Stolen Car

by Patrick Jones

  STOLEN CAR

  PATRICK JONES

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  JUNE

  1 Friday, June 13

  2 Saturday, June 14

  3 Monday, June 16

  4 Tuesday, June 17

  5 Friday, June 20

  6 Friday, June 27

  7 Saturday, June 28

  JULY

  8 Saturday, July 12

  9 Saturday, July 19, and Sunday, July 20

  10 Monday, July 21

  11 Friday, July 25

  12 Saturday, July 26

  AUGUST

  13 Sunday, August 3

  14 Sunday, August 10

  15 Wednesday Afternoon, August 13

  16 Wednesday Evening, August 13

  17 Thursday, August 14

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Patrick Jones

  Imprint

  To JLJ

  I’m fifteen years old and I’m driving a stolen car.

  Ashley, my best friend forever, sits beside me. Despite my long light-brown hair, I’m the Goldilocks of the interstate: not too slow, not too fast. The speed is just right to avoid attention, while taking us far away from Flint, from family, from friends, and from a summer filled with faithlessness.

  I don’t want a stolen car; what I need is a time machine to reverse the past two months of my life. Before all this, if someone was doing a word association game and said my name—Danielle Griffin—the word “normal” would have been the right answer. Since I kept my home life hidden from most, I was just another under-the-radar sophomore at Carmen High School. I used to read books and think, “Why couldn’t something exciting happen to me?” But I’d trade all the turmoil of the past two months in a second to have my boring loveless life back.

  And it is love, or something like it, that has us heading north on I-75 through the hot and muggy August Michigan air. I’m not sure how any of this will end, but for now, I’m driving a stolen car on a steamy starless night, wishing I could vanish into the black void.

  JUNE

  1

  FRIDAY, JUNE 13

  “Can’t you just shut up?” Carl yells at Mom, then slaps her across the face. The smack of flesh on flesh echoes over the booming rap music from a passing car and the rumble of an airplane flying overhead. These angry sounds aren’t new, just freshly delivered this Friday evening.

  Mom stands there, stunned for a moment. She’s probably wondering—I can only assume, since Mom and I are not really on any serious speaking terms—what to do and who is this person she’s allowed to invade our lives. “Bastard,” she hisses, then heads back to the kitchen.

  Carl, the latest Dad wannabe, is inhaling his food in front of the TV. He asked Mom to get him yet another beer. Unlike Carl, she’s worked all day. She’s only home for a few hours from her Laundromat job before heading off to night waitress at the Capitol Coney Island. She told him to get off his lazy fat ass and get it himself, not that Mom is one to talk about fat asses, nor am I. If it hadn’t been about the beer, it would have been about something else—even if it was really about nothing. They’re always one spark away from the next explosion.

  He’d been sitting—the way he has for most of the past nine months—with his fat farting behind on the big brown sofa in the living room. That sofa, along with my mother’s bed and the bathroom, is where Carl spends the greater part of his day. He watches TV, drinks beer, takes money from Mom’s purse, plays softball, and mostly stays out of my boring life. Mom must have really pissed him off—also nothing new—to get him off that sofa. He bolted from his TV viewing spot to the dining room table in record time, slapping Mom’s heavily made-up trying-not-to-look-thirty-one face. Her look is hurt, not surprised, which leads me to believe that while I’m seeing this for the first time, it probably isn’t Carl’s first strike. In the past nine years, other wannabes have left their marks on Mom’s face, my backside, and both of our lives.

  “Get out of my house!” Mom shouts as she stomps back in the room.

  “Shut up!” Carl slurs, then retreats to his sweet spot on the sofa. He’s not much different from Stan, Mitch, or the rest of the men since my real dad left us back when I was six. Just because these men talk themselves into Mom’s bed doesn’t mean they can get into my life. Mom says these men love her, usually just before they leave her.

  “I said get the hell out of my house!” Mom shouts back at Carl, then walks from the small dining room into the even smaller kitchen. Carl’s fat face below his balding skull is red-hot with anger, while my mother’s face is so tight that the brown roots of her dyed blond hair stand out even more than usual. The blood dripping from her nose sprinkles her face with red specks.

