“What are you two so jovial about?” Stephen, the consummate reminder of sobriety, approached the car with Grant and Brandon behind him. His hands were stuffed in his pockets and he had a quizzical look on his face. Through our laughter, we had either completely ignored, or not heard them drive up and park.
“This stupid song,” Runaway said between giggles.
“Yeah,” Stephen replied, clearly not understanding the merriment. “Who played that one?”
“Random,” I answered, and laid my head back down on the windshield.
Grant looked at us lying on the hood of her car. I say looked at us, but it more like he was scrutinizing us. You could tell he was wondering something.
“So what are you two doing out here?” With the emphasis on “are.” I caught it right away, and so did Runaway—and we couldn’t let the moment pass.
“Stargazing,” she said, and smiled. “Or…” she trailed off, leaning over and winking at me. “Oh go on, Topher, you might as well tell them—we can’t keep it a secret forever.”
I played it just right. I looked at everyone and raised my eyebrows up and down and grinned from ear to ear.
Grant’s face went ashen white—Stephen’s eyes were bouncing back and forth from Runaway to me like a ball in a tennis match, and Brandon was quite literally perplexed.
“It’s true,” I said in the most serious voice I could find. “Runaway and I are going out.”
“Really?” Brandon shrieked, completely taken in.
Both Grant and Stephen looked as though they were going to pass out from holding their breath. I wanted to continue the charade a bit longer, but Runaway cut me off at the pass.
“No, you twit!” she laughed. “We’re just out here talking.” Then, as an afterthought—with her ever-present sarcasm while whispering under her breath—she added, “And listening to this lame song.”
“Runaway has yet another idea,” I started. I couldn’t just let her new idea fade away. I figured I should let Grant and Stephen relax and breathe, and then tell them the truth. I looked over at them, laughed, and said “Geez, take a breath, would you?”
Both Grant and Stephen let out their breath. Grant looked relieved, and Stephen tried to appear as nothing bothered him, or as though he hadn’t been duped into thinking Runaway and I were dating.
Again I laid my head back on the windshield and tried to put on the air of a guy who doesn’t have a care in the world.
“How was your date, anyway, Stephen?” I asked.
“Utterly preposterous—it seems the only thing she was infatuated with was my car.” He looked a bit dejected.
“Maybe she just couldn’t understand you,” I suggested.
“Doubtful—I gave exemplary definitions, combined with appropriate sentence structure for all words she didn’t comprehend,” he said in his matter-of-fact way.
“And how many words was that?” Runaway asked.
“All of them,” he replied.
“No wonder she liked your car,” she said.
The song suddenly changed to Conway Twitty’s, “It’s Only Make Believe,”
and so did the mood. I didn’t look at her or anyone else—I just kept my eyes on the stars.
“Runaway has been scheming again, and she has it in her head to form a car club before school starts. She figures we could race other schools, as well as people in our own school.” Then I smiled. “And she has an idea for a jacket.”
“A jacket?” Brandon yelled, and looked right at Runaway, laughing.
“Here I thought you going to get a new pair of boots for your senior year.” He was the only one amused with his little running joke about Runaway’s customary attire.
“Brandon, have I told you recently how hysterical you are?” She looked at him over her shoulder, completely expressionless.
Grant immediately interrupted the bantering to get us back on topic. “Okay, so you first think we should start a club, then you have an idea for a jacket?” He emphasized the word “jacket,” wrinkling up his nose and looking at her with a wildly confused look.
“Hey,” Brandon whined, poking Grant in the arm. “You interrupted—I wasn’t done giving Runaway crap about her boots.”
“Touch me again and I will pummel you,” Grant growled at him.
“Would you shut up, Brandon? Is it really that difficult for you?” I said, irritated. He always seemed to know how to ruin a good thing, and more often than not, he irritated me faster than anyone else.
“I don’t have to shut up if I don’t want too—it’s a free country.”
“Well, do it anyway, for society’s sake,” Stephen finally added, glaring down at him.
All of us knew that there wasn’t a great deal of love lost between Stephen and Brandon. Stephen was smart, articulate and rational. Brandon was rude, self-centered and lazy, for the most part. I figured that he had remained with us only because we all grew up together. We all tolerated him, but Stephen usually treated him with contempt and disdain. I think every group has one member who doesn’t fit, and in our group it was Brandon.
“Fine,” Brandon said sarcastically, glaring back at Stephen. Then, turning his attention back to Runaway, he said, “Give… what’s with the club?”
