No Right Turn (14 page)

I feel myself blush, but now Becka asks, “So your mom's boyfriend lets you borrow the car?”

“He's going to, after three months' probation is over, but that night, and the other times I was out in it, he didn't know I had it.”

“So you stole it?” She sounds surprised, even shocked.

“Kind of.”

“If you took it without him knowing, you were stealing it—what's ‘sort of' about that?”

I try to think of how to explain everything; but suddenly I feel tired of all the lies and bullshit—there's that word again. Besides, Becka's right. “Yeah, I stole it,” I admit. “He didn't know I had it, so it
was
stealing. And when I saw that cop start chasing us, I was scared. I'm sorry.”

She says, “You should be sorry, you idiot.” She pauses a minute to let her words sink in, then asks, “What's this probation thing?”

“Well, after ninety days, he's going to let me use the car; I'll have his permission then. My mom's ninety days of punishment is running concurrently, since it's for the same offense.”

“Wow.” Becka smiles a tiny bit and says, “Sounds like somebody's been watching a little too much Court TV. This Don must be a pretty good guy.”

“Yeah, he is....” I hesitate a second, thinking about my next words. I'm surprised I'm going to say them, even though they feel true. “He's like a dad to me.” I feel a warm shiver.

Becka smiles. “That's nice. It's neat that you have that.”

But Becka isn't smiling anymore as she asks, “Why did you lie to me? I mean about the car, about everything? What could have made telling me all these lies seem like it was okay to do?”

I take a single deep breath and say, “The truth is hard for me to talk about, but I'll tell you if you still wanna hear it.”

“Of course I do,” Becka says. “That's what we're here for.”

I take one more deep breath, and now I tell Becka the
whole
story about my dad and me,
all
of it—somehow I find the words. Mostly I talk about Dad. After all the years of
never
talking about him, it feels amazingly good saying it out loud. Becka looks stunned as I go over what happened that day Dad shot himself. She turns pale and her hands shake. Finally she cries and kisses my cheek and touches my face gently. It feels
really
nice.

For a long time after I'm done talking, she's quiet, cuddling next to me, just holding me tight—almost as tightly as I'm holding her.

After closer to two hours than ten minutes, we finally leave the park and drive the route, slow and easy through the turns and along the straight stretches. Even in the Honda it's kind of fun.

Becka says, “Did you really think I cared that much about your car?”

“Sort of.”

She laughs. “You don't know much about girls, do you?”

I blush. “Well, I'm learning a little about
you
.”

“But you didn't know that owning the Corvette wouldn't matter to me?”

I think about this for a second. “It mattered to me,” I say.

Becka smiles, even laughs a little, and then says, “Ninety days isn't that long, you know.” She kisses my cheek. “I can wait.” Then she adds, pretty sarcastically, “Guys and cars … good lord!”

I'm tempted to remind her that the 'Vette isn't just any car, but what's the point? Instead, I smile too.

On the phone Wally says, “So they nailed you, huh?”

I answer, “Ninety days is going to pass pretty fast. Truthfully, Mom won't be all that strict about my house arrest. After all, I have a long history of putting myself in ‘restriction' already.”

“That's true,” Wally says, but I can hear the disappointment in his voice. I haven't mentioned to him a bit of news I think he'll appreciate.

Wally says, “Well, I have to admit that it's gonna be kind of boring not having your crazy shit to worry about.”

“Yeah,” I answer. “Sorry about that.”

There's a long silence. I can barely keep from laughing.

“Well, hang in there, Jordan.”

“I will, thanks, Wal.... Oh, and by the way, I forgot to mention that Becka talked about you to Steffi Turner.”

“What?”
Wally gasps.

I laugh.

Steffi Turner is a sophomore cheerleader, sweet, no boyfriend, and best of all she has long, gorgeous red hair.

Wally is stunned. “Are you serious? Are you kidding? I … you …”

I laugh again. “She's expecting you to call. She
wants
you to, she's in the phone book under Turner, her dad's first name is Carl, they live on Jefferson, and—”

“I gotta go!” Wally blurts out and then tries not very successfully to control himself, “Thanks, Jordan.... I mean it, man—you're—you're the … Steffi Turner! I gotta go!”

He hangs up.

I go back into Dad's office at our house. It's been three years and seven months since I was in here.

Mom cleared out a lot of Dad's belongings. She got rid of his books on accounting and most of his personal stuff. I'm surprised that so many of Dad's things are gone, but not too surprised. After all, this isn't his space anymore. It's just a room now, almost empty and never used—but just a room.

And still here, a little dusty after all these years, is Dad's oak desk. It looks smaller now, not as huge as it always seemed when I was little.

Has Mom gone through this, too?

I pull open the big drawer on the lower right side. I see the old papers and manila folders. I carefully lift them out of the way, and sure enough, I find Dad's secret collection of risky dreams.

I reach down and scoop up every one of the old magazines and books and riffle through them until I find the one about Corvettes. I carry it carefully, like found treasure, upstairs to my bedroom.

I find a place on my bookshelf, in front of some of my old comics and little-kid picture books that I never look at anymore. I put
Sports Car Color History, Corvette 1968–1982
so that it faces out into the room. You can't miss it; the cover is a photograph of a bright-yellow 1970 LT1 Shark and a Silver '82 Collector's Edition C3.

I don't know, and I guess I'll never know, exactly what Dad's books and magazines meant to him.

But I know what
this
one means to me: that no matter how horrible things are, somehow, if you survive, life can get better. I wish my dad had known that—I'm glad that I do.

