Glory Road Read online

  “Don’t worry, you won’t be driving. All I need you to do is sit there and when I tell you, drop the clutch.”

  “Drop the . . . ?”

  “You’ve never driven a stick.” It wasn’t a question, but I shook my head anyway.

  “Okay. Sit down.” He pointed to the seat. “Sorry for the mess. It’ll look better soon.”

  I doubted the thing could ever look much better than it did right then, but I sat down anyway.

  He reached across me and adjusted the gearshift by my right leg. “Okay, it’s in second. Now press your foot down here.” He pointed to one of three pedals. “When I give the word, pull your foot off it. With any luck, the engine will catch and we’ll be in business.”

  “Wait, I . . .” But he’d already slid back out of the car and taken his place with a hand on the ledge and the other just inside the door.

  “You’ve got this. Just hang on.” He put his head down and pushed hard, muscles straining. When the Jeep started moving, he pushed harder, breaking into a slow run. After a few seconds, he grunted, “Okay, drop it.”

  I took my foot off the pedal and all of a sudden the engine sputtered, then roared to life. He whooped, a huge grin on his face, and slid into the seat right next to me. His arm pressed against mine, his leg hot through the cotton of my shorts. I quickly scooted over into the other seat, careful not to knock my knee into the gearshift as I moved.

  “Awesome,” he said, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel. “Thanks for the help.”

  “No problem.” But there was one small problem. I hooked my thumb back toward my house, receding behind us. “Um . . .”

  “Right.” He dug his fingers through his thick brown hair. “Once it’s going, I can’t actually stop it until I’m back at my house. Otherwise we’ll just have to do this whole thing over again.”

  He coasted down the bend in the road, then slowed as the Jeep approached the driveway of his house. He turned in, parked in the carport, and cut the engine. It spluttered, knocked a few times, then went silent.

  I tried to open the passenger door, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “Oh, sorry. You have to come back out the way you got in. I gotta work on that door.”

  After scrambling back over the gearshift and finally climbing out of the Jeep, I brushed my hair back from my face and turned to him. “Good luck with your car. I’ll just . . .” I nodded my head back up the road.

  “I’ll walk you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Without your help I’d still be out there pushing. I can at least walk you home.”

  We started up the road, the red dust still settling from the drive to his house. It felt strange walking alongside him. We’d known each other since the beginning of freshman year when I started cheering and he took his place on the offensive line, but we’d never had a real conversation. I always got the impression he didn’t like cheerleaders much. Maybe not even football, even though he was really good.

  Neither of us spoke for a few moments, but then we both tried to speak at the same time.

  “You first,” he said.

  “How long have you had the Jeep?”

  “Couple weeks. It’s in rough shape, I know. But it’s gonna be great.”

  I nodded.

  “It was dirt cheap. My dad said he’d buy it for me as long as I fixed it up on my own. I’ll probably still be out in the driveway working on it in the fall when you start hunting me down again with balloons and those little football cookies.”

  “Oh, I won’t be your cheerleader next year. We change players every year.”

  “I gotcha.” He kept his eyes on the road. Scuffed his shoe along the ground and kicked a rock out a few feet in front of us. I glanced sideways at him. He was big—muscular, broad shoulders, strong jawline. But the skin on his face looked soft, and he had a slight dimple in the middle of his chin. I already knew all this, of course, but being this close to him made it feel like I was seeing him for the first time.

  When we arrived at my driveway a few minutes later, he shoved his hands in his pockets. “If you’re ever free after school, I’ll probably be out working on my car most days . . . like I said.” He gazed back down the road, and I imagined him in his driveway peering under the raised hood of the Jeep, the familiar look of concentration on his face, tools scattered on the ground at his feet. He shrugged. “Company would be nice.”

  I was shocked. He wanted my company? Would I want his? I found myself nodding. “Okay. Maybe I’ll come.”

