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“You think so?”

“I do. I really do.”

He raises his head and looks me in the eyes. “You know, Ceejay, whoever this guy is you’ve got a thing for is real lucky.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“No, I mean it. You’re something else.” He brushes my hair back from my face. “You mind if I give you one more kiss just for good measure?”

I have to smile at him. You can’t help but like Chuck. “Okay, just one.”

It’s a good kiss. I’m sure he’s not even capable of kissing bad, but it doesn’t matter now. I’ve been inoculated against feeling passion for him. This kiss is nothing but good practice. Except just as he’s finishing up, a pair of headlights shine on us. My first thought is Bobby and Mona are back, but I’m not that lucky. It’s Padgett’s VW pulling up instead.

The headlights flick off, and for a moment the VW sits there idling. I wave with my free hand, but my other arm is still wrapped around Chuck’s back. I’m hoping at least Padgett didn’t see the kiss, but that’s doubtful. The back of the pickup is facing directly toward the road leading up to the captain’s house. The headlights beamed straight into our faces. I pull my arm free and start to get up, but the headlights flip back on and the VW begins backing up.

“Padgett,” I call. “Hey, wait a minute.” But he turns the car around and heads back toward the main road.

I’m like, “Oh, crap. Come on, Chuck, we have to catch him.”

“What? Why?”

“Don’t ask questions. Let’s just go.”

As Chuck fires up the truck, he looks at me and goes, “This isn’t the dude you’re hot for, is it?” And I’m like, “Yeah, you got anything to say about it?”

“No,” he says. “Not a thing. Except like I said before—he’s a lucky guy.”

On the highway, it’s not hard to catch Padgett—he’s not exactly the fast and the furious in that VW of his—but getting him to pull over is another story. I have to yell and wave and do everything but flash my boobs at him before he finally stops on the shoulder of the road.

I tell Chuck to wait in the pickup, but he’s right behind me as I walk up to the VW. Padgett rolls down the window. “What are you guys chasing me for?”

“Why’d you drive off?”

He looks away. “It didn’t exactly seem like you two were in the mood for company.”

“Hey, we were just talking. Chuck’s girlfriend broke up with him, and I was giving him some advice.”

Padgett’s like, “I know. I saw what kind of advice you were giving him. I’m sure he’s a much better kisser now.”

I’m like,
What’s he got to be mad about? He
sure never tried to kiss me. He hasn’t even called in the last couple of days.

“Look,” says Chuck. “She’s telling you the truth, dude. She was just giving me some advice. I’m the one that laid the kiss on her. She didn’t ask for it or anything.”

Padgett goes, “It didn’t look like she was asking you to stop either.”

So Chuck goes, “Quit being such a crybaby. You’re the one she’s crazy about, not me.”

I knew letting Chuck out of the truck was a bad idea.

“Shut up,” I tell him. “You’re not helping. Go back to the truck and let me talk to him.”

“What’s the matter?” says Chuck. “What’d I say?”

“Just give us a few minutes alone, okay?”

He’s like, “Whatever,” and heads back to the truck.

“What was he talking about?” Padgett says. “Did he say you’re crazy about me?”

“Don’t pay any attention to him. He’s wasted times ten.”

“So that’s not what he said?”

“Look, I don’t want to stand here talking with him back there staring at us. Why don’t you get out and we’ll take a walk.”

“A walk? Where, down the side of the highway?”

“We’ll just walk down to the bridge and look at the river and then come back.”

He stares through the windshield for a moment.

“Come on,” I tell him. “What do you think I’m going to do, pull a chainsaw on you or something?”

Finally, he’s like, “Oh, all right,” twists his key from the ignition, and gets out of the car. The bridge isn’t but a couple of hundred yards down the road, but the weird tension between us makes it seem longer.

After an awkward silence, I go, “This is going to be hard for me. I’m not a big apologizer, but the first thing I want you to know is I’m sorry about the way I acted the other night when you were telling me about that traumatic stress stuff.”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“Yeah, right. It’s just I’m real protective when it comes to Bobby. He’s always been like the most important person in my life, pretty much.”

