“Right. See you there,” he echoes, but he falls in step with me.
“Are you following me?”
He stops. “We’re going to the same place. Except I don’t have a car, so I’m taking the bus. I’d hate for it to get delayed, which would mean I’d risk getting kicked out of the game… and now I know you want me to stay in it so badly.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “No,” I say emphatically. The idea of Neil McNair in my car is unacceptable. There’s so much he could judge: my music, my cleanliness, the mangled front bumper. “I’m not giving you a ride.”
* * *
“Nice car,” McNair says, fidgeting with the air-conditioner dials and then rolling down the window when he notices the AC doesn’t work. I’m back in my cardigan, self-conscious about the stain on my dress again. It’s not that hot anyway—McNair must run warm.
“Please don’t touch anything.” I’m boxed in, so I have to wiggle out of the parking spot inch by agonizing inch. The car in front of me has a parking ticket, which we both crossed off our Howl lists.
He examines the parking stickers stuffed in the passenger-side door pocket, a few stray receipts on the floor. I wonder what he’s thinking. It’s so clearly not a nice car, even if I love it. We approached from behind, so at least he didn’t see the damage. I hope he doesn’t say anything about the weird smell. It’s not bad, exactly, just mildly unpleasant.
McNair scratches at some parking-sticker residue, then finds the adjustment bar beneath the passenger seat. He moves it back—too far back—and then too far forward. Then—
“Are you always this twitchy?” I ask.
He returns the seat to its normal position and drops his hands in his lap. “Sorry. Still anxious from the Savannah chase, I guess.”
“This is a onetime thing,” I say as I turn onto Pike Street. While I’ve never driven him anywhere, we’ve ridden on buses and carpooled with other kids to school events. “Only because it would have taken you too long by bus. And if you even think about criticizing my driving, you can get out right now.”
“I actually don’t drive,” he says, “so I can’t really criticize you.”
I… didn’t know that. I can’t imagine McNair not acing a test. “Foiled by the written test?”
“I never took it.”
“Oh.”
“And I’ll be in New York in the fall, so there’s no point taking it now.”
“Right.”
We drive in silence for a few minutes, and it’s not a comfortable one. Apparently, we’ve both forgotten how to sustain a conversation. I have never felt so awkward in my own car.
“This is the trip home from quiz bowl regionals all over again,” I say.
No one said a word on the ride home from the Tri-Cities after we lost last year. Darius Vogel and Lily Gulati were in the front seat, leaving Neil and me in the back. Somehow, even a quiet McNair annoyed me. He claimed he got motion sick, but I assumed he was miserable (rightfully so) over losing.
“Except we still have a shot at winning,” he says.
“Because now you know the final battle of the Revolutionary War was Yorktown, not Bunker Hill?”
He groans. “Trust me. It’s burned into my memory forever.”
I’m a little surprised he isn’t defending himself, but then, plenty of this day hasn’t made sense. He shifts in the seat again as though trying to get comfortable, something that may not be possible in his rival’s car, and when we’re at a red light, I notice one corner of his yearbook peeking out of his backpack. It’s enough to make me grip the steering wheel tighter. I should have just signed it.
Then he picks up his phone, scrutinizing the Howl list. I wonder if he knows any I don’t.
“Did you know the world ‘clue’ comes from Greek mythology?” he says. “A clew, C-L-E-W, was a ball of yarn. Ariadne gave Theseus a clew to help him out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. He unraveled it as he went so he could find his way back.”
I vaguely remember the myth from world history. “So it used to be literal, and now we’re metaphorically unraveling a ball of yarn when we try to solve something?”
“Exactly,” he says, nodding vigorously.
“Huh,” I say, because while it’s not unlike McNair to spout an etymology fun fact, this is maybe the first time I’ve noticed how excited it makes him.