I still told it the truth. “Max is home. I might bring him for a visit.”
Seeing the Yaris the first time was as excruciating as Metal Pete had promised, but now, there was no way to look at the twisted heap without thinking, How did anyone walk away from that? The Yaris reminded me that Max and I were miracles. Considering that the hood and the front seat were practically one, I hated my scars a tiny bit less.
Coupled with that miracle was guilt, and I searched for an answer to Why Trent? Why not me? in every twist of the metal, every tiny rusted flake, every shattered piece of windshield.
When I told Fletcher about my visits to Metal Pete’s, he explained survivor’s guilt to me and said it was normal. Then he’d asked, “Sadie, do you have a time machine?”
“No.”
“So there’s nothing you can do to change what happened at Willit Hill?”
“No,” I’d said, feeling the trap in his question.
“Then, somehow, you have to accept that you’re still here, and that maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason. Find the reason.”
“Find the reason.”
I repeated those phrases, “Find the reason” and “I don’t have a time machine,” regularly.
Time machine or no, I had good memories in that car. Gray and I making out in the backseat. Trent, Max, and I going on boiled-peanut runs on Saturday mornings. Gray and I, and Gina and Trent, riding to dinner before the guys’ junior prom. Trent made a little magnet for the Yaris that said Limo, and we all cracked up because the car was not much bigger than a go-kart. I tried desperately to replace the last memory with those happy ones, so that maybe, I’d get my ass behind a wheel again.
“I will drive again. Right, Headlight?”
Headlight sat down in shade of my shadow and put her nose on the ground. Knocking the dust off her coat, I gave her a good long rub and watched her knobby tail attempt to wag. She reminded me of the cars, the way she limped, looped, and sighed with the effort of walking, and yet she had parts that still worked fine. Metal Pete salvaged more than cars.
“What do you say, buddy? Do you think I can do it?”
Headlight stood up, put two paws on the tire, and licked my cheek.
“Good. I do too,” I said, and gave her a scratch between the ears. “But not today. Today, I’m just gonna look.”
She settled down and closed her eyes. I followed suit, giving myself permission to remember many other good things about the Yaris.
I didn’t hear Metal Pete until he stood over me. He wore a visor bigger than his best grin. Before I could ask, he dropped my long-sleeve shirt into my lap, and I put it on.
“You’re roasting like a pig on a spit,” he warned.
“I was just thinking.”
“Well, think with some SPF.” He tossed me lotion from his pocket.
I applied a thick lather of sunblock while he rolled an abandoned wheel rim near me and sat down. I flipped the lotion back his way. “Better?”
“You’ll be old someday and I’ll be too dead to thank, but you’ll remember that Metal Pete’s the reason why your skin’s still pretty.”
Pretty and my skin didn’t belong in the same sentence. “I’m sure.”
“Don’t get sassy with me, Sadie Kingston.”
“No, sir,” I said, knowing Metal Pete’s threat was as harmless as Headlight.
“Five dollars for your thoughts?” he said.
“Is that five for the Impala and five for the thoughts?”
His thick shoulders lifted in a half shrug. “It’s all Monopoly money anyway.”
I tried to keep the fear from my voice. “My folks are making me go back to school in the fall.”
Metal Pete toed the bottom of my tire. “Sounds wise of them.”
“You’re supposed to be on my side.”
He held out his hands in an I call it like I see it way.
Even though Metal Pete would gladly listen to me ramble about anything, I read the location of the Impala to him and held out my hand.
A five-dollar bill landed in my palm.
“Thanks,” I said.