Estrella House Publishing

Michael Chin

“You can’t just look a couple feet in front of the car,” Dad said. “You’ve got to look out and all around.” He fished his phone out of pocket. It made Rob nervous when his father moved around in the passenger seat, long-limbed enough he might knock into the steering wheel, knock into the volume control and put the radio on blast. All these possibilities for the car to descend into chaos.

“That goes double at nighttime. You can’t see the whole road, but you have to look as far as the headlights let you.” In three weeks of driving lessons, they’d only now ventured from empty parking lots onto the road. The idea of night driving felt impossibly far away.

“Look at the light. What do you do?”

Rob hit the brakes harder than he meant to. The traffic light was amber, and he eased off the brake to edge up to it. Mercifully, early Saturday morning there were no other drivers to honk their horns or speed around him. Rob rubbed at his eyes, his head still fuzzy with sleep.

His sister complained in the backseat. An exaggerated oof followed by a whine that she was getting carsick.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do driving lessons with Cece in the car.” Rob said.

Cece was seven, still small enough to sit in the car seat with the five-point harness. By the second foray of driving around parking lots, Rob had felt comfortable enough with her in the car, but actual street driving introduced new variables. In March, the roads could still be slick, and would Rob really know what to do if one car or the other lost control or if someone came up behind them and rode his bumper. Accidents felt like inevitabilities. He could bear the responsibility of damaging the car, maybe he and his father getting banged up. If Cece got hurt, he’d never forgive himself.

“It’s good practice,” Dad said. “There are always going to be distractions. Always. Maybe it’s someone else driving crazy or it’s raining. Once you get more confident, you start fiddling with the radio or trying to hold hands with a pretty girl riding shot gun.”

Dad gave him a smile and clapped a hand on Rob’s shoulder just as the light turned green. Rob transitioned from brake to gas more abruptly than he meant to, shooting the car forward in a spasm, prompting another oof from Cece and an easy on the gas from Dad.

“Trust me, a kid crying in the backseat is nothing when you look at the big picture.” Dad sighed. “Get in the turn lane to take a left up here at the light. Let’s get some doughnuts.”

“Doughnuts!” Cece pumped her fists, a motion big enough to catch Rob’s eye in the rearview mirror as he stopped at the next red light. A better, gentler stop.

Rob was surprised to catch his father not looking at the light or the road, his eyes fixed on his lap instead. His iPhone glowed, and Rob presumed he was texting Mom, because even since the separation, they still kept in touch constantly.

His father’s text bubbles were going out green, though, rather than the tell-tale blue of iMessages. He was communicating with an Android user. Rob tried to make out the name, but couldn’t. Dad had the screen tilted a little away from him, maybe in an effort not to distract Rob. Maybe to hide something. The gray circle at the top, the first initial of the contact, was a J.

A car horn broke his concentration.

Dad’s head shot up. “Green arrow. What’s that mean?”

Rob let off the brake but hesitated. A yellow Jeep coming in the opposite direction inched forward, bumper crossing into the thick white line under their own traffic signal.

“You’ve got the right of way.” Dad’s voice was sharper. A sense of urgency.

“I know.” Rob did know but was still wary of the Jeep.

“Rob!”

Rob went, hitting the gas harder than he meant to, veering toward the median once he’d made the turn and swerving clear of it at the last moment before he eased off the gas.

Moments later, in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot, Dad took a deep breath. “If you’re not up for driving, you’ve got to tell me. I’ll always drive if you need me to.”

Rob remembered how the drive had started. Rob saying he didn’t feel like driving. Rob reiterating the point as Dad tightened Cece in the car seat. Dad telling him, You’ve got to practice or you’ll never feel confident on the road.

Rob stifled a yawn.

“Why are you so tired?” Dad asked.

Shortly after 2020 had turned over to 2021, the typical haze of the holidays combined with COVID lockdown ennui to render time meaningless. Rob got up early to pee. He looked out his window and spied Hannah Jane Watkins running down the road.

Hannah Jane was pretty. Probably no taller than five-feet-flat, with paper white skin and fair blond hair. She was athletic, always a bounce to her step. Rob’s brain fogged with sleep, but he watched her jog past his window. The pre-dawn streetlight cast a shine on the film of sweat over her forehead. She was the stuff of dreams.

