Page 38

Chapter 38

Isa

“I can’t believe it’s here,” James said as our seat belts clicked. He took the captain seat while I’d elected to copilot. Both of us were skeptical of the Tesla’s remaining battery life, especially because we had no intention of leaving the parking lot yet. One last item had popped up on the agenda. “How do you know it’s here?”

“Because of this,” I replied, showing James my phone. Google Maps was on my screen, with one of those Parked Car notifications.

And that little blue icon? It was for someone else’s car. Someone’s else car that I’d ridden shotgun in whenever he invited me on a long drive up the river, connecting my phone to the Bluetooth system to play music. I didn’t understand why the notice had only announced itself now, but every exasperated iPhone owner knew their devices sometimes operated in inexplicable ways.

My father’s car…it was somewhere close by.

“You aren’t worried about time?” James asked, putting the Tesla in drive. I waited for him to ease up on the brakes. “I know Grace is the one with the locked and loaded curfew, but I don’t want your parents to get suspicious if you aren’t back for dinner….”

“I’m not worried in the least,” I said. “Dinner will be eight o’clock at the earliest, if Mamá doesn’t stay late at the office. I’ll coordinate takeout from Oishi with her train’s arrival time.” I rolled my eyes. “And who knows about my father. Will he even keep his promise and be home tonight?” I tried to laugh. I’d texted him an hour ago to confirm, and he hadn’t responded. In fact, his notifications had been silenced. “It’s a good thing Everett and I are friends again; now I can crash their dinners like I did in middle school. Mrs.Adler’s food is…” I mimed a chef’s kiss.

“You can always crash your boyfriend’s dinners, too,” James said with a shrug. “Just an FYI. The door is always open. I mean, sometimes it’s locked, but we’ll obviously let you in if you knock—”

I stretched to kiss his cheek. “I will definitely keep that in mind,” I told him. “And don’t worry about locked doors. I have a key.”

“What? You have a key to my house and I don’t?”

“Yes, I do.” I shifted in my seat, pretty damn pleased with myself. “It’s not my fault you lost yours, J.”

“Okay, I told you they fell out of my jeans somewhere! I didn’t know the pocket was ripped.”

“You are such a clown.” I smiled, tousling his hair. “But I’m so happy you’re finally my clown.” I took a breath. “I’m sorry for making you wait this long, James. We could’ve had months together.”

“Izzy, we will have months together.”

I chewed on my lip. “Only one together at school, though.”

“Yes, and then we’ll have the whole summer. It’ll be great, okay?”

I nodded slowly and then said, “Drive. I want…”

What did I want? I already had proof that Papá had lied, that he was back in Philly; I’d seen him with my own eyes in that restaurant. Why did I need to track down his car, too?

My jaw tightened. On the off chance that my father was currently searching for his car, I wanted to confront him.

James took one of my hands and kissed my knuckles. “We’re going to find it.”

I took a deep breath when he backed the Tesla out of its parking spot. We slowly wound our way through the vast lot, passing into territory that none of us had covered while searching for the Tesla. Monitoring the map, I watched the distance between us and my father’s car shrink until the radius was nothing more than a small speck. James didn’t bother parking once we found it; he just stopped in the middle of the vacant row. There were no open spots, and frankly, I didn’t care about proper parking lot etiquette right now. No one was here anyway.

Including Papá.

But nevertheless, my heart sped up when James looked at me, watching the nervousness unspool in my eyes. “I don’t understand,” I heard myself say. “Why didn’t he park in a garage?”

“Maybe he did.” James shrugged. “Then they went on a joyride around the city or something?”

They, I thought. The word made my pulse drop—and not in a good way.

Before I knew it, I’d unbuckled my seat belt and muttered something about grabbing my father’s new telescope from his trunk. There was going to be a meteor shower tonight.

I didn’t give a damn about astronomy.

“Izzy, wait!” At first I thought James was going to stop me, but instead he dug a stray bobby pin out of his pocket. “We don’t have your dad’s spare keys,” he said, “so this is our best chance. These things can be tricky to maneuver sometimes.”

I closed my eyes but nodded. We both opened our doors, rounded the Tesla, and I admit…I stared at my father’s car for a few moments. You couldn’t not stare at his car, the one missing from our precious garage. It was something straight out of a James Bond movie, an opalescent green vintage convertible with smooth beige leather seats. “The 1961 Jaguar E-Type SI,” I said to fill the silence. Papá had spent two years researching and looking for this car, and I remembered he’d bought it without telling Mamá. It’d been shipped over from France, and when it arrived, the argument they had over it was legendary. “This car is his prize,” I told James. “It’s his passion….”

“It’s his fault for not noticing it got towed to a sketchy parking lot under the highway,” James joked, and we both took a moment to ponder how such a luxury car had survived this long here. Even I would’ve attempted to steal it.

Yikes, I shouldn’t have said that. My father had raised me to appreciate cars. One of the biggest things he and Everett’s dad had had in common was their devotion to motor vehicles. They talked about cars constantly, texted about cars constantly, and even went to car shows together. The only difference was that while Mr.Adler had refurbished his Bronco himself, as a weekend hobby, my father had no interest in getting his hands dirty. His Jaguar had arrived in pristine, restored, Bluetooth-boasting condition.

