“If they’re here, mud riding, they’d probably get off on it.”
As if in agreement, Scooter Ledbetter chose this moment to start honking his horn in time to his stereo blasting Nine Inch Nails.
“Oh, what the hell,” I said, spitting my petrified gum out the window. It had turned more of a metamorphic flavor anyway. I scooted into the driver’s seat as Adam crawled over me. Nose close to his shirt, I caught a whiff of his cologne.
And then, too soon, he was on his side of the truck and I was on mine. “Is it in first gear?” he asked. “Are your feet on the brake and the clutch? Look both ways and make sure no traffic is coming before proceeding carefully into the mud hole.”
I screamed like a girl as the edge of the pit fell away under us. en I bit my scream off short as we bounced over a little hill and then a big hill that sent us flying. Now I was giggling.
Adam grinned and fastened his seat belt. “Put the truck in first gear again,” he said in an amazing imitation of the calming announcer voice from the films we watched in driver’s ed. “Press harder on the gas to scale the side of the mud hole. As you reach the top and circle back around for another turn, don’t forget to signal.” Later, waiting in line for our seventh time through, he told me, “You drive fine.”
“Really?” I squealed.
“Yeah. Of course, I haven’t told you to turn left or right.”
“Right,” I said, disappointed. I thought I’d been driving fine, too. But I’d done well only because he hadn’t asked me to do anything hard, like tell left from right. And let’s not even think about starboard and port.
“When you’re driving by yourself, it won’t matter,” he reasoned. “You’ve lived in this town forever. You know how to get around. Your dad won’t be sitting in the passenger seat, telling you to turn left or right. The only time anyone will do that is when you take your driving test.”
“at’s also the only time a person taking her first road test will be banned from driving in Alabama for life.” I edged the pink truck forward as a Dodge Ram dropped into the mud field in front of us.
“I have ADHD,” he said. “I’m the master of cheating on tests. Just put your hands on the wheel like this.” He placed his hands on the dashboard with his first fingers up and his thumbs in, pointing toward each other. “ll is for left.”
“Won’t the chick giving me the test notice I’ve got my fingers in an ll on the steering wheel?”
“Hold your hands like that while she’s examining your car,” he said. “By the time you start driving, she won’t think anything about it. She’ll think you have arthritis and it’s none of her business.”
I looked over at him. “You’re a lot sneakier than I thought.”
He smiled.
I said, “Frances hasn’t forgiven you for exploding her homemade cheese.”
His laughter rang out at just the moment I plunged the truck into the pit. He’d given me the confidence of Dale Earnhardt Jr. on holiday. I veered off the very beaten path and into uncharted mud puddles. I kicked up splashes so high, Adam rolled up his window and asked me to roll up mine to save what was left of the ancient interior.
We bounced from corner to corner and were bouncing our way back again when the truck dipped lower than I expected, sending a wave of muddy water across the hood and up the windshield. I pressed the gas and heard a ripping sound.
I turned to him in horror. “I broke your truck.”
“We’re just stuck. It happens.” He unfastened his seat belt. “Switch back.”
I started to crawl over him. He’d crawled over me last time, and I figured this time he’d slide under. But he started to crawl over, too. We met in the middle, laughed, and both moved to slide under at the same time.
“Do you want to be on top or on bottom?” he asked.
“Either way,” I heard myself saying. I had to remind myself that this was Adam, not Sean. is was the baby of the Vader family, who had always been the littlest, up until two days ago. At least in my mind.
He picked me up and, before I could wiggle, removed me to the passenger side. “ere.” He slid into the driver’s seat and pressed the gas, harder than I’d pressed it, with a longer and louder ripping noise. He opened the door and stepped out, sinking much farther than he would have on solid ground. “ey’ll call a tractor from the racetrack to pull us out, but it might take a while. Let’s wait by the concession stand. You’ll ruin your shoes, though. Here, get on my back.” He stood outside the open driver’s side door. His back was waiting. I hadn’t been on a boy’s back since… hmm… a free-for-all fight with girls on boys’ backs at Cathy Kirk’s pool party in middle school. If I’d been included, obviously there hadn’t been enough girls to go around. And in middle school, the girls and boys were about equal in height and weight, so I’d worried I would crush the boy I rode on.
Not so with Adam. My shoes were dainty things you shoved your toes into with nothing to hold them on. I kicked them off and held them in one hand. I slid across the seat and onto his strong, solid back, feeling like a feather. A snowflake! A dainty snowflake surrounded by an acre of mud.
He nudged the door closed with his hip. I looked down. His feet had disappeared. “What about your shoes?” I asked. “Your mom will kill you.”
“They’re Sean’s. I’ll put them in his closet just like this.”
I felt a momentary pang for Sean. en almost laughed out loud, picturing the look on his face. ey were his shoes, and he would have a right to be mad. But if anything could ever make me dislike Sean, it was how much he cared about his clothes. I cared about my own clothes only through great effort.
Sean’s shoes made a schlep sound every time Adam took a step. He struggled getting up the hill to the lip of the mud hole, and I thought I would have to dismount after all.
He felt me start to slide down. “No!” he said, catching my legs more tightly. “We’re fine.” With one last schlep we made it to the top. e prize was a tiny Airstream trailer blowing smoke out an exhaust fan. The air smelled like fried food. “Are you hungry?” he asked.
“No, but that never stopped me before.”
“Me too.” He stepped up to the window and looked in. “What’cha got?”
The clerk/cook/janitor looked up from a NASCAR talk show on TV. “Cheese fries, homemade doughnuts.” With me on his back, Adam couldn’t turn his head around enough to look at me, but he turned it enough to let me know I should choose from this array of delicacies.
“Strangely,” I said, “I have a taste for cheese fries.”
Adam reached into his pocket to pay. Putting me down on the bench beside the concession stand would have been miles easier. I was beginning to understand that he liked having me on his back. Holding my shoes in one hand, I grabbed the cheese fries with the other, and he carried a soda.
He walked to the bench, put the soda down, then put me down. I was still holding the cheese fries and my shoes. I tossed my shoes on the ground (oh well, so much for dazzling rhinestones) and picked up the soda so he could sit down, then handed it to him. It was like one of those problems on a standardized test at school. If Sean hooks up with everyone in school on Wednesday and Rachel on Friday, and Adam hooks up with Rachel on ursday and Lori on Sunday, on what day does the nuclear war commence? One of those problems Adam would just draw an X through because he thought he would never encounter anything like it in the real world.
He crossed one leg over the other casually, as if he weren’t coated with mud up to his knees. en he took a sip of the soda, handed it to me, and pulled out a cheese fry.
I took a tentative sip of soda. Not that I thought he had germs—or really bad germs, anyway—but we’d never shared a soda before. We’d shared popcorn, of course, while we watched DVDs with the other boys. Once the scoop from my ice cream cone had plopped into the lake, and he’d shared his ice cream with me. is was probably kind of gross. Mrs. Vader and Frances had rushed at us when they saw me about to take a lick. I shouldn’t read too much into sharing a soda now, though. It was something people did when they went out.