9.
“The Lesson for Today”
—1942
“The Grove? Why?” Kat asks, as she backs out of Kismet’s parking lot. Lane’s not working this morning, and Josh was especially untalkative, so it wasn’t hard to convince her to take our drinks to go. This way we can hopefully make it back by break and I can go to third period. “Now that you ditched your first class you wanna go down to the creek and get high in the trees, too?”
“No, I just wanted to do something different today. You said you were sick of the snow.” I look out the windshield at the remnants of yesterday’s storm, now pushed to the sides of the road and already blackened by gravel and exhaust. “It probably didn’t even stick down there. It might actually feel like spring.” I pause, waiting to see if that’ll be enough to get her to go. “Let’s just go see. I don’t want to go back to school yet.”
“Okay,” Kat says, hitting the gas hard enough that her tires squeal. I squeal too, but Kat just grins. “The Grove it is.”
We blow out of town in her little red pickup with the windows down and the music up. Passing the COME AGAIN! sign at the edge of town when I should be in second period sends a giddy wave through me that I think I could get used to. The sun is out, the sky is brilliant blue in every direction, and the wind in my hair feels like freedom long overdue.
“So what are we really doing right now?” Kat yells over the wind and the music. “Because you realize this is way out of the realm of normal behavior for you.” She turns the music down a bit.
Now would be the perfect time to tell her about the journal. She might totally get what we’re doing driving out here in search of their initials. But if she knew, she’d definitely have to read it, and as much as I love her, I also know that she has a tendency to not keep things like this to herself. And since I stole it, I’m still a little protective of it, and myself, so I decide it’s not time yet.
“What?” I ask. “Is it so bad that after almost eighteen years of you trying to get me to do things your way, I’m finally caving a little?” She looks at me like she knows I’m full of it. “Okay, fine.” I fly my arm out the window, letting my hand dip and rise over invisible waves of air. “You said I had to do something unexpected. This is unexpected, right?”
“It’s also random. But okay, I get it. You’re not ready to tell me whatever it is yet.” She shrugs. “It’s fine. I can wait you out. Like I said before, you’re a shitty secret keeper, anyway.” She winks, then turns the music back up and cranks the wheel at the same time, sending us off the highway and onto the dirt road that leads out to the Grove, and I know she’s probably right. I won’t be able to keep this from her for long. It’d be like trying to fight fate.
I’d never be able to find the Grove without Kat, but I know it’s hidden somewhere in the green vein of aspen trees on the hills in the distance. It’s a big party spot for kids at our school, and always has been, from what I’ve heard—and now read. And it makes sense. It’s just far enough out of town that it doesn’t get near as much snow, but still close enough to make it worth the drive if you don’t mind standing around in a clearing next to a creek to drink your beer. Which is both small-town and cliché, but that’s just the way some things are. I haven’t ever actually been to a party down here, seeing I’ve always had the earliest curfew of anyone and know better than to come out. Getting back before my mom called out the search party would be next to impossible, no matter how many times Kat promised me she’d do it.
But Kat knows the way well, and in a few minutes we turn off the wide, muddy road onto a narrower one that’s rutted and littered with boulders every few feet. I wonder briefly if it’s part of the actual creek and if it’s the best idea to be driving through it, but Kat seems to know what she’s doing. She downshifts or something—I don’t know what—and I feel the tires grab the road a little more. We slow to a crawl to get over a rock the size of one of her tires, and Kat grips the steering wheel with more concentration than I’ve seen her use for most anything. When we bump over the rock and come down hard, all of a sudden I’m nervous. This is a bad idea, I’m sure of it now.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Yeah, but I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to make it all the way out there. It’s not usually this rough. I don’t want to get—”
Before she can finish the tires hit a thick patch of mud and I feel us lose traction. “Shit,” Kat mutters. She jams her foot into the gas pedal to make it through, but that only makes it worse. The engine revs up to a high-pitched whine and our back tires spin, splattering mud out behind us in two big rooster tails.
“Kat, stop! You’re making it worse.”
She lets off the gas and smacks the steering wheel. “Shit, shit, shit. I thought I could make it.”
