Page 136 of Drive
Before she could think twice, Rainey grabbed Holi’s keys and walked outside. She descended the porch steps and found herself standing in front of Holi’s Cooper. It was a hardtop four-door. Pepper white. As cute as a car was allowed tobe.
She’d ridden in it — both shotgun and in the tight back seat — countless times. But now, she tiptoed to the driver’s side and gripped the door handle. It was warm from the late morning sun, and the warmth feltreassuring.
Rainey pulled the door open and stared at the steering wheel. The driver’s seat. The brake and gas pedals. Holi had renewed her driver’s license online three years ago when the Office of Motor Vehicles had mailed Rainey the renewal form. Rainey had thought it was a waste of the thirty-five-dollar fee at the time, but now she was grateful to her sister for being sopushy.
I can just get in. Nothing wrong with just gettingin.
She raised a foot and lowered herself onto the black leather seat. She placed her hands on the leather steering wheel as the driver’s seat seemed to hug her. The wheel felt molded to her grip, yetsupple.
She tugged the door closed and for a moment allowed herself to listen to the insulated silence of the car’s interior. Even the sound of her breath seemed to be muted. And that was a comfort because her breath wassteady.
Rainey realized she felt nofear.
What she felt — aside from an awareness that was so acute she thought she could feel each cell in her body hum with life — was fear’s absence. As though the place it used to be was hollowed out. Like a losttooth.
And it was just as fascinating. She wanted to probe the empty space like a six-year-old with the tip of her tongue, but even in the absence of fear, on the periphery of her awareness was something shadowy and immaterial. That, she knew instinctively, was the fear of the fear. The feeling that although it slept now, the fear could return if she wasn’t careful. But if she was careful, she could sneak pastit.
With this thought, Rainey pressed the ignitionbutton.
After three days in the Impala, the purr of the Cooper was so gentle, Rainey pressed the gas to make sure it was really running. The engine revved obediently, the sound, she found, surprisinglysatisfying.
She laid her right hand over the gearshift and saw that her fingers trembled. Again, she had the wherewithal to understand that it wasn’t fear but adrenaline that made them shake. Moving it down one notch, the car shifted intoreverse.
All you have to do is let up on the brake, and you’ll bedriving.
Her heart, now an excited flutter in her chest, made itself known like an untrained puppy wishing for attention. Ignoring it, she eased her foot off the brake, and the Cooper rolled backslowly.
It was then that the pores over her temples opened. On instinct, she checked the rearview and saw that her path was clear. A quick glance over each shoulder told her that the road was free of oncoming traffic. With shaking hands, she coaxed the steering wheel 120 degrees and reversed neatly ontoOakview.
And then shefroze.
Rainey listened to the inhale and exhale of three steady breaths. Desperately, she wanted to shift the car into drive and take off. Instead, she wiped her thumb across her upper lip, which was now dotted with perspiration, and she swallowed a noisygulp.
Then her phonerang.
The sound startled her so that her foot slipped off the brake, and she jolted backward for a jarring half second before she stomped down on itagain.
“Holycrap!”
Her phone rested next to her purse on the seat beside her, and, blessedly, the name across the screen readJacques.She swiped at the screen and stabbed the speakerphoneicon.
“J-Jacques?” she called, her voiceshaking.
“Hey, baby, you there? It’s hard to hearyou.”
She grabbed the phone and held it, shaking, in front of her. “I-I’m here. Are you inL.A.?”
“Yeah, we made it,” he said. Then there was a short pause. “You okay? You soundfunny.”
She hesitated. “Um…” The sound of his voice eased something inside her, but she had no idea how she would explain what she was doing. She wasn’t even a hundred percent sure what she wasdoing.
Was she planning to drive all the way to the jewelers? Granted, the whole distance round-trip was less than three miles. And when she thought about — pictured maneuvering the car up Oakview, making a left turn onto Johnston Street, crossing the two intersections between her neighborhood and the South College Shopping Center, and pulling into the parking lot — Rainey knew deep in her soul that she would make the tripsafely.
And, yet, the act of drawing down the gearshift into drive and pressing the gas pedal seemed as hard as base-jumping with a sketchyparachute.
“Rainey?” Jacques asked, breaking through the silence. “Where areyou?”
Rainey gripped the steering wheel in her left hand and cradled the phone in her right. “I-I’m in Holi’scar.”