Rob spent the next week thinking of how he might capitalize on his house falling in Hannah Jane’s jogging route. He set an alarm early enough to watch for her, to be sure he didn’t miss her, and sure enough, she ran past every morning within the same eight-minute window, between 5:26 and 5:34.

Finally, Rob got out and ran.

Timing was tricky. He couldn’t very well come out the door just as she was running past. Maybe a friend could get away with that, but he and Hannah Jane were friendly at best. Maybe she’d give him a cursory wave as she went on running and he’d find himself chasing her. It’d be obvious he’d been waiting for her, and though he might get to run with her that morning, she’d change up her route to avoid Rob the stalker.

He got out and ran early, shivering in a sweatshirt and wind pants, lungs burning from not only the exercise, but the winter air. He left the house at 5:15, running in the direction Hannah Jane came from and ducking down a side street, perpendicular to his own. Rob’s plan worked out, as he caught sight of Hannah Jane minutes later and intercepted her course. He turned back onto his street and ran a couple steps ahead before settling into her pace.

“Hannah Jane?” He affected surprise.

It took her a moment to overcome the disorientation of seeing a person she didn’t expect in a place and time she wouldn’t have expected. She got there, though. “Hey Rob.”

From there, it was all alarmingly easy. Not the running itself, which Rob thought might kill him. But Hannah Jane didn’t seem annoyed at him for interrupting her exercise—if anything, grateful for the company to the point Rob didn’t feel weird about repeating his running and walking on the side street the next morning and didn’t bother with that part of the charade the next day. Instead, he jogged slowly down the street starting at 5:25 and waited for her to catch up.

It became the weekday routine—all the days he was home with Mom. A week and a half in, Hannah Jane caught him coming out of the house just after 5:30.

Then that became the pattern. Hannah Jane waiting, because now she knew where he lived and they’d established a routine of doing the last mile and a half of her run together. Before long, they recognized neither of them would freak out about running just a couple feet apart, even unmasked.

Rob noted that Hannah Jane owned an impressive array of brightly colored leggings—pink one day, yellow another, then neon blue, orange. He assumed the brightness was for visibility, in contrast to a sleek black coat that looked as though it were made for a runner. Or maybe Hannah Jane just made it look that way in her easy, athletic stride. They talked, first a little stilted, about school and their English class. He was surprised at how readily she slid into talking about her popular friends, though. as if they were his friends too.

Rob built up his lung capacity and ran past the initial shocks of soreness in his calves and knees. He even worked his way up to the point he didn’t have to limp home once he’d left Hannah Jane at her place, but rather kept jogging, in the best shape of his life.

He had a crush on Hannah Jane, of course. But it had started as a general sort of crush, like he had on a lot of girls, and grew more specific, unmistakably deeper for getting to know the ragged edge her breath took from exertion toward the end of a run or the way sweaty wisps of hair clung to the back of her neck. The way she paused to really think when he asked her the most pedestrian questions like what’s your favorite movie or how was your weekend?

Rob had imagined a lot of girls naked. He pictured hazy images of breasts and hips and thighs. But also their soft tummies. With Hannah Jane, his fantasies took on a sharper focus. Not a soft tummy. Sweat running down the indentations between well-defined abs from all that running.

He spent long enough in those post-run showers before he started in on school work for the day, the bulk of it asynchronous (a word Rob only learned after the onset of the pandemic). He didn’t have much faith anyone was checking his progress all that carefully.

The runs grew longer, taking the long way around the park between their houses, then out of their neighborhood even.

Hannah Jane made these suggestions. Rob understood she wanted to spend more time with him. And so, he came to recognize the global shutdown as one of the best things that had ever happened to him. He had Hannah Jane all to himself.

“It’s great you’re running,” Mom poured spaghetti and boiling water from the big stainless steel pot into the colander. “I’ve been reading articles about the best ways to take advantage of the pandemic, and all of them mention exercise.”

Rob set the table for three. It had been his instinct to keep the running a secret, but when Mom asked where he was going every morning, he couldn’t think of a good lie. Mercifully, Hannah Jane hadn’t come up.

“The articles also talk about family time.” Steam rose from the sink as Mom shook the colander. “Now that we’re stuck together, it opens these opportunities for connection.”

Cece ran to Rob, Mom’s iPad in hand, to show him the red car she’d drawn in the art app she preferred to crayon-and-paper drawing. Mom had fought her on that for a month or so, then given in and bought a Bluetooth color printer, a compromise, so she could still have tangible art to put on the refrigerator.

