Joy Ride Read online

Joy Ride

  by MB Austin

  --- MB Austin

  For Basha, sine qua non

  We’re already in our nightshirts, Maji on the top bunk and me on mine, when she sits up and swears under her breath. The bunk squeaks some more, and she plunks to the ground. “I have to go back,” she whispers, pulling on shorts in the dim light that filters through the curtains from the streetlight.

  “What? No! Why?” I'm putting my feet on the floor, scanning for some pants in the piles there.

  “Go to sleep, Bubbles. I just left my tape in the player. I'll be back in twenty.”

  By the time I find some shorts, she's down the stairs and creeping through the kitchen. If I try to catch up, I'll make too much noise. Dammit!

  I lie back down and close my eyes, but it's no good. I flop one way, then the other. Tonight will be the night she gets caught, I just know it. Out there alone. I start to feel the panic rise, and now I'm afraid I'll start screaming any minute, and Hannah and Ava will run down the hall from their room, and Maji will get busted by them, when she comes sneaking back in.

  I take the calming breaths, and count, like Ava taught me, until the screaming feeling washes away. I have to put my brain someplace calm, so I go back through tonight, playing it back like a movie behind my eyelids. Dinner, then doing the dishes, me washing and Maji drying. Hannah asking what our plans for the evening are.

  “Thought we’d go to the park,” Maji lies. Well, not a lie, exactly. I know we’ll go through the park, to give ourselves some distance before we starting scouting for a car to borrow.

  “Well, keep your eyes open and - ,” Hannah starts.

  “And your shoes laced,” Maji finishes for her. “Yes, Sensei.”

  I would never interrupt Hannah like that. But then, Maji does a lot of things that never even occur to me to do. Plus, she’s been training with Hannah for years now, and Hannah’s her godmother. You’d never guess that at the dojo; but at home you can tell.

  I still can't believe Hannah agreed to let us stay out until 11. And go out alone, in the dark. Back in May, when Maji got kicked out of school again and came to stay for the summer, we heard them talking about it. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but if you just sit quietly at the top of the stairs, you can hear everything in the living room.

  “Bubbles needs to start getting out on her own, have some unstructured, unsupervised time,” Ava said. “She’s ready for more freedom.”

  Maji elbowed me.

  “By running loose with the Wild Child?” Hannah replied. You could hear the skepticism in her voice, no need to see that look on her face.

  I nudged Maji back.

  “Maji will look out for her, and teach her some things about being a teenager,” Ava said.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” And then Hannah said just one more word, “Havvah.”

  I looked at Maji. She shrugged. She’s learned some Hebrew on her own, just listening to them and looking stuff up. She can even read a little, thanks to Friday night dinners. Maji can read and speak English, Spanish, and Farsi already. She’s learning Russian from some babushka in Little Odessa, too. Me, I barely read English. Maji punched the bed when she learned that, and said a bunch of curse words in Spanish. All I caught was “Deacon,” and he deserves whatever she said. Now that reading’s starting to click, I get why she was so pissed, and why Deacon wouldn't let us. He was afraid of anything that gave us any power at all. Never in a million years would I have gone outside the compound on my own, day or night.

  So the very next Friday night, Maji asked what ‘havvah’ means. Hannah and Ava looked at each other, and I knew we were busted for listening in. But Ava just crinkled her eyes, like she does when she’s trying not to smile, and said, “Mischief.”

  Hannah’s kind of lectury; so she tagged on, “Wrong-doing. Petty theft, other crimes against property. Nothing as serious as assault, or homicide.” She paused. “So, girls, what else did you learn from our conversation? Which I am assuming you heard all of.”

  Maji pushed the fish on her plate with her fork, then looked at them both. “That you aren’t worried whether we can take care of ourselves.”

  “True, you will look out for one another.” Hannah agreed. “Follow the five buddy rules. Which are?” She looked at me.

  “Um, stay together. No drinking or drugs. No getting in cars with strangers. Stay alert to your surroundings? Uh…” I looked to Maji, stuck for number five.

