by Haus, Jean
“First you’re late so you can run around in circles,” Ron, my stepfather, bellows from the other end of the garage louder than the ever present rock music coming from the speakers above. “Now you’re taking a break to eat?” His face beams as red as his beard and hair.
I’ll never understand how my mother, a successful attorney, had dated then decided to marry Ron. Of course, she was always attracted to biker types. She spent the summer she turned thirty-five with my father. He blew into town and her life on a bike on one humid summer day then blew out before autumn brought a drop in the ever-present Southern Florida heat. But Ron and marriage? Sure when they met the shop did well, but after the first year, hell from the words I do, his work habits stared declining, his time on the couch lengthened, and his beer belly appeared.
I stuff the rest of the sub in and say through a mouthful of food, “I’m coming.” No use arguing. Explaining I haven’t eaten since lunch, ran over five miles in the heat, and that it’s now seven o’clock will just piss him off more.
“Quit jerking around! He’s coming to check on the tank tomorrow before it gets the clear coat!”
Irritation held in check, I chuck the torn piece of sandwich in the trash, grab the stack of stencils from the table, and snag the tape on the way to counter.
“He wants blue and silver with gray shadows,” Ron snaps and dumps the paint jugs on the counter. He pokes at my chest. “If it runs,” poke, “you’d better touch it up.” Double poke. “Or I’m docking your pay.”
I force myself not to scowl. The front bell rings and Ron gives me a narrowed look before going to answer the door. I tape the first stencil onto the motorcycle’s gas tank I stripped, sand blasted, and painted black over the last three days.
Docking my wage. What a lame ass threat. He pays me peanuts. If I wasn’t positive he’d kick me out of my own house, I’d quit. Fast food places pay more to flip burgers. Unfortunately, not enough to for rent, food, and clothes. At least with the hours I’d get while going to high school. And though I shouldn’t, I feel guilty leaving Ron and the boys to fend for themselves. They’re too dang lazy to survive. But in less than two months, graduation then freedom.
Guilt be dammed.
After twisting on the jug of blue paint, I turn on the air compressor and spray the tank slowly for even coverage. I’m not an artist. It’s just old red beard doesn’t have the patience to do the job, while his sons, Mike and Junior (after Ron of course) don’t have the skill to paint a two-by-four. Yet Ron keeps taking the paint jobs as if I can tackle anything. Hence the reference to the intricate job where the paint ran.
Once again, I’m not an artist.
When both sides have blue flames and the noisy compressor is off, Ron’s loud voice booms from the front shop. Dang. I was hoping he’d left so I could sneak off to get something else to eat. I’m still starving.
I grab a ratchet and go work on the rebuild bike while the paint dries. When I was thirteen, Ron married my mother and I knew nothing about bikes. At fourteen after my mom died, I knew a little. By fifteen, I could build a bike. I don’t have anything against motorcycles—they are cool—I’m just getting a little sick of working on them. Or maybe it’s not the work, rather the peanut pay.
“Dustan!” Ron roars from the front.
“Yeah?” I holler back. Like I need his interruptions. I still have homework to do and at this rate, I’m going to be up till two a.m. again.
“Get over here!”
I pull the tire off, wipe my hands on my grease encrusted jeans—I use the same pair for every shift since I only have three other pairs—and go see what he wants. As I get closer to his messy office, a female voice mixes with the rock music from his favorite station blasting from above. Though I’m imagining some biker chick who probably wants some ridiculous art I’m incapable of, Ron stands in the way and all I can see is a tall pair of combat boots. When I get next to my stepfather, my eyeballs almost pop on the floor.
With green eyes bright again, Harmony stands across from us.
What the hell?
“Dustan,” he points a greasy finger at me then her, “Harmony.” She mouths hi and waves her fingers at me. “Since you can’t keep up with your workload, she’s going to help you.”
I feel suddenly as girly as she looks. I’m actually, really going to faint. “You hired her?”
His lip curls at me. “Isn’t that just what I said?”
Harmony sways to the music and smiles at me. I gawk. She looks like the only work she’s ever done is applying lipstick. But it’s not the girl thing. My shock comes from the fact my stepfather has never hired anyone. He just works me to the bone.
“Between interviewing her and her resume,” Ron waves a paper in the air, “she can paint and do repairs.” He tosses the resume into a nearby filing cabinet and plucks his keys from the paper-strewed desk. “Take a few minutes to show her around then get back to work.” He points a key at my chest. “The paint job better be done when I come in tomorrow morning at eleven along with a whole hell of lot more torn off the rebuild.”
I watch him walk out the door then turn to the girl swaying to the music. Her wide smile has my jaw clenching. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Her lips tighten in a straight line and she plants her hands on the pink, shiny belt at her waist. Unsurprisingly, her nails match the color of the belt. “Why would you say that?”
