Driving Lessons

“Our parents betrayed us,” I said despairingly, raising a hand to shield my eyes from the sun. It was unbearably hot outside. I was certain that my flip flops were melting on the blacktop and that an oasis was calling my name from the other side of the parking lot.

“Our? You mean yours. My mom never would have agreed to this if yours hadn’t brought it up first. Since when does the DMV do two for one deals?” James groaned and wiped sweat away from his brow. “My mom is a sucker for deals. Did you know she entered to be on Extreme Couponing? When I die, my only claim to fame will be that ‘my mom was on that show about couponing once’. It’s a tragedy.”

“My mom is a saint,” I said, turning my head fractionally to glare at him. “She packed us a cooler of drinks so we wouldn’t die in this wild landscape. She should be canonized.”

“We’re in the school parking lot. In the middle of the most suburban suburbia to ever suburb.” James opened the cooler and pulled out an ice cube, pressing it against his face and moaning in ecstasy. I rolled my eyes and fanned myself with my hand.

“That makes no sense.”

“It makes sense if you believe it makes sense. Hope and confidence is key. Plus, your mom only packed Capri Suns, and they’re all the Pacific Cooler kind.”

I peered into the cooler. The ice was almost completely melted, the Capri Suns bobbing among little icebergs. True to his word, they were all Pacific Cooler.

“That’s beautiful,” I stated. “The entire world should appreciate the feeling of a cold Capri Sun on a hot day.” I grabbed one and was tempted to dump the cooler all over my body. I’d be dry again in less than a second again, anyway.

“Only you and every other seven year old on the planet.” I scowled at him. It was too hot to expend effort on anything else.

After a thousand years of standing on the surface of the sun, a black Prius turned into the school parking lot. From a distance, the image of it wavered in the heat. The timing was perfect, because my hair was suffocating me and I was very seriously considering shaving it off. I could rock a buzz cut if I needed to.

“Am I seeing a mirage?” I whispered to James. “Has it finally happened? Is this what heat stroke is like?”

The car pulled up beside us and a man stepped out, a clipboard wedged beneath his sweat-saturated armpits. I cringed and James respectfully pretended not to notice.

The man was tall with dark skin and hair that was more salt than pepper. His white shirt was permeated with large, yellowish sweat stains. He gave us a cursory glance, lingering hatefully on my melted flip-flops, before reading out from his clipboard. “Milena Santos and James LoRusso?” His voice was very oddly neutral, bland and without inflection. I only assumed what he said was a question because I didn’t think his goal was to just read our own names to us. I could very proudly say that I only took kindergarten once. James could not.

We nodded and he continued on, two beads of sweat racing to make it down his temple. “My name is Mr. Richmond. I will be your driving instructor for the next few weeks. Today’s lesson will just be both of you taking turns behind the wheel so I can observe how much experience you have so far. Any questions or concerns?”

“Um, yeah, I want to know why you decided to schedule this on the hottest day of the year. I’m 73% sure it’s child abuse.” My mouth was incredibly dry because the heat had evaporated all the water from my body. Was it possible to make a career out of being a human raisin?

James bit the inside of his cheek in an effort not to laugh and failed, a strangled noise released from his throat that sounded like a dying donkey.

Mr. Richmond’s eyes bugged out of his head a little bit, and he looked monumentally surprised. I wasn’t one to annoy authority figures (often), but it was hot and I was not meant to exist in the Sahara.

Besides, from the moment he first spoke, I made it my goal to coax a reaction that sounded less like robot and more like a cast member from a reality TV show.

“Any actual questions?” He asked, and I wondered if maybe my placement of imaginary question marks in his speech was throwing off my perception of him as a person. I thought we had a connection.

“No, sir,” James said, grinning. His eyes flickered to the clipboard, which held a few pieces of paper. The top one seemed a little damp. “Though I have to say, you look lovely today.” He winked at Mr. Richmond, whose cheeks had tinged red. Embarrassment or sunburn? The world may never know. Instead of a polite thank you, James was given a glare.

“Miss Santos, you will be driving first.” He pronounced my name like Sanne-tos instead of Sahn-tos. It was so Long Island.

I say that as if I’ve lived anywhere else.

Opening the driver’s side door, I ducked into the car, expecting a blissful cool to soothe all of my burning nerve endings. I was sorely mistaken. If anything, the car seemed to be hotter inside than it was outside. It was the worst kind of heat: stagnant and stale, seeping beneath your skin and making you itch.

“For future reference,” Mr. Richmond began, his voice still less expressive than Siri, “please do not wear flip-flops while operating this vehicle. I’ll let it slide for now.” Should I be grateful for his demonstration of mercy? I briefly toyed with the idea of thanking him profusely, but decided not to burn bridges before they were made.

Mr. Richmond showed us all the ins and outs of the car, like how to adjust the steering wheel, the mirrors, the seat, and how to toggle the air/heat dials. The first thing I did was turn the air up so high it felt like we were being blown away by a gust of wind in Antarctica. I fixed it accordingly, so it only felt like penguin enclosure at the Central Park Zoo, minus the overwhelming smell of fish.

When I adjusted the rearview mirror, I could see James’ eyes staring back at me, comically wide and his hands brought up to recreate that screaming man painting. I almost choked on a laugh, working to hide it from the instructor. He seemed less than pleased with us, and we’d only been together for a few short minutes.

