Page 33 of The Do-Over

-Fake-crying with an absurdly detailed fabricated story about my elderly—and dying—grandmother’s love of journalism

-Offering Mrs. Bowen a small bribe

None of those attempts provided me a changed result. With Macy and Josh, I tried:

-Lying in wait in my car and frantically honking the horn every time their faces got close together in his lame-ass tiny vehicle

-Texting Josh that I heard a rumor about Macy and herpes and mouth-rot (not my finest moment)

-Throwing a baseball at Josh’s windshield once he andMacewere ensconced in his ridiculous car. The ball actually made contact and cracked the window, but my throw was too slow and their lips touched before the resultant balling so it was all for naught. And I had to duck behind a car and slink back toward the doors like a Marine under siege.

Nothing was working.

As far as the car situation, I tried:

-Driving my dad’s car to school, but I still hit Nick.

-Riding to school with Chris, but he crashed into Nick instead of me. Ironically, I still ended up catching a ride with the surly one when Chris had to go to the hospital to get his neck checked.

I tried walking to school, but eventhenI ended up with Nick. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but his truck was parked on the side ofthe Hickory Oaks subdivision street that led to our school—I was assuming he lived in the house beside it. The hood was up, and he was doing something underneath it. I tried quietly walking by, but just when I thought I was past I heard him say, “Excuse me—hey. Can you help me for like one second?”

I glanced in his direction and put my hand on my chest. “Me?”

“Yeah.”

I said, “Um, no offense, but I’m a sixteen-year-old girl—it’s not really safe for me to help strangers. Can I call someone for—”

“I’m not a stranger—we’re in the same Chemistry class.”

What?

So he actually knew I was his lab partner? Had he been messing with me every single time we’d met? I said, “Are you sure? I mean, you kind of look a little familiar, but—”

“Yes, I’m sure—we sit at the same table. So will you help me?”

I stepped off the curb and approached him, trying not to smile as I felt some sort of a win by his recognition. “What do you need me to do?”

His hair was a little windblown, but his eyes were like the deepest blue in contrast to the black of his zipped-up jacket. I’d always thought they were brown, but they actually made me think of DeVos’s flowery prose; she’d kind of nailed his color with the whole cloudless-summer-sky thing.

He said, “I just need you to start my truck while I hoosh this frozen thing with starter fluid,” interrupting my distracted thoughts about his pretty corneas. “Have you ever driven a stick?”

I put my hands in my pockets and buried my neck a little deeperin my wool coat. “No, but I know how to start a car with a clutch.”

“Perfect. Would you mind?”

The smell of him—soap, cologne, I didn’t know what it was—hit me hard, but I pushed all of that aside. I said, “Sure.”

I went around his truck and got in, having to move the seat forward in order for my foot to be able to push in the clutch all the way. I left the door open so I could wait for his command, and when he said “Now,” I turned the key.

That old truck didn’t want to turn over, but Nick must’ve known what he was doing because all of a sudden, it roared to life. I revved it a little before he yelled, “Can you put it in neutral and leave it running?”

“Sure.” It felt familiar—comforting—to be in this position. I used to help my dad when he worked on the Porsche by doing this exact thing, only I’d been twelve at the time. I threw the truck into neutral and got out.

Nick slammed the hood down and came around to the driver’s side. He said, “Thanks a lot. She hates the cold.”

“She?”

“The truck.”

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