“I dunno?” I cross my arms. “First you track me down in the hall, demand lunch, and now show up at my job?”
“You think I like you or something?” She rolls her eyes. “As if.”
Do I think she likes me? I don’t know what I think. It’s weird. She’s weird. “Ah, I hope not.” Her eyes flash. “I mean you don’t even know me.”
“Look Dustan. I get it’s like a freaky coincidence but chill out. I have a boyfriend back in…in… Cali. I’m just here for the job. Okay?”
“Cali?” I echo.
“Um, like in California.”
“You’re from there?”
“Like didn’t I just say that?”
Okay, maybe the repeating confusion is my tired brain. I shake my head as if rebooting it. I have a feeling I might be doing that a lot in the future but Ron hired her so there’s not much I can do about it. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”
Once we tour the tool area and the stock room while she nods like she knows what’s up, I go to the counter and pull the stencil off the gas tank. “We don’t do custom work.” I point to the shelf of cubbyholes. “Those are stencils for all of the designs pictured on the wall in the office.”
Harmony traces a blue flame with a fingertip. “I can finish this if you want.”
I watch her pink nail trail across the design. If she screws up, Ron will blast through the speakers to the roof. But then his rant might be worth getting rid of her. I’m more than a little fearful she’s going to create more work for me. “All right, the gray is for shadowing, the silver for the border.”
She shuffles through the pile of stencils on the counter and lines up paint jars. “This should be way easy.” My stomach rumbles. Loud. She glances at my abdomen without making a comment.
“Just make sure the paint dries in between stencils,” I say, moving across the garage to the rebuild. And that’s all the help I’m going to give. Soon the compressor is running. I refuse to go and check her work. She claimed she could do the job. If I spend time helping her, what’s the point of having two people here?
Later, I’m under the rebuild when a pair of combat boots appear next to me. I didn’t even notice the compressor was off.
“What can I do?” she asks, bouncing to the music.
I force myself not to frown at her perkiness. Okay, let’s see how much she really knows. I point to the rebuild. “You want to start disassembling the forks?”
“Sure,” she says confidently.
I work and watch her from the corner of my eye. She’s actually fast and not only knows what tools to use
, but appears to have used them already. She also figures out where the parts go on the tarp and arranges them in order—while bopping to music. Who would have thought? Amid rock songs and annoying radio commercials, we work side by side without talking. Harmony comes and goes between the rebuild and the paint job. I’m anxious to see her work, but I wait. If she’s as good at painting as she is at disassembling, maybe Ron’s not as dumb as I thought.
At about ten thirty, Harmony yells out, “Done!”
I set my tools down and advance slowly to the counter. For the second time in one night, my eyeballs almost pop out of my head. The tank is awesome. She hand brushed some silver in the shadows of the flame and added definition with gray inside the flames. The design flows across the black background. The wings actually appear like they’re about to take flight off the tank.
Now, she’s an artist.
“It looks great,” I say and can’t help a smile. I’m going to be home before midnight. I’m going to get all my homework done for once. I’m going to get to bed before two a.m. Ron’s dickheadness comes down a notch. “I didn’t think you could do it, but it’s perfect.”
“Sweet!” She says and twirls around. “I knew I could impress you.”
Her wanting to impress me leaves me suspicious again. Then her liking me does seem a bit whacked. Especially in my current grease ball state. She moves toward the rebuild and I say, “I think we can clean up and take off.”
“Oh.” She glances at the clock on the wall. “It is getting way late. You have school tomorrow, right?”
I raise a brow. “You don’t?”
She wipes imaginary dirt from her off-the-shoulder white t-shirt. “Well yeah, I never get tired though. I’m like an insomniac.”
Watching her, I’m shaking my head to reboot it again. Her shirt, her jeans, even her hands are perfectly clean.
“What?” she asks.
“How do you not have any grease or paint on you?”
She shrugs and picks up a wrench. “I’m a girl. I know how to stay like spotless.”
I look around the messy shop. Nothing is clean in the garage. Not one tool. Not one spot on the counter. Not even the rags to clean with. Nothing. How she stayed spotless is like magic or something.
Chapter 3
When I was a kid, I played the three major American sports: baseball, basketball, and football. After my number one cheerleader, Mom, died from cancer, I lost interest. Besides, the workload Ron piles on me hardly allows time for homework. However, once Coach Gains timed me running in gym, he wouldn’t stop begging me to join the team, even calling Ron when I tried to use the garage as an excuse. Ron of course, wanting to seem like the good guy, gave Coach Gains his full support, which means he bitches non-stop during track season but would never tell me I can’t run.
