Parallel Parking

by Natalie Standiford

  “I can offer you private tutoring,” Mitchell said. “Then you won’t take up so much of everyone else’s time. I only charge fifty dollars an hour.”

  Mads knew her father would never want to pay fifty dollars an hour for lessons she was supposed to be getting for free. “I can do it this time, I swear,” she said. “Set up the cones again.”

  Mitchell had set up cones to show her where to put the car. He was trying out a new method on her. He told her to aim the car at one cone, then stop; back up to the next cone, stop, and so on. Mads crushed all the cones every time. The last time she’d ended up with the car half-parked on the sidewalk.

  “Forget the cones,” Mitchell snapped. “That’s not working. How about this.” He opened the trunk of the car and pulled out two crash test dummies. He stood in front of the car; then, nervously, as if he’d just realized what kind of danger he was in, stepped off to one side. Mads sat behind the wheel, window rolled down. Mitchell shook one of the dummies.

  “This is your mother. Okay?” He shook the other dummy. “And this is your father. If you don’t parallel park correctly, you will run over these dummies. Your mother and father. They will die. Do you understand?”

  Mads felt like crying. Why was he doing this to her? Threatening to kill her parents only made her more nervous.

  He set up the dummies, one in front of the car, one behind. They represented the space Mads had to park between. Then he got back into the teacher’s seat.

  “Okay. Pull up alongside your mother. Then back up, turning the steering wheel toward the sidewalk, without hitting the sidewalk or running over your father back there. Got it?”

  Mads nodded. Her hands were shaking. She didn’t want to be responsible for her parents’ vehicular manslaughter, even if it was only pretend.

  Mads pulled up alongside the mother dummy, then backed up slowly, turning in toward the sidewalk. But she was too far away from the curb, so she pulled forward again and ran over her mother.

  “Do we have to sit here and watch this?” Siobhan said. “I’ve got better things to do.”

  “Really,” Autumn said. “I’m afraid Mads’ bad driving is going to rub off on me. We spend so much time watching her screw up, it’s making an imprint on my brain. How will I ever pass the driving test this way? Do you know what I got for my birthday? A BMW convertible! Do you really think I want to tootle around in it with my dad sitting next to me? No, I do not! I want to go speeding through town with a carful of my friends and honk at cute boys! And if I don’t get my driver’s license, I’ll never be able to do that. Mads, why are you doing this to me? Why are you trying to ruin my life?”

  “Quiet back there,” Mitchell said. “Or I’ll fail all of you. Mads, one more time.”

  Mads banged her head on the steering wheel. This was her third parallel parking lesson. Her mother had tried to teach her—hopeless. Lina tried to explain it to her, but it only confused her. She’d had trouble with everything else, sure, but she’d eventually figured it all out. All except for this. What was it about parallel parking? Why was it so hard for her?

  She tried to park again. By the time she was finished the dummies were completely mangled and the car was about two feet from the curb.

  “Again,” Mitchell said wearily. “We’ve got ten more minutes of class time left today. Might as well use it. You won’t pass this class if you can’t parallel park.”

  Mads was freaking out. At this rate she’d never get her driver’s license.

  QUIZ: ARE YOU A GOOD DRIVER OR A FLAKE?

  Take this written driving quiz to test your knowledge of the road.

  Pay attention now!

  Which of the following are dangerous to do while driving?

  a talking on a cell phone

  b putting on makeup

  c checking out hotties

  d all of the above

  e huh?

  You are driving on the freeway. The vehicle in front of you is a large truck. You should:

  a speed up and pass him.

  b slow down.

  c keep one car length behind him.

  d do that hand signal to make him honk his horn.

  e what?

  You must notify the DMV within 5 days if you:

  a lose your driver’s license.

  b move to a new address.

  c dye your hair purple.

  d break up with your boyfriend.

  e I don’t understand the question.

  It is illegal to park your vehicle:

  a in a loading zone.

  b in front of a fire hydrant.

  c in your neighbor’s swimming pool.

  d all of the above.

  e Could you repeat that?

