“How did your day go?” she asks. Her tone is guarded like she's pleading with me to say “Fine” and leave it at that.
“Fine,” I say and head over to the fridge.
“You don't need to eat. Jeff is taking us out for dinner.”
“Sorry, I've got plans.” I keep my head in the fridge. I don't want to catch Mom's eyes.
“This is important, Miles,” she says. “We have something to discuss that you might find interesting.”
“Go ahead.”
“Not here.”
“Why not here? This is home, ain't it?” I can feel Mom wince. My grammar is usually pretty good. She knows I'm just playing up for Jeff.
Jeff clears his throat. “Miles, how about chicken ân' ribs at Swiss Chalet?”
“Thanks anyway.”
“We can invite Kenny to join us,” Mom says.
“She's busy. I'm meeting up with her later.”
I go into the living room, pick up the phone and punch the Lark's number.
“Hey, Lar.”
“Hey, bro. Was that you in the Mercedes? That hood emblem would make a great belt buckle.”
“Yeah, that was me. Thanks to you and that
bug
you hang out with.”
“Who? Spider? He's okay when you get to know him. He says you're a real ace guy for taking the rap. Don't worry, he'll make it up to you.”
I decide the less I tell Larry about my assignment, the better. He has a way of showing up at the wrong place at the right time. Most of the things the Lark does are wrong, come to think of it, but he's been my
closest buddy since grade school. He knows about my dad and all, but he'd never tell my personal business to other people. He just mentioned the stock-car racing bit in front of Spider so I'd look cool.
“So, what's up for tonight?” I ask Larry.
“It's gonna be a good one, man! Megan's having a party.”
“Sounds great. Pick me up. Now.”
“I'll be right there.”
I hang up. Mom follows me down the hall and into my room before I can close the door. “Okay, what's going on?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me about the community service.”
“This old couple have got me cleaning out their basement, sorting magazines, that kind of stuff. I'll get through it.”
Mom is leaning with her back against my door, blocking any escape. “I had a long talk with Ms. Kirkpatrick and a police officer today. Final conclusion: your behavior is going to improve starting
right now
. That's what we wanted to discuss with you. Jeff has some
positive ideas. But since you won't listen to him, you'll listen to me!”
Her voice rises as she builds up steam for the power push. “Whatever it takes â me quitting work to
baby-sit
you twenty-four hours a day, a group worker assigned to monitor you, sending you to an Outward Bound program â I'll do whatever it takes to straighten you out.”
She pauses for breath. “The first thing you're going to do is find some new friends. I don't want to see that scamp, Larry Lowisky, around here ever again. You hear? He's nothing but trouble.”
I grab my jacket and stuff a pack of smokes into my pocket. Mom doesn't say anything as I walk down the hall. Jeff stands up as if to block my way, then wisely steps aside.
“Your mother wants to talk to you, Miles,” he says.
“She just did.”
I hear the Lark pulling into the driveway with the old smokin' beast. Perfect timing.
“Hey, Miles, what's happening?”
“Trouble, Larry.”
The Lark and me are definitely due for a major discussion. Let's see, where should I start? What kind of a friend takes off and leaves you for dead in a stolen car? What kind of buddy gets you involved in stealing a car in the first place? The Mustang owner's insurance company will likely try and nail me for damages. Larry the Lark owes me, big time.
We cruise the drag but nobody's around at this hour. We pull into the A&W.
“ ⦠so I got these BMW hood ornaments and I try to trade two of them and an Alfa Romeo for one Ferrari, but think Spider will go for it? No way! So I sweeten the deal, offer him a ⦠”
His words drift in and out of my head. I'm thinking back to the covers of those dusty old
Hot Rod
mags. One from 1964 shows Don Garlits driving the
Swamp Rat
dragster.
“ ⦠and so I tell him to put it where the sun don't shine, I'll find some other fence ⦠Hey! You're not listenin'!”
“Sorry, Lar.” I take a pull on my milk shake. Get brain freeze.
“What are you thinking about? Anything I should know?”
Should I tell? He's interested in cars.
