Читать книгу Are We There Yet? - Дэвид Левитан, David Levithan, Рэйчел Кон - Страница 11

CAL DRIVES ELIJAH DOWN FROM PROVIDENCE IN HER BITCHIN’ CAMARO. It was buck-naked white until she and Elijah covered it with the primary-colour handprints of all their friends. It’s a 1979 model, the transmission is crap, and it goes from 0 to 60 in just under four minutes. But, man, once it gets to 60! The Camaro is, joyously, a convertible. Cal and Elijah zoom down I-95, blasting pop from the year of the car’s birth, swerving from lane to lane. When they can hear each other over the wind and the music, they speak Connecticut: I will not Stamford this type of behaviour. What’s Groton into you? What did Danbury his Hartford? New Haven can wait. Darien’t no place I’d rather be.

As they reach the New York state line, Elijah feels the urge to turn back. He can’t pinpoint why. It seems the wrong time to be leaving. He doesn’t want to step out of the present, this present. Because once he does, there will be college applications and college acceptances (just one will do) and the last of everything (last class, last party, last night, last day, last goodbye), and then the world will change forever and he will go to college and eventually become an adult. That is not what he wants. He does not want those complications, that change. Not now.

He tells himself to get a grip. Cal is driving him forward. Cal and everyone else will be here when he returns. It’s like he’s travelling into another dimension. Time here will stop. Because he is entering Family Standard Time. None of it will carry over to Cal, to the Camaro, to the state of Connecticut.

He will go with his brother. He will have a good time. Life will be waiting for him when he gets back. Not a bad deal.

Elijah smiles at Cal. But Cal isn’t looking. Then she turns to him as if she knows. She smiles back and blasts the music louder.