a look on his face that made me want to tie him to a tree with duct tape. It was a look that spelled mischief—only it spelled it d-a-n-g-e-r-o-u-s. “What are you thinking, Trey?” I really didn’t like the glint in his eyes.
He looked into the car and his smile broadened. “You know how I’ve been taking driver’s ed at school?”
“Trey . . .”
“I’m going to be sixteen in two and a half months.”
“Only if Dad doesn’t kill you before then.”
Trey leaned down and eyed the garage doorway like a golfer lines up his shot. “All I’ve got to do is put it in gear and let it coast into the garage.”
“Uh, Trey . . .” I was trying to figure out how to express my true feelings without resorting to nasty words.
Trey opened the driver’s-side door and got into the front seat. I was rooted to the spot with a combination of terror and reluctant admiration. My brother, the idiot, was truly a courageous guy.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?” I yelled as the engine came to life and he put it in gear. The car inched forward and I could see how it was perfectly lined up with the garage. I think Trey and I were both so focused on that, neither of us realized he had left the car door open. I saw it just as it was about to make contact with the garage’s doorframe and yelled, “Trey! The door!” so loudly that I startled myself.
I apparently startled Trey, too, because he panicked. He didn’t know what I’d yelled, but he knew it had sounded urgent, and in his frantic attempt to bring the car to a halt, he hit the wrong pedal, just for a second, and jolted the Chevy into the workbench on the back wall of the garage.
I’ve heard it said that time stands still at critical moments in life, like when someone says they love you or you win the lottery or your brother plows your dad’s prize possession into the garage wall. But time didn’t actually stand still in the aftermath of what we would come to refer to as the Big Bang. Time actually took on a life of its own and started to rock and swirl around me, and I think the whole earth kinda bucked along in rhythm. It was a cataclysm of unimaginable consequences, and time was thrashing around in a desperate effort to reverse itself. It didn’t succeed. When the earth settled a little under my feet, I heard a lone wrench fall off its wall hook and land on the hood of the shiny black Chevy.
This was not good—a very bad, very scary, very irremediable version of not good.
When Dad returned, he found us sitting on the stoop at the front of the house. We’d passed the minutes trying to make light of the situation, but I could see from the sweat on Trey’s forehead and the wideness of his eyes—like the top lids were stuck on something—that we hadn’t succeeded. That was a little disappointing, because we’d tried so hard.
“So do you still feel like Michael Jordan?” I’d asked.
“This is the end of my life.”
“Maybe we should run away to Mexico and build a Huddle Hut on the beach.”
“He’s going to kill me, Shell.”
“We could make up a story. We could say some homeless guy jumped in the car and rammed it into the garage. Or maybe a druggie.”
“Or maybe the pope.”
“Yeah—the pope’s a good one too.”
“The damage isn’t too bad, right?”
I hesitated. I didn’t know much about cars. “Well, the door is . . . It just has a few scratches, but . . .”
“He’s going to kill me.”
“Maybe if you tell him how sorry you are, he’ll understand. Or maybe he’s one of those people who get all upset about stupid little things but don’t really worry about the big things.”
He gave me a my-sister-the-moron look. We were in deep doo-doo and both of us knew it.
“I hear Mexico’s really nice this time of year.”
That’s when my mom’s car, with my dad in it, pulled into the driveway. It took a while for him to open the door, and that was scarier than anything that came after.
Trey stood and waited. I could see he had dark spots on his back and under his arms where the sweat had soaked into his shirt. When Dad got out of the car, Trey took a step back. I stood and touched his arm, and