  That maybe turned into a yes, which turned into me sitting under the dogwood tree at the end of his driveway most days after school working on homework while he did exactly as I had imagined—half his body hidden under the raised hood, tools everywhere, a can of Coke on the ground at his feet making wet rings on the concrete. Occasionally he’d ask me to jump in the front seat and crank the engine, but mostly I worked on geometry or French. And I watched him.

  After the awkwardness wore off, I was pleasantly surprised to find we enjoyed each other’s company. It was easy. Natural. I could let myself relax around him rather than always being so concerned about how I looked or how I appeared to my friends. I didn’t have to worry about being popular or cool or pretty. I could stop pretending and just be me.

  On days when he didn’t work on his Jeep, we sat inside it—the AC or heat cranked, depending on the season—and listened to music from his huge collection of CDs. Or we walked to the Icebox and sat on “our” log, the one that spanned a deep crevice in the rocks, and talked while we dangled our legs into the water.

  I let things out that I normally kept tucked away, like the fact that I enjoyed gardening in our huge backyard with my dad. That I secretly liked the wide-brimmed straw hat he wore to keep the sun off his fair skin, even though I once heard Carol Anne Davies—our cheer captain—say he looked like a scarecrow.

  One afternoon at the Icebox, he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I laughed and flicked water at him with my toe.

  “I’m serious. What do you want to do with your life?”

  I shrugged. “The usual. Go to college. Get a job I like. Make a little money. Have a family.”

  “Okay. Tell me about that job. What do you want that to be?”

  I turned to him, expecting to see a grin on his face, but his eyes were serious. I knew what I wanted to do, what I hoped to do, but it was far-fetched and I’d never admitted it out loud before.

  “I want to be a garden designer,” I said quietly.

  “Really?” He tilted his head as if pondering my career choice.

  I nodded. “I know it’s stupid . . .”

  “No. It’s not stupid at all, actually.” He put his hands down flat on the log and bumped his shoulder to mine. “I think it’s perfect for you.”

  I shrugged again. “I don’t know. Maybe. If that doesn’t work out, I’ve thought about being an English teacher. Though the people in my classes often make me rethink that.”

  He laughed. “If you did decide to be an English teacher, I have no doubt you’d whip those kids into shape in no time. You’d have them reading The Great Gatsby and Lord of the Flies and loving every minute of it.”

  No matter what I said, what secret hope or embarrassment I divulged to him, he never made me feel silly for saying it. He was always kind. Funny. But best of all, he was completely unself-conscious. I wanted some of that to soak into me.

  The strange thing, though, was that we still rarely talked at school. It was like an unspoken rule that we both understood without saying it out loud. Our friendship existed on Glory Road. During school hours, at football games and parties afterward, at pep rallies and school assemblies, we were still separated by the invisible but almost tangible wall between us. Between my group and his.

  Ben was quiet, encouraging, honest—not the kind of guy my friends and I usually hung out with. He spoke to some deeper part of me, but I had no idea how to handle it. So I ignored it.

  Even if
I didn’t consciously recognize it, Mama did, of course. One afternoon on the back porch, watching as Daddy tried to finish cutting the grass before it rained, she told me to be careful with Ben.

  “What do you mean?” I was only half listening as I flipped through a People magazine. I was meeting Ben at the Icebox in an hour if the rain held off.

  “I see how that boy looks at you. You don’t look at him in the same way.”

  That got my attention. I slapped the magazine closed. “And how does he look at me? Or how do I look at him?”

  “He’s a fool for you, Jessie Mae. And while I don’t think you’re purposefully leading him on, that may be what’s happening.”

  “That’s crazy. I’m not leading him on. I wouldn’t do that. He’s my friend.”

  “That’s the problem.” She shook her head. “I don’t think he thinks of you as a friend. I always worry about your heart—caring for it, protecting it—but in this case, it’s Ben’s heart I’m worried about.”

  Her words stayed in my mind that whole year as Ben and I continued our normal routine—homework, talking, laughing. It was different during football season, of course. We saw less of each other then, except while on the field, but at home, we spent most of our free hours together. I was happy hanging out with him—he made me happy—but thanks to Mama’s words, now a measure of guilt was mixed in too.