  “Get your own beer!” Mom yells as she stomps back into the living room and hurls a white plate in Carl’s direction. The plate lands with a thud near the still-blaring TV.

  “Go ahead, break them all!” Carl shouts as he balances himself to stand.

  “Fine!” Mom bellows, then heads back into the kitchen. As Carl follows her, he pushes his finger hard into my shoulder and then points toward my room, like he’s trying to protect me from all of this. But Carl’s not a protector or a provider; he’s just another poor choice. Before I can move, or he can say anything more, another plate flies toward him. He deflects it with his arm, and the sound of it crashing mixes with the rumble of thunder outside to rattle every window.

  “Fine yourself!” Carl shouts back. He grabs one of the half-filled bowls—pasta and sauce from a jar—off the table and throws it at Mom. It misses, crashing on the floor, sending shards of porcelain all over the kitchen. With the red sauce splattered on the dirty white tile, it looks like a serial killer’s grisly crime scene, lacking only the police tape.

  None of this seems real, yet it’s all too familiar, like something from a TV show or teen problem novel. That’s why I only read fat fantasy novels: I need to escape for hours into a different world from the one I’m living in. In my life, the dragons are my dark thoughts of doubt, loneliness, and fear. If this were a magical kingdom instead of a trailer park, then some knight or wizard would come to the rescue. But rusting cars, not shining armor, fill the pitted streets of Circle Pines, so it’s up to me. I need to be my mom’s heroine, just like those brave hearts I read about in books. I will be Danielle the Defender. I bolt from the table as they continue hurling dishes and insults at each other, and run into my bedroom to grab my cell to dial 911. The cell is the only luxury in my life, even if it is a piece of crap. By the time I push the last button, it sounds like someone is throwing glasses—or maybe beer bottles—onto the floor.

  I suck it up, tell the 911 dispatcher what’s happening, and give them our address. The address is almost unnecessary; the prefab metal trailers at Circle Pines attract Flint cops like a magnet. I bury my face in a pillow and scream until my throat becomes as raw as my life. As the sound of yelling and smashing rages on in the other room, I pray for silence to get me through this summer. I spent last school year taking tests and answering questions. I studied math, French, English, history, and science, but never learned what I wanted most to understand. Thinking about Mom and all the Carls in her life, then remembering Reid—the only real love of my life—I know there’s only one thing I need to discover. I want to find out if love is real.

  • • •

  “You won’t even miss me, will you?” I mumble as I escape before the police arrive. I throw on my army jacket, making sure my cell and Camel cigarettes (stolen from Carl) are in one pocket and a Tamora Pierce fantasy is in the other, then head out into a light rain. I need a vacation, not from school—summer vacation started yesterday—but from myself, starting tonight.

  I grab my
bike from the small storage shed and pedal my pudgy legs like pistons down the flat backstreets of Circle Pines. There’s a crack of thunder and a harder rain starts to fall. I bike up Maple Road, over the bridge at I-75, then let the wet wind blow back my hair as I coast downhill toward the 7-Eleven at the intersection. It seems like I’ve spent so much of my life riding uphill. As I let gravity pull me faster, I wonder when I’ll get to coast through life, instead of always pedaling so hard.

  At the 7-Eleven, I pull my bike under the awning, catch my breath, and try not to think about the scene I’ve just left. The test comes tomorrow: if the locks to the trailer are changed, then I’ll know Carl’s yet another failed Dad wannabe. If not, then he’s getting another chance. I wouldn’t miss anything about Carl other than the cigarettes I lift from his coat during his post-softball six-pack-inspired naps. I light up a Camel and blow thoughts of its previous owner away.

