I HAVE MY DRIVING test on Friday. In the front seat of Mom’s car, waiting outside the DMV, I compulsively rehearse in my head the controls I’ll need to know. Wipers. Defroster. Hazard lights. The way I do before tests in class, I remind myself I’ve practiced and memorized. There’s no reason to be nervous. I feel prepared. Three weeks of lessons with Hector and I’m a fairly capable driver.
My mom’s in the passenger seat, and my dad’s in the back. Annoyingly, both of them took off work and insisted on coming. They decided to schedule the test during an ASG postering party at Isabel’s house, where I wish I was. It’s not like I enjoy postering or am particularly good at it, but I hate to fall short on my commitments, especially when Ethan will be there, making sure to remind everyone of my absence.
The car ahead of me moves up, and I roll forward in the line. We’ve formed a procession from the drive-thru to the parking lot, in which we’ve waited for the past twenty minutes. It’s like the interim in class where they’ve passed out the exams facedown and you’re not permitted to look, except it lasts for half an hour of pedal, brake, pedal, brake.
“Where are you going to drive first?” Dad asks.
“The ASG thing I was supposed to be at twenty minutes ago,” I remind him, permitting irritation to enter my voice. He’s used to it.
“You have to pick something more exciting than that,” Mom protests.
“Yeah, this is your first drive on your own. You can have my car for the rest of the day.” In the rearview mirror, I catch Dad wink. “Do something you’ll remember.”
I received the same exhortation from Dylan when I explained where I was going after school. I was urged to meet her and Grace in downtown San Francisco for a night out, which I declined.
“I thought being able to drive was supposed to mean freedom from your parents telling you what to do,” I say, inching forward once more in the interminable line.
“We’ll still tell you,” Mom says. “It’ll just be easier for you to ignore us.”
“Not that she doesn’t do that already,” Dad adds to Mom.
I wish they would end this comedy routine and let me quiz myself on where the latch for the gas is. Out the window, the DMV itself comes into view on my left. Ugly, squat square hedges surround the cinderblock office, with walk-in visitors waiting single-file out the door hemmed in by posts and white plastic chains. “I don’t understand why you both took off work for this,” I mutter to my parents.
“This is a big day, a step into adulthood,” Mom replies. While I know she doesn’t mean her praise patronizingly, her words rub me the wrong way. Like graduation, having a license is one more marker people use to measure maturity. But it’s not entirely accurate. Some people don’t really reach adulthood until years later, while others of us are already there, chafing at the restrictions of our numerical age. I’ll be glad to have my license, though. As long as people do respect those markers, they’re worth having.
My phone vibrates in the cup holder. When I look down, I immediately wish I hadn’t. It’s a text from Ethan.
ASG is boring without you. Hurry up and pass.
I might know how to celebrate . . .
My mouth falls open. I can read between the lines and deduce what’s happening here. I just wouldn’t expect it of Ethan. Or, I would expect it of him with plenty of other girls in my grade. Just not with me.
He’s flirting.
Not even the bickering flirting I’ve gotten used to in the past week. Genuine flirting. If I had to put words to the intolerable pull I find in his message, I wouldn’t want them uttered out loud.
The line isn’t moving, and my parents are engrossed in a discussion of what movie they’re going to watch tonight. I pick up my phone, my fingers flying over the screen.
How exactly?
He doesn’t make me wait, which is somehow so much worse than if he had. This conversation is clearly occupying all of his attention. It’s thrilling.
However you like it.
I stare at his reply, my pulse pounding. Surely, he doesn’t mean . . . I can’t even finish the thought.
Is this flirting?
Wow, Sanger, I knew you were inexperienced but this surprises even me.
My cheeks flame as I rush to reply.
Inexperienced? Careful. I do love proving you wrong.
His reply comes even faster.
Now you’re getting it. Please, do continue.
I toss my phone back into the cup holder, feeling far too many things at once. My face feels unbearably flushed, my hands suddenly hot. Dozens of replies come to mind, but I refuse to even type them.
I’m distracted—fortunately—when I hear tapping on the window to my left. I roll it down, finding the DMV examiner outside. “Alison Sanger?” she reads from her clipboard. I nod, and my parents open their doors and climb out.
