I’d come home from Willit Hill and napped.
“Hop to it, Kingston,” Max told me when I raised the window a crack.
“I’m coming. I’m coming.”
I rushed around for five minutes doing the necessary things—like putting on clean underwear and deodorant, and packing essentials—and five minutes doing totally unnecessary things, like changing clothes and hairstyles several times. I shoved Big, what was left of him, deep in my bag.
“We’re not going to the third world,” Max said from his perch in the window when he saw my bag.
“Cut me some slack. I rarely leave my street.”
He kissed my cheek and said, “Speaking of. You’d better tell them”—he pointed toward my parents’ room—“where we’re going.”
I wrote Mom and Dad a note that could warrant either a high five or a What the hell? and left it on the bar. They wanted my driving status out of neutral, but St. Augustine wasn’t exactly one city over. As far as they knew, I hadn’t even made it to the bridge by myself, and that was only down the street. So in a moment of overkill, I added a big smiley face to sell them on my mental state.
I’m happy. I’m good with this. I can drive ten hours round-trip.
I expected a phone call in T-minus soon.
As Max and I drove the Spree down our street, the first hint of sunbeams struck the pale-gray sky in a brilliant effort. The houses glowed like color cards at a paint store in shades of peach, tan, blue, and aquamarine. There was a white stucco house shaped like a dome that had been rebuilt several times. Some places still had blue tarps secured to the roof with two-by-fours, the aftermath of the storm that tackled the dome.
But they were all still here.
So was I.
And in a few minutes, I’d sit behind the wheel and drive to St. Augustine. When I was a kid, I marveled at airplanes and space shuttles. I watched fighter jets from Eglin Air Force Base run routes out to sea, leaving white traceable contrails against bright blue skies. Dad had even taken me to Cape Canaveral once to watch a launch. Those crafts seemed like impossibilities hurling through space. Cars had never dazzled me. They didn’t look like miracles with their wheels, engines, and speed. They were made of logic.
Until the accident.
Every day, the people around me got into vehicles and hurled their bodies down the road at high speeds. Didn’t they know that more people died in cars than in airplanes? Didn’t they know Trent was one of them? That Max and I almost were? I didn’t think they did. They texted and talked on the phone and ate take-out and changed their iPods from one song to another.
Driving needed a little more formal dining room and a little less backyard toy box. That fear was what started me running. My feet felt pretty damn safe.
But I couldn’t walk to St. Augustine.
“You’re quiet,” Max said.
“So are you.”
“Might be a quiet sort of day,” he said.
Gina and Gray were parked outside Metal Pete’s gate when we arrived. I’d left it to Gina to explain the day to Gray, and she’d promised me he was on board. We greeted one another cautiously. There was none of the humor of chicken-fighting and camping as we walked into the yard.
“Why can’t we just go in Gina’s car?” Gray asked.
“Because I want to drive.”
Everyone stopped in the middle of the dirt lane. Even Max.
“Why did you think we were here?” I said, jangling the keys as I walked my friends down the first row toward the S-10.
“No idea,” Gray said.
“Ritual,” Max said cautiously.
I read his mind. He clearly thought I was making the other two see the Yaris before we drove off together.
“I’ve been practicing.” I left out the for two days part.
Gina wrapped me up in a hug and said, “You can do this.”
“Thanks, buddy,” I said, allowing the praise to give me courage.