“I was thinking to myself, why don’t we put these things together,” Mom said. “You’ve been so disciplined about running. I think Cece and I have a lot to learn from you. Maybe we could all run together—not so early in the morning like you’ve been doing. Cece needs her rest. But maybe in the afternoon after school.”

There was something especially grating about Mom when she not only brought up a bad idea, but laid out all her reasoning to sound like she was serving his interests, and it would only be natural for him to agree. The tactic worked on Cece. But Rob, who’d spent most of his childhood finding his mother the more present, more caring, generally better parent couldn’t help considering maybe it was not his father’s aloof nature that drove him and Mom apart, but rather Mom being such a pain in the ass.

“We’d have to start a little slower, but maybe you can teach Cece how to pace herself and breathe.” Mom said. “Cece, wouldn’t it be cool if you were the fastest kid in your class when school opens again?”

Cece didn’t say anything.

“I’ve got a tight schedule,” Rob said. “School’s harder online. The teachers never really explain anything.”

“You have to tell me if a teacher isn’t explaining things,” Mom broke in. “That was in the emails from the school. The teachers are learning how to do school online too.”

“It’s fine.” Rob set down a plate harder than he meant to, then delicately adjusted as if that proved he wasn’t mad. He felt guilty. Like him, most of his friends had computers in their rooms and they’d coordinated to mute the Zoom lectures, turn off their cameras, and play Fortnite. They’d alternate who played lookout, actually paying attention in class to let everyone know if the teacher called on someone. If there were a delay or no response at all, technology offered a plausible out, like sorry, my Internet glitched or my mic isn’t working. “It just takes a lot of focus.” He sighed. “And you know how you’ve been bugging me to join extracurriculars? I joined Car Club. So that’s one more thing.”

He’d said the right thing. Mom congratulated him for getting involved and talked about how good Car Club would look on his college applications. He couldn’t get in a word edgewise before she was off and running about what a good, practical education it would be, too, to know how to change his own oil and tune up an engine. She wished she’d learned these things.

In not mentioning it again, he understood she’d accepted he’d keep his early morning runs to himself. He’d keep Hannah Jane.

Rob didn’t have any illusions Hannah Jane wasn’t texting with her friends from school or interacting with them on Instagram. He knew he didn’t literally have her all to himself.

And yet, Rob suspected he had a connection to Hannah Jane like no one else, if only because she had a connection to him like no one else—the only person he saw on a regular basis outside his nuclear family.

So, Rob had a sinking feeling with Hannah Jane first mentioned the party.

“I think it’s going to be lowkey,” she said. She’d shed layers as late spring settled in and ran in a red Shermantown High t-shirt she’d cut to hang over her shoulder, a sports bra underneath. Black leggings now. “Ten, maybe fifteen people, however much beer Hunter can get together. He says it’ll be easier to use his ID in a mask, but Kelsey says all the stores are cracking down.”

Hannah Jane had told Rob months back about Hunter using his older brother’s expired license to buy alcohol and how Brian took a more brute force approach of shoplifting individual bottles of Sam Adams, liberated from six packs at ShopSmart. The two of them were the steadiest sources of alcohol for Hannah Jane’s friends, though some of the parents would buy them a case of beer now and again on the premise they’d rather everyone drink safely under their roof than go off on their own.

Rob had never been invited to one of these parties.

“Anyway, we’ll be at Janelle’s in Washington Heights. Thursday night.” Hannah Jane said. “You in?”

Hannah Jane pulled up on the neck of her shirt to rub sweat from her eyes. When the shirt fell back into place it was a little off. For a beautiful moment, when Rob’s eyes landed just right, he could see where her breasts cleaved.

“I don’t have a car,” Rob said.

Hannah Jane tucked her hair behind her ear. “Nate’s coming to get me. He can give you a ride,” she said. “Just be at my house by eight. Make it seven-forty-five, actually. He’ll be pissy if he has to wait.”

Everything had gone smoothly. Rob told Mom he had a headache and he was going to bed early. Cece was being a pain trying to show Mom all the pictures she’d taken around the house for a photo scavenger hunt her teacher assigned, and it was just the right level of distracting and annoying for Mom not to give him much scrutiny. He hadn’t even had to sneak out his window, just closed his bedroom door and snuck back downstairs, button-up shirt wadded in his hands so it wouldn’t arouse suspicion if Mom caught him. He slipped out the backdoor, around the house, and to Hannah Jane’s.

