Page 44 of Furious

“JoJo Lucille Emerson-Boyd, get out of that car this minute.” His voice cuts through my thoughts, and his use of my full name makes me wince. There’s a controlled edge to his voice, a hint as sharp as a knife in a chef’s hand. That edge, in someone who doesn’t yell, tells me he’s well and fully furious.

Keep moving, I hear my mother’s voice in my head, reciting one of her earliest racing lessons. The only way forward is through and the faster you go, the sooner you’ll get there.

I pull the keys from the ignition, retrieve my messenger bag from the back seat, and step out of the car. The door slams softly shut behind me and my boots crunch over the driveway’s gravel as I walk toward the porch. “Hi, Dad.”

He’s in jeans and one of Mom’s old racing T-shirts. A car with her number on the front sits superimposed over a bright blue shape of the state of North Carolina. It’s such a little thing, to see him wearing one of her shirts like old times, but it makes my heart ache.

“Fun time at volunteer club?” he says archly.

I can’t help but smile, trying to push my sadness down. “Fun time with the president of the volunteer club. Does that count?”

Dad doesn’t crack. “Hardly. Sit.”

He points to one of the rocking chairs on the porch, but I climb the steps and plop onto the porch railing. We’ve not fought or talked much in months and Mom was usually the one to ground me or come up with a punishment when I got into trouble, which was rare. Dad was usually happy to take a back seat to her, and even now, the strain of figuring out what to say makes his forehead crinkle.

Silence stretches between us, a great expanse filled up by the rustle of the breeze through the leaves of the twin oaks in Grandma Jolene’s yard and the buzz of thousands of cicadas. The scent of the night-blooming jasmine that climbs a trellis on the far side of the porch floats on the air, delicate and seductive. I lick my lips, tasting El’s chapstick again. Somehow I feel like a part of so many stories in this moment—the ones from my past, when Mom and I would sit on this porch and I would catch fireflies; and the one from right now, when I snuck out and kissed a girl after winning a race; and the ones in a future that hasn’t happened yet, when Dad I might laugh about this moment someday. Thinking about that hypothetical future reminds me of the very real, tangible one I have tied to the form in my messenger bag. The one I still need to ask Dad about.

I slip the Hornet’s keys into my pocket. “I’m guessing you already know where I’ve been?” I say, prompting Dad. The sooner we get through this, the sooner we can talk about other things.

Dad blows out a breath, finding his voice at last. “Mostly. Your grandmother got a call from Mabel Rae, her head mechanic, about an hour ago. Mabel Rae went back to the garage tonight to get her phone, and when she got there, the Hornet was gone. She panicked—”

Horror fills me, a shot of ice down the back of my neck, as I think of something that somehow hadn’t occurred to me yet. “Did she call the police?”

Is borrowing Mom’s car going to send me to jail? That would kill all my chances at the F1 Academy and likely mean I couldn’t race or go to college—and what would it mean for El? She’s going to hate me if—

“Mabel called Jolene first,” Dad says, swiping a hand through his hair. “So slow those speeding thoughts of yours. Mabel Rae had a notion that you might have wanted to drive the Hornet. Says you’ve been working on it all week, so she called your grandmother in Italy first. Jolene called me—and you, I’d imagine.”

I hold up my phone, showing him all the missed calls from Grandma Jolene.

Dad nods. “Yep. I told her you were with Eliana Blum. When we couldn’t get you, Jolene called El’s parents.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“And El’s parents told you I picked her up in the Hornet?”

“They told Jolene you picked El up in the Hornet,” Dad confirms. “None of which you were supposed to be doing.”

Shit.

My stomach plummets. El has to be in so much trouble. Which isn’t really fair.

Getting defensive is a terrible idea; I know this. But I can’t help it. I can’t explain to Dad the real reason why I took the car or how important it was to get Max’s jacket back. Or why I had to help El. Or what it means to have a friend or a connection to someone. Or what it was like to kiss a girl like El under the stars on a warm summer night.

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, crossing my arms.

“That’s a wildly untrue statement.” Dad sits in a rocking chair and knocks another cigarette out of the pack. “You took a car that doesn’t belong to you, from private property, drove it without a license, and did who-knows-what with it.”

Ahhh. So he doesn’t know about the street racing at least. We can keep it that way.

“Dad. You make it sound like I’ve never driven a car. Or like Mom wasn’t letting me drive the Hornet two years ago when I had my learner’s permit. You make it sound like I’m supposed to just sit around this house all the time, not doing anything!” I try to keep my voice level through this speech, but the last part comes out strained. Full of the hundreds of unsaid things I’ve held back over the last few months.

Dad flicks his lighter on and off. “I know all that, JoJo, but you can’t steal a car.”

“I didn’t steal it.”

“You borrowed it then?”

I give a brittle laugh. “It’s practically mine anyway! Since you don’t even drive anymore. Do you really think Mom would just want Betty sitting in the garage unused?”