“Good luck!” My mom waves.
As the examiner circles the car and gets in the passenger seat, I find myself unable to stop thinking about Ethan’s text. What’s happening with us keeps changing state, shifting faster than I can keep up with. First, we kissed, then we kissed twice, then I accepted I might want to kiss him again. Now he’s upset the dynamic further, threatened the tenuous equilibrium I’ve hung on to. I can’t imagine he meant what he said. I picture getting to Isabel’s house, him and me sneaking off somewhere, him saying he missed me. It’s unrealistic, farfetched, like when a friend flatters you with what you want to hear.
I follow the instructions of the examiner robotically, pointing out the parking brake, turn signals, headlights. When she tells me to exit the DMV lot, I turn on the car, pointedly check my mirrors, and shift the car into drive. Keeping my speed reasonable, I smoothly steer toward the exit, braking when a couple crosses the pavement in front of me.
I can’t stop picturing Ethan. Ethan sitting with everyone, thinking of me while ignoring their conversation. Ethan pulling out his phone, typing in my name. Ethan waiting, wondering what I’ll say next or when I’ll knock on Isabel’s door. The detail of the mental images embarrasses me, yet they keep coming. Ethan—
“Okay, take a right here, then circle back to the DMV,” the woman says.
“Really?” Her words don’t register. “Already?”
“Incomplete stop upon exiting the lot. Not leaving enough room for the approaching car. It’s an automatic fail,” she replies. Her voice is neither gentle nor incriminating. She writes notes on her clipboard without looking up.
“Fail?” I repeat, feeling the first wave of nerves.
“It’s very common,” the examiner explains, like it’s reassuring. “Roughly 50 percent of people fail here. You can retake the test in two weeks.”
I circle the block, stunned and slightly sick. Neither of us speak. I have nothing in my head except formless disappointment starting to coalesce into frustration. When I park in the parking lot, the examiner gets out of the car. I don’t. Fifty percent of people fail? I’ve never been in the fiftieth percentile in my life. In the corner of my vision, I see my parents walk up to the car. I can’t move. While my mom opens my door, I wait with my hands on the wheel, stock-still like a crash-test dummy.
“That was fast,” she says. “Do you need to go inside to take your license photo?”
“I failed,” I reply quietly.
“What?” Dad asks, coming to stand beside Mom.
“I failed.” I raise my voice, and I hear everything the declaration means. It unlocks me. I get out of the car, movements rushed with humiliation. “You should drive.”
While they pause, presumably not knowing how to respond, I crawl into the back seat. My mom gets behind the wheel.
She’s the first to recover. “You know, hon, failure is natural,” she offers, twisting around in the driver’s seat. It’s forced, like she understands why I’m upset but can’t comprehend how this is a big deal to me.
I can’t reply, a lump forming in the back of my throat.
“You’ve gone your whole life with never failing anything,” my dad joins in, equally off-kilter. “Honestly, you should be proud.”
“I’m brimming with pride right now, yeah.” Facing the window instead of my parents, I wipe my eyes. It’s ignominy on top of ignominy. I feel childish for getting this upset over a test I don’t even care about. I remember what the examiner said. I’ll retake it in a couple weeks.
“Don’t worry about it,” my mom says, sounding half consolatory and half uncomfortable. “You’re young. You’re going to fail hundreds of times in your life.”
I close my eyes. I can’t believe I made such a basic error. Four stupid texts from Ethan, and everything I practiced and worked at crumbled. If it only takes a handful words from him to throw me off—
My eyes fly open. What if Ethan planned this? He knew exactly where I was, what I was doing. I had to tell all of ASG why I wouldn’t be there on time to paint posters.
It’s instantaneous, the reaction the realization causes in me. Fire hitting dry kindling. Every ounce of furious hurt in me converts in a flash into resolve. I face forward. “Can you drop me off at Isabel’s?” I ask Mom. “I have to go help ASG.”
Ethan’s promise from earlier rings in my head, fusing with the pounding in my ears into an uncomfortable cacophony. He’d said he could distract me, and he succeeded.
He wasn’t flirting. He was competing.