  Then our senior year wrapped up. We graduated, and everyone started making plans for their life after high school. Ben got an academic scholarship to the University of Alabama, and I was headed to Birmingham and a degree in English and horticulture. We still saw each other that summer, but it felt different, like someone had pushed fast-forward on the hours.

  It was tradition for the outgoing senior class to have a big bonfire party at the end of the summer before everyone headed their separate ways. The party was held in a big, empty pasture supposedly owned by someone’s uncle, although no one knew exactly whose uncle it was. We didn’t care either. The police sometimes came, red and blue ricocheting off windshields and tailgates, tossing out warnings about hauling us off and calling parents, but they never did. Especially not on senior bonfire night. It was as if they allowed the outgoing class that last bit of freedom before they entered the world of adult rules and expectations.

  When my friends and I arrived at the field, we tumbled out of our cars like dominoes, everyone laughing, freedom and the warm evening air making us feel alive and bigger than the universe. I noticed Ben’s Jeep parked at the edge of the grassy field. By now it was a thing of beauty—the leather inside oiled to a shine, the seats repaired, the engine purring. When I saw it that night, a swell of happy pride crested in my chest, but then again, that night I was happy about everything. It felt like my real life was beginning.

  Hours later, I sat in someone’s abandoned plastic lawn chair as Dave Matthews Band’s “Two Step” poured from a nearby truck’s speakers. The fire had died down to a glow of embers and burned blocks of wood, and all around it people sat in pairs and small groups. Down the field a bit, a handful of people tossed a football around, their laughter bouncing through the trees, but it was quiet near the fire. That’s where Ben found me.

  “Having fun?” He sat on the ground next to my chair.

  I shrugged. “I guess so.”

  He leaned back on his arms, then sat up and propped his elbows on his knees. It was unlike him to be so fidgety.

  “Something wrong?”

  He shook his head. “No. But I need to tell you something.”

  “Okay. Tell me.” I leaned forward a bit, trying to see his face. The faint light from the dying fire cast an orange glow on his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, but I couldn’t make out the emotion in his eyes.

  Finally he spoke. “Jessie, I’m in love with you.”

  All the sounds around us—conversation, crickets in the night air, the pops and sizzles of the fire—died away, like the two of us were in a vacuum, a black hole that spit everything else out. All I heard was my heart thumping in my chest.

  “You’re what?”

  “Sorry to just blurt it out like that. But I’ve loved you for so long.” He said it like an exhale.

  “Ben, I . . .”

  He shook his head, his eyes still focused on the fire. “I just needed you to know. I’m leaving in a few days and . . .” That’s when he turned to me. His eyes burned into mine, like he was trying to read the waves crashing in my brain.

  But he was just my friend. Right? I couldn’t . . .

  But I did know. Deep down, I knew he loved me. I’d known it for years.

  “You don’t have to worry. I don’t expect anything to happen. I just wanted to tell you before I left.”

  We stared at each other until someone called my name, startling me out of myself. I jumped up to my feet and searched the field. My friend waved her arms at me. “We’re leaving,” she yelled.

  Next to me, Ben stood. He wiped his hands on his pants and took a step toward me. “Jessie, I know the real you. You’re so much more than all this.” His voice was low and by now sweetly familiar.

  Then all of a sudden my friends were right next to me, laughing. One grabbed my arm. “Come on. James is pulling out and he’s our ride.” I let her drag me away—I’d left my purse in the Bronco and anyway, it was almost curfew—but I glanced back at Ben. He shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled.

  I didn’t see him again before he left for Tuscaloosa.

  I went on to Birmingham and tried to live my life as I thought I was supposed to. He and I both made decisions—some good, some bad. Then Chris stormed in and blew me away, and the fallout had landed me here—on my own with my fiery mother and my incredible daughter, surrounded by the street and air and land that had cushioned me for most of my life. I knew there was more—Mama loved to remind me of that—but Glory Road was what I knew and loved.

