparently if you already had a permit from the state of Ohio and you were Elizabeth Marie Jennings, red tape magically vanished before you. Not that I was pissed or anything.

“We may as well do driving lessons together,” Dad said. “It’ll save time. And you can learn from each other’s mistakes. Right?”

“Lesson one: Cadie demonstrates roadkill,” I muttered.

Elizabeth shot me a sympathetic look. I guess Dad had already filled her in about my disaster of a first lesson. By now I could almost think about it without that lump rising in my throat, but I still didn’t want to get behind the wheel. I suspected this was Dad’s other motive: if he combined our lessons, I’d watch Elizabeth and see that learning to drive wasn’t so bad after all.

“So your, ah, your mom had a Corolla,” Dad said to Elizabeth. I guess he knew because he’d helped her sell it to pay the medical bills. “That’s not too different from our car. It should handle very similarly.”

There was an awkward silence. It was the first time I’d heard anyone address Elizabeth directly about her mother.

“We call our car the Commie Comet,” I offered, to break the silence.

It worked. Elizabeth looked startled, then laughed—quietly, of course. “Makes sense,” she said. “All the bumper stickers.”

“Hey, now!” Dad said. “We are progressives in this household, not Communists, although there’s nothing necessarily wrong with Communists. My parents were fine examples. But the ‘Commie’ part of that name refers to the color of the car, not its political leanings or those of its occupants.”

Dad was kind of babbling, the way I did when I got nervous. I wondered what Elizabeth thought about our political leanings. I assumed she was pretty conservative, what with the Catholic school and the argyle sweaters. She didn’t respond to Dad’s comment, though.

We spent the evening driving around the ShopRite parking lot again. Elizabeth didn’t have much more experience than I did, because her mom had been too sick for the past few months to teach her. But she was definitely catching on faster than I was. Dad had me park in five different spots, then he had Elizabeth try it. I parked sloppily over the white lines or at a skewed angle each time. Elizabeth nailed them all after the first one.

“Are you ready to try a little road driving?” Dad asked finally. “We can just go up and down Elm a few times, nice and slow.”

“Dad,” I said. “I am not driving down Elm. No way.”

“Chestnut, then,” he said. “We can take 34th Street over and practice left turns.”

“Sure,” Elizabeth said.

So she drove around the block twice, practicing left turns and complete stops at stop signs, and then we switched seats and I drove around the block.

My hands were trembling on the wheel the whole time, but I managed to keep my foot steady, and I mostly stayed in my lane. Luckily no one else was trying to drive around that particular block, because I kept the speedometer needle at a daredevil 5 mph. At least no wildlife darted out in front of my tires.

“Good, Cadie,” Dad said. “You have to work on checking all your mirrors, but you’re getting the hang of it. Want to try once more around the block?”

I shook my head. “I’m tired. Let’s go home.”

“Okay. Good work for one night.” Dad twisted around to face Elizabeth in the back seat. “And you, missy. You’re a natural! I think you’ll be ready for three-point turns next time.”

I’d never heard him use Proud Dad Voice for anyone except me and Josh.

Which made sense, since he’d never had any kids except me and Josh. Before.

“I think I’ll just walk,” I said, getting out of the car. I slammed the door shut, shoved my hands deep into my pockets, and started down the sidewalk in the dark.



Saturday morning, Raven and I had a date to go shopping with her mom and grandmother for our Fall Ball dresses. Mom was already out of the house—she’d gone in to her office at school to catch up on work (or so she said)—and Dad was preparing to take Elizabeth out for a grand tour of Baltimore. Josh was going along, too, and he actually seemed excited.

“I’m going to show her all around Peabody,” he told me, scraping his cereal bowl. We were finishing breakfast while Elizabeth showered. “The practice rooms, the dance studios, Friedberg Hall, and the Harry Potter library.” Peabody has two libraries: an ugly functional one and a fairy-tale-gorgeous one, six stories high. The main room is a giant marble-floored atrium lit by hanging lamps and a skylight, with gilded cast-iron columns. Every floor opens to a balcony over the main atrium, hemmed in by an intricate scrollwork railing that runs around all four walls. Some of the Prep kids call it the Harry Potter library. Mom calls it the Chapel, because people really do get married there.