Deanna Roy - Forever Innocent

But now she was here and wanted nothing to do with me. Just as well. If she knew what all I’d done since leaving that funeral, she’d hate me even more. 

My boss never missed a thing.

“Roll all the tires out to recycling,” Bud said. “They’re filling up the back.”

I stuck my punch card in the sleeve dangling beneath the clock. “You hatin’ on me today?”

“You look like you need a chore that won’t cost me money if you screw it up.” Bud coughed into his elbow. “Class that tough?”

I tossed my backpack beneath a scuffed-up desk by the door. “You have no idea.”

“Don’t need no degree to hold a socket wrench.” Bud wiped his hands on his overalls, leaving a long black smear.

I forced a laugh. “And that’s a good thing, since I’ll be sixty-five before I graduate.”

“You got your schedule? I’ll figure up your hours.”

“Nah. I’m dropping out.”

Bud pulled off his hat and wiped his head with a red rag. “That’s bull.”

“Nope. Not feeling it this year.”

Bud’s meaty hand gripped my shoulder in a vise. “I know I just said you don’t need a degree. But you’re not cut out for this work long-term. I like you, and you’ve got a job here as long as you need one, but I’m not going to stand by and let you quit school.”

I turned away, shrugging off his hand. “Then fire me.”

He spun me back around. “Get out there and roll tires until you change your mind.”

“Not enough tires out there for that.”

“You ain’t been back there in a while.”

Fine. I stormed through the bays where Randy and Carl were changing oil on a couple SUVs. Mario had the guts of a 1997 Camaro spread on a tarp, shaking his head over a gunked-up intake manifold.

I stopped short, seeing the car. Why would this car be in the shop at this very moment?

Mario lifted a gasket and peered through the hole. “People don’t treat their babies right.”

I ran my hand along the roof, shiny and clean. “They kept it waxed and purty on the outside.”

Mario grunted. “The engine is beyond gone. These people should be lined up and executed.”

I thumbed the door handle, unable to resist a look inside. I had saved up and bought a very similar Camaro when I turned eighteen. Corabelle and I had broken it in pretty fast, and just looking at the slope of the passenger seat brought up visions of her, sweaty hair sticking to her forehead, looking down on me as she straddled my lap.

I slammed the door closed.

“Easy, friend. Everything’s loose and hanging.” Mario reached for a rag. “You don’t like the car?”

“I used to have one.”

“Ah, a woman. Always a woman.”

“How did you get from the car to a girl?”

“A man slams a door, it’s always about a woman.” He grinned.

I had to be wearing my damn past on my shoulders. First Bud, now Mario. “I got to go roll tires.”

Mario laughed. “You piss off the boss man again?”

“Apparently I’ve pissed off the world.”

Mario chortled as I walked on through to the back, where the old and new tires were stored. Some we repaired and resold as used. The ones too far gone were rolled behind the shop and heaved into a short dumpster that would be picked up by a recycler when it got full. It was a backbreaking chore, tumbling the flat and sometimes shredded tires and tossing them over the side wall.

I tugged the first tire off the stack and braced it on my shoulder. It was too thrashed to wheel out, and I knew from experience to take these first, as once you got worn down, you wanted to be rolling, not lugging.

A girl with long black hair stepped out of a car on the side lot as I pushed through the back door. I stared so hard that I stumbled off the curb, sure it was Corabelle, and my heart nearly thumped right out of my skin.

But when she looked my way, I realized she was just some other girl. She peered up at the sign to Bud’s Garage and headed toward the front door. I wondered if Corabelle had already gone to see her counselor and dropped out of astronomy. I picked the class because of the star parties, like most undergrads. I didn’t really need more science electives, as my geology courses were plenty, but it seemed a good balance, the earth and the heavens, staying grounded but looking up to the infinite.

I tossed the tire into the bin. Damn, I hadn’t waxed all poetic like this in years. Life had been practical for a long time. Work. Class. Beer. Studies. Occasional women, when I could afford one. I didn’t have much of a clue what I’d actually do with a degree in geology. But rocks were solid. They didn’t change, not easily. If they got worn down, it took time.

