Free My One Square Inch of Alaska (9781101602850) by Sharon Short Page A

and blue pole still turned by the barbershop’s door, next to the Woolworth five-and-dime, where Jimmy most likely got the Blue Waltz Sachet.
    Everything was the same, yet utterly changed.
    I smiled at him. “What now?”
    He smiled back. “Now…I really teach you how to drive!”

Chapter 8
    A nd so I drove.
    With Jimmy Denton patiently giving me instructions and tips, I drove.
    “Give me a tour of Groverton,” Jimmy said.
    And so I did.
    Now, fourteen years later, I still remember everywhere we went: up and down Main Street, away from Dot’s Corner Café; by Miss Bettina’s Dress Shop; by the Ace Hardware where Daddy worked; by the big Victorian house Grandma had grown up in, where her father practiced medicine as one of the town’s doctors and where she still lived, polishing her bitterness as carefully as she did the silver she’d inherited from her own grandmother; then out to the edge of town to the Cosmic Burger and Shakes, where I carefully steered Jimmy’s car up to the speaker, without adding a single scratch to the damage I’d already caused, and where we laughed at the shock on Lisa Kablinski’s face when she roller-skated out to deliver our chocolate malts. By morning, everyone would know that Donna Lane, instead of working Friday night again at Dot’s Corner Café, had been out with Jimmy Denton, even driving his car!
    Then I drove us on out of town, passing by the Lucky Horseshoe Bar, where Daddy drank most nights, by the Groverton Cemetery, where Mama should have been buried but wasn’t—her body had never come home from Florida because Daddy said it was easier to have her buried down there—and on out to Pleasant Valley Orchard, which had closed after the owner passed away, its gravel lot by the old barn becoming a favorite make-out site.
    But at first, we just talked. We talked on the drive and in the orchard parking lot, talked and talked.
    We didn’t drive by Mr. Cahill’s house. Groverton Pulp & Paper. Across the bridge to Tangy Town—definitely not there. Jimmy’s house.
    Eventually we kissed. My first kiss. I don’t know if it was Jimmy’s—probably not, but I didn’t care. It was a sweet, lovely, tender kiss that lingered and that made me feel just…happy. Nothing like all the pulps Babs insisted on loaning me, like
Frenchie
and
Bonanza Queen
, said I would feel. But happy.
    At some point, Jimmy turned on the radio, to a station playing some song with a racy fast beat and a wailing horn line.
    “Is this local?” Jimmy said, sounding surprised.
    “Are you kidding? No. It’s out of Chicago. Every now and then, late at night, you can pick it up here. But the local station would never play this. It’s jazz. Grandma says it’s only fit for colored folks to listen to.”
    “What do you think?”
    I wasn’t sure how to answer, what he expected me to say. I decided to tell him the truth. After all, I’d perpetuated a lot of untruths that day.
    “I like it!” I said.
    Jimmy smiled. “I’m glad. I do, too.”
    So we listened and kissed until the old gravel parking lot filled up with too many other cars for us to really feel comfortable and then, at nearly midnight, I drove back to my house, my head fairly spinning at how much had happened since that morning, which now seemed a lifetime ago.
    The closer we got to 230 Elmwood Street, the more my heart thudded. It was dark, so Jimmy wouldn’t really be able to see how ramshackle our house looked compared with everyone else’s. But it was also late, much later than I usually got home on a Friday night after closing up at Dot’s Corner Café.
    I prayed,
Please…let the porch light be off, the living room dark, just a glow coming from Will’s room, Will reading his comic books under the bedspread….
    But Dad’s car was in the driveway. The porch light was on. The living room was lit up. Will’s bedroom window was dark. And parked by the curb was a ramshackle truck with faded lettering on the back: Stedman’s