“It sounds like it’s running rough,” Quinn said over the throbbing engine.
“It’s supposed to. It’s been tinkered with for racing. It barely idles because it wants to fly.” She grinned. In that moment, with exhaust flowing into the close space of the garage, blood matting her hair to the side of her head, she had never looked more beautiful. That smile.
He blinked, coming back to himself. “Don’t you think it’s a little loud?”
“Some of the trucks we’ve driven have been almost as loud,” she said, stooping to turn the vehicle off. “At least with this, we’re riding in style.” She turned to Ty. “What do you think, buddy? Should we take this car or look for another one?”
“This one,” Ty said, a smile spreading across his face. “I like how it sounds.”
After checking the engine to make sure it was full of coolant and oil, they put the wheels on with a socket wrench. The interior was in rough shape, the dark leather cracked with stuffing poking through in yellow clumps. The floorboards were dirty and little strippings of wire were scattered every few inches. With nothing to put in the trunk, Quinn moved to the garage door and opened it, glancing in all directions before coming back to the car. When he got there, Alice was already in the driver’s seat.
“Nuh-uh, not today, bud. You’re riding shotgun,” she said, jerking a thumb to the seat beside her. Once he was in, she backed out and lined the car up with the open highway. The sun was apexing in the sky, the shadows nearly extinct. “I really shouldn’t do this, but what the hell,” she said.
Alice slid the shifter back. Her feet twitched beneath the dashboard, and Quinn was sucked back in his seat as the engine roared and the wide tires shrieked. They rocketed forward, and Ty let out a high peal of laughter as Alice accelerated through the gears. The landscape beside the car fled past, trees and brush only blurs, a wooden bridge there and gone. When Quinn glanced over at her, one end of her mouth was turned up in a grin.
Eventually the road lost its straight line and began to snake through several rough hills that spilled down to the highway. Alice slowed and eased the Challenger around the curves as if she had grown up driving the car. She rolled her window down, and her seat was far enough forward for Denver to poke his head into the open air. His tongue lolled, eyes taking in the speeding scenery.
They drove into the golden afternoon without hindrance, filling the car up with gas at a large, silent farm that appeared to the north. The hills gave way to fields again that wouldn’t be planted, last year’s crops withering away in stolid silos. Quinn watched the land coast past. So much to see and take in. He drank the scenery with his eyes, opened his hand to catch the passing air in his palm like a harried creature that couldn’t stay, each mile the furthest he’d ever been from home.