too many apricots. The day was bright and cold. One kid from school had off to go hunting. He wanted to go hunting. Why couldn’t he go hunting.
Melody tapped the steering wheel of the bus with her index finger while she drove. It was a nervous habit. “When you’re older.”
“How old?”
“Old enough to know better than to want to do that,” she said, flicking her turn signal and flooring the gas pedal to urge the old bus past a lumbering pickup loaded with trash for the landfill. The motor made its cheery jingling VW sound. The little engine that could. On Tuesday, Wednesday, or Saturday, at least. The rest of the time was a toss up. She wished she could shoot the poor thing and put it out of its misery. She alternated between feeling nostalgic about its years of magical service and disgusted by its current unreliability. Disgust was weighing in heavily, but it wasn’t like she could run down to the local dealership and pick up a new one. If she skimmed the top off what she took home each week, if she made payments, maybe she could spring for a skateboard. Maybe. She and Wrecker could take turns riding and running alongside. It would take them—oh—a day and a half each way to commute into town.
Why couldn’t she have been born rich?
Oh yeah. She had been born rich. It just hadn’t worked out.
Wrecker made a face. “Too many apricots,” he said.
“Go easy on them, buddy. They sneak up on you.” She cut a quick glance at his face and then swung the bus back into the proper lane. He was changing so fast. One week his face was all baby fat and foolishness and the next it had slimmed down, had an eight-year-old’s skepticism and resolve. Well, not resolve. He’d always had that. They’d just labeled it stubbornness. Stubborn fit in with ornery and immature, but resolve?
He sure hadn’t picked that up from her.
“What time is it, Wrecker?”
He lifted his wrist to check. She watched his lips move as he counted by fives. He was okay to thirty or so, but after that it started to break up. She had bought him a watch so he could practice. At school they played cooperative games and learned number theory with manipulatives; at home, guiltily, it was flash cards and torn sheets from the cheap pulp workbooks she picked up at the supermarket. “Eleven ten.”
“Let me see.”
Jesus, it was five to two. She was supposed to have him there by one fifteen. By two she was supposed to—oh, well, great. They were out in the open, three minutes from Wrecker’s school, and a cop was dogging the van with lights flashing and the siren making its stupid little whoops. A cop? Out here? She pulled to the side of the road and shut her eyes. She rolled down the window. “Yes?”
“Holy mackerel, lady!” The cop had a beefy face that appeared red from internal combustion and not from any exposure to the elements. “You know how fast you were going?”
Speeding? No. Not speeding. She couldn’t keep a small smirk from staining her face. “Not exactly, officer. But I can tell you this old bus”—her index finger flicked rapidly against the steering wheel—“she just hasn’t got it in her to speed. I’m lucky if I can coax her up the hills.”
“Up, maybe,” he said. He looked earnestly affronted. He looked personally offended. “But coming down that hill I clocked you at sixty in a forty-five zone. That’s—that’s—”
Fifteen.
“—that’s fifteen miles over the speed limit. I’ll have to ticket you for that.” He rearranged his features to express paternal disapproval. “Where are you in such a rush to get to?”
Melody rubbed her face with her hands. She was going to have to grovel. “I’m taking my son—” She tipped her head toward Wrecker and the words died in her mouth. His face was ashen and he had made himself as small as he could in the seat. His hands gripped the frayed piping of the upholstery edge.
The cop bent sideways to get more of his face in the open window. “Something wrong?”
Melody turned in the seat and put her hand on Wrecker’s cheek. “Hey,” she said softly. “You okay?”
The kid wouldn’t look at her. He kept his head down and his eyes fixed on the white rounds of his pant knees. She leaned closer to him. Whispered in his ear, “You need the bathroom?” He didn’t look up, but he freed one