I don’t say anything. She shuts off the engine. When we both get out, my shoes squish into the same mud the back wheels of her truck are sunk into, deep.
“Maybe we can like, wedge something under it?” I offer. I have no idea.
Kat walks around the back, squishing every step of the way, and shakes her head. “I don’t think so.” She laughs. “We’re screwed. Look at that.” I do, and she’s right. The back tires have spun themselves into two deep ruts that have already filled in with mud.
“Crap, this is all my fault. I’m so, so sorry.” I feel awful for a few seconds. And then I panic. “Oh my God. If my mom finds out about this she’s going to freak. Seriously. We have to get the car out and get back before she knows I’m not in school.”
I look around for something to wedge under the back tires to give them traction—a log, a rock, anything. “Maybe I can push it out.” I’ve heard of people getting superhuman strength in dire situations, which this all of a sudden is. Kat just looks at me like I’m being stupid, which might be the case, but I don’t know what else to do at the moment.
“What?” I ask. “You get in and give it some gas, and I’ll push.” I say it with confidence, then roll up my sleeves, step into the mud, and put my hands on the bumper, ready to get the truck out and save my butt from being grounded for the rest of senior year.
“It’s not gonna work,” she says flatly.
“Well, we have to try something. This can’t happen. I can’t get caught the very first time I ditch. That’s ridiculous.”
I wonder for a second if the desperation in my voice is as obvious to Kat as it is to me, and then I know it is, because she twists her long hair up into a bun, walks back to her open door, and gets in. “Don’t get pissed if you get dirty, because you will.” She closes her door, then turns the key, and the engine jumps to life again. “Okay,” she yells back to me. “You ready? Push on three!”
“Okay!” I dig the heels of my hands into the bumper and try to find something in the mud to brace my feet against.
“One . . . two . . .”
“Go easy at first,” I yell, but it’s too late.
“Three!” She hits the gas hard, sending a mud explosion flying from both tires. In the half second it takes for me to squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember to push, it splatters my face and my feet slip out from under me like something out of a cartoon. And that’s probably what I look like, lying face-first in the mud when she shuts the truck off.
By the time Kat gets back to me, I’m on my hands and knees wiping grit from my mouth and she’s laughing so hard she can’t talk or breathe. I chuck a handful of mud at her, which only makes her laugh more, then she loses her balance and ends up on her butt right next to me, and now it’s my turn to laugh so hard I can’t breathe. She grabs a handful of mud and smears it down my arm. I glop some onto her leg. We sit there in the mud like that for I don’t know how long, laughing until tears stream down our faces and it’s one of those moments I want to always remember. One that years from now will make me laugh just to think about. It makes me miss Kat already.
Finally, I catch my breath. “I’m sorry. This is totally my fault.”
Kat nods slowly, traces a shape in the mud. “Yep,” she says. “Which means now you have to tell me what we’re doing here with my car stuck in the mud and you about to get your ass handed to you by your mom.” She’s right, and she knows it. I owe her an explanation, which she waits for with a smug smile on her face.
“Fine,” I say. “But you’re gonna think it’s stupid.”
“Try me.”
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “I heard that Shane Cruz’s and Julianna Farnetti’s initials were carved into a tree out here near the Grove, and I wanted to see if I could find them.” It’s the truth, just not the whole thing.
Kat’s quiet a moment. “You’re kidding, right? Their initials on a tree is why we’re here? Do you know how many initials are carved into the trees down there?”
“I told you you’d think it was stupid—”
“I don’t know if stupid’s the right word,” she says, getting to her feet. “But it is kind of weird. Why are you all of a sudden obsessed with them since you got that letter? It’s not like you get points with the scholarship board for finding their lost initials.”
“I don’t know, I . . . it’s kind of romantic to think they’re out here somewhere. I just wanted to see.”
Kat shakes her head. “Clearly, you’re in need of a life outside of sappy books and movies,” she says. “And a guy. Which I’m gonna help you out with right now. I know how you like your knights in shining armor, so let’s call one to come get us out of this mess.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Whoever’s willing to drive all the way out here and get us unstuck. Relax about it,” she says with a wink. “Enjoy the sun and the last of your freedom.”