Driver's Ed by Caroline B. Cooney
Lark would cool the friendship till things settled down.
* * *
“Sway to the left!” cried Mr. Willit. “Sway to the right!”
“This is not cheerleading,” said Taft. “Try to be normal, Mr. Willit. We basses are compromising our masculinity by singing in chorus at all.”
“This isn’t cheerleading?” said Mr. Willit, his jaw dropping in shock. “Oh, no! Taft, why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
Concert Choir was happy. Another skit was under way. The only question was who the victim would be.
“I’d like our normalcy representative up here, please,” said Mr. Willit.
“He means you, Queen Joanne,” said Chase.
Morgan had not been able to eat in two days. A humming noise occupied his skull. He said, “Come on, Mr. Willit. I’m normal. Doesn’t that exempt me from being a cheerleader?”
Everybody laughed. He must have delivered the line okay.
Involuntarily his eyes flashed toward Remy. She was sitting very straight, back away from the chair, like a punishment. Behind her was a row of three tubas on stands, so she was displayed against curves of gleaming gold.
Mr. Willit jerked dramatically to a halt. “Is that a blush of interest I behold upon your face, Morgan?” he said.
The chorus loved it.
Run with it, Morgan ordered himself, be the joke, laugh along. Don’t fight it, not now.
Mr. Willit patted Morgan’s cheeks, testing for heat level in this blush. Everybody who could whistle did.
Remy said, “Where, when we need him, is the God who Restrains Music Teachers?”
Mr. Willit laughed with everybody else. “Remy,” he said, “I kind of like you.”
“Do we tell?” said Morgan.
That was their date. Remy wanted to be in his lap, in his arms, in his life, and instead she was in a mall, among shoppers and strangers and canned Christmas carols.
They stood in the vast multistoried center, decorated now for Christmas, although Thanksgiving had yet to arrive. A million glittering gold stars fell from invisible wires. High in a distant corner one star was much larger than the rest.
Mr. Willit kind of likes me, thought Remy Marland.
What would Concert Choir be like if he knew? If Mr. Willit kind of despised her. Kind of vomited at the thought of her.
Around them snaked a line of toddlers eager to sit on Santa’s lap. “I know what I’d ask for,” said Remy.
Morgan nodded. “I’d take the night back.”
If only you could. It had been just a moment in their lives. It had no right, that moment, to have done so much without their consent.
Remy wanted the stars above to be stars of love. She wanted a kiss.
They slumped down on the pewlike curl of endless seating. Morgan put his arm around her. Her dreams for junior year had included just such an arm, in just such a place. She’d wanted to date Morgan, or a boy as terrific as Morgan, share movies and popcorn and have their favorite song, and she would wear his class ring on a ribbon around her neck. “Never mind, Morgan. You don’t have to date me. I’m thinking of becoming a nun, anyway.”
“We don’t have nuns in our church,” he said.
“I’m starting my own. It’ll be for murderers and drug dealers and child abusers.”
Morgan usually found tears the most horrible imaginable tool of womankind. This time, he was glad to see them. If she cried, he wouldn’t.
After long uncivilized years in which Morgan would not use Kleenex, because his sleeve was quicker, he had adopted his father’s habit of carrying a huge white cotton handkerchief. He handed it over. She pasted it over her face like a bank robber’s mask.
“Remy, we didn’t murder anybody. Okay, we were stupid and thoughtless. We were thieves and vandals. But we didn’t know anybody would get killed. We didn’t plan on Denise Thompson driving through that intersection.”
Remy stayed behind her white curtain. “We should have.”
“But we’re not murderers. We’re not drug dealers. We’re not child abusers.”
She dropped the curtain an inch. Her lovely teary eyes met his. “Then what are we, Morgan Campbell?”
He swallowed. “Nice kids who normally do the right thing?” Maybe she would smile and agree.
“Denise Thompson’s still dead. You can never get by that.”