First off, thanks to George Nicholson and Paul Rodeen, my agent and his former sidekick, who helped shape this story, and to everyone else at Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc., who put up with my constant phone calls and whining.

Thanks to Toni Markiet, whose efforts at editing this book were typically brilliant and who deserves much of the credit for this. Also thanks to everyone else at HarperCollins, especially Phoebe Yeh and Catherine Onder.

I'd like to acknowledge all the usual suspects, of course—many friends and professional colleagues. Chris Crutcher, Terry Davis, Mikey Gurian, Ed Averett, Laurie Halse Anderson, Bill Egger, and my other partners in crime who live and die by twisting and turning words around. Kelly Milner-Halls for being both a writer friend and a great help with my web page. Thanks to Terry Pratt for working as my events coordinator and webmaster for a while. Thanks, Stacie, too—even though I can't ever seem to find you anymore. LOL.

Thanks to Wally and Kathy Egger, both for still liking us after we missed our flight to Europe and also to Wally for referring me to John Colliver at John's Auto Repair in Clayton, Washington, who helped me get the right info about GTOs and nitrous oxide. Also to the guys at Five Mile Auto in Spokane and to Jim Driggers of Camp Lithia and my friends at the Spokane Corvette Club for invaluable Corvette info.

Thanks to my terrific family—my sons Jesse and Sheehan, my wife Patti, my sister Cindy, and Garren—and to my many other friends, both in the writing world and out of it. Finally, as always, thank you to my readers: the teachers, librarians, reading specialists, and young adults without whose continued support and interest in my work it would be impossible to continue finding homes for my stories.

TT
October 2005

Terry Trueman
grew up in the northern suburbs of Seattle, Washington. He attended the University of Washington, where he received his BA in creative writing. He also has an MS in applied psychology and an MFA in creative writing, both from Eastern Washington University.

Terry is also the author of
CRUISE CONTROL
, a companion novel to
STUCK IN NEUTRAL
and the sequel
LIFE HAPPENS NEXT
;
HURRICANE
;
7 DAYS AT THE HOT CORNER
;
NO RIGHT TURN
; and
INSIDE OUT
. You can visit Terry online at www.terrytrueman.com, on Twitter, and on the Terry Trueman Fan Page on Facebook.

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www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Cruise Control
is a companion to
Stuck in Neutral
, telling Paul's story. Why did you feel it was important to give readers more insight into Paul's perspective?

Well truthfully, I always wanted to write more about Shawn but, for a while, I worried about ruining that annoying ending of
Stuck in Neutral
, where the reader doesn't know what happens to Shawn next. Antonia Markiet, my editor for
Stuck in Neutral
, suggested I write a companion novel, one told in the same time frame but from a different character's point of view; I knew instantly I wanted to tell Paul's story. When my son Sheehan was born I felt a lot of emotions and a major one was anger. Paul's character is based on that anger, and I kind of needed to get it out, so I wrote
Cruise Control
. All my life I've had a terrible temper that's only gotten a little better with age.

Inside Out
brings us inside the head of a boy with schizophrenia. Why did you write a novel about a character with this mental illness?

Both
Inside Out
and
No Right Turn
are about devastating illnesses. I have a Master's Degree in Applied Psychology and had worked in mental health and counseling facilities for a number of years. Then I lost a much-beloved stepson to schizophrenia: he killed himself at our home in October 1997. So both professionally and personally I have a big interest in stories about mental illness. Anybody can wake up one day and realize that they are not normal anymore—anyone! So I wrote these books to help readers understand how mental illness is a tragedy and a challenge, not a curse or some kind of punishment for anything.

No Right Turn
is about a boy who is struggling in the wake of his father's suicide. Is it hard for you to write about such heavy subjects? Oftentimes you hear that actors really take on the weight of their characters. Do you feel this way when you write yours?

My stories are based on things that have happened to me in real life. Living through the losses and heartbreak associated with difficult and challenging moments is way harder than later using the material of those experiences to try and create understanding and compassion in readers. Usually by the time I'm writing a novel about something painful and hard, I've gained enough distance and perspective to approach the material with honesty and, hopefully, a certain level of fearlessness. You can't write realistic fiction if you're a chicken-butt. You have to take risks.

7 Days at the Hot Corner
is a book about baseball and friendship, as well as the discovery of homosexuality and all of the emotions that come with being different as a teen. Why did you put these themes together in the same novel?

The truth is that when I saw how much crap gay teens were taking from their peers and classmates back at the time I wrote the book, it bugged me. I'm not gay myself but I know a lot of gay people, so I wrote this book to try and increase tolerance and understanding of homosexuality. Also, I'm a wannabe jock and if I could be great at any sport, I'd want it to be baseball! Why did I blend the two thoughts together? I have no idea. Even though
7 Days at the Hot Corner
is my fifth novel, I actually started writing it the very same day I started writing
Stuck in Neutral
. But
Stuck in Neutral
bumped
7 Days
out of the way on the second day of writing, and it took me all those years to get back to telling that story.

Tell us about your inspiration for
Hurricane
, which is set in Honduras. Is it true that you once lived there?

Yes, I lived in Honduras in the city of San Pedro Sula during the early 80s and loved the people and the lifestyle there. My Spanish is rough at best so the language barrier always got in my way. After returning to the United States, I lost contact with most of my Honduran friends so when Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras and Central America in October 1998, I decided to write a story that would show American teen readers how much more similar Honduran kids of the same age are to them, than they are different from them. It's kind of an odd twist of fate or something like it that Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. gulf coast about the same year that this novel first came out, and the plight of people in New Orleans was very similar to that of the Honduran people during Hurricane Mitch.