Then there were geodes. My grandpa, way back when I was a kid, had bought me one once. He cracked it sharply on the step in front of our house, and the dull smooth exterior revealed something fantastic inside, a sparkling burst of colored crystal — the opposite of what it had once appeared to be. I immediately ran to Corabelle’s to give her half, leaving my grandpa behind to laugh at my surprise.

Life had turned out exactly the opposite of that rock. What once had been so bright and full of promise had gotten buried in the dull grays of the daily grind. I still had that geode, though, and it had inspired me to get my high school diploma squared away and take up geology at UCSD. Pick a new dream, as far from my old life as possible.

I wiped the sweat off my neck, glad for a hat as the sun was more like summer than fall. Honest work, my mother would have said. I should call her. I hadn’t spoken to her, hell, since Christmas. I yanked open the back door, feeling guilt but pushing it back. I knew why I didn’t call. Dad would jerk the phone from her hand, start yelling about when I was going to pay him back for that semester he covered when I took off. Four years and he wouldn’t let it go. He never let anything go.

I decided to roll the next tire, and chose one so bald it showed the tread ghosts. Still, I wasn’t seeing the rubber or the stack, but Corabelle’s face, not the features of a girl any longer, but sharper and more defined. I’d looked into that face more than anyone’s, even my mother’s, from the time we could walk. We lived back to back across an alley, and the path from my house to hers was one I could do in the pitch black, the driving rain of a monsoon, sick, angry, lost, or desperate.

I smashed through the door, already tired of rolling. Corabelle had been my whole life for eighteen years. The last four without her had been nothing. I hadn’t seen it until I looked up from that piece of paper listing her name, and there she was.

Right now, it was her choice to reject me and that had to feel good to her. She was getting me back for leaving and for all the things she didn’t even know.

Maybe I shouldn’t quit. Maybe I should keep letting her throw punches at me. If she gave a good hard shove that truly and finally hurt, maybe I’d finally stop wanting her back. 

The strap to my backpack was going to break clean off if I jerked on it any more. I sat across from my counselor, who looked frazzled from dealing with first-day mishaps. Folders and loose pages covered her enormous desk. The office was small and hot, and a rivulet of sweat trickled from her hairline down her temple as she typed.

“Corabelle, you have three choices. Pick a different time slot for a class. Drop below a full load for the quarter.” She glanced up at me. “Or stay in astronomy.”

My fingers tightened on the strap again. “I have to ask my manager if I can change my hours. He has to work around all our schedules.”

“Well, I can’t help you if I don’t know any other times. There’s nothing else useful to you on Mondays at 9 a.m. unless you want another PE-type credit. I can get you into interpretive dance or weight lifting.”

I groaned.

“Enrollment is way up this year and classes have started. Pickings are slim.” She tapped more keys. “I’ve got seven students hoping you’ll drop astronomy. It’s a popular class.”

“How long is the waiting list for the speech class, or what was the other?”

“Ancient Rome. Too long. Those are small classes and I don’t think enough could possibly drop.” She swiveled in her chair. “Corabelle, if you want to graduate on time, you should just take this class. I don’t understand why you’re suddenly so opposed.”

I couldn’t tell her it was about a boy. “It’s got too much extra work for an elective.”

“The star parties are what make the class. You knew that going in.”

I swallowed. “I have to get out.”

She pushed a folder aside. “Let me pull up your actual records rather than this printed overview. We can take a good hard look at your transfer history and see if maybe we can wiggle some class over to cover this one.”

I slammed my hand on the desk. “No!”

She looked up, startled.

I forced myself to relax. “I mean, no, it’s fine.”

She turned from the keyboard to study me. “I’m just trying to see where you might switch something around. Maybe there’s an online course.”

My face burned. I’d gone this far without anyone finding out what happened in New Mexico. I couldn’t risk the consequences if that professor had saved any note in the system. “I’ll stay in astronomy.”

The woman nodded. “That’s a good choice. You’ll find the star parties fantastic.” She closed my folder full of official printouts I painstakingly kept, all bearing seals and formal letters, anything I could do to avoid people digging too deeply into my electronic past. So far, I had been able to count on people being busy or lazy.