  With a Class C driver’s license a person may drive:

  a a car.

  b on the grass.

  c underwater.

  d other people crazy.

  e I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.

  Unless otherwise posted, the speed limit in a residential area is:

  a 25 mph

  b 55 mph

  c 75 mph

  d whatever speed you happen to be going

  e There’s a speed limit?

  Scoring: Add up your points, then read the answer that applies to you below.

  1a-1, b-1, c-1, d-0, e-5

  2a-3, b-2, c-0, d-4, e-5

  3a-5, b-2, c-4, d-4, e-5

  4a-1, b-1, c-1, d-0, e-5

  5a-0, b-4, c-4, d-4, e-5

  6a-0, b-4, c-4, d-4, e-5

  0–3 points: You know your driving rules pretty well. The real test should be a breeze.

  4–15 points: You’re a little shaky on your facts. Better brush up on them.

  15–29 points: You have no common sense. You’re going to be a menace on the road!

  30 points: You’re completely out of it. I hope you like your skateboard, because you’re going to be riding it around town for a long time.

  9 Ramona and Rex

  * * *

  To: linaonme

  From: your daily horoscope

  HERE IS TODAY’S HOROSCOPE: CANCER: If you really want to help your friends, try secluding yourself in a cave for the rest of the year.

  * * *

  Are you nervous?” Lina asked.

  “No,” Ramona said. “Should I be?”

  Her voice was pitched a few notes higher than usual, Lina noticed. Ramona would never admit it, but she was nervous.

  So was Lina. It was Saturday evening and Ramona was about to leave for her meeting with Rex the Eleventh Grade Boy. Lina had called to see how Ramona was feeling about it. She felt responsible. She was the matchmaker. The happiness of Rex and Ramona was in her hands.

  Ramona didn’t know that Lina had already met Rex. She didn’t know that Rex was a super-straight preppy. Lina hoped that Rex would charm Ramona into seeing past their differences and melt Ramona’s cold heart.

  “What are you going to wear?” Lina asked.

  “What do you mean?” Ramona said. “What I always wear, plus a few extra rings.”

  “How can you possibly fit more rings on your hands?” Lina asked.

  “Left thumb. Toes,” Ramona said. “Nose, ears, lip. Lots of places.”

  “Okay,” Lina said. “Well, good luck. Have fun. Hope you like him. And be nice to him, okay?”

  “I can’t make any promises,” Ramona said.

  Lina hung up. She was planning to go out with Walker later, and she had instructed Ramona to call her on her cell as soon as the date was over. As it turned out, Lina heard from Ramona within half an hour.

  “Are you out with Walker yet?” Ramona asked.

  “No, I’m still home,” Lina said. “I haven’t even started dressing yet. Where are you calling from?”

  “Home.”

  “Home? What happened? Didn’t he show up?”

  “He showed up, all right.”

  “And?”

  “I took one look at him and wanted to turn around and walk out,” Ramon
a said. “I hated him on sight.”

  “Oh, Ramona.”

  “But you would have been proud of me. I didn’t walk out. I gave him a chance, just like you told me to. I sat down, introduced myself. He’s ultra-preppy, Lina. My worst nightmare.”

  “So? Just because he’s preppy, does that mean he’s impossible to like?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “He said, ‘Nice to meet you,’ and I said, ‘Well, it’s not nice to meet you.’”

  “Ramona. You call that giving him a chance?”

  “He gave me a bunch of flowers—pink roses, which I totally hate. I got up, said, ‘I’m out of here,’ and walked out.”

  “You just left him there?”

  “What choice did I have?”

  Lina rubbed her face in frustration. “You had lots of other choices. One of the best might have been to politely say thank you and ask if he wanted to get something to eat.”

  “That’s not something I’d say. I’ve got to be true to myself, Lina.”

  “So you’re not interested in him at all?”