“At this old guy's place where I was today, he had a pile of old hot-rod magazines. I was just thinking about some of those cars.”
“Like what?”
“Like âBig Daddy' Don Garlits breaking
two hundred miles per hour in a quarter mile with a dragster called
Swamp Rat
in the early '60s!”
Larry looks doubtful. “And he turned
two hundred in the quarter
, way back then? You sure? What did he use for power?”
“A 392-inch hemi out of a '57 Dodge truck, totally modified.”
“What's a âhemi'?”
“It's a special way Chrysler made heads. I read that they stole the design from Zora Arkus Duntov, the guy responsible for the Corvette. The âZ' in the Z-28 Camaro comes from Zora.”
“Hey!”
“
Swamp Rat
ran on these humungous Racemaster drag slicks. The engine was super charged, fuel injected, with a Crower roller cam.”
“What language are you talking, man?”
I laugh. “Mr. Barnier, the dude I'm working for, he's a hot-rodder from way back. He tells me all about these cars. He's a cool old guy.”
“He have a rod?”
“I dunno. He wants to do the heads on something that's in his garage. I said I could probably grind the valves for him at the school shop.”
“Getting in good with the boss?”
“He's okay. This hundred hours is going to be easy time.”
“Find out if he's got a rod,” Larry says. “It could have parts worth lifting.”
“No.”
“No what?” The Lark leans towards me in his seat, staring. I stare back.
“Look, Lar, this last bit, with the Mus-tang, you and Spider running off and letting me take the rap â I could have gone to the joint!”
“Hey, man, Spider got nabbed on that theft charge two months ago and right now he's on bail. He couldn't stick around! And if I break my probation I'll get time for sure. I knew you'd be okay.” Larry pops a fry into his mouth. “And you aren't exactly havin' a rough time over there at that old man's. You
said yourself this hundred hours' community work is goin' okay.” He leans towards me. “Me and Spider are
grateful
, man.”
“I could have lost my driver's license.”
“Aw, you got nothing to drive anyway. Come on! Let's forget it â get ripped at Megan's bash, be somebody.”
“I don't feel like it.”
“C'mon! Don't play dead. Give Kenny a call. It's time we had some fun!”
Larry crunches up the papers and napkins, all that's left of his huge order, and flicks on the headlights for tray pickup.
Sure. I'll call Kenny.
Megan is a Space Cadet. She used to do drugs but then she got involved with this club that turned her on to a new world. Now she loves the Space Channel. She'll get up at four in the morning to watch astronauts suit up, walk out and get strapped in for their shuttle launches. Then she yawns all day in school. She says it's good to be focused on something. Her shrink says she has an obsessive personality.
Larry and Megan have been hanging out for almost a year now. Megan has long straight blonde hair, usually with pink, purple or green streaks depending on what galaxy she's in.
The Lark, Megan and I pull up to No. 17 Green Forest Acres. Larry and Megan stay in the car with the motor running because it's hard to start. I sprint up to the door and ring the bell, which chimes something classical.
Mr. Morash answers.
“Come in, Miles. Kenny's nearly ready.” He looks out to the smoking '72 New Yorker that's brought me to his door. “Tell your chauffeur to head down to Midas Muffler â he's losing a tailpipe and you'll all be asphyxiated.”
“Yes, sir.” I grin and he smiles back.
When I first met Kenny's parents I was real nervous â especially after Mr. Morash's first comment.
“Miles Derkach,” he said slowly when we were introduced. “I know Duke Derkach from the Speed Boss Racetrack. Any relation?”
“Uh, yeah. He's my dad,” I said, expecting to be thrown out of the house. “How did you know him?”
“My father, Aesop Morash Sr., started the family garage business and worked me like a hired hand,” Mr. Morash replied. “I wasn't allowed to go racing. How I longed to be at the track with guys like your dad.”
“Daddy, Miles doesn't want to hear your life history!” Kenny interrupted, with a cute grin. Her dad smiled back. You could see they were close.
“I do want to hear about it, Mr. Morash,” I said.
