Rebels Like Us

by Liz Reinhardt

  “Okay. In literal bases? I made it all the way home!” I’m aware this isn’t what Ollie’s asking about, but the heady victory of my slide to home—never mind the stupid catcher calling me out—still feels like a cause for celebration.

  “Are you seriously talking about the actual sport of baseball right now? No. You shut up about all bases except romantic ones, Agnes.”

  “The closest I came to metaphoric bases was barely first, and that was only on a bet. He backed out.” I try to hold back my sigh, then remember who I’m talking to and let it burst forth because Ollie knows tangled-love pain better than anyone.

  “He backed out of first?” Ollie’s eyebrows dip with worry. “Shy? Gentlemanly?”

  “I think…I told him the kiss wasn’t my choice if it was a bet, and he told me he’d never kiss a lady unless he was sure she wanted him to. So…it wound up being bad timing, I guess.” I flop onto the bed and hold the phone in my outstretched arms.

  “That is so feminist and woke of him! That is the most incredibly romantic thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” Ollie hugs herself. “It’s like Hercules completing all those tasks.”

  “Olls, did you pay any attention in our mythology unit? Hercules did those to atone for slaughtering his six sons.”

  “Oh right. Not as romantic then. But this example so clearly illustrates why you and I have divergent budding romantic lives. You take a perfectly good love metaphor and twist it back to death, while I take a horrible story about filicide and make it romantic.”

  “You are completely nuts. That’s what you are,” I tell her, my laugh edged in the pain of missing her with all my heart. “I miss you. Also, did you mention a budding romantic life of your own? Are you and some cellist making beautiful music together?”

  She hides her face in a pillow. “Sorry. Romance metaphors really are lame. Maybe. Yes. Maybe.”

  “So, was it like a symphony? Or was it just a few off-key notes? God, yeah, you’re so right. Metaphors suck. Did you make out like crazy?”

  “Yes!” She rolls on her bed and drops her phone, so I stare at her paisley quilt until she digs it out. “He played me like he was Yo-Yo Ma and I was a cello.”

  “Worst metaphor yet,” I groan. “But I’m so, so happy for you.”

  “When will I get to be happy for you? What are you doing on your next date?”

  “Driving trucks in the mud.”

  Ollie looks confused, and it’s actually a relief. I’m tired of being the only one totally caught off guard by what passes for a good time around here. “Driving in the mud? Why?”

  “Fun, of course.” I drizzle sarcasm all over that explanation. “What are you doing? Are you two lovebirds hanging out today?”

  “I have some, ahem, music to make. Sweet, sweet music. Seriously though, I can’t make out with him all day. This project is killing me, and the crazy making out helps me destress, but it doesn’t help me practice. I have so many glitches to work out.”

  “Well, work them, lovey,” I command.

  “I will. Now,” she says, sighing.

  “Love you.” She tells me she loves me back and we hang up after we kiss our screens. As always, my longing for her is worse right after I listen to her voice.

  I don’t just miss Ollie. I miss Brooklyn. I miss the city and its constant noise. I miss my school, where I had teachers who stopped me in the halls just to hug me and tell me they enjoyed my passionate comments in their class. I miss going places and having people excited to see me, instead of whispering about me behind their hands.

  I even miss stuff I shouldn’t. I miss the way it felt to walk into a room with Lincoln at my side and have everyone know and accept that we were a couple. When I didn’t know it was all a sham, it was like the blanket I carried around as a toddler: mine, all mine, claimed by chew marks and slobber.

  I didn’t tell Ollie about the rebel mascot thing, even though that’s the kind of news we’re usually happy to exchange. Why? I feel embarrassed. Even though it has zilch to do with me. I’m embarrassed because I know Ollie would want me to do something about it.

  I flop back onto my mattress and watch the sun move across the gray cobwebs on the ceiling, wondering why I feel guilt and embarrassment and raw need and what exactly I’m going to do to help myself stop feeling it all.

  I also think about mudding next week.

  “I’m thinking about mudding,” I declare to the ceiling, and marvel at what a strange mess my life is. “Enough is enough. I need to find something more productive to do with my time.”