In the car, he’d been surprised Hannah Jane, Nate, and his girlfriend Tracy all went unmasked, and he got self-conscious about his face-covering. When they got to the party, no one wore masks either—the ten-to-fifteen people Hannah Jane had predicted in the living room and plenty more in the kitchen, in the stairwell, a rumble of footsteps overhead. Rob discreetly took off his own mask. Brian Hineline and Janelle Thompson made out in a recliner. Big Dustin Jones, a linebacker for the football team, a menace in gym class dodgeball games, wandered barefoot drinking from a Solo cup. Hannah Jane led Rob to the kitchen, stopping to hug different girls along the way, before she took out bottles of Coors Light from the fridge for each of them.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Everyone got tested before the party.”

Rob was skeptical because he himself hadn’t been tested. He was conscious of so many bodies around him after months of isolation. Body odor that was par for the course at school but he’d grown unaccustomed to after a year away.

How long before Hannah Jane felt smothered by Rob? He imagined her saying, We run together everyday, can’t we spend five minutes apart? or Don’t you have any other friends? He did have other friends, but they were the kind who, even before social distancing guidelines, stayed home and talked over headsets while they played Among Us. But Hannah Jane never tried to shake him off, if anything staying close to Rob, so close she always had a hand on his arm or her chest against him, her breath on his neck each time she looked up to talk to him. The only times she left were to get more beer—starting her fourth while Rob nursed his way through the first half of his second. It tasted stale.

Rob was telling Hannah Jane about Car Club when the song switched to one with blaring trumpets Rob didn’t recognize but everyone else seemed to, registering their delight with a collective, oh! Dustin Jones lifted a girl in the air in one arm, another, smaller guy from the football team in the other and bounced. They both laughed. This wasn’t their first time in this position, maybe not even the first time during the pandemic, because didn’t everyone else at the party seem so at ease, unfazed by human contact and noise?

“Do you want to go somewhere quieter?” Hannah Jane asked.

At last, Rob thought, a reprieve. A moment, beyond physical proximity, to register a connection, an understanding between them. He thought they’d go outside, or maybe to a private study in this house where they could sit together on a leather loveseat and talk without shouting.

Hannah Jane laced her fingers between his. Her hand was small and hot to the touch. She led him away, upstairs and past two closed doors. She knocked on a third and when no one answered, she opened the door so they could go inside. She locked the door behind them.

“Keep telling me about that car thing,” she said.

“Car Club?” He wondered if Car Club were actually the most interesting topic of conversation he had to offer. “It’s OK, I guess. Mr. Fusillo posts these videos.”

Hannah Jane let out a little oh, quieter, softer around the edges than the chorus of ohs downstairs. She pressed her body against his, his back to the door.

“He was really trying at first. I think he wore a GoPro and he narrated while he changed his spark plugs.”

“Yeah.” Hannah Jane flicked her tongue against his Adam’s apple.

“But now he’s just posting videos from YouTube anyone could find. And he leaves a discussion board open for people to ask questions, but no one does.”

“Car. Club.” She said it like a breathy incantation, hand beneath his shirt, exploring his abdomen.

Then she was on him, her tongue filling his mouth. They lay on a bed covered in olive green sheets that smelled a little sweet, a little sour. Hannah Jane’s breath reeked of beer. She sat up, straddling him and peeled off her shirt. Her skin smooth to the touch when she pulled his hands up against her, over her stomach, up under her bra.

“This is Sex Club.” She moaned. “No videos allowed.”

She swiveled over him. He was erect, but it wasn’t like he was about to pop the way he thought he might if they so much as closed-mouth kissed. Her hair got in his eyes.

“How bad do you want this?” Her voice had taken on a higher pitch, a whine. Her tongue flopped into his ear. “Hold on a sec.” She got up and knelt by a wastebasket where she puked her guts out. Her eyes were on him again a moment later as her thumb and forefinger disconnected a string of drool from her bottom lip. “Curtis has condoms in the nightstand.”

