The Lies About Truth(58)

That meant I had work to do.

I showed up at Metal Pete’s with two bags of doughnuts and two choices of coffee, still wearing Max’s T-shirt to channel my brave. Surely caffeine and sugar would woo Metal Pete into submission, and the T-shirt would prove I was serious about change.

I walked toward the office feeling hopeful.

Metal Pete eyed me suspiciously when I set the morning feast on his desk. “You’re . . . up to something,” he said. “Spill the beans.”

“That car you promised me,” I began.

Metal Pete began most expressions with a scrunched nose and raised eyebrows. This one ended up in a smile. “Uh-huh?” he said.

I gave him a prize-winning grin. “Could I maybe borrow that on Thursday?”

“You mean you want to drive it off the lot?”

I nodded.

“Like . . . you’re going to take the car through the gate, hit the gas, and put it on an actual road and . . . ?”

His skepticism wasn’t a refusal. It was a challenge.

“Somehow. Some way,” I said, even though I wasn’t quite sure of that part myself.

“And where might you be taking this borrowed car of mine?”

“St. Augustine.”

“St. Augustine?” he practically screamed. “Whoa, kid. You don’t start small, do you?”

“I’m just glad to finally be starting,” I told him.

Metal Pete strolled over to a gray box that hung on his wall and examined rows and rows of keys. He settled on one, and said, “Follow me.”

Together, we walked down the first row of cars. I had never spent much time in this row. The cars here were all in good shape. Good being a relative thing: most people wouldn’t look twice at them, but I wasn’t most people. I eyed an old black Trans-Am and crossed my fingers. It was a car that screamed Road Trip, and it was much bigger than the Yaris.

But Metal Pete walked past the Trans-Am and stopped at a little red S-10 extended cab. His hand caressed the bed as if the old Chevrolet were a woman he loved.

“Not putting you in a car,” he said matter-of-factly. “Rebuilt this engine myself. It’s the best I’ve got. Plus, it’s insured.”

Don’t cry. Don’t cry, I thought as I considered Pete’s generosity. “Pete . . .”

“Nope,” Pete warned. He took my hand the way my grandfather had when I was a little girl. Squeezing it once, he said, “I won’t have any of that sap. You’re not a tree.”

The keys were in my hand then.

“You’ve got two days to prove to me you can do it,” he told me, and opened the door with a bow.

“I won’t be going alone,” I promised him.

“Naw, I didn’t figure you were.”

I climbed in and rolled down the window. Moment of truth. Sweat lined the creases of my hands as I turned the key.

The engine didn’t argue.

Quickly, before I changed my mind, I tapped the brake and shifted into reverse. The trucked rolled slowly backward, and I watched everything. The parked row of cars behind me. Metal Pete, smiling under his visor. My own nervous face in the rearview.

Nervous or not, I had the truck in drive.

“That’s it, kid,” Metal Pete yelled as I turned the wheel at the end of the row.

Driving wasn’t all that hard. Everything from my months of training with Mom and Dad came back in that first lap around the row. I could have walked faster than I was driving, but I knew, even at ten miles per hour, that not driving was just another one of those things I’d built into a fortress of impossibility. After I took a few loops around the rows, I shifted to neutral, and wrote the original list in the dashboard dust.

1. Wear a tank top in public (Check-ish) 2. Walk the line at graduation (Not yet) 3. Forgive Gina (Check) and Gray (Not checked). And tell them the truth. (Double check) 4. Stop following. Start leading. (?—If I pulled this off) 5. Drive a car again (Bonus points) 6. Kiss someone without flinching (Hell yeah) 7. Visit the Fountain of Youth (Maybe Thursday) Holy wow, this was serious progress. Feeling slightly confident from my successes, I added one more thing: 8. Confront Gray and Max about Big Number eight needed to be on the list, regardless of the consequences. I finally knew I was strong enough to handle the truth, even if it was Max. I wanted it to be Gray, but I had a gut feeling it wasn’t. This had not been a year of getting what I wanted.

I drove cautiously back to Metal Pete, honking the S-10’s horn as I approached.

When I put the truck in park, Metal Pete leaned through the window, his eyes moist with pride. “You look like an old pro out there.”

“Yeah, a regular NASCAR goddess,” I joked. “I need to do this.”

“You need to try it on the real road. The interstate is a far cry from the yard.”

Fear descended on me.

Metal Pete turned his head and whistled. From under one of the old school buses, Headlight appeared. She loped lazily for two steps and then broke into a full gallop toward the truck.

“Take Headlight here over to Ferry Park and let her run around,” Metal Pete said. He gave me the assignment the same way he’d sent me on scavenger hunts in the Yard, with the confidence that I could do anything.

I leaned across the cab and opened the door. Without being told, Headlight hopped onto the bench beside me and lay her head down on my lap. Her foxlike ears pointed at the sky as Pete told her to be good for me.