Driving With the Top Down Read online

  “I can’t believe you’re going to be gone for two weeks,” said Vince, draping a limp arm around her shoulders. They were alone for once, something she always longed for yet always disappointed her when it happened.

  “I know.” She was dreading it. All that time on the road with the bitch who’d spied on her Instagram and basically ruined her ninth-grade year. It was like punishment.

  “It’s gonna suck, dude.” Vince yawned. “I guess I’ll have to start looking at porn again and everything.”

  Ew, she thought. Guys have needs, whatever.… No need to share with the rest of us. She’d seen Don Jon. She knew what guys were obsessed with and why.

  She resisted the shiver of revulsion his words sent through her spine, for fear that he’d somehow be flattered by her reaction.

  “Guess so…,” she said, still staring at the TV. She didn’t even know what this show was. Some cartoon that was trying to be crass like Family Guy but wasn’t funny at all.

  “Babe.” He burped loud. “Will you do me a favor?”

  “Prolly not.”

  He laughed, mistaking her rudeness for a joke, as always. “I’m gonna miss you so fucking much. And—” He raced an extended palm up her crossed leg. “I don’t want to have to think about anyone but you.”

  She resisted a sneer as well, and finally looked at him. He had a nice nose, good eyes, and sharp cheekbones. He was kind of hot. Almost hot. She still vaguely remembered when his slightly narrow frame had reminded her more of ’80s rock gods and less of her Betty Spaghetty toy from childhood. His eyes had once seemed like chestnut brown, but now struck her distinctly as poop brown. She started to laugh without meaning to.

  Guess the weed was kicking in. It rarely made her giggly anymore—but then, not much did.

  “So I was thinking,” Vince went on as if Tamara hadn’t lost track of what he was saying, “that maybe I could … you know, maybe I could film you.”

  An unexpected image flew to mind. Her, in a Hawaiian dress, the skirt a blue and white map of the islands. It had been a gift from grandparents who were long dead since, and she’d waved at the camera for her mom, who was recording a video to e-mail to them as a thank-you.

  Her mom was long dead now too. Or long enough to no longer be anything like the smiling pretty blond Barbie who’d always smelled like baby powder when Tamara was young. That was the mom she liked to remember. Not the desperate, shaking, bloated, and bitter alcoholic she’d become before she died. That was someone else. Someone unrecognizable.

  Someone now dead.

  Tamara played with that word, “dead,” like it didn’t hurt. Like it wasn’t the most harsh word ever. She used it like an experiment to see if it still made her wince inwardly. It always did. But she couldn’t stop doing it to herself. Sometimes Tamara pictured her mother underground. What did she look like now? Was she just a skeleton? How quickly did that happen? Were her clothes torn like a prop in the Haunted Mansion at Disney World?

  What did her mom smell like now?

  Stop it, she thought, chastising herself in her own version of her father’s voice.

  Tamara hated the thoughts, but couldn’t resist them. She visited them now and then like someone opening the oven to see if a cake was almost done. As if she’d check someday to find the thoughts no longer cooking in her mind.

  “So,” Vince was saying in what she recognized as his persuasive voice. “Like, now?”

  She shook her head in confusion. “Wait … what?”

  “Maybe I could film you, like, giving me head.” He held up his iPhone. The most recent generation of it, despite his insistence that his parents hated him and gave him nothing. In fact, he lived on the nicest street in Catonsville. One of the ones with big, tall, old trees, redbrick fronts, and actual mailboxes at the ends of actual driveways. The houses there looked like real homes. The kind people lived in on old Disney shows Tamara barely recalled watching.

  Vince’s place was just around the corner from the crappy row houses where he and Tamara hung out at night when they snuck off. He lived a couple of miles down from Tamara, who lived without a real mailbox, in a newish apartment building, void of any personality or homeyness.

  Back when she really thought Vince was a tragic boy, unloved by his parents and unexposed to luxury, he had seemed like a fixable problem. A drowned boy she could breathe life into. A project she could complete with a feeling of satisfaction. In fact, she even thought they’d had things in common that might make theirs one of the stories everyone said couldn’t happen. Young love that worked out for real.