“I wasn’t trying to say anything bad about him. You know? I mean, if you’re protective, you should want to know what’s wrong with him. He needs professional help.”

“But it’s just so ridiculous—my brother with a mental
disorder. Anyone who could think that doesn’t know him one bit.”

He starts to come back with something to that, and I realize I’m getting mad all over again, so I cut him off. “Look, I don’t want to argue about it anymore. What I want to say is I’m glad you want to help. I think you’re wrong, but I appreciate how much trouble you went through doing research and everything. That was really nice of you, and I shouldn’t, you know, put you down for that. Okay?”

He says okay, but I can tell he still wants to push the issue. We finally reach the bridge and stand there leaning against the guardrail, looking at the river. The light from the moon swims along the surface of the water below. The air is warm, and the smell of the woods is thick and heavy.

“So,” I say, “were you mad about me and Chuck?”

“Mad? Why should I be mad? I just didn’t want to interrupt you guys, that’s all.”

“You seemed mad.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“He did kiss me,” I say. “But it was just one of those things that came out of the blue. He was wasted and feeling bad about getting dumped by his girlfriend and needed someone to make him feel not so bad about himself. That’s all that was. I feel sorry for him, but I don’t have any, like,
feeling
feelings for him.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

He looks toward the river. “That’s good.”

“Really? You think it’s good?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?” I’m bound to get him to admit he has feelings for me, even if I have to squeeze it out of him.

He keeps staring at the river.

“Well?” I say.

Without looking at me he says, “I talked to my father the other day.”

“Wait a minute. Are you changing the subject?”

“I’m just trying to explain something.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “The thing is my dad had a big relapse, got arrested for DUI again. It looks like he may be going to jail for a while.”

“I’m sorry.” I reach over and squeeze his wrist. “So now what’s going to happen?”

“Well, for one thing it means I won’t be going back to the city this fall.”

“Oh yeah?” I try not to sound too happy about it. I mean, yes, I hate to hear his dad had a relapse and all, but at the same time I’m pretty thrilled Padgett’s staying around a little longer.

“Yeah,” he says. “I won’t be doing all those things in the city we used to talk about. I won’t be doing anything.”

“That’s not true. We’ll do plenty of stuff together right here. The city will still be there later on.”

“Maybe,” he says, still staring off at the river. “But I have to tell you I’ve been thinking, and I just don’t think I can do, like, a real relationship. I mean, look at what happened with my parents. Why would I want to get involved in a disaster like that?”

Wow. You can’t help but hurt for a guy when he says something like that.

So I’m like, “Hey, all relationships aren’t a disaster. My parents’ sure isn’t. They’ve lasted pretty well. I’m not saying it was always easy, but they toughed it out when they had to. Come on, you’re the guy wearing white. Take your own advice and have a little hope.”

He lets out a faint half-laugh and half-sigh. “Maybe I should start wearing blue instead.” He brushes his long hair back from
his face. “Anymore, it seems like all this hope business is just a way of kidding yourself, pretending something good’s going to come when you don’t have any way of knowing if it will. Like a dull painkiller to keep you from seeing what life’s really about.”

I study him for a moment. “Then forget hope,” I tell him. “Screw it. You don’t need hope. What you need is valiance. When everything goes dark, you keep going anyway. That’s what you do.”

He looks at me, a skeptical smile cocking one side of his mouth. “Valiance, huh?”

“Damn right,” I say. “That’s what you can wear white for now. Like the white knight, the way he keeps fighting with dragons breathing fire right in his face.”

“That’s all right for you,” he says, looking away. “You’ve got valiance to spare, but where am I going to get any?”

“What are you talking about? You had to have plenty of guts just to be you in a town like this.”

“I don’t know about that.”

I step closer to him. “Let me ask you something.”

“What?” He doesn’t make eye contact.

“Here, look at me.”

“Okay,” he says. “What’s the question?”

“Just this,” I say, and, without giving myself a chance to chicken out, I lean in and kiss him, hard, putting everything I just learned from Chuck into it and then some.

When I pull back, he stares at me for a second, then says, “Ask me again.”

