Free 100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith Page B

Western.
    This was definitely not a good time or place for me and Blake to rekindle our fistfight.
    So I attempted to defuse the situation with a sober and sincere-sounding lie.
    â€œHey, Blake. Great party, man.”
    â€œWho told you you you could come and be here, Easton?”
    Blake Grunwald was exceedingly drunk, stoned, chewing tobacco, and hurling an excess of pronouns too.
    â€œOh, uh, Cade said it it it was okay as long as we brought some girls.”
    â€œWhat girls?” Blake demanded.
    â€œUh. They were here just a minute ago,” I said. “Maybe they’re outside. Getting high. Smoking the weed. Man.”
    I only hoped that Julia wasn’t like that. I had the idea she wasn’t, but it’s always so hard to tell these things about kids.
    Blake said, “Huh?” and glanced over his shoulder, out the sliding, postmodern seventies-style glass door through which he’d entered. And as soon as he did, I spun around and headed for the front exit.
    Monica Fassbinder and Julia Bishop stood on the curb beside Julia’s Mustang. Monica smoked a cigarette, taking big, dramatic, disaffected drags.
    â€œYou guys can’t take off,” I said. “Blake Grunwald wants to kill me .”
    â€œWhy does he want to do that?” Julia asked.
    Monica Fassbinder, being a sort of mascot to Cade Hernandez, knew all about our issues.
    â€œWe just hate each other,” I said.
    â€œOh,” Julia said with a tone that implied she understood perfectly well that sometimes boys just hated each other for insignificant reasons.
    â€œWell, Monica asked if I would take her home,” she said. “I was going to come back to get you.”
    â€œYou can’t leave me here,” I said. “I’ll ride with you.”
    I realized this meant I would be the solitary boy riding with Monica Fassbinder and Julia Bishop inside a brand-new Ford Mustang, and it made my atoms feel very fertile.
    Monica exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke and said, “What about Cade?”
    â€œUh, he needs to sleep for a while. He’ll be okay. Julia and I will come back for him. We’ll keep him safe for you, Monica.”
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    So that’s how I ended up alone with Julia Bishop, driving twenty miles per second through the deserted streets of Burnt Mill Creek after midnight, and under the second brightest moon in more than a century.
    Sixty billion miles.
    â€œWhat about you?” I said. “Won’t your boyfriend want to kick my ass for getting you to drive me and my wasted friends to a shitty party?”
    We’d dropped Monica Fassbinder off at her host family’s house, which happened to be across the street from the left-field fence at Burnt Mill Creek High School’s baseball diamond. Monica’s host “mother,” Mrs. Shoemaker, was a substitute teacher at our school.
    I’ll admit my question was a rather obvious way of askingwhat I didn’t have the nerve to say directly to Julia Bishop.
    She said, “Finn Easton, Right Field.”
    â€œHow did you know what position I play?”
    Julia kept her eyes fixed forward. We stopped at a red light on Old Mill Boulevard, at an intersection across from Flat Face Pizza.
    â€œBecause I’m a stalker and I ruin boys’ lives,” Julia said blankly.
    â€œOh.”
    Then she laughed.
    â€œI’m in the yearbook class. I looked you up,” she said.
    I remembered seeing “Yearbook” on her class schedule the day I showed her around the school, and I wondered if she’d been as interested in finding out about me as I was about her.
    That couldn’t possibly be the case, I thought.
    â€œOh,” I said. To be honest, I was relieved that she was only messing with me and that she wasn’t actually a stalker who ruined boys’ lives.
    Then she said, “I wasn’t stalking you or anything. It’s just that I didn’t know anyone