  I lean against the wall and think about calling my BFF Ashley, but hesitate. What I really don’t need now is Ashley’s predictable, compassionate, yet unrealistic advice. I need to laugh, so I try Evan. Evan’s my best boy friend but not my boyfriend, much to his disappointment. I just don’t like him in that way, no matter how hard I try. Evan’s nice, sweet, maybe even a little cute, but he’s my sidekick, not my love interest. Still, at times like now when I’m feeling down, I know that he’ll make me feel good about myself. He’s the anti-Carl—though I suppose that at one time, Carl made Mom laugh too.

  “Is Evan there?” I ask the male voice who answers the phone.

  “One second,” he responds. After a cough, I hear him shout Evan’s name. A few seconds of silence, another cough, and he comes back on the line. “No dice, sweetie.”

  “Do you know when he’ll be home?” I ask.

  “Whenever, I guess,” is his less than helpful answer.

  “Just tell him Danielle called,” I say, ready to click him.

  “Oh, his girlfriend.”

  “I’m not his girlfriend,” I announce, then pause as the male voice on the other end launches into another laugh-induced coughing fit.

  “Maybe you’re just his big squeeze, huh?” the voice asks.

  “Whatever.” Maybe I’m overly sensitive, but I cringe at the word “big.” My growth spurt was after eighth grade, when my baby fat went into my breasts and butt. I don’t try to act sexy, but my eighth-grade wardrobe no longer fits my eleventh-grade body. Evan’s interest—and other boys’—seems in direct relationship to my increasing cleavage and cup size.

  “Evan says you’re his girlfriend,” the voice says. He sounds bored; I’m his entertainment.

  “Who is this?” I ask in order to change this sore subject.

  “I’m Evan’s older brother, Vic,” the voice says. The two things I know about Vic are that Evan doesn’t like to talk about him, and back in the day, he used to hang around Reid’s house.

  “Tell him I’ll call him back,” I say. I won’t let Evan call me at home; it’s my rule so my mom doesn’t find out about this boy who likes me. Mom has a rule that I’m not allowed to go out on dates until I’m sixteen. Mom has a rule that I can’t be over at any of my friends’ houses unless an adult is home. Mom has a rule that I can’t have friends over unless she’s home. Mom’s rules are better suited to a toddler than a teen, and all of them show she doesn’t trust me. Like most of my clothes, those rules don’t fit me anymore.

  “Evan’s working at the mall,” Vic says. “If you need a ride, we could roll.”

  “No, thank you,” I say. I’ve heard enough of Mom’s boyfriends high to detect the buzz in Vic’s voice. I don’t feel much like being alive right now, but I’ve got no interest in dying.

  “Fine with me,” Vic answers, then I end the call. I push number one to speed-dial Ashley.

  “Hey, Danny,” Ashley answers. She sounds out of breath too, but I know it’s not from smoking: she’s straight-edge and substance-free. With the schedule her parents have her on, even in the summer, I don’t know when Ashley will get a chance to breathe, relax, or even play her most important role as my best friend forever.

  “This is last minute, but could I come over and spend the night?” I ask, true to form. I know I ask far more from Ashley than I give her in return. I didn’t need to get a B+ in algebra last year to know that our friendship’s an unbalanced equation.

  “Let me tell the ’rents,” Ashley says, meaning her parents.

  “Thanks,” I say, knowing I’ll have to summon a second round of courage to ask them to make the drive to get me—Ashley lives about five miles away. But her parents seem to like me okay, and I like being at a clean, sober, and shout-free house whenever I can.

  As I wait for the answer, I will it to be a yes. There’s no place else in this big world to go. My grandmother lives in Florida, but she and Mom haven’t talked for years. The only other option is my mom’s older sister Abigail and her family—including my soon-to-be-married twenty-four-year-old cousin Brittney—but they live about two hundred miles north up in Traverse City. Aunt Abby’s husband is a doctor, but even he can’t stitch together our fractured family. No wonder Ashley means so much to me: without her, I wouldn’t have any lightness in my life, just loneliness. I’d be Danielle the Dark Warrior.

  “The ’rents say it’s a go,” Ashley says, but adds, “But can you have your mom drive you over? The ’rents say they are in for the evening.”

