Driving With the Top Down Read Online Free PDF Page B

our mercifully clean thirteen-year-old to a total delinquent near his age and have them hang out for a week on your ‘guys’ trip?” That galled her; it really did. Thanks a lot, Kevin. Way to make me feel unwanted again . “No thanks. I’ll do it.”
    His face showed he was not surprised. “Honestly, I think maybe there’s a small chance it could be good for you both.”
    “How do you reckon that one?”
    Kevin shrugged. “She doesn’t have a mom. She’s messed up, but she’s a smart kid. And for you, I don’t know, I think it just might be a good thing for you.”
    He locked eyes with her and tightened his lips before looking away. He didn’t have to explain. Colleen knew.
    “It’s not even the delinquent thing—I’m just afraid she still hates me and she’ll just be one more thing I screw up.”
    “Stop thinking you’re screwing up! Seriously, Colleen. Just look at her as a—” He searched for words. “—like a grimy, dull tiara or something. And you’re going to polish her up and fix her just like your other stuff.”
    Colleen gave a soft laugh. “That was cute. A tiara.”
    He laughed too, and squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll help him figure something else out if you really don’t want to do it. But I don’t want you to say no out of fear. You’re a great mom. You’re a great role model. And she needs both those things. You know I’ve spent some time around her when I’m with Chris, and I’m tellin’ ya, she’s not the worst thing in the world. She’s smart.”
    “Sure, you said that. I mean how bad can she be?”
    They looked at each other, and then looked elsewhere. They both had an idea of how bad Tamara could be: two tattoos, a pack a day, (at least) one delinquent boyfriend who’d been arrested for assault no fewer than three times, and a couple of stays in a juvenile detention center. That’s how bad she could be. Or no—that’s how bad she could get caught being.
    Colleen knew nothing about dealing with a girl like Tamara. Yes, she’d been a teenage girl once too. But she had been a completely run-of-the-mill teenage girl. An embarrassing story or two, a pretty cute high school boyfriend who always drove the speed limit, and a couple of regrettable nights and punishing mornings from stolen beers and bottles of peach schnapps. She’d always had a date to the dance, but no queen titles; played girls’ lacrosse, but never well enough to take it very seriously.
    As far as her own delinquency went, she had none. She’d gotten detention three times in high school: once for tardiness, once for spaghetti straps that showed her bra straps beneath them (the height of sexiness at age fourteen, or so she and her peers were somehow led to believe), and one time for skipping school on Senior Skip Day. Which she’d been nervous about doing from the beginning of the year, but her friends had talked her into it. She was the last to agree and the first to get caught.
    Story of her school career, actually.
    She was no high school badass.
    And now she would be going on a road trip with one.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    Tamara
    Tamara Bradley took her index finger off the tiny hole on the side of the bowl and breathed in deeply. The smoke hit the back of her throat like a thousand knives, just as it always did. She held it in until it started to rebel, burning and tickling her lungs at the same time, and she exhaled.
    Long and slow. Trying not to cough at the end rattle of breath.
    The feelings that came next always hit her in the same strange and confusing succession: Dizziness. Relief. Hope for oblivion and, inevitably, a vague sense of disappointment that she was still present.
    Then, always unexpected, a guilty tightening in her stomach.
    After that, she just had to wait the next couple of minutes until she started to fade into the hazy cloud that started to soak up her thoughts like a single paper towel in a pool.
    “Let me hit that.” Her boyfriend, Vince, took the bowl from her hand and