Only their ski jackets were touching. And yet Morgan had never been so intimate with any person in his life. Perhaps he never would be again. No sex, no love, no act of fatherhood or war, would ever make him so close to another human being. He actually thought of marrying Remy, in order to seal up the guilt and keep it between them.
Get a grip, Campbell.
“If you want to tell,” he said, “I’m ready.”
They sat for a long time.
Shoppers swirled around them. Lights twinkled and carols played. Bright packages and stuffed shopping bags bounced against wool coats. Happy children and exhausted cranky children demanded to go to the Food Court.
“I’m actually thinking of marrying you,” said Remy, “to keep the secret between us. We’d add an extra vow to our marriage ceremony.”
He was staggered. He tried to say he’d just had that thought, but it was too scary to say out loud. She was braver than he was.
“I don’t want to tell,” said Remy. “I don’t want anybody to think that’s the kind of person I am.”
She’s not braver than I am, he thought. Neither one of us is brave at all.
He remembered himself long ago, last week, wanting danger, snipers, bombs, mountains, and thrills. I’m not brave after all. I’m a coward.
All that was on Monday.
Morgan had never endured such emotion and demand. Surely Tuesday would just lie there, letting him catch his breath, giving him time off to think about it.
Tuesday did.
Wednesday did not.
On Wednesday the local paper, to which Current Events subscribed in multiple copies, contained a full-page ad.
Full.
Paid for by Denise Thompson’s husband.
Twenty-two inches by fourteen inches of heavy, screaming black type above a charming photograph of a pretty woman.
WHO MURDERED MY WIFE?
I DON’T KNOW BUT I WILL FIND OUT.
Look at this beautiful woman.
Only twenty-six.
You killed her.
You ended her life and left mine empty forever.
Don’t sleep tonight. Lie there.
Think about my wife.
Think about my motherless son.
REWARD!
Tell me who murdered my wife.
CHAPTER 7
But it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Everybody in America had Thursday and Friday off, the entire country having family reunions, turkey and stuffing.
Let Mr. Thompson put it in the paper only once, thought Remy. Don’t let him run it again next week. Don’t let anybody in Driver’s Ed want a reward.
Mr. Thompson didn’t give a dollar amount for the reward. What would it take for somebody to tell? A thousand dollars? Ten thousand dollars? Twenty-five dollars?
If Driver’s Ed gets questioned, if they ask our parents who went out that night, if they search our houses …
… don’t let it happen.
Who did she think was listening? She had run out of handy little gods.
Denise Thompson must have begged a fairy godmother or guardian angel to get her out of that intersection. And nobody had come to her aid. Why would one come to Remy’s?
* * *
Morgan’s father, of course, read every newspaper as well as watching every television newscast. He ripped out the ad before he recycled the paper and left it loosely folded on the coffee table. The bottom half hung where Morgan had to read it over and over.
Don’t sleep tonight. Lie there.
Think about my wife.
Think about my motherless son.
REWARD!
It worked for Morgan. He didn’t sleep.
Thanksgiving was the only holiday on which the scattered Marland family came together. Everybody drove Wednesday night to Aunt Marian’s, bringing sleeping bags and air mattresses (except elderly relatives with hotel reservations). Remy, her brothers, her cousins, second cousins, and this year newly inherited cousins from a remarriage, all slept on the floor: a slumber party from infants (Henry) to college kids.
Aunt Marian provided the turkeys; it took three to feed the crowd. Remy’s family was responsible for bread, and there were pumpkin rolls, corn spoonbread, cranberry muffins, buttermilk biscuits, and long, thin cylinders of French bread. They were oven hot, and set enticingly among them was room-soft sweet butter packed in pretty little bowls.
Grandmother Marland, who was deaf and confused, hugged each grandchild in a continual round of affection. It was like Driver’s Ed; Remy got more than her fair share of hugs because Grandma could not remember how far down the line she had gotten, and stalled next to Remy. The family smiled and let it go. The unhugged kids reminded Grandma what their names were, and Grandma said, “Of course, darling, you’ve grown so much!”