  And I will. As soon as I get through my big mudding initiation. My cousins in Santo Domingo would howl with laughter if they knew I traded nights of dancing the merengue for driving trucks through the mud. In Santo Domingo, we say you’re enchivarse when you’re stuck in the mud on the road, and it’s not considered fun at all. It definitely wouldn’t be their idea of a romantic chercha. And it wouldn’t have been mine either. But Doyle is changing the way I define a good time, and I can’t lie—I kind of love my new perspective.

  THIRTEEN

  The entire bog area varies between slick and pitted expanses of reddish, sandy mud. A dozen other Jeeps and trucks are parked around, and people talk high and quick, laugh loud with excitement, steal each other’s cigarettes, and chase each other through the mud like they want to get coated in it.

  “Um, is everyone here wearing white?”

  I feel like I’m in the “after” shot of a laundry detergent commercial. Blindingly bleached caps and Tshirts and bikini tops are everywhere, and even Doyle’s wearing an old white Hanes shirt with holes in the collar.

  “It’s kinda tradition.” He maneuvers his words around a grin. “It’s like a point’a pride to see how dirty you can get.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Even if it’s ridiculous to want to wear a white shirt I’m just going to destroy instead of the perfectly good navy one I have on now, any subtle detail that helps me fit in is comforting.

  “You wearin’ your bikini?”

  I tug my shirt down and show the red ties. “You said we were going swimming after.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you to wear your bikini and wear white and have you only do one or the other. It was a calculated risk.” He drives over a particularly raised mound of mud and presses me back in my seat with his arm as if I’m not wearing a seat belt.

  “You could’ve just told me that you wanted to see me half-naked,” I gripe. I’m irritated that—as usual—I’ll be the one who doesn’t fit in because I never even thought to ask what the rules were.

  I’ve never broken so many rules I had no clue existed.

  He lowers his arm and his goofy smile fades. “You’re pissed.”

  I know from the flash of my reflection as we crest another hill that my scowl reads all hot belligerence. I have zero game face.

  “No, I’m not.”

  Doyle rests one hand on the wheel, lifts his hips off the seat, and roots his free hand in the back, finally pulling out a pristine white T-shirt.

  “My extra gym shirt. It’s clean.” He hands it over. “It wasn’t jest about the bikini. Though—I can’t lie—that was high on my priority list. I never thought you’d wanna match with us dumb rednecks. That was stupid of me. You’re not the kind of girl who does anything by half. Why’d mudding be any exception?”

  I pull off the shirt I’m wearing and enjoy the bob of Doyle’s Adam’s apple as he watches. I know how good white looks against my skin, and I can tell from the hungry look in Doyle’s eyes that he agrees. “Thank you.”

  I love how his shirt smells like the detergent he uses and also like dirt, leaves, starlit nights, and pool water.

  Maybe that’s just Doyle.

  Or maybe I’m turning into a pining romantic, because I even think the air smells better when he’s around.

  “So, what’s the point of this?” I need a distraction before I start mentally writing him love sonnets.

  “The point?” He grin
s like a fool. “The point’s to hold on tight and embrace the mud.” He leans half out the window and lets loose a wail that sounds straight out of the throat of a Lost Boy or a delinquent.

  Screams, hoots, and cheers puncture the air as Doyle guns the engine, bumping us up and down the soft mounds of mud that squelch under our tires and spray in globs and mists and waves over the roof and into the windows. I’m so mud-flecked after we crest the first hill, I look like my freckles have tripled in a few seconds. By the third hill, I closely resemble a Dalmatian. By the time we’re on our second lap, I have no clue what we look like, but there’s too much mud caked on the rearview mirror—and the rest of the truck—for us to be anything less than complete bog monsters.

  Doyle screams out the window and spins his tires. The guys behind us lay on their horns and scream back.

  “You’re mighty quiet.” He leans over like he’s going to kiss me but doesn’t. I’m tired of this lip-over-lip tug-of-war. I have no intention of asking for a kiss, but I might take one.

  I smile and grip the side of the window when he glances over.

  “It’s fun!” I insist.

  Maybe too emphatically.

  His eyes glint the exact way my brother’s do before he gives me a wet willie or tickles the crap out of me until I can’t breathe.