Rob put it together. Janelle Thompson’s house. Curtis, her older brother, who’d graduated the year before. Maybe he was at college. But didn’t dorms close for the pandemic? Had Rob seen Curtis at the party? Had Curtis seen them go upstairs? Had Hannah Jane slept with Curtis? Or had she slept with a different boy in this bed? She’d talked about Sex Club, hadn’t she? A riff on Car Club. A joke. Right?

Hannah Jane’s breath was hot, acidic. The taste of not only Coors Lite, but barf. She smelled like the back of Mom’s car after Cece got car sick. She always got car sick.

“I have to get out of here,” Rob said.

He registered Hannah Jane saying What the fuck? as he got on his feet and a yelp as he opened the door—he hadn’t given her time to get dressed. He hesitated, which made things worse, then got out of the room, closing the door. The lock clicked behind him.

Rob left the party and walked down the street. It would be too far to walk home.

Mom and Dad had each, separately, given him a year-and-a-half back. They both said he could always call them, always get a ride home if he were in a bad spot. The content of what they said, down to the phrasing of no questions asked suggested they’d coordinated the messaging, but miscommunicated about which of them was going to have this particular to talk with Rob.

He couldn’t imagine having Mom get him. He’d snuck out of her house in the middle of a pandemic. No way she’d wouldn’t ask questions.

He texted Dad.

I need a ride.

Rob walked on. No direction. More distance from the party, though.

It took a couple minutes, but Dad replied. What do you mean?

Rob took a deep breath. I’m stuck in Washington Heights. Please.

How did you get to Washington Heights? Then, Your mom’s got you tonight. Have you tried her?

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Of course there’d be questions.

But then Dad texted again. Drop a pin. I can get there in 15 min.

Rob updated his location a few times. First, he got spooked about standing outside someone’s house—that they might see him and call the police. Then from an empty stretch of road where he imagined someone speeding by and running him over.

Rob settled on a playground. Public property. No one around. He sat on a swing.

A black Subaru Impreza pulled up. Not his father’s car, but the driver’s side window rolled down and Dad called for him to get in.       

This car was older than Dad’s. Analog gauges on the dash where they were digital in his father’s Corolla, the steel on the seat belt buckle scratched up, worn. This car was cleaner too. No half-drank soda bottle in the cupholder or Snickers wrappers on the floorboard.

“Are you gonna tell me what happened?”

Rob fiddled with the seatbelt strap. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Dad sighed. “You’re OK going back to the house?” He rubbed at the stubble on his cheek. “You can stay with me, you know. I just wasn’t expecting it. And we have to tell your Mom so she doesn’t freak out, thinking you got abducted or something.”

The idea of someone taking Rob as if he were still a small child felt absurd, though he knew Dad was right that’s where Mom’s head would go long before she considered he’d snuck out. Mom worried like that.

“You can take me home.” Rob said. “To Mom’s.”

This different car hinted at a whole other life his father lived five days out of the week. Rob wanted to ask about it, but when Dad didn’t volunteer an explanation, it registered they’d both be happier with no questions asked.

It was dark on the main drag back to their side of Shermantown, dark masses of trees to either side of the car, all blackness past the headlights. Dad took his foot off the gas and coasted toward an intersection. “This light never stays green long.” True to his prediction, the light was yellow about fifty yards out, red by the time they reached it.

“You can always call me,” Dad said. “I’ll be there if you need me.”

 “I texted you, didn’t I?” Rob said.

The light turned green again.

Rob felt terrible, like he did when he’d helped Dad load up the car to move out of the house in the first place and lost his grip on a plastic bin of full plates and glasses that clattered. Some must have broken, and Dad had scolded him to be careful and he’d yelled back because of course he hadn’t meant to drop the box and dropping it itself was a reminder to be careful.

“Thanks for getting me,” Rob said.

They didn’t say anything else. Dad cut the headlights as they pulled up two doors down and advised Rob to go in the backdoor so Mom wouldn’t hear him. Rob said thanks again and got out. He expected the Subaru to pull off right away, but Dad lingered. Rob figured he waited to make sure his son got in OK, even though Dad wouldn’t be able to see him once he circled around the back of the house.

After Rob got inside, he walked carefully not to make any noise tripping over one of Cece’s toys. He made his way to the living room, overlooking the street, and turned the light on and off and on and off again. A signal they’d never agreed on that he’d made it inside. Sure enough, a moment later, headlights drove past, then everything was dark.