None of the Regular Rules (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

“Tonight’s goal, as always, is to find Sophie a date
.
” Grace squirmed in the front seat of the car next to me, full of energy. She jiggled her leg and opened and closed her window. Nervous energy. East Central’s sports teams didn’t start practice until the first day of school, and Grace didn’t do well when she couldn’t get her restlessness out on the field or the court or the track (the venue changed, depending on the season).
So s
he got her energy out by planning things for everyone else. “Good plan?”

“A fine plan.” I pulled the car out of my driveway and headed uphill.
“
The catch is, we have to go up the hill in search of guys. Actually, we’ll have to experiment with what happens if we only go straight or left, because my car makes rude noises when I turn right. Any objections?”

“So we’re just going to go left all night?” Grace asked, pulling her eyebrows together. “Where are we going to end up?”

“You sound a little scared, Gracie,” Ella teased from the backseat. “Don’t like the idea of an unknown destination, eh?”

Grace waved her arm in the air dismissively. “Go left. Knock yourselves out.” She pulled out her cell phone and sighed happily.

“How is good ol’ Ian?” Ella asked. It was obvious Grace was cooing over a text from her perfectly
polished, white-toothed, uptight boyfriend. “Is he ready for a super-duper first day of school?”

I shot her a warning glance as we drove past the grocery store and a gas station. Ella thought Ian was a dweeb of epic proportions, and I sort of agreed, but she was supposed to keep that opinion locked away. It seemed like he made Grace happy, and I didn’t want to see our happy
threesome split up because Ella couldn’t keep her opinion about Ian to herself. “He could have come out with us tonight, Grace.”

“Oh, no, it’s okay. He didn’t want to intrude.”

“What a sweetheart,” Ella said. “If only I had a boyfriend just like adorable Ian.”

Grace sighed happily again, either pointedly ignoring or blissfully unaware of Ella’s sarcasm. Sometimes it was hard to tell if Grace feigned naivety to keep conflict to a minimum. Ella could be a real turd a lot of the time. “I know. I wish we could find someone perfect for both of you. Unless you’re ready to actually start talking to Peter Martinson again this year, El? I think you should.”

“I will.”

“You will?” I asked. Ella had been in love with the same jerky guy forever. She and Peter Martinson had kissed, once, way back in seventh grade, and she had been trying to figure out a way to finagle a do-over ever since. Ella firmly believed that she and Peter were made for each other, but that nothing else had ever happened between them because she’d kissed like a leech. Whatever that means. I think nothing else ever happened between them because they’d be a strange couple and had nothing in common, but there was no convincing her of that. “When?”

“I will. Sometime. Eventually.” Ella stared out the window. “But at the moment we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you. After all, tonight’s goal is to find you a date. A man date.”

The road hit a T, and I had to turn. I went left again, heading onto the beaten-down old road that slowly wound around the far side of the golf course. I knew it would wrap us around so we’d be headed back downhill eventually. It was a gorgeous evening, we had the windows down, and we weren’t really in any hurry to get anywhere in particular. I reveled in the fact that I owned a car and could drive anywhere I wanted, with no end point in mind. “I’m all about finding me a date,” I said as the wind whipped at my ponytail and pulled pieces loose around my face. “But please don’t say ‘man’ like that. It sounds like I’m trying to hook up with someone’s dad. Man implies old, bald guy.”

“Gross.” Grace giggled beside me. “Sophie, I wish you and Sean were still together.” She put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed, as though she was comforting me through a difficult breakup.

“I don’t,” I said, and meant it. “Sean acted like an eleven-year-old, and his mouth was always cold.”

“His mouth was always cold?” Ella blurted out. “What do you mean?”

I shrugged. “I mean, kissing him reminded me of drinking a milkshake. Even after we’d been kissing for, like, five minutes, his mouth still seemed cold and slippery. It was like his spit failed to keep pace with the rest of his body heat.”

Ella and Grace both
said
“ew,” but it was true. I’d dated slippery-lipped Sean Holton for a month and a half at the end of junior year, and his chilly spit was only part of the problem. He was also completely shallow, and we never had anything to talk about. Mostly, we just hung out when a bunch of people got together on the beach or at someone’s house. He was a boyfriend of convenience and circumstance more than someone I would have actually sought out and kept around for a meaningful amount of time. I don’t think he necessarily adored me either, but it was nice to have someone to kiss. Until I realized he was sort of a waste of time. Why bother, when it wasn’t going to go anywhere?

There were a few guys I’d hung out with since high school had started—none for more than a few weeks or months—that were like Sean. Guys who were fine enough, who seemed fun and even
were
fun…at first. But no one was worth any significant time investment.

“Sadly, the pool of potential is smaller this year,” Grace reminded me. “You’ll either have to dip into the underclass
boys, or take another look at our class now that everyone older than us is taking off for college.”

“Well, at least Ella still has Peter,” I said sweetly, grinning back at Ella. “There’s always seventh
-
grade crushes to fall back on.”

As I drove on, I thought about how people had always said senior year was when we’d see tides shift (a cheesy term, but I swear I’d heard that—verbatim—from
someone
). I’d assumed that meant we were supposed to evolve and live out all our unfulfilled childhood dreams so we could head out into the world with no regrets.
Oh, The Places You’ll Go
, and all that.

But so far it all felt exactly the same. Same conversations. Same lame jeans I’d been wearing since freshman year. I was pretty sure that when school started in a few days, I’d find the same mole on the back of Brennan Donnelly’s overly
large head, always nodding and bobbing
right
in front of me in half my classes.

