Brake for It
Jessica Goodman
Playlist: “Getaway Car”
Everyone in town can see me coming from a mile away. Well. Maybe a mile is an exaggeration. More like half a mile. Or a quarter. Okay, fine. Four blocks at least. And only in daylight.
Which is why I’ll never lay the heel of my palm on the horn.
They don’t make those parts anymore, and the last thing I want to do is introduce some new thingamajig into the Beast. So, when my best friend Drew doesn’t bound down the stairs of her house and out the front door as soon as I arrive like she does nearly every other day, I grab my phone and dial instead.
The call goes to voicemail. “Drew,” I say. “It’s Willa. Obviously. Get your ass down here. Let’s go!”
I hang up and send a text to the same effect, but just as it whooshes out of my phone, Drew’s mom, Ellen, opens the front door and scurries down the walkway.
She’s half-dressed for work, wearing her nightshirt and a pencil skirt, her bangs curled up in one big roller.
She’s barefoot and has half a piece of toast clamped between her teeth.
I reach for my camera—a Leica point-and-shoot from the nineties my mom gave me for Hanukkah—and bring it to my eye. Click.
Ellen covers her face with her hand. “You know I hate when you do that.”
“Aw, come on. I just want to remember you when I’m off at college.” Ellen rolls her eyes, but she loves me. Can’t hide it. “Where’s Drew?”
“Taking a sick day. She said to tell you she’ll call you later.”
“Too sick to tell me herself?”
Ellen’s eyebrows curl up in that concerned way of hers. “Yeah. She is.”
“Okay,” I say, a little taken aback. I set my camera down beside me. “Let me or Cam know if she needs anything. We can bring soup by later.”
Ellen’s face clouds over, and she shuffles back to the front door, waving over her shoulder. I glance up to Drew’s window and see her curtains—white lace embroidered with yellow flowers. For a moment, they flutter, and I think I can see her in there, peeking outside. But it’s just the wind.
Ah, well.
We graduate in two weeks, so no one’s really paying attention in class anymore. Drew won’t miss a thing.
The Beast has no aux cord plug-in, no Bluetooth hookup.
I reach for my stash of cassettes and thumb through the choices.
Blondie’s in there now, but I’m not really in the mood for those heart-pounding Debbie Harry vocals this early in the morning.
I could go for the Talking Heads. David Byrne always makes me smile.
But then I find Cher’s Greatest Hits, acquired in an eBay grab last year.
Boom. Perfect. I jam it into the stereo, and as her deep voice fills the car, I press my foot on the gas, let the wind whip through my hair. There is no better feeling.
I’m still humming as I toss my bag into my locker, grab my notebook, and sling my camera over my shoulder.
When I slam the door shut, Cameron’s on the other side, leaning up against the metal.
His dark curls are springy today, like he just washed them, and he’s wearing the Henley shirt I helped him pick out at the vintage store on Rose Street.
A little gold hoop dangles in his ear, an anniversary gift from Drew.
“There he is. The best guitar player in the history of Great Falls.”
“False,” he says. “We’ve established that the backup guitarist for Punterhead probably spent three years here in elementary school.”
“Doesn’t count. That band sucks. Hey, have you heard from Drew? Ellen said she was too sick to even tell me she was sick, which seems weird.”
Cameron pats the back of his head with his hand and looks down at his scuffed sneakers.
“Now you’re being weird, too,” I say. I’ve known Cameron as long as I’ve known Drew, which is to say forever. We met in mommy-and-me music class in the park when we were practically in utero and never stopped hanging out.
Things only got awkward for about point-five seconds in the ninth grade when I started to notice that Cameron had grown to be kind of hot.
Well, more than kind of. He is undoubtedly a smoke show.
Grade A. The kind of hot that makes just about everyone in Great Falls fail to utter real sentences around him.
I never told Cam that I, along with everyone in school, agreed with this sentiment.
But that’s mostly because, when we were fifteen, Drew confessed she had feelings for Cameron and asked during a sleepover, “Is it cool if I go for it?” What was I going to say?
No way, I thought it first? I told her of course, and we spent the next four hours scheming a way to get them together.
Even though they’ve spent the past two years dating, they’ve never made me feel like a third wheel.
Eh. Maybe not never. But…most of the time. Sometimes.