  “You can’t jest say you’re havin’ fun. You need to produce evidence.”

  I raise my eyebrows as we get sucked down into the sinking mud and rock from side to side.

  “Are we stuck?” I wonder what protocol is when you get trapped in this pit.

  “We are.” Doyle leans out to check how bad it is and shakes his head in defeat. “I only know one thing that’ll get a rig this stuck outta the mud.”

  “A tow truck.” I can’t even imagine how they’ll get one back here. Doyle’s truck is twice as big as any tow truck I’ve ever seen, with huge, gripping tires. “Do you have AAA? Does AAA cover this kind of stuff?”

  “AAA can’t help us now.” His bright blue, flame-like eyes are hot and disarming all at once. “What we need is a hot girl—I mean, like smokin’ hot, hot as hell, blow-your-mind hot. This girl—who’s crazy hot—jest has to lean out the window and scream her pretty head off.”

  I narrow my eyes at him and fold my mud-flecked arms over my mud-splattered shirt. “You’re insane if you think that’s happening. I’m not going to act like an idiot so you can laugh at me.”

  Doyle puts a hand over his heart, gasping like he’s deeply wounded by my words. “Are you serious? You really think this is some put-on?” He leans out the truck and yells, “Guys! I’m deep in the muck, and Nes don’t believe me when I tell her what she gotta do!”

  The one-word chorus spreads from the inhabitants of the few vehicles in our vicinity to every single mud-flecked soul in the pit, all shouting with pure, crazy joy.

  “Scream!”

  Doyle looks over at me smugly and shrugs. I hear his unspoken triple-dog dare loud and clear. And I open my mouth.

  I open as wide as I can without actually hurting my jaw. I pull from low in my gut, from deep in my bowels, from the pit of somewhere I haven’t wanted to face in a long time, and I scream.

  The accompanying screams from the pit get louder until it’s all a dull roar so intense, I swear it blows my hair back. My throat protests, stripped ragged and raw, but I push on and scream louder, harder, until my vocal chords vibrate and my throat starts to go dry. Doyle joins in, and we must sound like maniacs, like banshees. I couldn’t care less. Since my life started falling apart, nothing—not snarkiness or kicking my heels against the mattress or laps around the pool or vodka—has felt as good as this guttural, primal scream.

  I stop when the truck springs forward and flies over the next mound, spraying mud into my mouth and Doyle’s. We both lean out our windows and spit. No matter how much we do, there’s still grit crunching between our teeth, but we’re laughing too hard to care.

  “You wanna turn at the wheel?” Doyle asks, pulling to a less muddy area.

  “What if I get you stuck?” I ask. Before he can recommend screaming again, I cut in, “Really stuck. Not stuck just so you can trick me into acting stupid.”

  “That wasn’t a trick. That there was harnessing somethin’ pure and wild.”

  “I trust you,” I tell him.

  His eyes are blue as the twilight sky reflected on a summer lake. He slides close to me on the bench seat, so close I can hear his every breath and smell his minty gum. So close I could wrap my arms around his neck if I wasn’t the world’s most colossal chicken.

  He tugs me over until my jean shorts glide across the leather seat, the sweaty backs of my legs sticking slightly. He lifts me and, for one quick beat of my hammering heart, I’m sitting on the strong muscles of his upper thighs. My back is to his chest, his breath is hot on my neck, his fingers are locked high enough on my ribs that they brush just under my breasts.

  I imagine all kinds of soft touches, tickling whispers, sweet and shocking kisses, but all I get is plopped in front of the steering wheel. Doyle runs a rough hand over his hair again and again.

  “Damn, girl. That was no joke when I said you were hot enough to scream us outta that mud.”

  I can’t control how erratically I’m breathing, or how hard my heart punches in my chest, so I get busy buckling my seat belt and starting the engine. I say a silent prayer of thanks for the summers I spent with Mom at my grandparents’ summer cabin in upstate New York. City kids don’t get to drive much at all, let alone drive stick—unless their grandfathers sneak them lessons behind the wheel of an old beater truck. If Mom knew Gramps taught me to drive before I graduated eighth grade, she’d have a fit.

