a big school, and not easy to make friends.
“Why Chicago?” he asked her.
“My stepfather got a job here, so we had to move.”
“My parents are divorced too,” he commiserated. “It sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?”
“My father died eight years ago. My mom remarried when I was fifteen,” she said in a soft voice.
“I’m sorry. That’s tough. Cancer?” he asked cautiously.
“He was a test pilot in the Air Force,” she said proudly. “And a fighter pilot in Vietnam. His plane malfunctioned, and it crashed. It was fun when he was alive. We moved around a lot. It’s different in civilian life, and not so fun.” She looked into his eyes as he held the door open for her and they walked into school together. He had said he was a senior too. There were a thousand kids in their class, which made it even harder to meet people, and she was shy. She’d gone to a lot of different schools until they moved to Miami, but she still hadn’t gotten used to it. Being the new girl was hard. She thought civilian kids were much snootier than military kids, especially the girls. In the military, your status depended on your father’s rank. Here, it was about a lot of other things: where you lived, what you wore, what kind of car your father drove, your parents’ jobs. She didn’t have any of the obvious status symbols the other girls did, which might have impressed them, so she didn’t try.
“Your father sounds cool. I want to learn to hang glide when I finish school,” he said with a grin.
“Do you want to be a pilot?” Her eyes lit up when she asked him. It was familiar ground for her. Finally.
“I want to be a lot of things. I want to race motorcycles. I’ve got a friend who lets me ride his on weekends.”
“That’s dangerous,” she commented.
“So is everything worth doing. I want to jump out of an airplane and see what that feels like,” he said, smiling at her, and then looked at her regretfully. “I have a class in five minutes. Econ. I suck at it.”
“Me too,” she admitted with a grin. “I like history, and Spanish.”
“I hate school,” he said, and lately she wondered if she did too. Her school in Miami had been smaller and easier to navigate, and she’d learned Spanish from her Hispanic classmates. No one spoke Spanish here. “Well, see ya,” he said, and stopped at his locker to put his skateboard away. She walked past him to her locker at the far end of another hallway. It had been nice talking to him for a few minutes.
She didn’t see him again for several days, and then he caught up to her leaving school on a Friday. She was hurrying, afraid to be late to meet Tommy at the bus stop.
“Want to see me race tomorrow?” he asked her. “My friend let me enter his motorcycle in a race. I just turned eighteen, so I have a license.” She thought about it and decided she did want to see him race. It sounded exciting. She didn’t know what her mother would say. She probably wouldn’t like it, but Maggie wasn’t going to ask her. Her mom didn’t have to know everything she did. She’d have to find someone to leave Tommy with. She watched him for her mom on Saturdays, while her mother worked at the hotel gift shop. They had promoted her to manager.
“I babysit my brother. If I can find someone to keep him, I’ll come. Where is it?” He told her. It was on an old track, a long bus ride from where she lived, but she was intrigued by him now. She realized she still didn’t know his name.
“Bring your brother with you. How old is he?”
“He’s twelve. He’d probably tell my mother, but he’d love to see the race too.”
“Well, bring him if you want.”
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
He shook his head. “Nope. My parents got divorced when I was two. They fight whenever they see each other. I live with my mom. My father works on boats, all over the place. I don’t see him much.” She nodded. They each had their own heartbreaks to deal with. “What’s your name?” he asked her then.
“Maggie Kelly.”
“Paul Gilmore,” he said, and they smiled at each other.
“I’ll try to make it to your race,” she promised, not sure if she could do it, and then ran to meet her brother