  “Be accountable to one another. One of us acts out, we’re both in trouble.”

  Hannah nodded, satisfied. But Ava added, “And, of course, neither of you needs any attention from the county sheriff.”

  All I could say to that was, “Yeah.” Cause truer words were never spoken. I needed to keep flying under the radar, out here in quiet little suburban Long Island. After the FBI went after Deacon, they wanted to put me in WitSec, send me to strangers someplace far from NYC and from “home,” both. But Hannah pulled some strings, and the Feds gave me a choice.

  When I chose to stay, Ava promised I could start a new life here, go to school with normal kids. OK, she said, “average,” but I know what she meant. And Maji? She could totally take juvvie, she's the original badass. But that could take years; and it's bad enough she's going back to Brooklyn when school starts. I wish she could stay out here with me; but some people have real parents who actually want them. And she's going to that Queer school, where they'll let her independent study stuff. The rate she's going, she'll know like a dozen languages before we graduate. And I'll be lucky if I have a diploma. Seriously. Really fucking lucky. I’m not going to let my temper, or my panic attacks, or even all the school I’ve missed out on get in my way. When I think what Deacon would say about girls going to school, much less there being a Queer school for girls like Maji, I don't know whether to laugh or break something. These days I do a lot of both, making up for lost time.

  Turns out I love being outside at night, feeling like we can go anywhere, and do anything. But tonight we just kept walking, never picking a car. Sitting in the swings at the park, watching the sun set over the cove was nice and all; but I’ve been looking forward to taking a ride since Maji brought it up this morning.

  The more cars we pass up, the more time I have to think about havvah, the sheriff, and the look on Ava’s face if I got in trouble.

  “At this rate, we might as well walk home,” I say, “No matter what car I like, you got some reason it we can’t take it.”

  Maji just shrugs. She never apologizes for her rules, and she never backs down from them, either. You don’t want to follow them? Fine; see ya later. Brat. She’s so much like Hannah, you’d think she could see that. But noooo.

  I see the Andersen’s spare car in front of their house, and start for it. “Hey! We can take this one again.”

  “Bubbles - no!”

  But Maji’s too late - my hand’s already on the door handle, lifting up. And there’s the alarm, bouncing around the sleepy, tree-lined street. Crap.

  Without even looking at each other, we dash across the street and hunker down behind a minivan. I close my eyes, waiting for sirens. But instead, the alarm stops. We peek through the minivan windows to the dark houses across the street. No lights going on, nobody stepping out onto a porch. I breathe again.

  Almost broke Rule #1 - Don’t Get Caught.

  “So that’s another reason for rule two, huh?” I can feel myself blush. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  Maji grabs my hand and peels my fingers out of their fist, before the nails can cut my palm. “S’ok, Bubbles. No harm, no foul.”

  The Anderson’s car was the first we ever took for a spin, back in May; and it didn’t go berserk like that then. Maji picked it specially because it met Rule #2: Must be unlock
ed, with keys in it, or hide-a-key handy.

  “So, stealing a car is OK, but breaking into it is not?” I said to that one. “You just don't know how. I bet you never hot-wired a car in your life.”

  Maji gave me her ‘I am not amused’ look. “If that’s what I wanted to do, a late ’80’s Civic like this would be perfect,” she said, opening the driver’s door. “Hondas and Toyotas, any econo model, pre-’90, are the top most stolen cars in the US. The last three years, they changed the security, but the 80’s are still OK. If I had a Slim Jim - ” She paused, waited to see if I knew what she meant. I didn't, but I'm not dumb. Some kind of break-in tool, right? So I nodded.

  “OK, I'd slide it right down here, between the window and door panel, mira?”

  I saw. I nodded.

  “So, now we’re inside, under 10 seconds. Get in.”

  I opened the always-unlocked door and slid in behind the wheel, while Maji got in the passenger side. “Where the key goes in - there - you find the gap under that. Go ahead, feel it.” She waited until I did, then went on, patient like I might actually need to know how