Anyway. It doesn’t matter. I’ve got the Beast and my photo portfolio and the reputation around Great Falls that I am as cool as a freaking cucumber.
Wearing a mask to hide your truest, most embarrassing feelings will definitely do that to you.
Besides, there will be plenty of time for boning and googly eyes once I get to art school in the fall.
“She hasn’t told you?” Cameron asks, fiddling with his combination lock.
“Told me what?”
“Damn, Willa. I thought everyone knew by now. Especially you.” Cameron glances down the hall, and I realize that people are starting to stare, talking to one another behind cupped hands.
Which isn’t that unusual. Cameron does attract a certain pant-dry-heave-I’m-now-sweating level of attention.
Especially since his band started performing around town and honest-to-god record execs began showing up at his gigs.
“Knew what?”
“We broke up,” Cameron says.
I nearly drop my camera. “What?”
He leans in close, and I can smell the mint from his toothpaste, the earthy musk of his deodorant. “There’s someone else.”
“Drew said that? Are you serious?” She had barely looked at another dude since they got together.
Cameron folds his bottom lip under his teeth and nods. “I found texts confirming everything. Couldn’t stay with her after that.”
“I can’t believe it. She didn’t tell me anything.” But suddenly, it makes sense why she was avoiding me. If she saw me, she’d have to tell me what happened. What she did. And maybe she couldn’t bear to do that.
Cameron shakes his head. “I just want to move on.”
I pull him in for a hug, resting my chin on his shoulder, and he wraps his arms around me, holding me tight. His breathing steadies, and his shoulders relax. An electricity zaps my insides, and I try to ignore it.
“What do you need from me?” I ask, letting him go. Together, we start walking to first period, our shoulders nearly touching.
“Just…be my friend, okay?”
“Easy ask, man. Dream bigger.” Cameron throws me a grateful smile.
We turn into the classroom and take our seats in the middle of the room. All around us, people keep looking at Cam with excited eyes, like there’s a glowy aura emanating from him. I’m not sure I like it.
Cameron’s phone buzzes, and he reaches into his pocket, then shakes his head. He turns it around so I can see the screen, where there are a dozen text messages waiting to be read. “Do you believe this shit?” he says.
“What am I looking at?”
He opens one from a junior named Monica, whose folk band is opening for Cameron’s at the gig on Saturday. I hear you’re going through some tough stuff. Here for you! <3 <3 <3
“You’ve barely ever spoken to Monica,” I say.
Then another from Grayson, a guy in our Spanish class. Sorry about Drew!!! TBH, I always thought you could do better. Lmk if you want to hang?
“Oh my god!” I say.
Cameron pockets his phone. “It’s been like this all morning.”
Heat rushes to my cheeks, and just as I’m about to say something, Mr. Rosenberg steps into the classroom and calls for us to quiet down.
But as he drones on about world history, I can only focus on the dozens of invitations in Cameron’s phone and what everyone must be saying about Drew.
I tap my foot against the floor, anxiety coursing through me.
Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I raise my hand and ask for the bathroom pass.
Mr. Rosenberg waves me along, not even breaking stride in his lecture.
The second I’m in the hallway, I push through the back exit near the math wing and duck below the overhang the math teachers use for smoke breaks.
Pressing my back up against the brick wall, I pull out my phone and call Drew.
She answers on the second ring, her voice hoarse like she’s been crying. “Please don’t hate me, Willa.”
I close my eyes and rub my forehead as Drew starts talking, her story unspooling like thread.
As she speaks, I crouch down on my haunches, suddenly dizzy from the truth about my two best friends.
My heart rate picks up, and I try to steady my breathing, but it’s no use fighting what my body already knows: Everything is about to change.
On Friday, Drew still isn’t in school, and it seems like everywhere I turn, people are whispering about her, calling her a whore, a scumbag, a total bitch.
“How could she do that to Cameron?” a random freshman asks as I walk past her at the water fountain.
It’s almost too much to listen to, which is why I dip into the yearbook office during my free period.
The room is dark and quiet, just the way I like it.
I only have a handful of portraits left to go through for our final selection, and the editor in chief wants to make sure I get it done before the weekend.
I tap open the folder and start looking through the images of friend groups posing in the social spaces, on the lacrosse field, in the choir room.
As I tap through, I hold my breath. I know what’s coming.