Lessons in Falling
Diana Gallagher
FOR MY PARENTS
CHAPTER ONE
THE OCTOBER SUNSHINE glints off of the Department of Motor Vehicles’ door as my father holds it open, like he’s ushering me into a debutante ball. I breeze past him to join the line of would-be drivers. The girl in front of me whimpers.
Amateur. I’ve taken this test six times. There’s no point in showing fear.
Ping, ping. My best friend’s texts roll in. I keep my head down as the line shuffles forward.
Cassie: You’re gonna kill it today!!!
Cassie: Come to South Cross ASAP when you’re done.
Cassie: When you PASS, that is.
Cassie: Bring burritos.
Right. Senior Cut Day. While I’m here, my best friend is busy frolicking by the ocean, never mind the fact that it’s cold enough for frost outside. “That’s the beauty of it,” she’d told me last night. “The teachers don’t expect us to ditch on a shit day. You’re sure you can’t get out of your test?”
“Would you want my father as your life chauffeur?”
She’d laughed. “Fair enough.”
I half expect to see a poster of my learner’s permit on the wall with the caption DMV’s Most Notorious. New York State still hasn’t passed a law to keep repeat offenders like me from signing up for one test right after the other, so here I stand. The first three tests, I was optimistic. On four and five, the doubt settled in. By now, it’s just embarrassing, or in the words of my father, “They’re going to start sending you Christmas cards.”
“Name?” the DMV attendant says.
“Savannah–”
“Kaitlyn Gregory,” Dad interrupts.
Nobody has called me Kaitlyn since I was seven. Not even Mom. I’d tugged that name off and taken my more exciting middle name instead. Cassie had seen to it. Get it together, Dad.
“‘K.S. Gregory,’” the man reads from my permit in an I-don’t-have-time-or-patience-for-your-discrepancy tone. “That you?”
“Yes,” we say in unison.
The man sighs. “Park across from the playground.”
There’s no doubt that Cassie’s the first senior down to the shoreline. Although it’s only eight in the morning, I bet the Atlantic Ocean is warmer than the air. My best friend won’t be swimming, although some of the braver seniors might attempt an early-season Polar Bear Plunge. No, she’ll be walking over the dunes, stopping at the peak, and digging in her heels to keep from sliding in the sand. Her camera will be slung around her neck. The fact that her attendance has been, shall we say, spotty so far this year won’t bother her.
Tomorrow, she’ll show our teachers the photographs, dropping her voice so that it falls into her purple-and-green Palestinian scarf. She’ll even win over our notoriously hard-ass precalculus teacher. As always, she will be forgiven.
Meanwhile, a permanent layer of dust covers the dashboard, the seatbelt digs into my shoulder, and the gas pedal groans like an old man whenever I press it. The car’s a piece of shit. It’s as sick of the Town of Ponquogue DMV as I am.
We’ll get out of here today, you and me.
I’m sick of failing.
“I didn’t feel good about the parallel park you ended on yesterday. Did you?” Dad says in his teacher-chastising-a-young-delinquent tone. Since he’s the AP Calculus teacher at my high school, all of my classmates have the privilege of hearing that voice, too. On the rare days he has a sub, like today, it’s like Christmas break comes early for Ponquogue.
No license. No gymnastics career. A father infamous for assigning shitty grades. Yeah, I’m pretty much the coolest senior.
“When am I ever going to have to parallel park in my life?” I counter, fully aware that this argument is futile.
“Two cars from now.”
“I’m not worried.” I am very worried. “I’ve been practicing.” I extend my legs like I’m warming up for a gymnastics meet, eliciting the crack of scar tissue in my right knee. Bad move.
Last night, I tried an exercise that my former gymnastics coach was fond of. “Ten times a night, every night,” he’d instruct, “look in the mirror and say to yourself, ‘I am a great beam worker.’” We’d all roll our eyes behind his back.
But when you’re six road tests in the hole, you’re not really one to judge. “You can do this, Savannah,” I’d mumbled once I’d shut off the lights, feeling my breath bounce back at me from the mirror, and then threw my face into a pillow. Useless.
Thinking about gymnastics–just as useless. I need to have realistic goals now, like passing this goddamn thing once and for all.
Another text. I know it’s from Cass. Nobody else would text me this early (or at all these days–sad, but true). “I’m fairly sure texting during your test results in automatic failure,” Dad says sarcastically as I glance at my phone.
Sure enough, it’s Cass: I’m freezing my balls off. Can you bring hot chocolate, too?
Cass: Love youuu!
“So when are you going back to the gym?”
My hands freeze on the steering wheel. Another text arrives, but the words don’t register.
Dad steamrolls on, either not noticing or not caring that I’ve got a death grip on the wheel. “You’ve been cleared by the orthopedist for a month now.”
How many times must we play this game? Too bad Mom couldn’t take me today. She wouldn’t bring up this nonsense. “I’m done,” I tell him for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time, I ignore the drop in my stomach. It should feel easier by now, shouldn’t it? I’d had a career-ending injury on the most important day of my career. What part of done doesn’t he get? And why does he have to bring it up now?
“You’ve had plenty of injuries,” he replies, undeterred.
“Exactly.” A thin man in a black blazer with an equally dark look on his face waits by the curb.
Wait! Not yet! Now I’m the one who wants to whimper. Dammit. Except this is my seventh time here, and if I can’t do it now, when am I ever going to be able to?
I slide next to the curb at a cool one mile per hour.