  “Shit,” I mutter under my breath. Ashley’s parents are nine-to-five types with General Motors. They don’t keep the same odd and ever-changing low-wage hours as Mom. Still, eight o’clock on a Friday night seems early to be in for the evening. They’re also old, a lot older, I guess, than my mom. Maybe almost forty-five. Ashley doesn’t talk much about her parents other than normal complaints, so I respect that. There are certainly things about my miserable life I’ve never shared with Ashley, either. I notice the rain has mostly let up, so I say, “I’ll bike over.”

  I wonder what will happen next in my house. Carl might go, but probably not to jail. The police are probably there now, but Mom won’t press charges. Instead, she’ll change from mad to sad and Carl will be back in our house and her bed. There’s a formula for it: the number of beer cans will decrease and the talk of “attending church” or “going to college” will increase. People always grumble about how stupid math is, but it helps me understand life. Like Carl and all Mom’s boyfriends before: they all have a common denominator. They’re all common and they all bring her down. Life’s a fraction: somebody’s on top, somebody’s on the bottom. I’m not sure how I got stuck on the wrong side of that line.

  As I bike toward Ashley’s, I think more about when I’ll start driving come October. Driving always makes me think of my dad. One of the best memories I have is of him behind the wheel with me on his lap. He had this old Corvette convertible and every weekend in the summer, we’d go for long drives: top down, radio on. No matter which direction we went, whenever I was with my dad, it seemed the breeze was always behind us. Then when I was six, something happened between my parents, and he was gone. And lately, it just feels like Mom and I were born to run against the wind.

  • • •

  “You remembered it was game night, right?” Ashley asks in a whisper the second I walk in the door.

  “Welcome, Danielle,” Ashley’s mother says as she walks into the room. She’s always polite.

  “Hey,” I mumble in return. Her natural grace makes her seem to tower over us even though she’s shorter than both Ashley and me. I kick off my pink Chucks so I don’t trample my Circle Pines filth into her always immaculately clean house.

  “Let me get some iced tea for you both,” Ashley’s mother says, exiting as smoothly as she entered.

  “Make hot chocolate instead,” Ashley says as we make our way downstairs to the basement. While I’m trapped in one little room in our cramped, crappy trailer, Ashley’s got a big bedroom, and this huge finished basement where we usually hang out.

  “Are w
e still going shopping tomorrow?” I ask nicely. The politeness of Ashley’s house sticks even to me.

  “She wants to come with,” Ashley says, pointing upstairs. “When I told her no, she suggested that I could just give you some of her old clothes, like you’d want to wear them.”

  “Your mom dresses so nice,” I say. Ashley’s mom dresses for success; my mom’s biker-chick chic. “Just like you do, Ash.”

  “You can’t wear any of my clothes!” she says. Ashley’s taller than me, but weighs less. She’s almost five eight, but not much more than a hundred twenty pounds. She’s not all freaky bony like some of the model wannabes at school; she’s just tall and thin, which is weird, since both her parents are short and round. But I know her thinness is natural, not some Lifetime-movie eating disorder. No way could my best friend keep a secret like that from me; besides, I’ve seen her eat more than me, but never gain a pound. She’s born lucky, I guess. She’s got long brown hair that sometimes falls in front of her big brown eyes like a mask, dark thick eyebrows, never-needs-makeup skin, and full lips. Ashley’s beautiful.

  “Is everybody decent before I descend?” Ashley’s father yells from the top of the stairs.

  “He’s so weird,” Ashley whispers to me and I nod in agreement.

  “I’m walking down the stairs now,” he says. “One, two, three.”

  “Forget it,” Ashley cuts him off in her most disgusted voice. “What do you want?”

  “Just inquiring when you’ll be emerging,” he asks, then almost runs back up the stairs.

  “Just tell me when the hot chocolate is done, okay?” Ashley shouts up the stairs, then sighs.

  “How can you be cold when it’s summer?” I ask.

  “I’m always cold,” she replies, then points into the laundry room. “Sometimes I just want to jump into the dryer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It would be like being back in the womb—warm, safe, and surrounded.”