  She didn’t have those kinds of dreams anymore.

  Once she realized he was a spoiled little bitch boy with up-to-the-minute electronics littering his bedroom and basement, she became strangely less interested.

  Her disaffection changed nothing, though. She had no intention of breaking up with him. He was better than nothing. She’d had too much nothing in her life not to know that. He was like a drug she knew would eventually kill her, or at least damage her, but since the worst hadn’t happened yet, she didn’t really see the sense in stopping herself now.

  Much like, you know, the actual drugs she occasionally did.

  But she wasn’t going to buy her way into his good graces like this. Not by being filmed doing … anything. “Um … no. I don’t want to do that.”

  “Aw, come on, why not? Don’t be lame.” He leaned back on the couch again, as if she were the most exhausting person he knew.

  “Because, I just … don’t want to.”

  “Are you saying you don’t trust me?”

  She was instantly defensive. “Of course not—”

  “Then what does it matter? It’s just for me, and I see you do it all the time.” He looked at Tamara.

  She raised her eyebrows and searched for an objection to this undeniably true statement. She wanted to say, Yeah, and how lucky are you that you do? But since she never said that kind of thing out loud, she just frowned instead.

  He took his arm back. “Okay, whatever.”

  “Don’t be pissed.”

  He shrugged but wouldn’t look at her. “I’m not.”

  She hated this feeling: Guilt because she didn’t want to do something she should never have to do. Guilt for letting him down, when he should be the one feeling guilty for being disrespectful enough to ask. “You obviously are,” she said, when she knew what she should have been saying was, Who the fuck do you think you are?

  “Tamara. I said I’m not.”

  She started to grit her teeth, then stopped and asked him to hand her the bowl and lighter back.

  Three more episodes of (Not) Family Guy later, Tamara had begged him to do something besides sit in the basement. The idea of sitting there all night was enough to make her want to down half a bottle of NyQuil. But instead, they got out of the house for once. He’d texted a few people, saw what was happening, and then said they could go to a party.

  In the Lexus—another luxury he bitched about constantly—he told her to put on whatever radio station she wanted. On his XM Radio. She put on Channel 7, the ’70s station. The music wasn’t Vince’s kind of thing, but it was always cool of him when he didn’t care what she put on. They pulled off of Edmonson Avenue and stopped at a gas station next to the liquor store.

  He got out and told her to lock the doors. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. He wanted her to lock the doors and be protected.

  A voice somewhere in the back of her head told her that the fact that he didn’t want her kidnapped—or maybe even his car stolen—did not exactly make him a loving and considerate boyfriend.

  But when he returned from the liquor store with her favorite vodka—Three Olives Tartz, it tasted like SweeTarts—in addition to the Sailor Jerry, 94 proof, she thought maybe that did.

  Yeah, between his fake ID and vague recollection of her favorite alcohol, he was practically a white knight.

  After driving a bit more, they pulled up to a house she recognized as Jenna King’s. Je
nna was an annoyingly bubbly, perky, had-her-shit-together cheerleader type. Only she wasn’t a cheerleader, she was a drama student, and had somehow turned that from lame to cool. Instead of seeming like a Glee character, she’d transformed herself into Megan Fox in the eyes of her peers. A cool, sexy actress. Not an overdramatic, limelight-craving drama kid.

  Despite being the one to say they had to get out of the house, Tamara now felt annoyed, and wished she were—well, she didn’t really know where. Not the basement. Not her dad’s house—Lord, not there.

  Just … somewhere else. Unfortunately, this was it.

  There was nowhere else they could go without being watched or getting yelled at.

  When they walked in, there wasn’t much of a reaction. Everyone was caught up in whatever they were caught up in. Beer pong. Cards. Shots. More effing video games. It seemed like a disappointing display, but then, Tamara couldn’t think of something more she had really been expecting.