“…remember, there are plenty of other fish in the sea!” Grace was saying, when I tuned back into the conversation they were
still
having about Peter Martinson. I peeked in the rearview mirror just in time to see Ella roll her eyes.

Suddenly, the car lurched and there was a loud boom. A rock or a funny pothole or—God forbid—a small mammal with sharp horns attacked my tire and pulled my fancy new car out of my control for a few seconds. Something thunked and the car screeched out a banshee
scream as it lilted to the right. I slammed on the brakes and we came to a sudden stop on the rocky shoulder. “Crap.” I put the car in park and unbuckled my seat
belt.

“What was that noise?” Grace asked, peeking out from between her fingers to see if someone or something had landed on the hood of the car. “Did your car just scream at us?”

“I told you, it doesn’t like to go right,” I grumbled.

“Did we pop a tire?” Ella asked, opening her door. She and I both climbed out of the car to inspect for damage. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. This car really is a beauty, eh?”

“I have a spare,” I said. “My Grandpa kept the car well
stocked. And this isn’t exactly the middle of nowhere. The golf course is right there—someone might come by eventually. Or we can walk back to a busier road.”

Ella and I wandered around to Grace’s side of the car. The front passenger tire was, indeed, flat. I didn’t see any dead animals, which was a relief. I’d never been big on blood—or anything else that suggested danger. “Who knows how to change it?” Grace climbed out of her seat and stood next to us, all three of us in a line looking at the flattened front tire. The doors of the car stood open, gaping, and everything was silent.

No one said anything.

“Please tell me one of you has done this before?” I put my hands on my hips and faced my friends. “Grace?”

“Nuh
-
uh,” she said. “I can look it up on my phone, or call Ian, if you want.”

“Don’t call Ian,” Ella said sharply. “I’m sure we can figure this out. We’re smart girls. It can’t be that hard to change a tire.”

I nodded. “Maybe there’s something in the car manual? A visual step-by-step, or at least some tips?”

“Yeah, you guys look for the manual and get the tire out,” Grace said, all business. “I’ll try to find a little how-to video on my phone.” She sat in the gravel on the side of the road and pulled out her phone. “I only have one bar, so it’s going to take a while to load something.”

Ella settled in on the car’s hood while I dug through the glove box, searching for the car’s manual. I knew I had a spare tire in the trunk, but I wasn’t sure what else I needed and I wanted to make sure we wouldn’t pull the car apart when we began to disassemble things. It had been mostly parked in a garage for ten years, after all. It was probably rotting from lack of use.

When I found the little booklet in the glove compartment, I realized it was sort of a miracle that the car’s manual was even still
in
the glove box. The car was older than I was.

I sat next to Ella on the warm front hood and quickly searched for the section on tires. As I flipped to the back of the book, a piece of paper fluttered out of the manual and fell into my lap. Ella looked over my shoulder.

“What is that?” she asked, her smooth hair tickling my cheek as she leaned in close.

I scanned the paper, realizing it hadn’t been attached to the manual. It was handwritten, a piece of lined notebook paper filled with faded ink. The handwriting was small and scratchy, and I immediately recognized it as my aunt Suzy’s. I stared at it, stunned.

After she died, my grandparents
got
rid of or put away just about everything of Suzy’s almost immediately. It was their way of moving on, my mom had explained at the time. I remember how angry I was at the time that they’d been so eager to erase her, to chuck everything so unceremoniously and hide any remaining memories of her away in a box in the attic. Sometimes now it seemed as though she’d never been part of the family at all. No one ever talked about her. She had always just been a warning to us all—don’t be too careless or stupid, don’t push boundaries. The unspoken last part of that lesson was, “or you’ll die.”

Though my grandparents had purged almost everything, they decided to keep her car, but only out of practicality. In the ten years Suzy had been gone, they’d used it as an extra set of wheels that they could pull out of the garage when one of my mom’s six other siblings came into town to visit.

I was eight when she’d died, only ten years younger than Suzy, but not yet old enough to realize she was being erased. Otherwise I would have fought to keep something for myself, anything more than a picture that would remind me of her. But all I had were memories and a few fading photographs, and I’d never dared to ask for more. We were a family that didn’t talk about difficult things, and so it was taboo to talk about her.

But now I had found some sort of list.

Grace looked up from her phone. “This is taking forever. There’s no way I’m going to get a video to load. I think I better try to find a blog or something.” She furrowed her brow. “Any luck over there? What did you find?”

I waved her over. “Look,” I said quietly, scanning the paper. “This was tucked inside the car manual.”

Grace squinted at the paper. “What is it?”

“It’s some sort of list,” Ella said, her bony shoulder pressing against my side as she leaned into me. “Like a list of dares or something. From 2002!”

“
 
‘Number one,’
 
” I read, finally getting my eyes to focus on the paper. “
 
‘Jump off Hanging Rock.’
 
” The jumping spot at Hanging Rock jutted forty feet out over
the
swimming hole, and you had to get your toes right up to the very edge before jumping in order to clear the branches that hung out from the cliffside below. The water at the bottom was near
freezing most of the year.

“Look at this one,” Grace said, blissfully unaware that the list was making me feel sick…especially the last thing on the list, which I had just noticed and was now trying hard to ignore. “
 
‘Number
f
our: Get invited to one of Seth’s parties…and actually go.’
 
” She looked at me pointedly. “Huh. Sounds like Sophie and Johnny Rush.” I tried to smile.

“
 
‘Number
t
en,’
 
” Ella said, pointing. “
 
‘Confess my crush and kiss X.’ Who do you think X is?”