They ate most of the day, taking seconds and thirds, with family gossip, television football, and outdoor games for the kids in between. Sleeping bags were finally unzipped around midnight, after the littlest kids had just collapsed on the floor, to sleep like cats wherever they gave up.
Remy tucked way down inside her sleeping bag. Cousins talked without her, mainly of cars. Who had a license; who was waiting for one; who had a car; who was saving for one; who had backed over a trike left in the driveway and who had gotten a speeding ticket.
The sleeping bag was safe and dark and warm. Inside, she let herself cry.
Denise Thompson had not just had a husband Mark and a son Bobby. Somewhere lived her mother and father. Brothers, maybe, and sisters. Cousins. Would Thanksgiving for Denise Thompson have been a family reunion? Had that family spent Thanksgiving weeping for the twenty-six-year-old who would never give thanks again?
Thanksgiving at home did not happen in the Campbell family. Morgan’s mother believed hotels existed in order to save her from that kind of thing. Every year they went someplace special. This year it was Bermuda.
Morgan loved Bermuda. He loved the bicycling and the sand, the wind and the people.
It was a vacation of the mind.
Even Starr seemed desirable to Morgan those three days at the resort. She was good company, she laughed, she was nice.
He and Starr bicycled past a little intersection with no signs. No stop signs, no yield signs, no arrows or names.
Morgan pedaled on, trying to have no thoughts, to be nothing but legs pumping wheels.
All we did was take an octagon of wood off a post. It isn’t my problem that somebody came along. A good driver would have known enough to stop even without the sign.
Starr was so far ahead of him that she turned, came back, and cycled in a circle around him, laughing. “Daydreamer,” she said. “Are you in love? Tell me who it is.”
How strange, thought Morgan, actually smiling at his sister, actually liking her. I’m the one, now, who is not nice.
Sunday they flew back.
Their four telephones combined had twenty-three messages blinking away and the fax had dumped page after page on the floor behind his father’s desk.
One will be from the police, he thought. Somebody who wanted that reward told, and now somebody knows. In a few seconds Dad will know too.
The maid, who usually came Fridays, had not, since she, too, celebrated Thanksgiving. Mr. Thompson’s ad still hung over the side of the coffee table. Starr was in her room on the phone, of course, having been unable to make calls for four whole days. He was momentarily alone. He picked up the ad without letting his eyes read the words, crushed it with both fists, and dropped it in the wastebasket.
His heart was at it again; it had a new hobby: it liked to double its speed. Just when he thought he was faking it fine, his heart would betray him. Thrum like bass guitar strings.
Morgan did not have long to wait. Dad slammed out of his office, door hitting doorstop with a rubbery thud. This is it, thought Morgan, he’s going to throw me up against the wall, break my arm—
“The news is next,” said Dad, jogging past. “Get those televisions on. I lost the whole world on Bermuda. This is it for vacations. I hate being isolated.”
The room turned to water around Morgan. He had to swim to his seat, grabbing the sofa back as if it were the pool rim, trying to put bones back into his jellyfish body.
“Guatemala, Morgan!” shouted his father.
Morgan tried to recall a time when Guatemala had seemed important.
“Forty-three thousand refugees,” said Anne of the silver hair, “have fled into Mexico, but some are beginning to return.”
Morgan concentrated on refugees. It sure beat the other stuff he had to concentrate on. How did you even think about 43,000 people fleeing? Were they on the road, changes of clothing, loaves of bread, and two-year-olds under their arms? What did towns look like, with 43,000 people on their way out? Or in?
“Did you get that, son?” demanded his father.
“Yes, Dad. Thanks.”
Compared to Guatemala, he said to himself, compared to 43,000 refugees wandering around, what’s one car accident?