I don’t love running or anything. But when college scouts started looking at me right away last year, I began envisioning a way out of my futureless future. A life free from the garage, Ron, and my stepbrothers. A real life. I’d never thought college a possibility until the first day Coach Gains told me someone from The University of Florida had asked about me. After that, I took practice and the meets much more seriously. My dream does leave a ping of guilt inside me because I’m not sure how Ron and the boys will make it without me, but I crush guilt down with the fact I shouldn’t have to take care of them forever. Four years of hell should be enough.
During the long hours a track meet takes, since I only run the sixty, the hundred-meter dash, and one relay, I usually read. One of the few things my father left from his summer with my mother was a comic book collection. I’ve been addicted to the things since I was little. At first, I was just searching for a piece of my unknown father in them, but then the stories, the art, and the selfless heroes reeled me in. Though track meets are a break for me from the shop and even homework, today during lunch Coach Gains called me into his office and explained (yelled) if I didn’t get my Trig grade up from a D+ to at least a C, I’d be hitting the sideline.
So I’m sitting at a picnic table on the side of the bleachers under the shade of a cluster of palm trees, eating a hot dog—got to love school concession stands and their cheap food—working on polar graphing, and waiting for the hundred-meter all call. I already kicked ass in the sixty. I take a bite from my hotdog and start my third graph when someone plunks a pile of magazines on the table next to me. I’m not surprised by the neon pink clad body that follows. The bench creaks as she sits and I can’t help letting out an irritated sigh.
Harmony frowns. “What? Like now I can’t sit by you?”
Amid the scent of fresh flowers—the girl must rub herself with lilacs or something—I hold in another sigh. “I need to get ready for tomorrow’s quiz. If I don’t get my grade up, Coach isn’t going to let me run.” I point to my Trig book then her. “Besides what are you doing at a track meet?”
She shrugs. “Not being able to work at the garage, I got bored.” She flicks the top magazine open with a thumb. “Study away, I won’t bother you.”
I clench my pencil instead of my jaw. “I see you made it home alright. I wondered when you weren’t in Anatomy.” Last night she insisted on walking home no matter how many times I offered her a ride on my bike.
“Yeah, I didn’t get to school till after lunch.” She glances at the half-eaten hotdog. “Should you be eating before running?”
I shrug. “I can’t run hungry. It’s just a small snack.”
“You’re always hungry,” she says, licks a thumb, and pushes a page.
Okay, so my stomach gurgles a lot. Ron rarely buys groceries. Him and his kids live on convenient store food and drive thru fare.
Harmony whisks through pictures. I crunch numbers. Intermittently, she points to ads of teenagers covered in denim and sand. “How is that fashion? Isn’t it blah? How is this stuff in? Everything’s so plain.” Each time I shrug, but she continues pointing and asking the same questions. Until she says in a nonchalant tone, “So you going to prom?”
“Ah, no,” I say, pushing calculator buttons. My homework would be a lot easier if I had a graphing calculator, but Ron forking out a hundred dollars for one isn’t going to happen. “I thought you were going to let me study away?”
Ignoring me, she stares at a glossy picture of a girl dressed in pink ruffles. “Why not?”
I tap my pencil on the table and stare at the zigzag line of a graph that should be a curve. “Too busy. No one worth taking.”
“Like no one?” she asks, creasing the page. Glancing at her pink fingernails on the pink dress, I’m hoping she isn’t hinting for me to ask her. “It’s your senior year.” Her nail outlines the dress. “This school’s got like over a thousand kids. There has to be someone here who rocks your boat.”
There is one person who gives my boat a bit of a sway. I glance across the fence past the line of spectators leaning there. Most of the team sits on blankets at the end of the field under the bright, hot sun. Mirana and Eric sit with their group of friends who consist of the popular people. Mirana tilts her head back and laughs at something. Sunlight shines off her dark hair as she leans on Eric. “Nope, no one,” I say, but Harmony follows my gaze.
She looks across the field. Her pink mouth presses into a frown. “Or is it that your someone is already taken?” Suddenly, my latest graph becomes very important while her fingers drum on a magazine cover.
“Dusty!” My stepbrother Mike stops in front of the picnic table and I force myself not to curl my lip in annoyance. He stares at Harmony. “Making new friends? Or should I say, a friend?” After running a hand through his slicked backed hair, he shoves his cell phone in his pocket and walks over. His brother and shadow, Junior, follows at his heels.
I inwardly groan as they sit then realize if they’re here, Harmony won’t pester me about Mirana. Mike plants his butt next to my homework on the top of the table—so short he likes to tower over people whenever possible. Junior sits on the bench across from Harmony. They come t
o almost every sporting event at school. It’s their lame tactic of trying to pick up chicks. While I introduce them, they both stare at Harmony like they’ve never seen a girl before. I won’t be surprised if drool soon wets the table.