James and I headed for the convertible’s rear, and predictably, the trunk was locked. He offered me the bobby pin, and I told myself that all we were doing was grabbing the telescope. One small act of rebellion.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t fit the pin into the keyhole. My fingers wouldn’t stop trembling. “Hey, relax,” James said, putting a hand on my back. “Take a deep breath.”

I exhaled a couple seconds later, but felt no relief. “J…”

“Step aside, Miss Cruz,” he said, smoothly twirling me around before taking the bobby pin and going to work. Hehummed the alphabet to himself as he meddled with the pin inside the keyhole. Something quietly clicked when he reached S.

“S” rhymes with “yes,” I thought.

The Jag’s trunk sprung open, and bless the stars, there it was. Papá’s telescope, among his golf clubs, roadside assistance kit, and the leather briefcase Mamá and I had gotten him for his professorship. James grabbed the telescope, and for some reason, I stole his five iron from the golf bag. Would he notice? My father did love a good eighteen holes.

“Mission accomplished!” James cheered before slamming the trunk shut and nodding his chin back to the Tesla. “Let’sroll!”

“Yeah, all right,” I said, but in no way did I feel victorious.

“Hey, come on,” James said gently. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t respond. Instead, I stared at the Jag. Not in awe like earlier, but blankly—as if I hadn’t a care in the world for this car. All those weekend rides Papá and I’d taken together up the Delaware River? I didn’t want to remember them rightnow.

Instead, I kicked the car. My teeth gritted, I kicked the side of my father’s Jaguar like I was Everett during one of his soccer games, his team hoping to come from behind. I kicked it with everything I had, so hard that it felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. My foot, probably bound for infection, throbbed.

James winced.

“This is bullshit,” I said, hearing the waver in my voice. I gestured to the convertible. “I’m putting up with a bunch of bullshit—my family is putting up with a bunch of bullshit, and we don’t even acknowledge it. I ask to see a therapist? Nope, request kindly denied! Why would I want to talk to someone who doesn’t know me when I have him or Mamá? Meanwhile, Mamá is so obsessed with work and me getting off Princeton’s or Harvard’s or Yale’s waitlist and whatever else she has in her agenda book, she doesn’t even see that my father is cheating on her!” I forced myself to laugh. “I don’t even know if I should tell her.”

James took a step toward me. “Izzy.”

“I think I should, J,” I told him. “I shouldn’t keep my mouth shut when he’s lying about his Georgetown schedule and these business trips instead of working on his marriage and spending time with his daughter, who tries so hard to make him proud.”

“You do,” he said softly. “You try, Isa. You try your best every single day.” I felt him look at me, somehow an acknowledgment of my accomplishments. I thought of my name on honor roll again and again, my perfect ACT score, my acceptance to Brown, and the probability of me being named valedictorian in a few weeks. All my hard work. “It’s incredible,” James said. “You are—”

I kicked the car again—and god, it felt good, even though my foot felt like a hospital trip waiting to happen.

“I am so sick of his lying,” I said. “I can’t stand him”—I adjusted my grip on my father’s golf club—“and I can’t stand this fucking car!”

And then I swung the five iron and nailed the Jag. James whistled when I hit the windshield. The cracked glass looked like a delicate spiderweb. “That,” he commented, “is a work ofart.”

My eyes prickled. “Who do you care about?” I asked, and whacked the car again—the golf club left a deep cavity in the driver door. “Because it’s certainly not Mamá, not our family, not our life—and not me. ” Ready, aim, fire. “You don’t care about us, but you care about this car.” I moved to hit the hood, skirting around the already destroyed bumper. “The only things you love are this car and that woman!”

I swung the five iron, again and again. James kept glancing over his shoulder, on guard for security.

“Wow,” I breathed when I finally stopped. Adrenaline surged through my veins, so quickly that I didn’t realize when I started sobbing. “I did some serious damage.”

“Damage?” James was flabbergasted. “Izzy, you slaughtered the car.”

The leather interior had gone untouched, but the exterior? It looked like it had been attacked by a prowl of jaguars.

“Who cares?” I shrugged. “Because I honestly don’t. I’m over it, J. I’m done being Daddy’s little girl.” I wiped my tears to admire the ruined car. “And we’ll see what happens when I tell Mamá about the bottle blond tonight.”

James’s eyes widened. “You’re going to tell her?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “I am.”

Someone had to.

James ran a slow hand through his hair. “You’re going to have to tell her where you were today,” he said. “She’ll find out you were in Philly and not in school.”

“I don’t care,” I replied with a burst of confidence. “It’s worth it.”

He set down my father’s telescope and I raced forward to hug him. My feet left the concrete when he scooped me up in his arms, my heartbeat wild against his chest. “You’re just too good to be true,” he murmured.

I smiled as I slung my arms around his neck. “All right,” I whispered against his lips. “Let’s roll.”