A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life by Dana Reinhardt

Author:Dana Reinhardt
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780375890888
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2008-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

It’s Friday afternoon. Mom wrote me a note getting me out of seventh period because she wants me to arrive at Rivka’s before it gets dark. The car is loaded with way more snack food than anyone should eat in the two hours or so it should take me to get there. Given all the snacks, Mom has gone surprisingly light on the drinks, just a half a bottle of water, and when I point this out she tells me that she’s worried that if I drink too much I’ll have to pee and she doesn’t want me stopping anywhere between here and Wellfleet. I also promise not to talk on my cell phone or to play the music too loud. I promise to stay in the slow lane. She really seems flustered, and I figure this must be about more than just my driving alone, so I try not to get too annoyed with her. Neither Dad nor Jake is around to see me off, and this appears to bother Mom, but I remind her that I’ll be back tomorrow, it’s not like I’m moving away, and then I see that her eyes are filling with tears. I give her a big hug, get in the car and start it up, then roll down my window and say, “I love you, Mom,” which isn’t something I’m in the habit of saying all the time, and then I put the car in reverse and back out of our driveway.

Another good thing about getting to leave school early, other than missing physics, is that there’s almost no traffic. Maybe this is because it’s only three-thirty, or maybe this is because no one goes to Cape Cod in December. Once I get onto 93 I immediately break two of Mom’s rules. I pass an old Buick, requiring that I dip into the fast lane. And I turn up the volume on The Eminem Show to the point where the bass is rattling the windshield. But when my cell phone rings a few minutes later and I see that it’s James, I don’t answer it. So I’m one out of three.

Boston has disappeared from my rearview mirror. I’ve passed the big open concrete lot where every April the Big Apple Circus sets up its blue and yellow tent. I’ve passed the JFK Library, where during my third-grade field trip I broke out in the first few telltale red bumps of chicken pox. And somewhere in there I must have driven by the community where Rivka grew up and where the rest of the Levins still live.

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