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The Driver - Part Three

By Andrew Foster Altschul

Her mother says the salon has saved their lives; since her father left, Chick has had to work after school and weekends, sweeping wet hair clippings and taking inventory while her mother and Betty, her mother's partner, gab over their clients' heads. "So you can learn responsibility," her mother says. "So you'll never have to depend on a man."

At least Trey gets paid, Chick thinks, glumly sorting through months of fashion magazines, staring out at the parking lot and the crisp February sky, the veterinarian's office across the street. It's been warmer the last few days, a weak Indian summer, storm drains rushing with water, dead grass poking through the snowpack. Trey says the weather is a sign. He stands outside Billy's garage in a t-shirt, says he can feel the warm Mexican winds calling him.

Between clients, her mother sits next to her in the waiting area. She picks up a magazine and flips through the pages. She stares at Chick's hands, rough bitten nails, touches her daughter's hair with a pained look.

"What are we going to do about you?" she says. "You're too old for this tomboy stuff."

"Please," she says, bringing the magazine closer to her face.

"How do you expect to find a boyfriend? You think the boys at college are interested in tomboys from the boonies?"

"I'm not a tomboy," she says.

"You don't have a boyfriend, honey?" Betty says, unwrapping foil strips from a client's hair. Betty is overweight, unmarried, and nosy, and has a different hair color each week. "What about that boy from the Iron Horse, Claude's kid?"

"Bite your tongue," Chick's mother says. "I wouldn't let her date that one in a million years."

Chick looks up. "I can go out with whoever I want," she says. She turns back to the magazine, flips the page nonchalantly.

"He is cute..." Betty says.

"I heard he's into drugs," says the woman in Betty's chair. Chick can't see her face. Betty considers this, comb and scissors held motionless.

"My daughter's smarter than that," her mother says, tossing the magazine on the table. "She's waiting for a boy with some ambition. That's how Ted and I have raised her."

Betty and her client exchange looks. "Maybe he is my boyfriend," Chick says. Her mother narrows her eyes. "Maybe he is," she says.

Betty goes back to snipping. "Well is he or isn't he?" Chick can feel her mother's temperature rising. She flips another page. "Is he or isn't he," Betty says again.

"Yes dear," her mother enunciates dangerously. "Is he, or isn't he?" Chick studies a perfume ad. Let her mother sweat it out, she thinks. She's 17 years old -- she can date anyone she wants. She doesn't have to tell her mother every last little thing.

Betty takes off her client's cape and flings hair onto the floor. "Well just be sure you're not giving him the milk until he buys the cow," she laughs.

Her mother glares.

---

Out in the woods on a Sunday afternoon, just the two of them. His father has fired him again, thrown him out in the middle of a shift and said not to come back until he's ready to take some responsibility. Trey says he might just leave for Mexico, hitch a ride with a trucker in the middle of the night. Chick says his father will change his mind. If not he can get another job, she says, maybe there's something he can do at the beauty parlor. The thought of him leaving feels like looking into a deep well, dropping a pebble and never hearing a splash.

"You should come with me," he says. "We should just take your car and go."

She sits on a stump by the frozen stream, ice that has loosened in the warm weather creaking behind her. The sun is a dull smear in the drab sky and the trees shed fat, heavy drops that tap lightly in the snow. "It's not my car," she says.

He turns in place, squinting up into the branches. The stuff Pete sold them was the best they'd ever had, they all agreed. This morning Trey snuck another dose from their stash; Chick let him use her scarf to tie off.

"We could leave it at the border and mail back the keys," he says, opens his mouth to catch melting snow on his tongue. "Just you and me, Chickie. Think how much fun we'd have." It's a scene from one of her dreams: the two of them speeding through the desert, or lying on a beach, palm trees waving overhead -- his head in her lap, she eases the lines from his forehead, makes room for his sweet, sad smile.

"What about Susie?" she says, squeezing wet snow into a ball. "Don't you want to take her instead?"

"Susie, Susie Q," he says. "Man, she used to be so great."

"Is she still your girlfriend?"

He closes his eyes and smiles. "We had lots of fun, me and her. Back in the day."

She'd been teasing, but his vagueness sets her on alert. "What does that mean?"

When he doesn't answer she throws the snowball at him; it makes a dull thump splatting against his coat. He looks down with a surprised, almost comic expression, clasps his hands over his heart.

"What does it mean? Is she your girlfriend or isn't she?" she says, scooping another snowball. She suddenly wants to hit him hard, really hard, to smash that shell he keeps around him.

"Is she or isn't she!" Chick shouts, chasing him around the clearing, mashing wet snow into his hair. "Tell me!"

He sticks his tongue out and dodges another snowball, takes two steps onto the frozen stream and stops. He looks down at his shoes, up at Chick, then breaks through the crust with a loud plunk and waving arms.

"Oh my god," she says, half laughing. He stands shin-deep in the stream, darkness spreading up his jeans as the whoosh of freezing water flows around him. "Get out of there!" she says. "You'll get hypothermia."

When he doesn't move, she comes up behind him and slides gingerly onto the ice, grasping his sleeve for balance. The ice ticks and groans under her shoes.

"It's cold," he whispers. She takes his elbow, wraps an arm around his body, cautiously leans toward shore. "I can't feel my feet," he says.

Water seeping up around her footsteps, she leads him out of the stream and they stumble to the bank. Trey lands on top of her, snow in their sleeves, their shoes, both of them panting clouds of vapor.

"Are you okay?" she gasps. Where his forehead rests on her collarbone, she can feel her heart beating hot and fast. She can smell his skin, the odor of cigarettes in his hair; he is shaking like a small animal in her arms. Before she knows she's going to do it, she leans forward and touches her lips to his ear.

He makes a small sound, shivering in her arms. She covers his ear with her mouth and exhales warm breath; she kisses the side of his face, his jaw, then twists from under him and presses her lips to his, rolls him on his back and covers him with her body.

"What are you doing?" he mutters, arms flailed to the sides. She kisses his eyelids, his neck, works her arms into his coat and squeezes. He tries to turn his face away but she takes his lower lip in her mouth and bites hard.

"Come on, stop" he says. She holds him as long as she can, arms tangled in his clothes, until he pushes her off into the snow. "What the fuck, Chick?"

"Why don't you like me?" she yells. She smacks her hands against the cold ground. "I just want you to like me." She hates the sound of her voice, high and petulant.

He struggles to his knees, legs dark and waterlogged. "Jesus," he says, spreading his arms. "Of course I like you. You're my little friend. You're my Chickie."

"Stop calling me that," she says.

Now he takes her chin in his hand, his voice hiding a laugh. She can see the pulse at his temple, the blue cast of his lips. "Chickie Chickadee," he sings, and when she tries to turn away he holds her fast. "I like her, and she likes me..."

"I don't want to be your little friend," she says. She shoves him, hard enough that he falls back and sinks into the snow. She grinds her teeth to keep from crying, but she can already feel the first drop snaking down the side of her nose.

"I'd be a really good girlfriend," she sniffles, her voice so pathetic it only makes her cry harder. "I'd be better than Susie. I'd be the best girlfriend you ever had."

From far away she can hear voices, Sam and Billy calling for them, frail notes in the cold dusk. Trey crosses his arms behind his head, his hair peppered with snow. A wolfish grin slides over his face, the transparent shell closing around him again. "You and Susie, man," he says. "It's hard to keep up with you, you're both so busy leaving."