  She followed Vince to the people who had told them to come by, and everyone pretty much took the positions they would have taken back in Vince’s basement. That put Tamara behind the lip of her vodka bottle, not bothering with a glass or a chaser.

  After a while, she remembered she had a joint in her purse. It was rolled up and hidden with her cigarettes in a cute, vintage-looking cigarette case she’d gotten from a store in D.C. Her head was swimming already, but she didn’t care. She wanted more Nothing. Holding the railing with a tight grip, she made her way upstairs and went out on the back porch to smoke it. She didn’t feel like sharing her joint with Vince and his friends. It’d get back to her all soggy and gross.

  She sat down on a creaky wicker chair. The squeak sounded almost like an animal. It was so loud. Had everyone heard that? Were they going to come up now and accuse her of holding out or being antisocial? She got the second one a lot. She felt a strange nervous tremor run through her, like a kid quaking at the sound of angry footsteps on the stairs.

  She tried the lighter a couple of times with a shaking hand before it finally lit and she pulled the burn into the joint. She was alone out back, and took a couple of drags of the harsh smoke before hearing a voice behind her. “Um, do you think you could maybe not smoke that right next to a fucking window?”

  Jenna.

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Jenna gave a tight smile but didn’t walk far enough away from the window before adding, “Fucking pothead. I don’t remember inviting a bunch of burnouts to my party.”

  Tamara gnawed on the inside of her lip, a nervous habit, and pulled out her phone to distract herself.

  “Shit,” she muttered, seeing DAD, MISSED CALL (7). She slid over the alert to call him back.

  “Hello, Tamara?”

  She took a steadying breath and tried to sound normal. “Yeah, hey, sorry, I didn’t have service.”

  “Where the hell are you?” He had on his mean Scary Dad voice.

  “I’m at my friend—” She stepped away from the window and lowered her voice. “—my friend Jenna’s house.”

  “Jenna?”

  “Yeah, Dad, I told you about this.” She hadn’t, of course, but it’s not like he listened to her anyway. On the rare occasions that they spoke. “She’s the girl who does plays at school.” He’d like that. Plays. “She dresses like a nun and sings about hills and the sound of music.”

  This Jenna sounded downright wholesome. Carrie Underwood, about to bravely take the stage in The Sound of Music. Or maybe even like the nun Maria herself.

  “Oh. I don’t think you told me about this.”

  She bit her lower lip hard enough to hurt so she wouldn’t laugh. “Yeah, so her mom invited me to stay over tonight. They’re making lasagna and playing board games. Is that fine?” She could hear him trying to decide if she was telling the truth, so she added, “I’ll come home if you want, it’s just, you know. Seems like it could be kind of fun. Whatever.”

  The saddest part of that lie was that it did sound like it could be fun. Not with Jenna, of course, but in general. Did anyone really do that stuff? She hadn’t. Maybe it was just TV stuff and everyone knew it was bullshit and she’d just given herself away.

  Apparently not. “I guess … I guess that’s okay. But you have to come back by noon tomorrow morning.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m taking you to Kevin and Colleen’s, and we have to clean up the place and you have to pack before we go.”

  “Kevin and Colleen’s.” The hopeful, imaginative part of herself thought maybe Colleen would cancel and he’d have no choice but to leave her alone. If he did, she didn’t even think she’d party that much. Just stay at home and blast music and not get yelled at for once in her life. “Dad, seriously, can’t you just let me stay home?”

  Some people walked outside, and Tamara drifted farther away from the house. She didn’t want to be overheard sounding all teenager-y on the phone.

  “No, I cannot let you stay home, Tamara. The place wouldn’t be standing when I got back. What exactly do you take me for?”

  “Nothing, I’m not … I wouldn’t do anything wrong. I’m sixteen, I don’t need to be babysat.”

  He laughed. Actually laughed. “I think there’s a judge or two who would disagree with you on that.”

  She shook her head and said, “Fine. Whatever. I’ll be there by noon.”

