“I know,” I say, rolling my eyes. It was only, like, five minutes ago that he walked away from me like I was trying to get him to join a cult instead of helping him find the proper polling place.
“So, uh, do you have a car here?”
I narrow my eyes. “Why?”
He sighs. “Mine won’t start. Was thinking maybe you could give me a jump? I gotta get my little sister to school, and I—”
“I know, I know.” I drop my voice to mimic his: “Killer test in Calculus.”
He frowns. “You don’t go to school or something?”
“Of course I go to school.”
“Exactly. You seem like someone who’d take it pretty seriously, so I don’t know why you’re giving me shit about needing to be there.”
I look down at the blank screen on my phone and shove it in my bag. I don’t look at him as I take a sip of coffee. “I’m just…Today is really important, okay? And sometimes it seems like I’m the only person who actually cares about the future of our country.”
He laughs, but it’s not like the one from before. Not exactly. This one is gentler. Less mocking. “Are you kidding? You saw how many people were in line back there. Look at it now—wrapped around the building. And the parking lot is full.”
My eyes skate over the church and all the cars baking in the sun. He’s right. But I don’t want to give in that easily.
“Well, sometimes I feel like I’m the only person our age who cares.”
“I was in that line, too.”
I chew on the inside of my lip for a moment. “I have a car, but I don’t have jumper cables. Do you?”
“Nah.” His big shoulders sag. “All right. Thanks anyway. I’ll call a car or something. You think the church will tow me if I leave mine here for the day?”
I glance at my phone again, checking the time. I do take school seriously, but I don’t have any tests or quizzes today. I could probably miss two weeks straight and still graduate at the top of my class. Which I’d never do, even if all the hard work I’ve put in over the years gives me some cushion. So it feels as if someone else has taken over my voice box when the next sentence comes out of my mouth.
“I’ll drive you.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You don’t even know where I go.”
“Flores Hills isn’t that big.” If he doesn’t go to my school, he must go to one of the other two private schools in the area. I’m surprised I haven’t seen him around before, but I’m so busy with academics that I don’t have time to go to games or anywhere else I’d interact with people from other schools. “Laguna Academy?”
“Nope. Good ol’ Flores Hills High.”
“Oh.” He laughs again, and it makes my cheeks warm. “What?”
“The look on your face is like I said I went to school in the gutter.”
“It is not.” But I don’t say it so much as huff it, and then I’m even more embarrassed.
“We’re not all hooligans and hoodlums at FHH,” he says, and I swear his grin gets bigger the hotter my face burns. “Just some of us.”
Ugh. Who even says hooligans? “Do you want a ride or not?”
“Yeah, but Ida has to come, too.”
“Who’s Ida?”
“Me,” says a cheerful voice over my shoulder.
I jump, completely startled again. I might need to get my hearing checked.
MARVA DRIVES LIKE A MANIAC.
From the minute we merge onto the freeway, people start honking. She’s not a bad driver, just the most aggressive one I’ve seen in a long time. You can only be so chill on the freeway, but she jerks the car around like literally everyone is in her way. I grab the oh-shit bar on the passenger side as she cuts off a silver BMW by inches.
“You know, it’s cool if we’re a few minutes late,” Ida says from the backseat. She’s finally detached her nose from her phone, so even she must be worried about the fate of our lives.
Marva glances at her in the rearview mirror. “What?”
“You seem like you’re in a hurry, so…you know. We can get a late pass or whatever. You don’t have to drive so fast.”
Marva laughs. “You think this is fast?”
Ida stares at me with wide eyes when I look back at her between the seats.
“So, where do you go to school?” I ask Marva, hoping she might slow down if I distract her a bit. But not too much. Just enough to get us to FHH in one piece.
“Salinas Prep,” she says, laying on the horn when someone cuts her off for once.
“Damn.”
“What?”
“It’s just…fancy.”
She shrugs. “It’s really not.”
But everyone in this car knows she’s lying. Salinas Prep has some ridiculous statistic, like 70 percent of their students go to the Ivy Leagues. I don’t even have to ask to know that she’s applying early acceptance, and probably every single school is out of state.
Nothing against Ivies, but I don’t get the big deal. I just don’t understand why anyone would pay all that money to go to a place where people think they’re better than you because they were born into rich families. I like school, but I don’t think I need to apply someplace where secret societies and legacy admissions count more than what you actually bring to the table as a person.
“A girl in my class is going out with someone from Salinas Prep,” Ida pipes up. “Do you know Aileen Mayer?”
“The name sounds familiar,” Marva says. I can’t tell if she’s pretending not to know her or if she really has no idea who she is.
“I met her at a protest I went to recently,” Ida says.
I can feel my sister’s eyes on me without even turning around. But she swore me to secrecy, so I know not to say a word about that protest. Even in front of Marva, who’d probably respect her for what she did.
“She’s pretty badass. And involved in, like, a million things. Orchestra, cheerleading, an officer in the GSA.” When Marva doesn’t respond, Ida adds, “The gay-straight alliance?”
Marva sighs. “I know what the GSA is. Her name doesn’t sound familiar, but my boyfriend’s best friend runs the meetings. Maybe he knows her.”
My jaw tenses. Hard. It comes out of nowhere, and I’m glad Ida is in the backseat and not sitting next to me. My little sister notices everything. Even when she’s on her phone.
“Who’s your boyfriend’s best friend? And your boyfriend? I bet Aileen knows them, too.”
“He’s nobody,” Marva snaps, pushing down hard on the brakes behind a slow-moving pickup truck.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ida shrink down in her seat. And she gets on my nerves worse than just about anybody I know, but that doesn’t mean I want total strangers being an ass to her.
“You seem pretty stressed,” I say to Marva, trying not to let my voice get too annoyed. It gets deeper when I’m annoyed, and it’s so deep it kind of booms, and it makes people nervous when a Black dude my size starts talking in a booming voice. “You can take the next exit and drop us off at a gas station or something. We’ll call a car the rest of the way.”