“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I won’t touch your cake.”
Then all my friends chimed in and asked when I was going to take my driver’s test.
“I’m not sure. I’ll get to it sometime this week.”
Actually, I was going on Monday, but I didn’t want to tell them in case I didn’t pass the test. I couldn’t imagine having to tell everyone I’d failed.
Caitlin said, “You have to take us out for a victory ride as soon as you get your license.” Then Elise sang, “She’ll have fun-fun-fun ‘til her Daddy takes the T-Bird away,” only she changed “T-Bird” to “Accord.”
I laughed along with everybody else, but in my mind I could already see myself behind the wheel. Independent. In control. A license was the first step to adulthood.
On Monday I went down to the DMV for my driving test, completely confident. Over the months I’d practiced for hours. I could parallel park perfectly. I could three-point turn without a hitch. I was completeness itself on all of my stops.
At the Division of Motor Vehicles, I was assigned Mr. Jensen as my tester. He was about fifty years old and looked devoid of any emotion except a general distaste of teenagers. I smiled at him. He didn’t smile back. We got into the car and I pulled into the street.
His sour mood made me feel nervous. Without thinking I said, “So, how does one end up with a dangerous job like this?” And then, a little faster, I added, “Not that I’m implying I’m a dangerous driver. I’m actually very safe.”
He grunted and said something that sounded like, “I’ll be the judge of that.”
“I just meant you don’t have to worry that your life is in my hands because I’m always careful.”
He looked at me suspiciously. “Concentrate on the road. Turn here.”
I turned and headed toward the college campus. I also bit my lip so nothing else stupid would fling out of my mouth.
He made the whole driving experience hard because he had a habit of mumbling his instructions. I kept having to ask, “What?” and then he’d look dour and repeat himself slowly. I hoped he couldn’t mark me off just because he didn’t like me.
We drove around campus awhile, and then he said, “Er by va melllox.”
At least that was what it sounded like. I ran it through my mind again and again. I tried to make sense of the words so I didn’t have to ask him to repeat himself. It was no good.
“What?”
“Turn . . . by . . . the . . . mailbox.”
At this point we were practically past the mailbox, and I had to pull a sharp turn. The wheels squealed. Mr. Jensen looked dour again and wrote something on his notepad.
I could feel my palms start to sweat.
“Pull n front oda bookstore,” he told me, “and parallel park between dose cars.”
I pulled my car alongside of the first car—a green Volkswagen. I was a bit nearer to it than I wanted to be. I craned my neck to see over Mr. Jensen, trying to decide if I was too close. I had horrible visions of sideswiping the car and having to fill out a police report and drive back to the DMV with green paint on my mom’s Accord.
“How many tries do I get at this?” I asked.
“One.”
“What if I promise I’ll never parallel park once I get my license?”
“You still hatta pass it off.”
I sighed and tried not to look at the college students who were walking by. I put the car in reverse and backed up slowly. The whole time, my gaze was riveted to the side of the Volkswagen. I was so afraid that I’d scrape into it that I wasn’t paying attention to the back of my car, which ran up onto the sidewalk and into a bike rack.
A couple of the bikes jarred loose and crashed to the ground. Some of the college students stopped walking and clapped. I was so humiliated I put my head down. Unfortunately, the steering wheel was in front of my head, and I accidentally hit the horn. Mr. Jensen and everyone else in the vicinity jumped. Any of the students who hadn’t previously been staring now watched me with complete attention.
Mr. Jensen grabbed hold of the dashboard. “What are you doing?”
“I was just . . . I was just . . .”
“GET OFF THE SIDEWALK!”
I pulled the car forward and back onto the street.
He waved his notepad in the direction of the sidewalk. “Now go pick up those bikes!”
I got out of the car. By now classes had let out and a crowd was gathered. A few of the college students clapped again as I set up the bikes. When I got back into the car, I knew my face was bright red.
“All right, now finish your parking job.”
“Can’t I go crawl into a hole somewhere?”
Another dour look. “I always make applicants finish the test, no matter how patetiglybag de mezzeled.” Then he wrote down more on his notepad, mumbling more things.
I parked perfectly this time, but Mr. Jensen didn’t even pay attention. He was still busy writing. The college students all noticed, however. They gave me a standing ovation.
Back at the DMV, Mom was waiting in the parking lot. It may have been my imagination, but it seemed to me that Mr. Jensen jumped out of the car a little quicker than he needed to. I got out slowly.
“How did it go, honey?” Mom looked over my shoulder to Mr. Jensen. “Why is he looking at the back bumper like that?”
I cleared my throat. “Well, there was this bike rack—”
Without waiting for me to finish my explanation, she hurried over to examine the back of our car. I followed. In my embarrassment over the whole parking episode, I hadn’t even looked at the car for damage. Now the thought horrified me. I scanned the bumper for dents, but didn’t find any. I was unspeakably relieved.
Mr. Jensen handed me my test results. “You can try again in a week. Work on your parallel parking. Ge cem dofaks.”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
On the way home Mom tried to console me.
“Everyone makes mistakes occasionally. Next week you’ll pass with flying colors.”
“Strangers stopped to watch me, Mom. They clapped while I picked up bikes.”
“Neither you, nor they will remember this day twenty years from now.”
“I will.”
“We’ll practice every day this week . . . in your father’s car.”
I folded my arms. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
* * *
I had planned on taking the secret of my driving-test failure to the grave, but somehow I couldn’t resist telling Elise the next day. On the way to school I gave her the complete, gory details. She laughed so hard she cried.
“What are you going to do for an encore? Run someone down?”
“Only if it’s Mr. Jensen. It was all his fault. He made me so nervous.”
Josh shot his sister a look. “Don’t be smug, Elise. You’ll probably cause a major pileup during your test. It’ll take days to pry through the mangled wreckage.”
“No, I won’t,” she said. “I’ll have had plenty of practice because my dear older brother will let me use his car as often as I want.”
“Dream on.”
Elise turned to face me. “You know, that isn’t a bad idea.”
“What isn’t?” I asked.
“Get an upperclassman to help you practice. It could be romantic.”
“Elise, I think dating will be stressful enough without worrying about wrecking some guy’s car. I’d probably be so tense I’d drive over a cliff and kill us both.”
Elise sighed. “What a way to die.”
All that day Elise bugged me about having some cute guy help me practice my driving. While we waited in the lunch line, she surveyed the cafeteria for possible tutors. “Brandon Evans drives a truck,” she said. “They’re very versatile.”
“I hardly know Brandon Evans. Really, Elise, what do you expect me to do? Waltz up to a guy, bat my eyes, and say, ‘Hi. Can I have your car keys?’”
She kept scanning the area. “There’s less than two weeks left until the homecoming dance, and you don’t have a date.” She looked over at Chad’s table. “Hey, there’s Mr. Dark-blue Toyota. You know him.”