This calmed him for two minutes. He knew because he timed himself.
Maybe he could work up to more calm time, the way you worked up to more weights. He would add guilt-free minutes. Eventually he would get himself up to an hour, and then to twenty-four hours, and then he could forget about it.
It would be meaningless.
Just another traffic accident in the big road-slick of life.
Monday again.
Her second Monday since the stop sign.
Perhaps she would spend her life counting the Mondays since the stop sign.
The principal of East Line High took his duties seriously. He had put Mr. Thompson’s ad on the main bulletin board.
WHO MURDERED MY WIFE?
I DON’T KNOW BUT I WILL FIND OUT.
Look at this beautiful woman.
Only twenty-six.
You killed her.
You ended her life and left mine empty forever.
Don’t sleep tonight. Lie there.
Think about my wife.
Think about my motherless son.
REWARD!
Tell me who murdered my wife.
“Today,” said Mr. Fielding, “I will drive with Taft, Chase, and Remy.”
Remy held her name tag up to signify willingness to switch. She wanted to stay in the library and hear the gossip and the guesses.
Incredibly, Mr. Fielding saw the motion. “Yes, Remy,” he said, reading off her tag. “You.”
“Hasn’t she done more driving than anybody else?” complained Joss, who had been planning to take her place.
Mr. Fielding was confused: how could one person do more driving than another? Taft, Chase, and Remy followed him out of the library and past Mrs. Bee.
Taft drove. Exiting the school campus meant coming close to the wreck. Remy wiped tears from her cheeks.
“You’re taking this so hard,” said Taft. “You didn’t know Denise Thompson, did you?”
I killed her. Does that count?
Chase said, “I think about it all the time. And to think that our class actually—”
“Shut up,” said Taft.
Lark’s eyes regarded Morgan. They were just eyes, not attached to Lark at all, but as if she had popped them in that morning. They did not blink, they did not drift away, they were fastened on him.
Morgan braced himself. This was it. Lark was going to talk about it. She was going to say, So, Morgan, what signs did you and Nickie and Remy steal that night I knew better than to go along?
Alexandra leaned way forward and swung her yellow hair, so it grazed
Morgan was truly astonished. “Me?”
He knew Christmas was coming. He had the pageant rehearsal schedule from Mrs. Willit. Sunday night he and his mother had taken the boxes of decorations down from the attic. Starr had stacked CDs to play the endless rounds of Christmas carols Mom would want playing for the next four weeks.
But presents? For Alexandra?
“So far,” announced Alexandra, “I am considering getting you a calendar of girls who win weight-lifting championships, or else a calendar to increase your vocabulary.”
“Why do I need a calendar?”
Alexandra kissed his cheek.
His mouth fell open as if he expected her to feed him.
“I’m giving you a calendar,” said Alexandra, “so you’ll have plenty of room to jot down the dates you and I are going out.”
Morgan could not recall the slightest suggestion on his part that he might date Alexandra. “Mr. Willit was right. I’m going out with Remy,” he said quickly. He hoped he would get to Remy before the rest, to let her know.
The class went nuts. “You are?”
“That’s so neat!”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“She didn’t tell me!”
This was entirely from girls. The boys were paralyzed. Morgan’s involvement with girls might spread, and contaminate them.
“A Driver’s Ed romance,” said Joss, clasping her hands like an illustration on a Valentine’s card. “Ooooh, Morgan, I love it! Did it start in the backseat? With Mr. Fielding as chaperone?”
How incredible, thought Morgan. We’re not going to talk about the ad. We’re not going to mention the sign.
He suddenly wondered if other members of the class had gone out that Thursday night and taken their own stop signs.
“Stay in the slow lane, Taft,” said Mr. Fielding. It’s one of my kids, he thought. He had half heard the giggly talk of sign stealing. He half knew who did the mailbox bashing too.
Half listening was key. Then he could hold himself only half responsible.
My kids.