“Okay,” I said, feeling my face flush. “We’re out of here.”
My dad handed me the keys to the Falcon. I opened the front door for Mickie, but when I followed her onto the porch I bumped into her. She’d stopped suddenly.
“No way,” Mickie said, looking and sounding dumbfounded.
The Falcon remained parked in the driveway but was now wrapped in a big red bow. I turned to my parents.
“Surprise,” my mother and father said in unison.
“No way! No way!” Mickie said, stepping from the porch to the driveway, circling the car. “You got the Falcon?”
“Damn,” Ernie said under his breath.
I’d expected a junker, something slow and safe, if anything at all. The Falcon was cool in and of itself—forget that it was also a convertible and fast. “Really?” I asked.
My dad shrugged. “Your mother wants a new car.”
But I knew my mother still loved that Falcon, even if it now had some miles on it and tended to leak a little oil.
“It’s mine?” I asked, still not believing.
“If you pay for your own gas and upkeep,” my father said.
I had grown up spending Sunday afternoons changing the oil and doing the tune-ups on the cars with my dad. I don’t know if he did it to avoid Fast Eddy’s garage or to save money, or both, but I had learned a lot and knew I could keep the Falcon running in tip-top shape. Paying for gas, however, would not be easy. My friends’ thirty dollars wouldn’t go far with gas at thirty-six cents a gallon.
“You’ll be a chick magnet driving that car, Hell,” Ernie said. “Especially with me in the passenger seat.”
“You got a car,” Mickie said, not sounding at all happy at my second surprise of the night.
“I’m talking Friday and Saturday nights,” Ernie said. “Cruising the El Camino Real!”
“We’ll wait a bit for that,” my mom said, arching her eyebrows at Ernie. “Samuel just got his license.”
“I’ll watch out for him,” Mickie said. “And make sure no chicks stick to the car.”
6
As we drove the El Camino, Mickie slid across the bench seat and pressed next to me. This would become her unwavering spot. “You are so spoiled,” she said.
“I’m not spoiled,” I said, but I was unable to hide the huge grin carved across my face.
“They gave you a freaking car.”
“It’s not exactly new, and I have to pay for my own gas and upkeep. You heard my dad.”
“Poor baby.”
“If anyone is spoiled, it’s Ernie; he got a new car.”
“Please, a convertible Falcon or a VW Bug? Kids would kill to have this car. You might even get laid, Hill.”
I felt my face flush.
Mickie leaned away, smiling. “Don’t tell me you’re still a virgin, Hill?”
“No,” I said, but I was never a good liar, especially not with Mickie.
“You are,” she said, smiling. “You’re still a virgin.”
“Okay, so I am. So what? A lot of guys my age are.”
“That’s because you go to a school without girls, and you’re all homos,” she said, teasing me. But I was in no mood to be teased.
“No, it’s because girls don’t exactly swoon for guys with red eyes.”