EVERS WAS OUT near Delaware Park, a line of bare trees at its back, a baseball field off to one side. It was two o’clock, and the snow was falling a little harder by the time I got there. I flipped up the hood of my jacket before I got out of the car. I’d never been to Evers before, but at my school, a security guard roamed the hallways and the grounds all day, so I assumed there would be one here, too, and I was praying to God not to run into him. I cut across the grass to the side of the building. No one else was around. The only sound was the swish of cars whizzing by on the wet street out front.
I crept from one classroom to the next, my adrenaline surging, and peeked through the windows, looking for her. I couldn’t believe I was doing this. I’d never skipped out on school before. The snow fell into my eyes, and I kept stopping to blink it away. Classroom after classroom and no sign of her. In the rooms where the kids looked younger, I moved along right away. In rooms where they might have been our age I lingered, even if I didn’t see her, just in case she was in the bathroom or something and would appear in the doorway at any minute.
And then, in the eighth or ninth classroom I checked, I saw her. She was sitting in the front row with her chin in her hand. She looked gorgeous, even from that distance, even separated by a pane of glass and a span of air. I curled my fingers over the ledge of bricks jutting out beneath the window, the rough surface burning my fingertips.
As soon as her teacher, who was winding through the row of desks, walked to the corner farthest from me, I tapped the backs of my fingernails against the glass. An aide seated by the chalkboard narrowed her eyes and craned her head toward the windows. I ducked. I stared at my hands against the cold brick and breathed quickly. I tried to flatten myself against the building in case the aide had gotten up and walked toward the noise. It wasn’t like I could make myself invisible, though. Should I run? Go back to the car? I didn’t know what to do, but in all the time I’d been thinking about it, nothing had happened, either. If the aide had seen me, she’d be shouting out the window by now. I waited another minute before standing again, and this time, when I did, Maribel was staring right at me. Like she was waiting for me. She blinked a few times, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. I pointed at the sky, at the snow. I pumped my arms overhead in triumph. She smiled and covered her mouth with her hand. She looked to her teacher, pretending for a few seconds that she was paying attention. When she looked at me again, I motioned for her to come outside. She shook her head. I held my hands together as if in prayer. Come on, Maribel, I was thinking. Come on. She blinked fast. Then I saw her get up and say something to the aide, who handed her a small wooden paddle. A hall pass. Yes! I hightailed it back to the parking lot.
I pulled my dad’s car up to the entrance. I didn’t want to turn it off because I’d only have to go through the process of starting it up again, and I didn’t know how to idle it without stalling, so I decided to drive in circles around the bus lane and back up to the entrance until Maribel came out. I didn’t see her at first, but then she walked out from around the side of the building—maybe she’d had to use that door so no one would notice her—smiling like I had never seen her smile before, holding her hands up to feel the flakes land on her palms. I slowed down as much as I could and leaned over to roll down the passenger window. I had this idea that if I went slow enough, she would jump in and I wouldn’t have to stop. Like we were in some kind of slow-motion action movie. I was going to yell out and explain it all to her, but while I was coordinating the pedals and the steering and my tilting body at the same time, I stalled the car. Maribel acted like she didn’t even notice. She just walked over and climbed in.
“It’s snowing,” I said, like it wasn’t obvious.
“It’s snowing,” Maribel repeated in wonder. She wiped her hands on her pants.
This was the thing about Maribel: No matter how many times I proved it, she didn’t think I was an idiot. She just took me. She took me in. Such a simple fucking thing.
“Where’s your coat?” I asked. “And your sunglasses?”
She pointed toward the school.
“Well, are you cold?”
“No,” she said. Then she leaned forward and looked out the windshield, twisting her neck to gaze up at the sky.
“I thought we could go somewhere,” I said.
“Where?”
“Just a place I know. It’s really cool. Especially in the snow.”
“Is it okay?” she asked.
I didn’t know what she was talking about. Was she asking if it was okay for her to leave school? Probably not. It wasn’t really okay for me, either, but I didn’t want to think about it.
“Everything’s okay,” I said.
We drove for at least a mile without speaking. Which was fine with me. I felt electric just at seeing her again, at sharing the air with her, at anything and everything.