  Tamara walked inside, took her usual seat next to Vince, and downed another swig from her vodka. It lodged hot and hard in her throat, and for a moment she thought she might hork it right back up, but she held steady and waited for it to fade.

  Vince didn’t notice. No one did. She wondered if they’d even noticed that she was outside earlier, since so one reacted to her return.

  She was glad when the weed and the liquor started to take control of her mind for her. Pairing them with the Red Bull she had before coming to Jenna’s, she almost cobbled together something that resembled a good mood. As everyone got drunker, a few got higher, and the music got louder, she was out of it enough to really let go a little.

  In the living room, the lights had dimmed, and someone was being a really good DJ. The songs playing were ones she liked, and she was dancing along with everyone else. She even had a fun moment or two with a group of girls, shouting along with the song.

  It was following one of those moments that left her smiling and happy, that she turned to see Vince dancing with another girl. She was small—possibly too small to even envy—with a shock of red hair. Like, Hayley Williams from Paramore, atomic fireball red, not natural red. He had one hand on her back and one on her ribs as he said something in her ear.

  Probably something about how much he hated the songs that were playing right now. She was probably agreeing and saying she wished they could go change it to some band she liked. Then he’d probably say, “Dude, you like them? No girl I know likes them!” And then she would probably be the kind of girl who didn’t mind being called “dude” by a dude, and so would just nod and say, “Right on,” or something equally annoying.

  Fuck that redhead, Tamara thought.

  She knew she could have gone over and pulled him away, but she didn’t do that. If he was going to fuck up on her, he was going to fuck up on her. She couldn’t stop him from cheating on her. Instead, she slithered out of the crowd to hide in a bedroom. She wasn’t even sure why. It wasn’t to cry, or to check her makeup. She just wanted to get out of it all of a sudden.

  Pulling away from the mass of bodies, she headed down a hallway, losing her footing now and then and skidding her shoulder along the wall; then she pushed open a door. She shut it quickly behind her, not wanting to be followed by Vince or to become the token Arguing Couple at the party. She didn’t anticipate, however, the voice that came from within that room.

  “Uh.”

  She jumped at the sound, and then saw a boy sitting on the bed, holding a beer. He reached across the bed and paused the laptop that was playing some show or movie.

  “I’m sorry,” she said
, her heart pounding as if he’d jumped out from behind a tree in a Halloween mask, “I thought the room was empty.”

  He gave a small laugh. “Why are you trying to find an empty room all by yourself at a party?”

  She shrugged, returning the laugh. “Uh … I guess I just wanted to be alone for a second.”

  “You’re at a party. You might be at the wrong place if you’re having to hide.”

  She tried to focus in the dim light. He looked kind of familiar, but she could have imagined anything at this point. “You’re alone.”

  “I live here.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m Jenna’s brother. Conor.”

  That was it. “Hi, I’m Tamara.”

  “I actually know who you are,” he said.

  “I … actually know who you are too.…”

  They exchanged a look, and then he said, “I don’t know why we all act like we don’t see each other and hear about each other all the time. We go to the same school. And that’s really not that big a world.”

  Tamara felt an internal cringe when he said “hear about each other.” Yeah. A lot of people had heard about her. She didn’t have the best reputation, and she knew it.

  “I guess none of us wants to seem stalker-ish?”

  “Probably.” He ran a hand through his dark brown hair, the same color as Jenna’s, but without the—in Tamara’s opinion—hideous blond chunks. “So, I know you because you’re Tamara the Jailbird. You know me because…”

  She shrugged, feeling sheepish at his casual way of addressing the elephant that followed her into every room. It wasn’t something she would ever have imagined herself ending up in the rumor mill for. “Just … seen you around.” Hate your sister, know her circle so I know who to avoid.

  “That’s it, huh? Damn. I gotta work on my rep.”

  “Better than being called a jailbird, probably.”

  “Right.”

  Feeling the oncoming silence, and not wanting to be told to leave the room, she asked, “What are you watching?”

  “Breaking Bad.” He shrugged. “Unlike the rest of the world, I never watched it. I’m super late.”