“One more try,” she said.
I shook my head and put the racket in the supply chest where the equipment was kept. “You can’t keep up and I’m probably going to hurt you if we keep playing. Nail you in the face with a ball or something. Your dad would be freaking pissed.”
She jogged over to me. Her breath was a little wheezy, but I didn’t think it was too bad. “I can’t get better if I don’t practice,” she pointed out.
“You need to find a friend to play with,” I told her.
“You’re my friend.”
I shook my head. I was fourteen. I’d already made out with a girl in my class. I was getting boners when the wind blew too hard. I cursed with my guy friends and talked shit on adults who were all assholes.
I couldn’t be friends with a twelve-year-old girl. No matter how nice she was to me. It wouldn’t work.
“We’re not friends, Ash. We just live next to each other.”
“Can we try? To be friends? Real friends.”
I looked at her then. She had soft, wispy, blond curls that were matted down on her head from sweating. Her eyes were this pale blue color that looked a little creepy if her eyes were dilated. Cornflower blue eyes that saw too much inside me.
Stuff I didn’t want anyone to see. The stuff I kept hidden.
“No. You need to find a friend. A girl friend, your own age. That’s how it works.”
“But I like you.”
There it was. That was my problem with her. She was so honest about everything because she didn’t know how not to tell the truth. She didn’t know how to protect herself from meanness or anger, or anything.
Which only made me want to show her how mean and angry people could be.
“Yeah, well, I don’t like spoiled princesses.”
I shrugged off the hurt in her eyes and walked away. Ashleigh needed to learn how it was out there in the real world. She was this fragile thing always on the verge of being shattered by the next mean thing I said.
What she needed to do was toughen up. Like I had. Nothing could hurt me, because I wouldn’t let it.
Maybe I was a jerk. Maybe I was hurtful, but if that thickened her skin a little bit, I told myself it was a good thing.
I was helping her to grow up the only way I knew.
One year later
Marc
“I don’t know why you need to be here,” I said, looking over my shoulder into the back seat where Ashleigh was buckling her seat belt.
“Duh, moral support.”
“I don’t need moral support to learn how to drive.”
George, who was sitting in the passenger seat, chuckled. “Don’t knock it. Having a cheerleader might help.”
I didn’t need a cheerleader, I just needed to do this. In New Jersey they didn’t let you drive legally until you were seventeen, but I’d convinced George he needed to teach me earlier than that. Driving was a form of independence, and I wanted it sooner rather than later.
Since George agreed waiting until sixteen to learn how to drive was foolish, he was willing to do this, even though, technically, we were breaking the law.
He’d driven us to a large parking lot. The store was closed on Sunday, so we had the space to ourselves. Then he let me get behind the wheel.
“Okay, we’re just going to focus on acceleration and braking,” George said. “The same with both—you want to ease on the gas and ease on the brake.”
I knew the basics of driving. I put the car into drive and hit the gas pedal with my right foot. Immediately the car lurched forward with more speed than I was anticipating, so I hit the brake hard and we jerked to a stop.
“That’s not easing,” Ash said from the back seat.
“That’s not being a cheerleader,” I told her.
“You’re right. Sorry. You’ll do better next time. Give me an M. An A—”
“Shut it,” I scowled as I glanced in the rearview mirror, but she was all smiles. Her soft, curly, blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her pale blue eyes were filled with mischief.
That was the thing about Ash. No matter what I said or did to her, it always rolled off her back. Like she understood, on some weird level, I never really wanted to hurt her feelings.
I just did.
This time I hit the gas pedal a lot easier and I could see the difference. But as we approached where the parking lot ended I immediately went from the gas to the brake and we were lurching to a stop again.
“That’s okay. You’ve got to learn that when you take your foot off the gas, the car slows down,” George said. “So ease off the gas first, then worry about braking to a stop.”
I put the car in reverse. Figured out how to make a K turn, then drove forward, this time easing off the gas first before slowly braking so that the car stopped without a lurch.
“That was awesome!” Ash clapped. “I knew you were going to be a good driver. You can do anything, Marc.”
A freaking cheerleader along for a driving lesson. Who did that?
“You just want me to learn how to drive so I can take you places off the estate,” I muttered, even as I put the car in reverse to turn around and try again.
That made her smile. “Wait. You’ll take me places when you get your license?”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
“Then yes, I absolutely want you to learn how to drive. Then I can be free! Also, are we going to get ice cream after this?”
George nodded. “Successful driving lesson number one in the books, yes, I think we should get ice cream.”
“Fine, but we need to go to a burger joint to get it,” I said. “I’m not a little girl who wants ice cream. I want a burger and fries.”
George laughed. “Yes, sorry for doubting your manliness with ice cream.”
“But you love ice cream,” Ash said, clearly confused.
She didn’t get it. I was getting older. I was learning how to drive. I was getting closer and closer to the day when I wouldn’t need anyone or anything because I could take care of myself.
Closer to the day when I would be legal. A man.
And men didn’t eat ice cream with little girls.
One year later
End of summer
Ashleigh
I was never exactly sure when I fell in love with Marc. I just knew for sure I was. Like I’d always been. Like maybe it was love at first sight even though I was only ten. It should have been weird. But I decided it wasn’t.
It was just us. I understood he didn’t love me back, not the way I wanted, not yet. Sometimes it seemed he barely tolerated me, but I knew that was an act. Like when I was super annoying, and he called me princess with this sneer. Or when he told me I was a spoiled brat.
I used to think the reason he was always so mean to me was because he associated me with being separated from his mom. Like saying goodbye to her in the rehab place, then meeting me for the first time were ultimately linked in his mind.
Which made me a sad thing to him. Because his mom never got better.
After she’d left the halfway house that first time, she’d been found by the cops. On the streets selling drugs, which led to her doing time in jail. Then another in-patient stay at a rehab facility, another halfway house. For a while there, it looked like she might make it. She wasn’t in a position where George would consider letting Marc live with her, but for the first time everyone had hoped she might stay clean.