On the way out of the school parking lot, the car had lurched and sputtered as I got it up to speed, but once we were in fourth gear, I just squeezed my hands around the steering wheel and stayed in the same lane, cruising along down Route 7, toward Route 1. The snow was still falling, dissolving against the windshield, leaving wet asterisks on the glass. The sky was as pale as salt. Maribel kept her face against the window, rapt and in awe. I glanced at her a few times, but mostly I fixed my eyes on the road. We sped by Chili’s and Borders and Christiana Mall, and eventually, the snow started falling harder, white dashes shooting at the car and past the windows like light trailing from a thousand stars. A few miles later, I got confident enough that I turned on the radio, but after bouncing around through about twenty different stations, I clicked it back off again.
“I think I should start a radio station,” Maribel said suddenly.
“What kind of radio station?”
“I like music.”
“Are you talking about a radio station at your school? Do they have that?”
“I could do it.”
“Sure, why not?”
“I could.”
“I believe you.”
I felt her staring at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re the only one who thinks I can do anything,” she said.
We drove for the next hour and a half and the snow kept falling, even though it wasn’t sticking to the pavement, only the grass. I stayed in the right lane, letting people pass me, and focused on keeping the car steady even though I was practically shaking with the thrill of being out on the road like we were. My cell phone rang at one point, not long after I should’ve been home from school. I fished it out of my pocket and looked at the screen: home. I turned it off. I knew I was in for a mountain of shit when I got home—for seeing Maribel, for taking my dad’s car, for driving with nothing but my permit folded up in my wallet—but I didn’t care. Maribel and I deserved to be together and she deserved to see the snow if she wanted to and nobody was going to hold us back. I was her one chance. I wanted to give her the thing that it seemed like everyone else wanted to keep from her: freedom. Besides, by now the damage was done. If I’d turned around that very second and taken her home and parked my dad’s car in the lot and walked back into the apartment, the mountain of shit wouldn’t have been any smaller.
“I’m hungry,” Maribel said after a while.
“I have some Starbursts in my backpack,” I said. “You can have them.”
“What are they?”
“You’ve never had Starbursts? They’re fruity. Like candy. But chewy.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You don’t want them?”
“Do you have French fries?”
I laughed. “I didn’t even know you liked French fries.”
“I have them at school sometimes.”
“Cafeteria fries? Are you kidding me? That’s like eating ear-wax or something. Listen, I’m going to do you a favor and introduce you to real fries. You won’t know what hit you.”
I pulled off at the next exit. Straight ahead, the golden arches hovered high above a McDonald’s, its roof covered with splotches of snow. The car skidded as I turned and the rosary my mom had hung on the rearview mirror knocked against the glass. I tried to downshift, and the car made this horrible grinding sound, but somehow I recovered and before long we were coasting into the drive-thru lane. I pulled up to the speaker box, thinking I could just shout my order and circle around without stopping the car, but of course it didn’t work out that way. The car clunked and stalled, and Maribel and I were just sitting there, waiting for a voice to come through the speaker. When it did, I yelled out that we needed an order of large fries, and then I depressed the clutch and turned the car on again. We drove around to the first window slowly—I was concentrating on staying in the drive-thru lane without bumping up onto the curb—and I handed over a five-dollar bill, all the money I had with me. This time I just kept the clutch down until I got my change, then let it go again and rolled up to the second window, where I grabbed the bag of fries from a guy who was standing there dangling them out the window.
By the time we left, I was feeling pretty good. If I didn’t say so myself, I was getting the hang of driving stick.
Maribel held the warm paper bag on her lap until we got back on the highway. Then she said, “Can I have one now?”
“Sure,” I said. “They’re probably still really hot, so be careful.”
Maribel pulled out a fry and bit into it.
“So?” I asked, when she didn’t say anything.
“Cafeteria fries suck,” she said, and I busted out laughing while she finished that one and reached for another. Then another. Then another. She was going through them so fast I had to tell her to save some for me.
It was close to five o’clock by the time we got to Cape Henlopen. I parked on the street, near the outdoor showers where people washed the sand off their feet before walking to their cars during the summer.
“You ready to get out?” I asked her.
“Where are we?”
“You’ll see. Come on.”