  “Lina, he was wearing khaki pants with a crease in them,” Ramona said. “And a pink shirt—what’s with this guy and pink? And those horrible whales on his belt! I could barely look at him. He’s friends with all those country club people, those Kips and Chips and girls named Sterling. He’s a monster!”

  “But he likes you!”

  “So? What do I care? Does that make me somehow obligated to like him back?”

  “No,” Lina said. “But you might try getting past the superficial to see what kind of person he is inside.”

  “I can see what kind of person he is, very clearly. A person who wears whale belts. That’s all I need to know.”

  Lina sighed. Why did Rex’s outside have to be so different from his inside? If Ramona would just talk to him for ten minutes, she’d see that they were soul mates.

  “Why did you go?” Lina asked. “What were you expecting?”

  “I don’t know,” Ramona said. “An adventure?”

  “You’d like to have a boyfriend,” Lina said. “Or at least a date to the Hap. Admit it.”

  “No. I won’t admit it.”

  “But it’s true. Right?”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  A-ha. “See you at school Monday,” Lina said.

  “Yeah, okay. If I make it in. Five minutes in the presence of a super-prep is enough to make me sick.”

  Lina hung up. Ramona’s stubbornness annoyed her. But Lina had known this would be a challenge when she took it on.

  She started dressing. She and Walker were planning to hang out at his house and babysit his little brothers. It wasn’t exactly a dress-up occasion, but she didn’t want to wear what she had on, which was sweats with a hole in the knee and a baggy T-shirt.

  She glanced at her computer. She had a new e-mail.

  Lina—Have you talked to Ramona? She met me at the Marina, but then she walked off. She hardly talked to me! What did I do wrong? Did she say anything? Please help me. Rex

  If Ramona wanted a boyfriend, she’d have to be more open-minded. It wouldn’t be easy to find another boy who liked her as much as Rex did.

  Rex—Don’t give up yet. Keep at her. Get in her face. Sometimes perseverance works. Maybe she’ll change her mind. Lina

  It was a lame strategy, barely a strategy at all. But for the moment Lina couldn’t come up with anything better.

  “Ramona, this is for you.” Lina and Ramona were studying in the library when Rex walked up and gave Ramona a small brown box wrapped in a pink bow. Lina vowed to say something to him about losing all the pink.

  “What is it?” Ramona asked, as if she expected the answer to be “dog doo.”

  “Chocolates,” Rex said. “Dark chocolates.”

  Ramona’s eyes flashed happily for a split second. That’s the way to do it, Rex, Lina thought.

  Ramona opened the box and took out a chocolate. She bit into it, then spit it out.

  “Ugh, there’s cherries inside them,” she said. “I hate chocolate-covered cherries.” She dumped the box onto the table and buried her head in her book. “You can have them, Lina.”

  “Ramona!” Lina nudged her with her elbow. “You’re so rude.”

  “What?” Ramona said. She looked up. “Oh. Thanks a ton, Rex. You want to make me fail my geometry quiz?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were studying for a test,” Rex said.

  “Well, I am, so go away.”

  Rex walked away. Lina took a chocolate-covered cherry.

  “Why are you so mean to him?” she asked. “He’s only trying to be nice.”

  “He’s been bothering me all day,” Ramona said. “After lunch I found a note on my locker. Some stupid love poem. He didn’t even write it himself. He copied it out of a Shakespeare book. From Romeo and Juliet, my least favorite play. So trite. Except for the poison scene at the end—that’s good. If he’d picked one of the tragedies, especially a slaughterfest like Hamlet, I would have been a little more impressed.”

  “Let me see the note,” Lina said.

  “I threw it out,” Ramona said. “If I want to read Shakespeare, I’ve got the Complete Works at home.”

  “He must like you for a reason,” Lina said. “Maybe underneath his clothes he’s got a dark soul.”

  “Soul schmoul. His haircut makes me want to vomit,” Ramona said. She put down her geometry book and picked up a music magazine that was lying on the table. “See what he did to me? Now I’m all distracted and can’t study.” She flipped through the magazine, stopping at a photo spread of a band called Deathzilla, her favorite.