“Call me Ace,” he offered. “All I wanted was to be like the Duke. His team would come into the shop to get sponsorship money. We'd give them parts and some cash for gas and they'd be off again. He lived the life I dreamt of.”
Good old Dad. The man in the photo album wearing the double-breasted suit, holding up racing forms and “lucky” tickets, in a picture taken somewhere in the States. The man in the T-shirt and jeans, mechanic's cap on backwards, grease all over his hands and face, holding up a beer.
“I lost track of your father,” Ace said, “although I often wondered about him.”
“That gives us something in common,” I'd replied. Kenny's dad and I have got along pretty well ever since.
He pats my shoulder. “You and Kenny have a nice evening. And get that exhaust system fixed.”
“Thanks, Mr. Morash â Ace. I sure will.”
We get into the New Yorker. It rumbles like a locomotive and slowly pulls away.
“Yahoo!” Kenny shouts so loudly I jump. “Out of jail for one whole night! Let's party!”
“Some jail,” Larry says. “You ain't seen nothin', babe. I'll be in a real jail if I break
probation.” He shoots a meaningful look my way.
Megan moves over on the big bench front seat to cozy up next to him. “Nobody's going to jail. We're going to party!”
We arrive back at her house to see that several cars have already arrived, including Spider's black Z-28. I want to grab Kenny and get out of there, but I have no wheels. Besides, she's already jumping out of the car to help Megan pack in the groceries. Like Duke used to say, “
The best way through a bad situation is hands on the wheel and best foot floored
.”
Megan's family room is decorated to resemble the space station with posters, souvenirs, signed photos of astronauts, and a large-screen TV flashing videotaped scenes from the space station and Mission Control. She's also taped televised interviews with astronauts who describe how it feels to travel eight kilometers a second and view the earth from space. She's even bought freeze-dried packages of space food for the party. Her
favorite thing in the world is a scale-model replica of the Canadarm that Larry made for her from PVC piping. For tonight she insists everyone take on names of astronauts. She, of course, is Julie Payette. Great, but I mean
obsessive
.
Talk gets interesting as we compare hot rods to the space shuttle. “I'd way rather be in a shuttle,” Megan says. “Imagine being powered by two seventeen-inch-diameter fuel lines, one for hydrogen and the other for oxygen! Cosmic blast!!”
“I suppose so, compared to a 3/8-inch car fuel line!” Larry says, grinning. “And no road drag.”
“Big fuel bill,” Greg Summers adds, sounding like the accountant he'll likely become.
Megan's eyes sparkle as she gets into her favorite subject. “A shuttle uses twelve tons of fuel a second,” she informs us. “Four and a half million pounds of shuttle and pay-load need lots of help to get off the launch pad.”
From the corner of my eye I see Spider standing against the far wall, sipping a beer, looking over the group. He's older than the rest of us and I don't know why he's here. Larry likely invited him, but we're not his usual crowd. His eyes flicker over to me. I stare him down and he looks away.
I'm suddenly furious. When he leaves the room I decide to follow. I trail him upstairs and into the kitchen, which opens onto a deck. He looks back at me, then opens the sliding glass door. Then we're standing outside. He lights a smoke and offers me one. I shake my head. We lean over the deck rail to look at the city lights below. The night is warm, perfect, no insects except for the big one standing beside me.
He speaks first. “Sorry, kid. That whole scene came down bad. You need anything â parts, cash?”
I don't reply. He flicks his butt over the deck rail. For some reason, that act does it.
“Go down there and pick it up.” I'm surprised how even my voice sounds.
Spider looks at me. “What?”
“You heard me. There's a deck below, that butt could start a fire.”
“It won't â and watch your mouth, you little punk.” His eyes narrow and he turns to face me. “You're a slow learner, you know that?”
But Spider's wrong. I'm a quick learner. My right fist lands on his chin. His head snaps back and he grabs the deck rail for balance. I catch him with my left and he's staggering, holding onto the rail to keep from hitting the floor. Then I see his hand snake to his belt and a flash of a silver blade. I nail him hard, square on the temple, sending both him and the knife flying. He hits the boards while the knife skitters over the side of the deck.