As I pulled up to my house, I expected sirens to sound, my parents to come rushing out yelling and screaming. But all was quiet, as I had left it. Everything was exactly the same. Not even Amelia’s car was back. It was almost like it hadn’t happened at all. Something should’ve been different to reflect how different I felt.
I sighed. Now I had to decide what to do with the truck. I had been planning on putting it back on the platform, but maybe I should leave it in the drive. It would force me to have the conversation with my parents that I’d been putting off practically my entire life.
My dad would be the first to see it the next night. It would shock him. Maybe even put him on the defense right away before I had a chance to share my feelings. Or maybe it would make him sad or scare him. I thought about every possible reaction my dad might have to seeing the truck, after eighteen years, not where it belonged. And regardless of how I felt, I didn’t think that was fair to him. I couldn’t go from saying nothing to doing the most dramatic thing possible. Both he and my mom deserved to be eased into what I needed to tell them. They didn’t deserve a lightning strike.
I put the truck in park and got out. The ramps were where I left them in front of the platform so I moved them around to the back. Then ever so slowly, positioning the truck just right, I drove it forward. When I got to the top of the ramps, the truck stopped, not having enough power to get over the lip. I needed to give it more gas. I gripped the wheel and pressed gently on the gas pedal. It still wasn’t enough. I’d gone up the ramps too slow. I thought about backing up and going up again, a little faster. First, I tried one last time with a little more pressure on the gas pedal. The truck lurched forward. I gasped and slammed on the brakes. It stopped just in time, inches from the front edge. I caught my breath.
Now I needed to back it up just a few inches. As I started to shift the truck in reverse, a set of headlights swept across the yard and a car pulled up to the front of the house. Amelia. Her eyes were wide as she climbed out of her car and saw me, the headlights of my brother’s truck like a beacon across the lawn. I held up my finger, telling her to wait a minute, then looked over my right shoulder to back up. I lifted my foot off the brake pedal, but instead of moving backward, the truck jumped forward. The wheel jerked and the left front tire was off the platform and on the ground before I could step on the brake. The right tire was now suspended in midair in front of the ramp. I slid to the left, my body slamming into the door, my head hitting the window.
No. This couldn’t be happening. I applied the gas, slowly trying to ease the truck forward, hoping to just get it all on the ground and start again. The left tire spun and spun, obviously not fully on the ground, which meant the platform must’ve been holding up some of the center of the truck. No.
Amelia knocked on the driver’s-side window. I rolled it down with the cranking handle.
“What are you doing? Your parents are going to kill you.”
“Not helping. How do I move it?”
She backed up, assessing the position of the truck. “One of the back wheels isn’t fully grounded. You’re stuck.”
“Thanks. I caught that.”
“Your parents are going to kill you.”
“You already said that.” I turned off the engine and opened the door. I fell out, barely catching myself before hitting the ground. Then I, too, backed up to assess the position of the truck. “What if I moved one of those ramps so it’s facing backward under the left front tire and then drove forward a little?”
“Then what?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I grabbed a fistful of my hair and a pain shot through my right shoulder. I pinched it hard. “Then put the other ramp forward under the right tire?”
“Then you’d just have this same situation but in reverse.”
“You think?”
“I don’t know. We can try it.”
At two o’clock in the morning we gave up. The truck hadn’t moved from its original lopsided position and I was pretty sure the only thing we’d managed to do was tear up a section of grass under the left tire. “It’s fine. We’ll fix this. We have all day tomorrow.”
“Is it time to tell me yet what you were doing?”
“I was facing my fear. Being Heath Hall.”
“What?”
I thought about telling her who and what Heath Hall was and represented but I felt like that took away from the secrecy pact of it all. She’d know in a couple days when that backpack and instructions ended up in her care. So instead, I said, “My parents choose my brother over me every time.”
She didn’t argue. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m tired of it. I thought if I drove this truck tonight that I’d be facing a fear, the fear of competing with his memories my whole life. I thought I’d be facing the memory of my dead brother once and for all. Telling him in a way that I had won. Or maybe that it shouldn’t be a competition at all. I don’t know. It sounds weird, I know.”
“So wait, you drove this truck around? Like out of this yard?”
“Yes, I was just getting back when you pulled up.”
“Wow, Hadley. And how did it feel?”
“Freeing.”
She smiled. “I bet.” She put her hands on her hips and looked at the truck again. “And now you’re trying to put it back?”
“Yes.”
She hesitantly asked, “What about your parents? Don’t you want them to know?”
“I think the message would be a little too shocking. I want to ease them into it a bit by talking to them first.”
“Probably a good idea . . . except.” She gestured to the truck. “Now you’ll just give them a heart attack.”
“I know.” I let out a defeated breath of air. “This will not go over well. It would’ve been one thing if I had just left it parked in the driveway. That would’ve been shocking enough. But this?” I couldn’t even finish that thought out loud. This would be like a punch to the gut. This looked like a broken truck. A wrecked truck. This would be more than a shock. I felt beyond terrible. That’s why I was going to fix this. I had to.
Amelia walked around the platform again, as though some new idea on how to solve this would suddenly come to her after over an hour of trying to figure something out and failing. “Where did you go?”
“All the places I wanted to go and never could. I took Jackson.”
She clapped and gave a little jump. “Tell me everything.”
I climbed up on the platform and into the bed of the truck. It teetered just a bit with my weight but the way it was sloped forward provided a really good angle to sit. I patted a space next to me.
She raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure? I’ve never been inside his truck before.”
“Neither had I. Come on. Let’s talk. I want to hear all about your night with DJ as well.”
She joined me, then laid her head on my shoulder. “You have no idea how proud I am of you right now.”
I gave a single laugh. “For what? For taking my brother’s truck and failing to put it back right?”
“No. For realizing that you don’t have to earn your parents’ love.” She squeezed my hand. “And if they don’t kill you first, I’m sure they’ll realize that too.”
“Thanks. Very helpful.”
“Maybe Jackson will know how to right this truck. We should call him.”
“At two o’clock in the morning? I think I can wait until a decent hour. My dad won’t be home until tonight anyway. I have time.”
Amelia stretched and leaned her head back to look at the sky. “This is a great view.”
I looked up as well. The stars were bright tonight. “How long have you known that my swimming was about my parents? My brother?”
“First of all, you love swimming. Don’t let this make you think you don’t. But in a race, as soon as you tap the wall, your gaze goes first to the scoreboard. If, and only if, your name is in the top spot, do you look to the stands.” She took my hand in hers. “Maybe now you can swim for yourself, Hadley. Enjoy it even more.”