  “Oh, man, look at him.” She pointed to Donald Death, the lead singer. His black hair was plastered into a sharp, shiny faux-hawk that made his head look pointy. His face was like a doll’s, eggshell white with two red circles rouged onto his cheeks. His eyes were heavily lined and a red sneer was painted onto his mouth. Most striking were the two thick black rectangles tattooed over his eyes where his eyebrows should have been. He was wearing an electric blue latex jumpsuit.

  Lina couldn’t see the appeal. She didn’t like his dirge-y, scream-o music, either. But Donald Death was clearly Ramona’s type.

  “He changed his eyebrows,” Ramona said. “They used to be all pointy.” She tore the page out of the magazine.

  “That’s the library’s copy,” Lina said. “What if somebody else wants to read that magazine?”

  “Shove it, Glinda,” Ramona snapped. “This is going into my Love Book.”

  Lina snatched the page away from her. “No, it isn’t,” she said.

  Ramona looked surprised. “Give me that!”

  “No. I’m taping it back into the magazine,” Lina said.

  The bell rang for the next period. Ramona rolled her eyes and gathered up her books. “I’ll just come back later and take it again,” she said.

  “Go ahead,” Lina said. It didn’t matter, because the picture wouldn’t be there. Lina had more important plans for it.

  “Can I look in the mirror now?”

  Lina surveyed her handiwork. Rex stood before her dressed in black jeans, boots, a black T-shirt, and a black jacket, with a couple of studded leather bracelets around one wrist. Lina had dragged him downtown to Rutgers Street after school on Friday for a makeover. He actually owned the black clothes; he’d just never worn them all at once before. The boots were new—she’d ordered him to buy them.

  Now they stood together in the local Sephora, where makeup samples were free and plentiful. Rex wouldn’t go for the cakey white base, but he let her line his eyes and darken his blond eyebrows. Still, something was missing. She checked the picture of Donald Death, which she’d brought along for reference.

  “Lina? Can I look?” Rex asked. She hadn’t allowed him near a mirror for fear that he would stop her before she was finished.

  “Not yet,” she said. She dug a jar of her own hair putty out
of her bag and got to work on his Leave It to Beaver haircut, the one Ramona found so vomitous. She spiked it out as best as she could.

  “There,” she said. He was no Donald Death—and really, what sane person would want to be? But the old preppy Rex was gone, buried under a ton of hair goo.

  “Can I see now?” Rex asked.

  “Um, better not.” Lina took him by the arm and pulled him out of the makeup store before he passed another mirror. She didn’t want him to freak out.

  Lina had arranged to meet Ramona at Ruby’s, a café down the street. She didn’t plan on showing up, however. Goth Rex would show up instead.

  “Do you really think this will work?” Rex said. “It seems kind of silly.”

  Deep down, she had serious doubts. She said a silent prayer of thanks for Walker—laid-back, easygoing, adorable Walker. No makeover required.

  “It’s a long shot,” Lina said. “But Ramona really likes Goth-y punk guys.”

  Lina peeked through the plate glass window of Ruby’s. Ramona sat alone at a table with a cup of tea.

  “There she is,” Lina said. “Go!”

  She opened the door, gave Rex a shove, and ducked away from the window. She counted to three, then peeked.

  Rex stood at Ramona’s table. Ramona looked up. She seemed confused at first, as if she didn’t recognize him. Good, good, Lina thought.

  Then Ramona started laughing. Not a good kind of laugh. Head thrown back, mouth wide open, chains jiggling. Rex looked pained. Ramona said something and shook her head. She was still laughing when Rex walked out onto the sidewalk.

  “She said I can’t pull the Goth thing off,” he said. “She called me a poseur.”

  He stared at his reflection in the plate glass. He tried to rub off the eyeliner. “I look like an idiot.”

  Lina felt terrible. “Rex, did you ever think that maybe Ramona’s not the girl for you?”

  “She is,” Rex insisted. “She just doesn’t know it yet. You’re not giving up already?”