I wasn’t sure if he was mocking me or if he really meant it. “Her name’s Kyra Kelley. And you should stop acting like you don’t know who she is, since you once rode in this car to one of her concerts, then drooled the whole time she was up on the stage. And yes, going to her show is still the plan, unless you can think of something better.” I said it like I was still absolutely sure, then waited for the smart-ass comment that was sure to follow.
Rusty put his arm on the seat behind me and cranked the wheel hard as he backed out. “I can think of a helluva lot better things than that, but this is your deal and your car, so . . .” He twisted back around and put the car into drive. “You’re the boss.” With that, he laid hard into the gas, gunning us out of the parking lot and back out onto the dusty I-40 with a jump. It was kind of charming in his redneck, Rusty sort of way, and I forgot for a moment what the other side of that coin looked like.
Out the windshield, the road stretched forever in front of us, an endless strip of black dividing the cracked dirt of the desert. The sky expanded brilliant blue in every direction, and the sheer vastness of it made the morning feel full of possibility. I rolled my window down all the way and stuck an arm out into the heat, soaking it up. In about two blinks, we flew past a sign that read YOU ARE NOW LEAVING SANTA ROSA. COME AGAIN!, and as we did I heard the familiar first notes of “Wayward Son,” one of Finn’s favorite songs of all time. Also one that I used to put up a big fuss about, rolling my eyes and covering my ears. I’d thought it was the cheesiest song ever. He’d loved it for that. Rusty looked over at me with a cool smile, then nodded and cranked up the volume just in time for the chorus to open up:
“Carry on my wayward son,
there’ll be peace when you are done.”
I sat back in the seat and opened my mouth to protest, but he shook his head. “Nobody talks during ‘Wayward Son.’ Car rules.” He turned the volume up another notch.
I tried to hide it, tried to look exasperated, but it was no use. I felt a true, happy smile rise in me as Rusty sang along. He pounded a fist on the wheel to the beat, and I rolled my eyes again, even though I was about to join in. I liked this. This moment. It was one Finn would have loved, and I pictured us kicking up a billowing trail of dust as we headed out into the great wide open, in honor of him.
Easy silence settled between us as we sailed over mile after mile of flat, brown desert. It felt different in the passenger seat, with Rusty driving steady and fast. He seemed at home in Finn’s car, like he belonged there as much as me. And to tell the honest truth, he did. It was Rusty who had gone with Finn to talk its previous owner into selling it to a fifteen-year-old without a license for half the asking price. Finn had worked all summer, hauling dirt and doing whatever else at a neighbor’s ranch, and he’d decided this was the car.
It was a piece at the time, all peeling paint and torn vinyl, probably worth closer to what he had in his pocket than what the guy was asking. But when they rolled into Aunt Gina’s driveway in it, he and Rusty were kings. Kings who spent every waking moment working on that car and emerged from the garage covered in grease and boy stink.
I mostly tried to steer clear when Rusty was out there. He was the type of boy who’d either come at me with the hose on full blast or completely ignore me while he and Finn talked about Sydney Bennett, the senior girl Finn (along with the entire male population at school) loved from afar. She was a girl of myth and legend who stopped even the most cocky guys in their tracks with her long dark hair, blue eyes, and smile that was just the right combination of naughty and nice. She had perfected the art of hinting at possibility—a smile or a fleeting moment of eye contact that could keep a guy hoping for god only knew how long.
I knew all this from listening behind the half-open door between the garage and the kitchen, and I would’ve given anything to learn just how she did it. They talked about her outfits and speculated about what type of underwear she’d been wearing, if any. They proudly rehashed any little moment she gave them, whether she’d passed them in the hallway and glanced in their direction or smiled at them from the top of the cheer pyramid. Never mind that Finn and Rusty each had their fair share of football groupies who were more than happy to throw themselves pathetically at their feet. They would’ve traded any of those girls in a second for Sydney Bennett. Being sophomores, they never had a shot in hell with her, but they worked on that car like it would somehow give them one.
Once Rusty went home, I’d head out to the garage and survey their progress. I had no idea how they knew how to work on the car and was half-amazed whenever they did it right. Finn always claimed that once a guy turned thirteen, he automatically knew everything. He told me that every time I asked him how he knew how to do something, and after a while, I mostly believed him. I even thought maybe once I turned thirteen I’d know all the girl things I needed to know, like how to do a smoky eye or walk like Sydney Bennett or look at a guy and say a whole lot without saying anything. But thirteen came and went, and I was none the wiser about any of it.
Lilah was a lot better than me at all those things, and she did her best to help me along, whether it was talking me into wearing something I had no idea I could pull off or starting up a conversation with the boys we had crushes on and somehow working me in so that I became a part of it. And I loved her for all those things, but back then I was most myself when I sat with my legs dangling out the Pala, while Finn worked and made plans for everything—the next football game, the upcoming summer, his senior year, college with Rusty, everything. I’d be willing to bet he spent his free moments on the other side of the world planning what he’d do when he got back.