Just Plain Weird (6 page)

         
“Sort of.”

         
“Sorry. Am I irritating you, now?”

         
“No,” I said, and was surprised that it was true: she was interrogating me that same way Raffles would, but coming from her, all the questions didn’t bother me in the least. “No, you’re not.”

         
“What else does he do?”

         
“Oh, I don’t know-- he makes me feel dumb.”

         
“How?”

         
“Well, like, he’ll use big words. I think he does it on purpose; he knows I won’t know what they mean, but he uses them just the same. It’s like he’s trying on purpose to make me feel dumb.”

         
“Maybe he’s just trying to get you to use a dictionary, improve your vocabulary.”

         
“No, he just enjoys it,” I said, certain.

         
“Well, why don’t you do something?-- start looking things up in the dictionary? Maybe you’ll learn something-- then maybe he’ll stop doing it.”

         
“Nah, I just don’t have book smarts,” I explained. “It runs in the family. Even my father said I come from a long line of males with strong backs and weak minds. Except for my brother, of course.”

         
“Why, what’s his deal?”

         
“He’s, like, twelve years older than me,” I said. “He got a couple college degrees. He’s an instructor at the University of Iowa.”

         
“What department?”

         
“The writing workshop.”

         
“Published?”

         
“All the time,” I said. “Won an O. Henry award last year.”

         
“Impressive.”

         
“Yeah.”

         
“A lot to live up to, huh?” she asked.

         
I had been staring at the ground as we spoke, and now looked up at her. I wondered how I’d been lulled into revealing so much personal information. She was almost a total stranger, after all, yet I realized I no longer experienced the least bit of anxiety speaking to her. It suddenly seemed that I had known her forever, and exactly when that started, I couldn’t say-- only that it seemed like magic.

    
    
She was now looking at me with curiosity mixed with concern.

         
“Sounds like you need to have some serious fun,” she said.

         
“And that will change things?” I asked.

         
“No, but it’ll help you live with the things you can’t change.”

         
“Oh?” I was doubtful.

    
    
She paused, thinking, biting her lower lip, as if formulating a plan. “First,” she finally went on, “you need to know what fun is, and it’s not lifting weights. Trust me, here. It’s even logically wrong.”

         
“How’s that?” I wondered.

         
“Well, fun is fun. The more fun you have, the more fun it is. So if lifting weights were fun, you have to conclude that lifting a lot of weights is even more fun, right? But if you lift too much weights, that can led to a hernia, which is not fun at all. It’s pretty simple, really: having fun can only lead to having more fun-- it cannot lead to injury, pain, or dismemberment.”

         
“You’re making this up, aren’t you?”

         
“Pretty much so,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe it…. Hey, I have an idea,” she said, and there was a glint in her eye that troubled me. She got to her feet, then, and ran up the front stairs, vanishing into her house for a moment. When she returned, she was all giddy with excitement-- so very different from the gruff Eliza that Raffles and I had witnessed the previous night. She stopped and stood on the stair on which I was sitting, and I had to lean back to look up at her face, trying really hard not glance at her bare legs, which were right next to me.

         
“How old are you?” she asked, looking down at me.

         
“Fifteen, why?”

         
“Fifteen-- fifteen?” She paused. “You were held back in school, then?”

         
“Just the one year.”

         
She wagged her head sadly, and then asked, “Well, what is it that makes having fun so hard when you’re fifteen?”

         
I shrugged. I couldn’t narrow it down to one thing.

         
She held out her fist, in which she’d been hiding something, and when she opened it, a set of car keys dangled from her finger.

         
“No way to get around, of course,” she said. She jumped off the stair and landed on the walkway. She quickly cut across her front lawn, heading toward the driveway, calling a curt, “Come on” over her shoulder.

         
I followed her, feeling I had no choice.

         
By the time I reached the driveway, she was already strapped into the driver’s seat of the black car, which turned out to be a Lexus.
 
I walked up to the passenger door, swung it open, and leaned over to look in at her.

         
“You’re kidding, right?” I said.

         
“No, get in,” she demanded, flapping an impatient hand at me.

