“You smell like a meadow made sweet love to a bottle of mouthwash,” I told her.
“Yeah?” Half of her mouth kicked up as she opened the sliding passenger door. “Awesome.”
“Hey, Teen Spirit,” Gabe called from the driver’s seat. “Let’s move.”
“Thanks again for the ride,” I told him, hopping into the front seat.
Cherry rolled her eyes. “He’s such a loser. All I have to do is shake the keys from anywhere in the house and he comes running.”
Gabe started the car with a wild grin that reminded me he’d had his license for only a couple weeks. Music was soon blasting, vibrating through the back of my legs and making it impossible to hear what Cherry was saying. She was talking, her violet-glossed lips opening and closing like a fish out of water. She leaned forward and clapped Gabe on the shoulder and then pointed to the stereo.
He turned the music up so that the beds of my nails seemed to thrum with the beat. Cherry rolled her eyes at me and doubled her efforts on her brother’s shoulders until he lowered the volume.
“We’re all deaf now, Gabe.” Cherry sat back with a huff. “You probably blew the speakers out, too.”
“My car, my rules.”
“Mom’s minivan, you’re pathetic,” Cherry said, echoing the rhythm of his words.
I tried to choke back my laughter, but Gabe saw me and barked out his own laugh. “Jealous, baby sister? Uh, yeah,” he said, starting to sing. “You are jealous of a minivan, jealous of a minivan.”
“You are tragically uncool.”
“Says the sixteen-year-old without a license. Burn!” He covered his mouth with one hand and held up the other for me to slap.
I eyed Cherry and tapped Gabe’s hand as lightly and quickly as possible. “What? He’s voluntarily driving us an hour early to our soccer game. He’s getting high-fived.”
By way of answering, Cherry narrowed her eyes and showed me the side of her short, bleached afro.
“You need to quit being stupid,” Gabe said to his sister. “Get your grades up and Mom and Dad will get let you get your license.”
That sounded cruel on the surface, except both Cherry and Gabe were super smart. I’d never seen Cherry get less than an A-on any test she’d ever taken. She just didn’t like homework. I couldn’t believe a driver’s license wasn’t motivation enough for her, but there we were, nearly a year since her parents had laid down the law where her grades were concerned, and she was still coasting on test scores alone. I, on the other hand, planned to spend my sixteenth birthday at the DMV if I had to walk there myself.
“Hey, hey,” Gabe said, lightly smacking my arm a few times. “What did you think of the song before the uncultured among us made you turn it down?” He narrowed his eyes at his sister through the rearview mirror.
“No way!” I turned the sound back up—though not to the same eardrum-bursting volume as before—and listened to the song.
Now that I was paying attention, I could pick out Dexter’s gravelly voice and Gabe’s deeper harmony. It was my turn to smack his arm and grin. I normally didn’t go much for alternative rock, but Venomous Squid was the exception. I was obviously biased, because I was friends with all of them, but even Cherry admitted they didn’t suck. The new song was one I’d heard a stripped-down version of when Grady, the lead guitarist, had been working on the melody while I shot B-roll footage for their first music video (which had turned out way better than I was expecting, as I’d never made a music video before). But that had been without lyrics. As I listened to the song, which was about a guy having to watch the girl he loved choose someone else, I started seeing the couple in my head, the close-up shots I’d start with and then how I’d slowly zoom out from her throughout the song, ending with an extreme long shot showing that distance she’d put between them as I choked tight on him.
“Whoa, are you crying, Jo? Man, I’m good.”
I laughed a little and blinked the moisture from my eyes. “Yeah, it’s good. I was imagining the video I could make.”
Gabe grinned. “Hell yes. We’ve got over thirty thousand views on the first one. We might even be able to pay you with more than free-hug coupons for this one.”
“Send it to me—” I pointed at the speakers “—and I’ll start working on it.”
“Awesome,” Gabe said. “Thanks.”
“You know, I could walk to the game faster than this,” Cherry said, leaning forward to rest her chin on the back of my seat. “Just saying.”
Gabe sped up, then came to an abrupt stop when we reached the school, causing both Cherry and me to jerk forward against our seat belts before slamming back.
Cherry smacked him and he groaned much louder than the hit required. I wasn’t the only one who noticed the difference. Cherry and I turned to see what her brother was looking at, and I had to hold back my own groan.
Cherry’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Meneik, was strolling toward us, right arm swinging like he was listening to music only he could hear. Even when she hated him, Cherry always said Meneik had mad swagger. He also had rich dark skin, a lean, muscled physique, and cheekbones so chiseled that they’d landed him a few modeling jobs. Plus, he was a senior and had had his own car long before Gabe got minivan privileges.
I never saw the appeal beyond his pretty exterior—okay, and maybe the fact that he could drive us places—but Meneik didn’t look so cute when he was yelling at Cherry for not answering his texts fast enough or laying down the mother of all guilt trips when she wanted to hang out with her friends instead of spending every night with him. He never got violent or cheated or anything, but he manipulated and isolated and tried to control every aspect of her life. She had no choices, no freedom, no support. He made sure the only thing she had was him, and he somehow managed to convince my funny and fearless friend that she didn’t want anything else. At least, not when he was around.
Their latest breakup had been the longest one yet, after Meneik lost it when Cherry had visited her grandmother in the hospital instead of going to his basketball game. He flat out told her that her grandmother’s hip would still have been broken after his game. No amount of backpedaling and telling her that he needed his lucky charm had worked, which had given me one blissful, Meneik-free month with her that I’d thought would last. One glance at the smile spreading across Cherry’s face was all it took to show me they were back on again.
She burst out of the van and ran to him, jumping onto him and sealing her mouth to his and I accidentally slammed my elbow into the van’s horn while twisting around to grab Cherry’s and my soccer bags from the back. If I were Meneik, I’d be able to sell that story. Since I was not, I was treated to a disbelieving glare and one artfully arched eyebrow.