“Grant’s not like that,” I said, my voice sounding tinny and distant.
“He’s a teenage boy,” Dad said, raising his voice again. “They’re all like that! You don’t understand this at all, do you? God, I still remember that letter you sent when you started your hormone pills, where you told me you’d been a girl all along. I hadn’t understood it then but now I think I do, because you’re acting like a girl now. You’re acting like a little girl who’s so lovestruck she’s lost her mind.”
I closed my eyes and took deep, even breaths. “I’ll be more careful,” I said, my voice low.
“You’d better,” he said, glaring out the windshield. “One wrong move and I’m sending you back to your mother.”
He pulled into the Walmart parking lot and the car came to a stop. I slammed my door and didn’t look back as I strode across the asphalt. I wasn’t sure who I was angrier with—him for trying to control me, or myself for arguing, when a part of me still suspected he was right.
15
Friday night came as slow as torture, but it finally came. All week I had been thinking about what Dad had said in the car, that I shouldn’t be with Grant, that I was being foolish. But when Grant told me he wanted to take me somewhere on Friday night, I couldn’t help myself. I said yes.
I was waiting on the bottom step of the apartment’s breezeway when Grant arrived in a sedan older than me, its front left panel powder blue while the rest was varying degrees of rust red. The engine rattled like a maraca, and though the light was dim I could see the upholstery sagging inside. Grant stepped out, hands in his pockets and eyes cast to the ground. I walked over and smiled.
“How do you find yourself this evening, m’lord?” I said, trying to defuse the tension, but he didn’t smile. He bit his lip and shuffled for a quiet moment before giving me an anxious look. “We don’t have to go,” he said. “We could walk somewhere.”
“Why would we do that?” I said, circling slowly to his side of the car.
“Because my car’s a piece of junk,” he said. “It’s so embarrassing.”
“She’ll make point five past light speed,” I said, patting the hood of his car and doing my best Han Solo impression. “She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid.” I leaned up, kissed him softly on the lips, and grinned, arching an eyebrow. “I’ve made some … special modifications myself.”
He smiled a little, but something was obviously still on his mind. I was starting to lose hope when he said, “Okay, well, get in the car you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder.”
“Who’s scruffy-lookin’?” I asked in mock indignation as I hopped into the car. The seat screeched and tilted as I sat in it, and I realized when I reached that there was no seat belt. Grant sat down and started the poor, limping engine and we headed out.
“Hey, wait,” he said, frowning. “How come you’re Han and I’m Leia? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
“You were pouting,” I said, matter-of-factly. “Han Solo doesn’t pout. You can have your Han privileges back when you cheer up. Can I ask what’s on your mind?”
“You can,” Grant said, scratching his temple and frowning again. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“That’s a surprise. Hopefully a good one.”
I swallowed dryly and gripped the door handle, my own anxiety building the farther I got from home. The car rattled even worse once it hit speed on the highway, to the point that I was afraid it was going to come apart.
“Sorry again about the other night,” I said, twisting a strand of hair.
“You don’t need to apologize,” he said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t be so happy either if I had a daughter and found her in my house alone with a boy.”
“No,” I said, “I mean about pushing you too hard to talk about your family.”
“Oh,” Grant said. “That. I mean, I should be glad you want to know that kind of stuff. I should be really, really glad you’re interested in that. And I’m trying.”
He turned off the interstate onto a highway miles outside of town. The streetlights grew thinner and thinner until he eventually turned onto a dirt road and the only light remaining was his car’s one functioning headlight.
We pulled into a patch of gravel beside a brown double-wide trailer. A light came on above the trailer’s tiny latticed porch, revealing a pair of bony, tired-looking dogs chained near a garden where a dozen chickens hopped around angrily at the sudden disturbance before fleeing behind the trailer to escape the light.
Grant turned to me and grimaced a little. He let out a long, slow whistle. “This is my mom’s car. It was never in the shop. I just didn’t want you to see it, just like I didn’t want you to see where I live.” He took a deep breath and turned to me. “You sure you wanna come inside?”