         
I climbed into the car, and shut the door, not really believing we would go anywhere. I watched as she pressed the buttons that adjusted her seat so that she was low enough yet her feet could reach the pedals. I was certain that she would stop at any moment and make a joke over the whole thing-- “Like, right, I’m going to take my father’s car for a joy ride!”-- but she just adjusted the rearview mirror, saying, “Put on your seat belt. Doc deactivated the air bags--he thinks they’re evil or something,” she added, rolling her eyes in a way I found so adorable I nearly asked her to do it again. Before starting the engine, she turned to me and said, “I really am a good driver.” The next thing I knew, we had turned out of the driveway and were flying down the street.

         
I realized what a truly awful idea it was, sure, and I should have at least tried to talk her out of it. But I was finding her will very hard to resist. It was very odd, actually; I would not under normal conditions let anybody talk me into doing something so reckless. It should have troubled me that I’d given in to her so easily. Instead, it all seemed natural-- not just natural, but something bound to happen. It didn’t seem dangerous or unlawful.

         
 
I was grateful, too, to see that she actually did know how to drive. After a minute or two of her not sideswiping parked cars and not blowing through stop signs, I was able to settle back in the seat a relax. Soon I was even enjoying the ride. Watching the houses go past, smelling the scent of new leather seats, I savored the feeling of not being tied down to one small parcel of earth.

         
“Nice car,” I mentioned.

         
“It’s a Lexus, you know.”

         
“And your father knows you drive it?”

         
She just chuckled. “I’m still alive, aren’t I? What does that say?”

         
After a long silence, I asked her, “Where are we going?”

         
She glanced sideways at me, quickly looking me up and down as if she were pleased with something-- maybe that I had been trusting her.

         
“I figured we’d head out of the city,” she said. “See some horses and cows-- maybe we’ll find a pond with some ducks or something. I’ve always found wildlife very calming-- except when animals are eating each other, of course.”

         
“Where did you learn how to drive?” I asked.

         
“Oh, just picked it up,” she said, very nonchalant. “No big deal. You know, years ago you didn’t need a license to drive, and people used to start driving when they were twelve, thirteen years old.”

         
“I didn’t know that.”

         
“It’s true.”

         
“If a cop stops you, are you going to tell him that?”

         
“If a cop stops me,” she said, “let me worry about that. You just keep your mouth shut.”

         
“Hey, I’m just going along for the ride.”

         
“Exactly.”

         
She got on the expressway, and before long, the city was behind us and the landscape flattened out into farms and ranches.

         
“Did you ever feel like you don’t belong somewhere?” she asked.

         
“How do you mean?”

         
“Like in a city,” she said, glanced at me, and then at the rearview mirror. “I noticed-- probably because we moved so often-- that there are some places that-- I don’t know-- agree with me more than others.”

         
“You mean you like the country better than the city?” I asked.

         
She frowned slightly. “It’s not a matter of liking a place, really. It’s more a matter of fitting it-- harmonizing with your surroundings, blending, and feeling as if you belong. You see the difference?”

         
“Yeah-- I guess.”

         
“I think I belong in the country, in a place that’s peaceful and never changes. What about you?”

         
“Never thought much about it. I always figured I belonged in a city, or else I wouldn’t have been born there.”

         
“You mean you believe it fate?” she asked.

         
“Yeah, I guess. I’m not sure.”

         
“It’s a good thing to believe in. Fate explains a lot of things.”

         
“What do you believe in?” I asked, genuinely curious.

         
“I believe I should turn off at the next off ramp,” she said grimly, glancing at the rearview mirror. “This state trooper has been following us way too long.”

         
My heart jumped into my throat. I snapped round my seat to look through the rear window at the traffic behind us. Just as I realized there was no state trooper, I heard her starting to laugh.

         
“Sorry,” she said. “I can’t help myself, sometimes.”

         
“You know, a guy could have a heart attack,” I said, and then resettled myself in the seat, and brooded.

         
“I’m sorry. I should have warned you. I get the urge to say or do something, and I just can’t resist.
 
It’s almost a mania, I think, sometimes. I probably should be on medication. It does make me a fun person, though, if you’re prepared for anything.”