I glared at James, sending him a silent mess around again and I will throw you out of a moving vehicle before settling into my seat. The seatbelt stretched across my body and pressed uncomfortably into my neck. I waited for further instruction.

“Turn right here, and then right again when you exit the school.” I flicked my blinker on, looked both ways even though the parking lot was empty, and turned. Before today, I’d only driven a total of four times. My birthday was in February, which meant that when I got my permit there was ice on the ground and my mom acted like World War III would start if I were to be allowed behind the wheel.

Cursed with a long winter, my mom didn’t deem it safe enough to drive until very, very late May. It was now the beginning of July, and to celebrate surviving our junior year intact, our parents gifted James and I with the lovely opportunity for driving lessons.

I was cruising at a cool fifteen miles per hour because it was a school zone, and also because I was mildly terrified of going any faster. Cars killed people. I was much too pretty to take a mug shot.

I glanced up at the rearview mirror again and caught James’ eye. He rolled his own and then mimed falling asleep before mouthing my grandma can go faster than this.

“At this corner, turn left,” Mr. Richmond said, scribbling something on his clipboard. Even though he said left, and I knew the difference between my left and my right, I didn’t know which way to turn. There’s something about the dead calm of a driving instructor’s voice that makes you doubt your sense of direction. And your existence.

As discreetly as possible, I lowered my hands on the steering wheel and stuck out my index finger and thumb on both hands. I saw which one made the L and flicked the blinker accordingly.

A choking sound behind me meant that James saw what I did and thought it was painfully hilarious. I glared into the rearview mirror.

Mr. Richmond made no effort to engage or talk to us at all. I suggested turning on the radio to liven things up a little bit, and he shot me with a look that suggested that I drowned kittens in my free time. I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel and he told me to stop. I took off one of my flip-flops because it was sticking to my foot, and I thought he was going to keel over right then and there.

After looping around back toward the school, I was instructed to pull into the tiny neighborhood across the street and pull over to switch with James. When we passed each other outside the car, I jammed my elbow into his ribcage and hissed, “You’re an asshole” before lounging out in the backseat.

When we started moving again, James spoke.

“So, Mr. Richmond, since we’re going to be spending our summer together, I think it’s time that we get to know each other.” James flashed a smile, wide and bright, in Mr. Richmond’s direction.

“Eyes on the road,” he replied in that same cool tone, but a vein was bulging in his neck.

“We have to keep some semblance of conversation going, Mr. Richmond. This car is quieter than a graveyard,” I added, sitting in the middle and leaning forward in the gap between the two front seats.

“The most important thing you need to know about me is that I’m not a big fan of silence. My mom says I’m on a constant quest for stimulation,” James said jovially, pushing the speed up to 45 in the school zone.

“What his mom means,” I inform him, “is that he’s annoying as hell and she just wanted to make him feel special. Moms are like that.”

Mr. Richmond looked torn between addressing me and telling James to slow down. His hand was clutching the leg that was poised over the emergency brake. I wondered if he had a history of high blood pressure.

“Please slow down, Mr. LoRusso.” An edge of anxiety seemed to sharpen the edges of Mr. Richmond’s bland voice. He wasn’t at the amazing emotional expression of Siri, but he would be.

“Mr. LoRusso is so formal. It makes me feel old and 40. Kind of like my dad. Please, call me James, so I can retain my brilliant, vivacious youth.”

“You are distracting yourself from the road, Mr. LoRusso.” Inflection at last! Audible annoyance!

James smiled. He took the next few instructions with little to no comment at all. Mr. Richmond looked at him constantly, expecting him to say something. Every third glance at James, he would look at his own rearview mirror to see if I was planning anything nefarious in the back seat.

James looked at me only once, his eyebrows rising as if to communicate, He has so little faith in us.

“Who do you think is the better driver, Mr. Richmond? Me or James?” James wasn’t wrong when he said that silence gets to him. It gets to me, too, though more as a side effect of having been friends with him since we were in diapers. You never had to worry about silence when James was around.

“I don’t feel like it’s my place to comment.” His fists were clenched so tightly that his knuckles resembled sticks of chalk.

“Don’t worry about hurting her feelings. She’s very used to losing to me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Contrary to popular belief, I am actually better than James at everything. Did you know he had to repeat kindergarten? Something about 2+2=4 got to him in a very 1984-esque way.”

James scoffed. “The education system is against me. They want me to fail.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night. Other than your teddy bear, of course.”

“That’s it!” Mr. Richmond yelled, and at first I didn’t recognize it as his voice. “Never in my career have I encountered students as annoying as you two are and, quite frankly, I hope I never have to again.”

“That’s a very loving observation,” I noted. “It touches my heart.”

“And they say love is dead,” James added tearfully, pulling into the school parking lot and putting the car in park.

“Just get out,” he said lowly, his repressed anger straining every syllable. “And please inform your parents that your next lesson will be given by a different teacher.” I barely had time to grab our cooler out of the car before Mr. Richmond had high-tailed it out of there.

James stood beside me, running a hand through his hair. Though the sun had set a little bit, the heat was already making our shirts stick to our backs.

“I think it went well,” he said solemnly. He pulled out a Capri Sun and began sipping on it.

Our eyes met and we both burst out into laughter.