This time everything inside us breaks loose. Our hands get into the action, mine moving up and down his back, and his tangling in my hair. It’s different from how it was with Chuck. There’s more than just the sexual thing. I’m gravity-defying,
like a rocket burning full-force into space, the moon and the stars fracturing around me and falling on all sides.

“What does that do for your relationship-disaster theory?” I ask when we stop to get our breath.

“What theory?” he says, and comes back for more.

I could stand there kissing on that bridge till my lips wear out. It crosses my mind that the Tip-Top Motel isn’t too far away. If we pooled our money, we could probably get a room. But a strange noise brings us back to reality. Something is coming down the highway, but we can’t tell what. Then Padgett recognizes the sputtering sound.

“Crap!” he says. “It’s Angelica. The captain’s trying to fly her down the road!”

It’s more like he’s bouncing than flying. The tires skip on the road, then he’s a couple of feet in the air, then another skip and he’s four feet high. As he gets closer, we see Chuck running behind the captain, but he’s so wasted he keeps falling down.

“This isn’t good,” Padgett says. “He hasn’t even had any flying lessons.”

We both run up the highway, waving our arms and yelling for him to stop, but he never looks our way. His cap is turned backward and his goggles stretch so tight his face takes on the wild determination of a comic-book character. He’s hollering something I can’t understand at first, but as he gets even with us it comes clear: “The Nogo Gatu are here! The Nogo Gatu are here! Evacuate! Evacuate!”

The aero-velocipede dips low again. It isn’t exactly going
to break the sound barrier, so, running hard, we can actually keep pace, but what good is that? It’s not like we can tackle the thing.

“Captain,” Padgett yells, “cut off the engine. Cut off the engine.”

Fat chance. Instead, the captain whooshes up to almost six feet, the highest he’s been yet, and heads across the bridge, coming back down, and nearly banging into the guardrails before making it to the other side.

Behind us, Chuck’s huffing and puffing, his nose bloody from falling down on the road. “I tried to stop him,” he shouts. “The dude’s totally flipped out.”

“Hurry up,” calls Padgett. “We’re going to have to grab hold of it somehow.”

I’m like, “The whole thing will crash if we try that,” but he’s already sprinting away from me.

“We don’t have any other choice,” he calls over his shoulder.

So there we are, running down the road with the captain in front of us, gaining speed, rising and dipping, veering left then right, Angelica’s nose aiming upward at one moment, her tail end scraping pavement the next. As we catch up to him, he’s about five feet off the ground, but we have a bigger problem than just finding a place to grab hold of.

In the distance, a pair of headlights rounds the curve in the road and heads our way.

“Oh hell,” says Chuck. He’s even with me now, and all three of us are gaining on Angelica.

“Captain, you gotta come down!” hollers Padgett. “You gotta come down.”

Padgett reaches for Angelica’s frame, but as soon as he does, she wafts up and away from his grip. “Come on, Chuck,” I yell. “You have to grab it. You’re the only one tall enough.”

Chuck leaps once and misses, then tries again, and this time he loses his balance and crashes to the pavement.

The headlights blaze closer. There’s no way we can stay in the road. We can only hope the captain will fly high enough to dodge the car or that the driver will see us in time to stop.

With the car a couple hundred yards away, the captain glides up to his highest altitude yet, maybe ten feet, but he only stays there for a moment before swooping back down. The headlights bear down hard, but at the last moment, the driver must spot what probably seems like a low-flying UFO. Brakes squeal, the car fishtails, the front end veers off the road and smacks into a highway sign.

At the same time, the captain dips low and tilts to the left. The tail end of the car juts into the road, and the nose of the aero-velocipede heads straight for it like a dive bomber.

“Pull up!” yells Padgett. “Pull up!”

But it’s too late. Angelica’s wheels plow into the car, snapping against the rear fender, her belly scraping across the trunk. From there she bounces through a fence and digs into the alfalfa field on the other side, the motor sputtering out as she rocks to a stop.

Only as we run toward the scene of the crash do I realize who’s in the car—Dani. She must have been heading home. After ripping off her seat belt, she throws open the car door and starts screaming, “What the hell are you dumbasses doing out here? You could’ve killed me!” She looks like a ninja assassin coming at us. “See what you did to my fucking car!”