“I don’t want you riding with strangers,” Mom says. As if this is going to undo the past week somehow.
“The taxi driver. The limo driver. Two limo drivers, actually.” I tick them off on my fingers. All the strangers I’ve ridden with in the past week. “My bus driver. Uncle Justin.”
“Uncle Justin’s not a stranger.”
“He drives like an imbecile. Even I drive better than he does.”
“You don’t drive,” she snaps.
“That’s the point.” Sheesh. Usually Mom has a sense of humor. Especially about Uncle Justin.
“I don’t want you riding with anyone but me and Dad,” Mom says.
I cross my arms. “Great. I’ll be seventy years old and my hundred-year-old mother will be driving me around town.”
“By then, you can drive me around. It’s just for now,” she adds.
“For now?” I echo.
“For the foreseeable future.”
“I can foresee myself at seventy,” I tell her. Which is a lie. I can foresee myself in lit class tomorrow, and that’s about it. On the other hand, I can foresee Sheila as a sophomore, junior, senior in college, which is a picture I have to dismantle.
“It’s just for now,” Mom repeats.
“Right. Because you’re going to get over it?”
Mom grips the wheel so tight her knuckles turn actual white. She rolls her lips into a thin line.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
She says nothing the rest of the way home.