“I’m leaving.”
Becky was already tugging me toward the senior lot. “I’ll drive,” she said, peeling off her sweater and stripping down to a bright yellow tank top like she meant business. I was busy tugging my own shirt to my nose, which was bleeding. I’d lost more than one T-shirt to spiked blood pressure, stress, and allergies.
Behind our backs Mr. Keller threatened suspension. Behind his back, Becky flipped him off like she was grinding birds into his face. Under different circumstances, I would have laughed. Under these, I was searching for Chan’s truck among the sea of senior automobiles. It wasn’t here.
“Keller is an unthinking asshole!” she said.
“Pretty much.”
We arrived at Becky’s electric-blue Mustang, a vehicle I admired. Every vehicle we owned except Dad’s had duct tape somewhere. There was no duct tape to be found on the Mustang. The paint was always gleaming from a fresh wash. The car sat so low she probably had to change the tires to cross train tracks. Usually she and her closest girlfriends (all with pretty hair and pretty cardigans and pretty ankle boots) tore from the parking lot, horn honking, on their way to Cason’s Market, where everyone hung out after school. I’d never asked to go along. And now I wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe because I didn’t have razor-sharp bangs or Warby Parker glasses.
Inside, the Mustang was a thing to behold. “Make space, Jennings,” she told me. When I didn’t respond swiftly, Becky raked her arm across the passenger seat and junk? stuff? all her worldly belongings? fell onto the floorboard. I wiggled into the remaining available space and made sure I didn’t bleed on the fabric. She squealed from the lot, leaving fresh treads on Main Street.
“Grab that for me, will you?” She flung a hand in the general direction of my feet. I handed her four different items of various shapes and sizes before she said, “The lipstick, silly.” I had to dig under the seat but was eventually successful. Mechanically, she flipped the sunshade, leveled her face with the mirror, and painted her lips brick red.
“You should try this color,” she said, and passed the tube to me.
My hand was shaking too badly to try. I guess Becky was amped too, because she chewed the lipstick right off her lips.
By the stop sign at Cason’s my nosebleed had settled down. Becky gave it a once-over and said, “So . . . you and Chan the Man?”
“I have no idea.”
“You preggo, Jennings? Got Chan’s little western sizzlin’ in your belly? Because I’d rather not train a new tennis partner.”
“No. I’m semi-promised.” I fluttered my left hand where she could see the ring.
“Seems that you’re semi-unhappy. That because of bomb drills or whatnot?”
“That’s because—”
“Oh, just say it, Jennings. Chandler Clayton is a jalapeño pepper, but there’s plenty more like him who have mastered the incredible art of . . . smiling.”
“It’s not so much Chan as it is the ring doesn’t make sense.”
“Because you don’t love him? Or because you only high school love him and plan to bone some lawyer with a trust fund in college? Or do you mean you wanted white gold and a little more flicker?”
My cheeks were on fire as I thought of a proper way to respond. “I love Chan, but . . . aaahhh, this is the dumbest thing he’s ever done.” I growled and clutched the ceiling handle until my arm muscles trembled with fatigue.
“You want to throw something?”
“Yes.”
“There’s an orange on the floorboard. That’s biodegradable. Launch that bastard at a street sign.”
I did. And unsurprisingly, I underestimated our speed, missed the sign by a yard, and didn’t feel better. Becky noticed.
“I’m out of oranges, so you’d better just tell me everything.”
I decided I would. The Mustang was blocking the city park for the third time—probably because I hadn’t given her specific directions—when I unloaded. “We were fine, Becky. You know, couple of the year for like—”
“Ten years running.”
“Six. But exactly. Then New York happened, and everything changed. Like literally everything. I get that trauma makes you crazy sometimes, but shouldn’t it be the same type of trauma if we lived through the same event? It makes you ask weird questions. Like what if we were this way before and I can’t remember. Whatever we were before Bus Twenty-One . . . I don’t know what we are anymore.”
The windows were down from my orange launching so she was forced to yell over the wind. “I know what you are. You’re semi-promised.”
I laced my hands around my skull and squeezed. “Do you know what I want?”
“What?”
“To get off the Hive. See who we are. See if we can get over who we’ve been.” The phrases slipped out like someone greased my windpipe.
Becky beat a drumroll on the steering wheel. “Yep.”
“But I clearly can’t.”
“Yep,” she said again. “Preaching to the choir.”
“At least we got away today,” I said, hoping that sounded enough like thank you.
“Let’s just keep driving,” she said.
“Fine by me.”
She stomped on the gas.
We weren’t really leaving town, but the speed and the wind made everything better. We were nearing the interstate when Becky’s phone rang.
“School?” she said, and answered.
Mine rang immediately after. We sat in a pull-off, fingers plugged in our opposite ears, listening to Principal Sanduskin in Becky’s case and Mom in mine explain we’d been suspended for leaving campus during a bomb threat. Oh, also, some freshman boy called the threat in from his cell phone because he didn’t want to take an algebra test. Mom didn’t blame me, and based on her tone, Sanduskin had his work cut out for him.
Becky was equally unfazed. “What are we doing with our vacation? Don’t say tennis. Don’t say homework.”
Strangely, the we worked. She was a quality person with a quality car and über-quality lipstick. That plus loyalty was enough to start. I could be a Becky person.
“You won’t be in trouble?” I asked.
“I’m sure I will.” She said this in a way that conjured no pity.
“Figure that out and we’ll make a plan.”
We turned around and Becky drove me home. Before she entered the outer Hive gate, she said, “Am I allowed in here, Jennings?”
My left eyebrow shot up. “Why wouldn’t you be?”
“My first commune experience.”
“Yeah, well, it’s the first time in ten months I’ve ridden in a car I didn’t check beneath.”
“Guess we’re both living on the edge.”