What Happens to Goodbye(63)

“How long have you had this thing?”
“Little over a year,” he said. “I bought her myself. Took all my savings bonds, bar mitzvah money, and what I’d made working at FrayBake.”
The brakes squealed again. I said, “That much, huh?”
“What?” He glanced at me, then back at the road. “Hey, this is a great car. Sturdy, dependable. Has character. She might have a few issues, but I love her anyway.”
“Warts and all,” I said.
He looked over at me suddenly, surprised. “What did you say?”
“What?”
“You said ‘warts and all.’ Didn’t you?”
“Um, yeah,” I replied. “What, you don’t know that expression?”
“No, I do.” He eased us into the turn lane for school, then took his left hand off the steering wheel, turning it over to expose the black, tattooed circle there. “It’s where this comes from, actually.”
“That’s supposed to be a wart?” I asked.
“Sort of,” he said, downshifting. “See, when I was a kid, my mom and dad were both teaching full-time. So during the week, I stayed with this woman who kept a few kids at her house. Eva.”
The snow was really picking up now, giving the wipers a workout. Just two small arcs of clarity, with everything blurry beyond.
“She had a granddaughter who was the same age as me and stayed there, too. She and I napped together, ate glue together. That was Riley.”
“Really?”
“Yep. I told you, we’ve known each other forever. Anyway, Eva was just, like, straight-up awesome. She was really tall and broad, with a huge belly laugh. She smelled like pancakes. And she had this wart. A huge one, like something you’d see on a witch or something. Right here.” He put his index finger in the center of the tattoo, pressing down. “We were, like, fascinated and grossed out by it at the same time. And she always made a point of letting us look at it. She wasn’t embarrassed at all. Said if we loved her, we loved it, too. It was part of the package.”
I thought of Riley’s wrist, that same black circle. The sad look on her face when Deb pointed it out.
“She got cancer last year,” he said. “Pancreatic. She died two months after the diagnosis.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. It pretty much sucked.” We were turning into the school parking lot, going past the guardhouse. “The day after her funeral, me and Riley went and got these.”
“That’s a pretty amazing tribute,” I said.
“Eva was pretty amazing.”
I watched him as we turned down a row of cars, slowing for a group of girls in track pants and heavy coats. “I like the sentiment. But it’s easier said than done, you know?”
“What is?”
I shrugged. “Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It’s a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.”
He found a spot and turned in, then cut the engine, which rattled gratefully to a stop. Never had a car seemed so exhausted. Then he looked at me. “You think so?”
I had a flash of my mom on the phone that morning, her wavering voice, the words I’d said. I swallowed. “I think that’s why I like moving around so much. Nobody gets to know me well enough to see any of the bad stuff.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. We both just sat there, listening as people passed by us. The ground was slippery, and everyone was struggling to stay upright, taking tentative steps and still busting here and there anyway.

“You say that,” Dave said finally, “but I’m not sure it’s actually true. I’ve only known you a month but I’m aware of plenty of bad stuff about you.”
“Oh, really,” I said. “Like what?”
“Well, you have no condiments or spices, for starters. Wled just plain weird. Also, you’re vicious with a basketball.”
“Those aren’t exactly warts.”
“Maybe not.” He grinned. “But seriously, it’s all relative, right?”
The bell rang then, its familiar tinny sound muffled by the snow on the roof and windows. We both got out, my door creaking loudly as I pushed it open. The ground was icy, immediately sliding a bit beneath me, and I grabbed on to the Volvo to support myself. “Whoa,” I said.
“No kidding,” Dave said, sliding up next to me and barely getting his balance at the last minute. “Watch your step.”
I started walking carefully, and he fell in beside me, pulling his bag over his shoulder. His head was ducked down, his hair falling across his forehead, and as I glanced at him, I thought of all the times I’d found myself with boys over the last two years, and how none of them came anywhere close to being like this. Because I wasn’t. I was Beth or Eliza or Lizbet, a mirage, like a piece of stage scenery that looked real from the front with nothing behind it. Here, though, despite my best efforts, I’d somehow ended up being myself again: Mclean Sweet, she of the messed-up parents and weird basketball connections, Super Shitty and a U-Haul’s worth of baggage. All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.
We were almost to the curb when I felt Dave begin to slip again beside me, his arms flailing. I tried to secure my own feet, with mixed results, as he tipped backward, then forward. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Going down!”
“Hold on,” I told him, sticking out my own hand to grab his. Instead of steadying him, however, this had the opposite effect, and then we were both stumbling across the ice, double the weight, double the impact if we fell.