She Drives Me Crazy(10)
“I never said I was smarter than you,” I say tersely.
She snorts. “Right. You only implied it. But you’re the one who was dumb enough to get taken in by Tally Gibson.”
My heart rate skyrockets. “What did you say?”
She raises her eyebrows. “Was I not clear enough?”
I jerk the car over to the side of the road. The car behind us blares its horn as it passes. Irene looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“Let’s be clear about a few things.” I’m so angry that my voice is trembling. “One: In case you haven’t noticed, driving you to school is the last thing I want to be doing, so try to tone down the bitchy factor. Two: I might have covered for your ass yesterday, but I haven’t forgotten your shitty tow truck prank, and I haven’t forgiven you for it, either. Don’t give me yet another reason to hate you. And three: Don’t you ever talk shit about Tally to me. Ever.”
Irene is breathing hard, her face crinkled in fury. The scar in her eyebrow visibly shows. I’d like to thank the person who put it there.
“Understood,” she says finally, her chest heaving. “But if you get to set some ground rules, so do I. And there’s only one: Don’t ever make assumptions about me again.”
“Fine,” I growl.
I pull back onto the road and turn up my music. We don’t say another word for the rest of the drive.
* * *
When I park in my usual space in the senior lot, I notice with relief that Danielle’s car is already here. I can’t wait to escape and find her.
I’m scrambling out of my seat when it hits me: Irene Abraham is about to get out of my car … in the middle of the senior parking lot … where we’re surrounded by classmates who know the two of us go together like a princess and a gremlin. People are definitely going to talk.
Irene gets out of the car first, snapping the door shut. I take a deep breath and open my own door.
The moment I stand up, I can feel all eyes on us.
The looks are coming from people all over the parking lot—the band kids, the potheads, the hipster Christian kids. Irene’s group of friends looks up with their perfect haircuts and cocky smiles, most of them snickering. They make their way toward us as I fish my backpack and duffel bag out of the back seat.
“Yayyy, happy carpool day!” Honey-Belle trills, clapping her hands. She is impossibly chipper. Her DNA is probably made of cupcakes.
“So whose fault was it?” Gino DiNova calls. “Was it you, Abraham?”
Gino is hard to explicitly hate because he never says anything actually offensive, but he never says anything nice, either. Right now he’s got his cell phone out, clearly taking a snap of my car, laughing like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen. I don’t think I’ve even spoken to him before.
“Funny you’re so interested, Gino,” Irene says coolly, “considering you ran over Brinkley’s mailbox last month.”
That shuts Gino up. The group combusts with laughter and Honey-Belle pulls Irene into her side. I push past them toward the school entrance, feeling their eyes on my back. Not one of them says a word to me.
* * *
“How’s your car?” Danielle asks the moment we meet at our lockers. I never texted her about it, but she must have heard through the grapevine. She looks sympathetic, which means she’s gotten over my poor playing last night. I grimace and accept the coffee she hands me, while she accepts the baggie of apple slices I cut up for her this morning. We’ve traded breakfast like this since the first day of senior year.
“Bumper’s all fucked up. But that’s nothing compared to my ego.” I take a sip of the coffee and brighten. “Whoa, second day in a row you’ve gotten the perfect cream-to-coffee ratio!”
“Told you I would,” Danielle says smugly. Then her expression darkens. “I heard who the other driver was. I hope you smashed the shit out of her car.”
The great thing about Danielle is that she would never say anything annoying like Why didn’t you tell me? It’s just not how we work. After Tally dumped me, I couldn’t even bring myself to tell my friends. It was Daphne who texted Danielle, and within an hour, Danielle showed up at my house with a gallon of Rocky Road ice cream. She let me sob for half an hour, and then she and my sisters queued up a movie marathon of John Tucker Must Die, She’s the Man, and a slew of other classics.
Danielle has been my best friend since fifth grade, when our teacher’s alphabetical seating system landed us right next to each other: Zajac and Zander, the far-flung edge of the class roster. That same year, Danielle ran for class president under the platform of latter-half-of-the-alphabet rights. Pretty much everyone whose last name started with M or later voted for her, and after she won, we enjoyed a solid month of standing at the front of the line before our teacher got tired of it.
“Welp, I did. And now I have to drive her till her car’s fixed,” I say, nicking one of her apple slices.
Danielle stares at me, horrified. “What?”
“My mom set it up when she found out we live near each other. She felt bad that Irene wouldn’t have a ride.”
“That seems like a cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Cruel, unusual, and completely on-brand for the year I’m having.”