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—”
