drove a used ‘83 Toyota Supra in incandescent teal with a pink sine wave painted along both sides. “Sorry about the paint job,” he said as we got in. He’d bought it used from a female physicist in Livermore. He had nice hands on the steering wheel.
His room had a mattress on the floor and a window looking out to a yard and the forest. There were papers and books strewn around, a stack of stereo equipment and headphones. It was large enough to seem empty and cluttered at the same time. He found the cord, and we left.
On the way back we turned onto Arastradero, a two-lane road, rough and patched, that wound beside a nature preserve.
“I’m going to show you a secret,” he said. “Hang on.”
The speed limit was twenty-five; he began to accelerate. We advanced toward a blind corner where the road rose up and then disappeared, a hill on one side, a drop on the other. The road curled back on itself, around the hill, out of sight. Another car might be advancing toward us and smash into us at the bend; a family of deer might be walking across.
He continued to build speed, shifting up: third, fourth, fifth. The car rumbled and whined.
“Are you sure you should be—”
“Don’t worry,” he yelled. “I’ve done it before.”
My mother sometimes said, There are guardian angels just for teenagers.
Oh, help me, God of Teenagers, I thought. Oh God of Teenagers.
“Hold on!” he yelled. The car scraped, the gears sang. I gripped the top of the seat belt in one hand, the door handle in the other. He shifted again, peeled around the blind curve—
And then we flew.
It was because of the uneven road—a raised portion followed by a long dip downhill. If you got up enough speed, you could catch the lip of the up and fly over the concavity, through the dots of light cast by the row of emerald trees and bushes growing alongside the road.
For me, the flight unlidded the town.
There were hidden places of freedom, and he knew them.
After we delivered the third paper a few months later, the other editors in chief—Rebecca, Nicole, Tom—and I stood together near Nicole’s car in the school parking lot in the late afternoon. Most of the other cars were gone, and copper light slanted through pine trees in between the parking spaces. In the distance I saw a couple approaching, holding hands.
It was Josh, wearing a too-big white shirt and trousers that looked like harlequin pants. I found out later he’d made them himself with scraps of cloth, first mixing up the waist and the ankles and then starting again. He strolled toward us, his legs wide and bending at impact with the ground. I didn’t know the girl. She was pretty and thin, with wavy honey-colored hair. They unclasped hands as they got closer.
“Hey, Josh,” Tom said. “We just delivered the paper.”
I felt my face muscles go slack. I had pitied him before, thinking him undesirable; now that he was with another girl, I felt shy and embarrassed and small, standing there near the two of them.
I biked home and cried to Carmen, who ran her fingers through my hair. An hour later, someone clanked open the gate. I looked over the rosebushes. Josh had never come over before, but we had friends in common, so he knew where I lived. He had a bounce in his step as he walked to the door, the white linen shirt swaying over the patchwork pants.
I invited him in and he followed me to my room. The whole thing was strange, how I hoped fervently that he’d come over, even if he’d never done so before, and now he was here.
“What’s up?” I said, standing in the middle of the room under the box-shaped lantern.
“I thought you seemed upset just now.” He stood nearby, his legs apart, his chest high.
“You were with that other girl,” I said.
“She’s older,” he said. “She goes to Stanford.”
“It’s just—I didn’t realize that I liked you and now it’s too late.”
“We’re just friends. I don’t know her that well. Anyhow the truth is—”
“What?” I asked.
“I’ve had a crush on you since freshman year. Since Living Skills,” he said. We had been partners during the section on CPR, although I had forgotten. How was it possible that someone had liked me during those years, when I was new to the school and to my father’s house and didn’t have any friends?
He leaned toward me on one