The words linger in the air between us. Is she implying that I am?
Gross.
I fold my arms tightly over my chest. “I was going to say inept. And selfish. He’s late for class all the time, like whatever he’s doing is so much more important than what we’re doing. Like his time is more valuable, and it’s okay for him to stroll in ten minutes into the lecture, disrupting Mr. Chavez, making us all pause while he gets settled, and he cracks some stupid joke about it like…” I drop my voice in imitation. “Aw, man, that Fortuna traffic, right? When we all know that there is no Fortuna traffic.”
“So he’s not punctual. There are worse things.”
I sigh. “You don’t get it. Nobody does. Having him as a lab partner has been downright painful.”
Ari gasps suddenly. The car swerves. I grip my seat belt and turn my head as headlights blaze through the rear window. I don’t know when the sports car showed up behind us, but they’re riding the bumper, dangerously close. I lean forward to look in the side mirror.
“There was a stop sign back there!” Ari yells.
The sports car starts swerving back and forth, its engine revving.
“What does he want?” Ari cries, already on the verge of hysteria. Though she has her license, her confidence behind the wheel still has a way to go. But something tells me having an erratic car on your tail would freak out even most experienced drivers.
“I think he wants to pass us?”
“We’re not on a freeway!”
We’re on a narrow residential street, made narrower by rows of vehicles parallel parked on both sides. The speed limit is only twenty-five, which I’m sure Ari had been following precisely. Now, in her anxiety, her speed has dropped to twenty. I suspect this is only further irritating the driver behind us.
They lay on the horn—extra rude.
“What’s their problem?” I shout.
“I’m pulling over,” says Ari. “Maybe … maybe there’s a woman giving birth in the passenger seat or something?”
I look at her in disbelief. Leave it to Ari to excuse this inexcusable behavior. “The hospital’s that way,” I say, jerking my thumb in the other direction.
Ari eases toward the side of the road. She finds a spot between two parked cars and does her best to angle her way in—no easy task with how long the station wagon is. Still, it leaves enough room for the other car to pass.
The engine revs again and the sports car shoots past. I catch a glimpse of a woman hanging out the passenger window with a lit cigarette. She flips Ari the bird as they speed by.
Fury washes over me.
My fists clench, nails digging into my palms. I imagine karmic justice striking them. A blown tire that would send them spinning off the road, crashing into a telephone pole, and—
BANG!
Ari and I both yelp. For a second I think it was a gunshot. But then we see the car, nearly a block ahead, spinning out of control.
It blew a tire.
I press a hand to my mouth. It feels like watching a video in slow motion. The car turns a hundred eighty degrees, miraculously missing the other vehicles parked on the side of the road. It wheels onto the sidewalk, stopping only when the front bumper smashes into—not a telephone pole—a giant palm tree. The hood crumples like an aluminum can.
For a moment, Ari and I are frozen, gaping at the wreck. Then Ari is scrambling to unbuckle her seat belt and kick open her door. She’s running toward the wreck before I can think to move, and once I finally do, it’s only to unclench my fists.
My fingers are tingling, on the verge of numbness. I look down at them, my skin tinted orange from the streetlamp.
Coincidence.
Just some freaky coincidence.
I somehow find the wherewithal to dig out my phone and call the police, and by the time I’ve given the operator the information, my hand has stopped shaking and Ari is making her way toward me. “Everyone’s okay,” she says, breathless. “The airbags went off.”
“I called the police. They’ll be here soon.”
She nods.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
Ari sinks into her seat. “I think so. Just scared the heck out of me.”
“Me too.” I reach over and squeeze her hand.
Her expression is pained when she looks at me. “This is terrible, but when it happened—like, that first split second after they crashed, my first thought was…” She trails off.
“Serves them right,” I finish for her.
Her face pinches guiltily.
“Ari, they were being jerks. And driving really erratically. I hate to say it, but … it does serve them right.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Rather than respond—because I’m pretty sure I do mean that—I withdraw my hand from hers. “I’m glad no one is seriously hurt,” I say. “Including us.” Reaching up, I rub the back of my head, where the lump seems to be going down. “I don’t think my head could handle another collision tonight.”
SEVEN
My headache is mostly gone the next morning, but there’s a lingering grogginess that clouds the inside of my skull as I print out the anglerfish paper, along with Jude’s piece on the basking shark, and get dressed.
“Last day,” I whisper to my reflection in the bathroom mirror. The words are a bit like a mantra, motivating me as I brush my teeth and untangle the same knots from my hair that I work to untangle every morning. Last day. Last day. Last day.
I’ve slept in almost an hour past the time I normally like to get up, and I can hear my family’s chaos already in full swing downstairs. Dad has a Kinks record playing and it’s one of their lively, upbeat tunes, “Come Dancing.” Dad has this theory that starting out the morning with music that makes you feel good will automatically turn the day into an awesome day. I mean, I think there’s something to that, and I believe in starting out on the right foot as often as possible, but sometimes his chipper morning tunes are more grating than inspiring. Everyone in the family has tried to tell him this on different occasions, but he brushes off the criticism. I think he might have the morning playlist for the entire summer already picked out.
Over the music, Ellie—four years old and full of Big Emotions—is screaming about who-knows-what. There are days when I feel like Ellie’s life is just one big tantrum. No, I won’t take a bath. No, I don’t want to put on socks. No, I hate Goldfish crackers. Hey, Lucy is eating my Goldfish crackers, it’s not faaaaaiiiir.
I hear a loud thump and something crashes downstairs, immediately followed by my mom’s shrill scream. “Lucy! I said, not in the house!”
“Sorry!” comes Lucy’s not-really-that-sorry-sounding apology. A second later, I hear the back screen door squeal on its hinges.
Lucy, thirteen years old and embittered to be going into freshman year after the summer, where she’ll officially be back on the bottom of the social pecking order, was probably switched at birth with our actual sibling. At least, that’s what Jude and I have theorized. Lucy is popular, for starters. Like, weirdly popular. And not that cliché teen-movie type of popular. She doesn’t wear high heels to school, she doesn’t spend all her free time at the mall, and she is neither ditzy nor mean. People just like her. All sorts of people. From what I can tell, in my limited knowledge of Fortuna Beach Middle School’s current social circles, she has a connection to pretty much all of them. She plays nearly every sport. She has a functional knowledge of pep rallies and fundraisers and other school events that Jude and I have habitually avoided. It can be unsettling to watch.