“Okay,” I say, but quickly add, “will you tell her you worked something out? Just say you got a deal or something, but it may take longer. I don’t know. I just don’t want her to know it’s me.”
“So, you do like her.” When I narrow my eyes, he shakes his head. For some reason, I can’t ever seem to impress this guy. Merle isn’t afraid of me and he doesn’t buy into my bullshit. “What’s with the secret, then? Why can’t she know you’re her fairy godfather?”
“Because if she finds out, she won’t accept it.”
His laugh sounds as old and rusted as the Mustang looks. “So. It’s like that. Should’ve known. Guys like you always go for the complicated ones.” He waves me off and heads back to the office. “I’ll come up with something. She’s not really in the position to complain.”
Merle is right. It is complicated, but not in the way he thinks. It’d be easy to say that I fucked up—that I hurt her—and it’d be true. I could call this penance, a clearing of conscience. That’d look pretty good.
But I look at that sad, broken car and think that, even despite all the work it needs, it’d probably be the easiest thing to fix in either of our lives right now. It’s a cop out, more than anything.
I can’t deny how calming it is to settle into the focus of planning. The body is shit, but it’s least urgent. Most important is the engine. What’s beneath this hood is Frankenstein’s monster. I kick around under there for a good hour, just marveling at the weirdness happening. Non-original parts for cars decades newer than this beast, hoses held together with clamps and electrical tape, a radiator cap that used to belong to a Gatorade bottle—it just keeps getting fuckier and fuckier.
“No one respected you, did they?” I ask the car.
It doesn’t answer back.
Before long, I confirm Merle’s initial assessment. The alternator is toast. But if it weren’t, the solenoid’s going to kick the bucket any day now, and the ignition switch is dry-rotted and falling apart. In conclusion, there are probably a dozen different forces conspiring to make this car not start.
Whoever worked on this lady before me was happy just putting any old thing in her, but I’m never satisfied with anything but original. Ridiculously, I decide to rebuild the alternator and starter myself.
Merle pulls a face. “Don’t be a fuckin’ idiot, boy. Buy one for a few hundred, slap it in there, and call it a day.”
“Nah,” I argue, dipping back beneath the hood to take off the belt. “There isn’t much left in here that’s original.”
“This isn’t a show car. It’s a beater. It’s just gotta get her from point A to point B.” This is where Merle and I butt heads. He’s pragmatic, all about the practicality. To him, a car is transportation. It should be dependable and secure. I’m guessing forty years in this business, dealing with hard-up customers who need to just get to work will do that to you.
Dependable and secure is important, but so is character. “I get it, I do,” I assure, walking around him to get a wrench. “But why not? Come on, Merle, like….” I gesture to the car. “Come on.”
He just shakes his head. “It’s your life.”
Only sometimes, I think.
4
Sugar
“What did he say?” Georgia asks when I walk back into the room. I’d stepped into the hallway to take the call from the garage, which I was fully expecting to come with a new slew of charges. I know what kind of condition my car is in. It doesn’t make it any easier to let it go.
Now, I’m standing here, staring at my phone in complete bafflement. “He… changed his mind?”
Georgia’s forehead creases. “About the car needing work?” Her voice is dripping with enough doubt that someone else would probably find it insulting. It just makes my chest bounce with a laugh, because it’s not like she’s wrong.
“About the cost,” I elaborate, dropping into the desk chair. “He said he’d work on it for a reduced price, so long as I’m cool with leaving it there for a few weeks. And something about finding a junk yard with older parts that are less expensive? I don’t know, but apparently I can afford it now.”
Georgia’s face lights up. “Sugar, that’s awesome! I know you were worried. That must be such a weight off your shoulders.”
She has no idea.
Georgia isn’t like the girls from back home. I barely know her, but she’s such an expressive person—so damn genuine all the time—that it’s hard to dislike her. She wears every emotion right on her sleeve, right down to the disappointment she’d shown when I turned down her offer to lend me the amount of repair costs I couldn’t cover with my own savings. I’ve never known someone willing to lend a stranger a few hundred dollars, no questions asked.
There’s just no way she could possibly understand my financial situation. I’ve ridden in her car, seen the inside of her closet, the rings on her fingers. Her phone is the latest model, as is her laptop and smart watch. It’s not like I begrudge her or anything. I knew what I’d be getting into by coming to a school like Preston, and it’s not as though she can help coming from wealth. But the economic divide here is palpable. Students here probably blow a thousand bucks without a second thought.
But even though she can’t really relate, she isn’t wrong. Feeling a little more weightless, I give the chair an indulgent spin. “At least I don’t have to worry about it right away. I could really use some time to settle in before looking for a job.” I pick up a shoebox and start sifting through my rolls of film, sorting them by importance. Back home, I’d send these off to be developed the next town over, but Preston Prep has its own arts wing, complete with dark rooms and the necessary materials. “I wonder what made him change his mind?”
Georgia gives me that sunny smile, saying, “Maybe he’s just a nice guy,” and it’s all I can do to not bark a laugh in her face. Kindness without strings or motive? Yikes, that’s some sheltered rich kid bullshit.
More diplomatically, I mutter, “I have a hard time believing that, considering the caliber of asshole he has working for him.”
It’s just my luck that the second I’d begun to really relax—to think I was safe—that I run into the one guy who’s ever come close to hurting me as badly as Doug. The worst part is the feeling of terror. The panic. The sense that I can’t protect myself. The powerlessness.
“Asshole?” Georgia frowns at this. “Did something happen?”
I never told Georgia about my first visit to the garage. She just offered to drive me back there, and after walking six miles that morning, I gladly took her up on it. I drop the box of film onto the desk, sighing down at it. “You know, it’s just the most random fucking thing. Last summer I had this run-in with a guy back home. He was vacationing there for the summer, and we were at the same party, and then...” I trail off. Now that I’m saying it aloud, I think it might be too much to dump on a stranger who’s already seen me at a pretty low point. I’m still burning from the humiliation of her seeing the fingertipbruises Doug had left on my neck yesterday. Luckily, she assumed it was a hickey.