  “Mud.” I focus on that single dirty word to tourniquet my dirtier thoughts. Thoughts about Doyle and the hard muscles in his legs and how completely right his arms felt around my waist. “The point of this is mud, right?”

  “Yup.” He doesn’t say more, and his hand shakes when he tries to clip his seat belt.

  “I’ll be careful,” I promise.

  “The point is mud, not careful.” He clinches his belt tight. “C’mon. You don’t scare me, Yank.”

  I shake my head, laughing all the impure thoughts of Doyle to the back of my brain. “You’re on, Johnny Reb.”

  I gun it, flying over dirt mounds and propelling us directly into mud pools. We rock but never get stuck, because I know from watching Doyle that in order to get coated, you need to avoid the sticky half-dry stuff on the edges and stay to the wide, shallow, murky puddles. Fountains of mud spray over us, explosions on every side of the truck, until it’s sluggish and hard to handle.

  “Bein’ a beast?” Doyle asks as I fiddle with the stick.

  “It feels off suddenly. Like it’s—”

  “Heavy?” When I nod, he explains, “Mud’s drying fast today. There’s a truckload caked on the chassis, I bet.”

  I pull over alongside a group of Jeeps and trucks. I don’t want to risk breaking Doyle’s main form of transportation.

  “Hell, Doyle! That yer girl at the wheel? I was gonna say, you ain’t never gone so crazy before! She’s a wild one, boy.” A guy claps his hands on his protruding beer belly and laughs deep and long.

  It’s aggravating that he talks about me like I’m not sitting right in front of his face, but he’s bragging about how completely my skills outdistance Doyle’s to anyone who will listen, so I let it go. Doyle nods and points for me to pull farther up and park. We hop into a puddle, not giving a damn about adding mud-caked feet and ankles to the list of coated body parts, and strut around the truck, ludicrously proud of all the filth we kicked up.

  “That’s Critter. He’s all right, but he’s making eyes at you,” Doyle says softly when we’re perched on the tailgate of his truck, segregated from the crowd.

  “Weren’t you just going on about how hot I am? How can the poor guy help himself?” A rush of warmth singes through me, which is irritating. I should know better than to be bowled
over by macho possessiveness.

  Apparently the part of my brain that’s still hardwired to pick whichever mate beats his chest the hardest is stronger than the part of my brain stuffed with reams of Mom’s feminist-theory literature.

  “He can help himself far away from you if he knows what’s good for him.” Doyle’s usually teasing tone is all business. He ignores my eye roll. “Maybe you’ll never date me, and I’ll cry in private over that. But I’m sure as hell not gonna stand by and let Critter Sharkey come out of the deep and steal you away.”

  “How chivalrous,” I drawl, my words heavy with sarcasm. “So do I get a say in this, or do you just clunk me over the head with your club and drag me back to your cave after you scare Critter off?”

  He starts with a series of chuckles that make his shoulders shake, but soon he has to rip off his hat and cover his face. It’s difficult to keep stony during an argument when the person you’re trying to school is laughing his ass off.

  “Stop laughing.” I hiss the words so there’s no chance my lips will mutiny into a smile. “I mean it. This whole thought process freaks me out.”

  His laughs water down to occasional chuckles until he turns to face me, dead serious. “Don’t be freaked out. It’s jest, y’know, you’re mine. Forever.” He drops his voice theatrically low. “And I might watch you sleep at night. Also, I might be a vampire.”

  “Ass.” I smack his arm, and might possibly use this gentle abuse to angle my body closer to his. And I might be supremely annoyed when a familiar feminine voice breaks through what might have almost been an attempt at a kiss.

  On his part.

  Not mine.

  “You let her drive your truck?”

  “She has a name, Braelynn,” Doyle growls. “And, yes, Nes tore it the hell up out there.”

  “Thought the Gospel of Doyle was that you never let anyone drive your truck. Hoo, boy, Ansley’s gonna shit a brick.” She giggles behind her hand.

  “Lovely imagery.” I lean around Doyle to face Braelynn directly. “I guess you should go report to Ansley right away, while it’s all still fresh.” I flash a toothy smile. “PS—she’s super lucky to have you watching her back.”