“But –”
“No buts! I’m your official love-coach, starting…” He looked down at his expensive watch. “…now! Let’s go.”
How could I protest? If I didn’t go, he’d get suspicious again. If I did, and came face-to-face with Wolf after what I heard him say about me – I don’t know how well I could pretend to like him in front of Fitz. But it seemed like I didn’t have a choice, because Fitz grabbed my hand and led me across campus like an unwilling sheep to the slaughter.
The Auto garage was quiet, the doors open. Wolf was the only one there, crouched at the wheels of his bike, a wrench and tuning rod at his feet. He’d taken the blazer of his uniform off, his shirt loose and open a few buttons at his collar, the white of it streaked with oil and flakes of rust.
“Wolf!” Fitz called. He turned, dark hair mussed and a bit of oil streaked on his cheek. His jade eyes narrowed at us. Fitz pushed me towards him and whispered a ‘good luck’ before trotting back out.
“What are you doing here?” Wolf’s voice was laced with flame.
“I live here,” I said. “In spirit. Like a ghost. I haunt this garage, basically – quick, somebody call ghostbusters!”
I made spooky ‘wooo’ noises until Wolf scoffed and turned his attention back to his bike.
“You’re an idiot.”
“A pathetic one,” I agree. “Some might even say…pitiable.”
Wolf stopped raising the wrench to his bike’s wheel. “You heard me talking at Seamus’s?”
“I was right behind you guys,” I say lightly. “I heard every word.”
His hands worked the wrench, obviously preferring silent labor to confrontation with me. But I wasn’t going to let him off that easy.
“You know, for future reference, showing up at a girl’s house, helping her out with a complicated-yet-dire situation by claiming to take her out on a date, and then calling her ‘pathetic’ behind her back to your brothers might not be the best way to get someone to like you.”
“I don’t need or want you to like me,” He snapped.
“Good, because it’ll never happen.” I said it so strongly that I could’ve sworn he flinched. But Wolf Blackthorn didn’t flinch. Not because of the words of girls he thought pathetic, anyway. I noticed his wrenching had slowed, and my irritation exploded. “You’re doing that wrong.”
I grabbed another wrench from a nearby table and squatted next to him. Wolf, as always, made space between our bodies instantly, and I took his absence as an opportunity to do things right myself.
“You have to take the backplate off if you want to rotate the bolts anywhere beyond 180 degrees,” I said. “Otherwise you’re just stripping the transmission cap.”
“I know that,” He spun one of his rings furiously. “How do you know that?”
“It isn’t exactly hard to open a book and study,” I said. “It’s what got me in here, and it’s what’ll get me out of here.”
“Is that all you think about? College?”
“High school is pointless,” I wrench harder. “We sit around, teachers tell us what to do, what blanks to fill out, we go home, and the cycle repeats. We have no control over our lives – we can’t do anything except what they tell us to, or we get in trouble. It’s bullshit. Nothing here is real, or impactful. So yeah, I can’t wait to get out to college, where I can do what I want to, the way I want to.”
“The professors in college are the same way,” Wolf insisted.
“But at least you’re working towards a degree. At least you’re amassing tons of knowledge that’s useful for what you want to do when you graduate. High school is the equivalent of macaroni pictures and fingerpainting. I want poetry from the greats, I want math no one’s heard of, I want philosophy from Greek masters and psychology from actual brain scientists. I want the real thing, not the imitation.”
Wolf scoffed. “There’s this thing called baby steps. Taking it one day at a time. Ever heard of it?”
“I don’t have time,” I muttered. “And I can’t afford to take baby steps. Not when I needed to have been running marathons by now.”
Wolf frowned, dark hair falling in his eyes that he pushed away immediately. “You can’t run marathons without training for them, first.”
“Okay, this metaphor sucks and I’m discontinuing it.”
“I thought it was passable,” Wolf said. “Not going to even throw it in the bargain bin? Straight to trash?”
“Straight to trash. Put myself in there too, while I’m at it,” I agreed. I worked my fingers into the back of the transmission chain, feeling for the nut I had to replace. I gritted my teeth – it was just beyond my reach. “Almost…there…”
Everything happened in a split-second; I put my weight on my other palm, which was balancing on the bike’s foothold. Something metallic snapped - I later realized it’d been the kickstand – and the bike came careening down on me. I had just enough time to pull my hands out and throw them up to shield my face. This was it – this was how I died, my irrational fear-brain screamed at me; crushed under the three hundred pound bike of my worst nemesis. My last thought? I hoped Dad found a better daughter than me; one who didn’t spy on three motherless boys and snitch on them to their asshole father.
But nothing hurt. No pain came. There was the sound of the bike crashing to the floor, and then silence. I squinted, a blurry slice of white and black fabric in front of me. I could feel warmth all around me, arms cradling me like a protective cage. My face was buried in a chest – white t-shirt, smelling like motor grease and cinnamon and sweat. Someone’s Adam’s apple bobbed just above me, and my eyes widened.
Wolf.
Wolf held me close, the bike splayed on its side. With the way we were angled, I realized he got in between it and me. It must’ve hit his back on its way to the floor.