She sat up a bit and looked at all of us. “Okay, here’s what I was thinking.” Her eyes quickly intensified. “For a long time, I’ve figured that once we had our cars, we could form a club. Then we could get something to wear, like jackets.” She looked directly at me. “That would represent us—you know—so people would know that we are all together. Then, if anyone asked, we could suggest coming here and racing on the quarter-mile.” She had a dreamy, wild look about her.
“Okay, that’s all fine—perfectly acceptable, not to mention fascinating… but what is the final result? Simply a club?” Stephen asked.
“Yeah, you forgot to tell them what the incentive is to race us,” I said lethargically.
“Wall of Fame,” she said brightly.
It was such a matter-of-fact response that neither Grant nor Stephen questioned it. I suppose it made perfect sense to them.
“Are you nuts? Who cares about that except us?” Brandon said in astonishment.
“Because it’s recognition, for one, dope. It’s the same incentive that your dad and his friends had.” She looked directly at him like he had lost his mind and knew nothing of pride.
“Two, who doesn’t want their picture up there with their car? It’s rivalry, nothing less than Grant playing football. And if it works and takes off, then we can get other schools involved, so everyone will want to race. Third, who can beat us? There is not a car out there that can beat any of our cars.”
“Great, we’ll be racing against new Mustangs and Porches. That’s stupid,” Brandon added.
“No,” again she smiled and rested her head. “I have another plan.”
“Oh, good Lord—you and your plans.” I rolled my eyes and laughed. I felt the rap on my head as Grant pounded me.
“I like it,” he said. “So hush.”
***
In the last few remaining days of summer, I contemplated the end of the year. We were seniors and we were graduating. Where would we all go? Would we all end up going to the same college? Would we totally go our separate ways? Would we still race? What was I going to do with the rest of my life? And what would life be like outside of high school?
It was so much different than when we were in elementary school moving into junior high—that was just the next step, the natural progression. Then we reached high school and that was the big time, the stuff dreams are made of. Then there’s the senior year—we had waited our whole lives to get there, and then we suddenly realized that it was essentially our last year as kids. We started savoring every moment, because in a very short while, less than a year, we’d be in college… and that’s just so adult.
But even with all the unanswered questions and fears, I tried not to let it stir my brain too much as I bought all the necessary purchases for a new school year.
We rarely saw Grant these days, as he was doing his best to become an all-state lineman, and thereby earn a college scholarship for football. He was in the middle of his two-a-days—which were two, three-hour practices twice a day—or “hell week,” as they sometimes lovingly referred to it. When we saw him at night, he was always in a state of pure exhaustion.
Runaway spent every waking moment tweaking, fixing, polishing, or refining her car in some way. Brandon helped his dad with the diner, so we usually saw him regularly, because we went to The Oasis every night. I spent every possible moment in my garage with Stephen and my car.
“Do you think this is crazy?” I asked Stephen one night from underneath my car, completing an oil change.
Stephen was sitting on a bucket near the front end of my car, playing with a wrench. He usually wasn’t a big talker, but more of a fixture. I had been under my car for the better part of twenty minutes before I even spoke up. It wasn’t that I was truly thinking that question the entire time I was changing my oil—it just sort of popped into my head and I voiced it out loud. It was three days before school started, and at times I was wondering how our club would be received.
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “That depends on your definition of crazy.”
Figures
, I thought.
Leave it to Stephen to completely not answer a question directly.
“If you defined ‘crazy’ as a delusional mental state, then yes, we are crazy… well, one of us is.”
I knew he had Brandon in mind.
“If, however, you define ‘crazy’ as a pioneering thought or action, then, no, I do not believe this particular idea is crazy.”
“Okay,” I said, still under my car. “What would be your definition?”
“I would lean toward ‘different,’ ‘new,’ and most certainly, ‘challenging.’ ”
He bent down and looked at me lying under my car.
“Why do you ask?” He raised his eyebrows. “What do you
think? It is not as if it is totally new to us, or anyone else—all we did was simply put a name on it.”
“True,” I said. I hadn’t really thought about it that way before. Perhaps, like always, I was over-analyzing it.
“Do you think it will be successful?” I asked candidly, while I waited for the oil to drain from the pan.
“Yes,” he said, still staring at me, almost upside down. Then, suddenly he sat upright. “Why shouldn’t it be? You know she has been plotting and planning this, probably since infancy.”
I smiled at this remark as the last of the oil drained.
“But again, really, it’s just more of the same. This is us—this is what we do.”