  It was just that somewhere along the days that stretched into months, that lengthened into years, I’d begun to feel restless. Like I had an itch somewhere I couldn’t quite reach. It was relentless. I stayed quiet about it though, especially around Mama. I knew she’d start up with that “magic” speech again.

  I didn’t want to hear her speech, but echoes of her words came back to me as I sat in this spot on this porch, in the nest I’d made for myself. Inside, things were still. Evan and Mama were probably dozing on the couch, an empty bowl of popcorn between them. Next to me, the house sighed and settled, the seventy-year-old thing tired and weighted with the responsibility of sheltering all our hopes and dreams.

  As the swing slowly moved back and forth, I tried to release some of the ache in my heart. It was the same ache—the same craving—I’d felt when I heard the music pouring from the windows of the Jeep flying down the road. The Jeep I hadn’t realized was Ben’s.

  The ache was always there—pressing into me, pushing down on me—but I had a feeling the appearance of Ben and Sumner in one day was part of tonight’s particular sting. If Mama’s “magic” meant a man, she must have been pretty satisfied with the day. But I didn’t know what to make of it. Only that the ache, the hunger, was still there—part pain, part something else. Hope? Desire? Fear? The potent mixture swirled in my heart like rich, fertile soil, all the parts meshed so completely it’d be impossible to tell one essential element from the rest.

  CHAPTER 10

  It can be tricky to keep an African violet content and thriving. It doesn’t like direct, all-day sun, and it prefers its leaves to be dry. Keep the temperature even, and if possible, set it in an east-facing window so it can receive nice, diffused light.

  —ANNE P. SNIDER, FINICKY FLOWERS

  EVAN

  My mom used to have this bathing suit. I barely remember it. It floats around the edge of my memory like a red-and-white-flowered fog. It had delicate ruffles around the edges where it skimmed the skin of her freckled chest. Or maybe it was lace. The fog makes it all blurry. What I remember most is the brightness of the red against the sof
t white. It was a happy suit, a confident suit, even though it was only one piece. It covered everything from the midpoint of her chest to her hips, but it clung to her like silk and hugged every curve. I was only five and a half at the time, but I remember thinking I’d never be old enough to wear a suit like that.

  I sat on the stool in the corner of the Parisian dressing room, my knees pressed together, my little Strawberry Shortcake purse in my lap. Mom did a twirl in the suit as if she were wearing a sequined cocktail dress instead of a strip of flowered nylon. I couldn’t imagine anyone or anything being more beautiful. In my mind, she was a princess, a fairy, and a magic ballerina all at once. I couldn’t wait to see her in that bathing suit at the pool, wowing everyone, making them wish she were their mother instead of mine.

  “I think this is the one,” she said to me, giving her backside one more glance. “What do you think?”

  “It’s perfect,” I whispered, as if talking too loud would break the spell she’d cast on the cramped dressing room.

  “Okay then. I trust you.” She smiled at me, and I felt my heart settle into a comfortable place. “I think your daddy will like this one.”

  But that was a million years ago, and my dad didn’t like it. Or if he did, it wasn’t enough to make him stay. Not that I would have wanted him to.

  A lot of girls my age hated their moms—thought they were dorky or embarrassing—but I really kind of liked mine. I mean, I loved her, but I also liked her, you know? She was smart and funny and she didn’t smother me too much. She was just there when I needed her to be. And she was pretty. The kind of pretty I wouldn’t mind being when I got older. So if my dad could see her in that suit, see the kindness in her eyes, the casual way she slung her beach bag over her shoulder, and still leave us—and for someone named Tiffani with an i—then I was glad he left.

  I hadn’t thought about that red-and-white bathing suit in years, but that night, long after Gus had left and I told Mom good night, I tiptoed back up to the front window just to stare at her. She seemed so young in her sleeveless nightgown, one strap falling down off her shoulder. She’d tucked one leg underneath her on the cushion and the other pushed off the floor every few seconds. I couldn’t stand seeing her like that, all alone and exposed, so I opened the door and stuck my head out.