Come on, fellow Pickwickers!! I know there is only a trio of us left but let us write!
-SP
Samantha had just gotten her driver’s license and was eager to show it off. Being born in July had its perks - she was the oldest in her class by a month.
“Hi Julie, hey look at this!” she shouted to her best friend Julie. Julie was standing about two feet away from her.
“What? Oh, I know, you’ve shown me that like seven times.” Julie was annoyed because she was born in August and was about to get her license too, and because Samantha had yelled into her ear.
“Shown you WHAT?” Samantha teased loudly, “Oh you mean my DRIVER’S LICENSE?”
Julie rolled her eyes and walked away to sit at her desk. Julie wasn’t deaf; but she was standing in between Samantha and Evan.
Evan. Tall, muscular (well, for a 16 year old), soft brown hair that wafted gently around his ears, a voice that warbled like an adolescent songbird’s when he played the guitar for assembly. Samantha was in love.
She had never actually spoken to Evan. She wasn’t worthy, she knew, and thus had never so much attempted a conversation even though they had been in the same class for two years. Instead, she would speak overly loudly to Julie or one of the other kids in hopes that Evan would overhear and want to join in. So far, it hadn’t worked.
But this time he glanced over at her and said “Oh cool. Your driver’s license. Dude. Jealous.”
Samantha’s eyes grew wide and she racked her brain for a response. But then the teacher came in and told everyone to shut down (the school board had passed a new rule banning the teachers from saying shut up) and so she sat down.
Dude. Was Evan calling her dude? Was it a term of affection? Or was it a filler, like um? She pondered this for the rest of the hour.
The next day, Samantha’s mom let her drive the family car to school all by herself. Samantha had been begging, pleading, even going so far as crying herself to sleep about it (but making sure she had red-rimmed eyes when she went to get a glass of water in the kitchen where she knew her mom was) and finally her mom had succumbed.
Samantha backed out of the driveway and then turned left to head toward Lakeside High School. She was very careful to effortlessly rest her arm on the rolled-down window and only had to grab the steering wheel with both hands a couple times.
At the parking lot she turned in. Ahh, smooth there! She thought to herself. People were watching! Oh!
There was Evan! He was walking with one of his buddies and soon he would pass her car. Samantha started breathing nervously and felt herself getting red. She would wave, she decided, with her right arm, so that her left arm could stay nice and effortless on the window sill. That would mean letting go of the steering wheel but she could handle that.
Here was her chance. She smiled, coyly, out the window. “Hey there,” she said, and lifter her right arm. But she had misjudged the angle she raised her arm at, and in doing so, hit the window-washer handle.
Windshield washer fluid formed a perfect arc, a rainbow, a shower of blessings down on Evan’s head.
“What the !?” Evan yelled.
Samantha’s life was over.
