Drive by Diana Wieler Page B

We might have crashed into people on the way down but I didn’t notice. If Chris landed me a few times, I didn’t feel it.
    It took three male teachers to drag us apart. The bus back to Ile-des-Sapins didn’t wait for me. Before he left, Mr. Wiebe made sure I knew I had the rest of the week off – a suspension.
    â€œI just can’t believe this, not from you, Jens,” he kept saying, mad and hurt at the same time. He didn’t understand: there were things you didn’t do to my family.
    They tried to make us say how it started.
    Sitting straight in my chair, fingers locked on my lap, I said I didn’t remember.
    â€œAnd what about you, Chris?”
    He looked at me. My jacket was torn and the left side of my face had begun to sting with a scrape where he’d cuffed me good. But I wasn’t afraid of him and I let him see it.
    â€œI don’t remember,” Chris muttered.
    While we were in the office, they phoned our homes for someone to come get us.
    Please not Dad, I prayed. Self-control. I’d really blown it this time.
    It was Mom who came, her pale skin even whiter than usual, dark hair pulled back, her delicate features looking sharp and awake. But she didn’t make a fuss over my cut and she didn’t cry. We got in the car and pulled onto the highway home.
    â€œI’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” I said, and I was. Not that I’d hit Chris, because I still felt he deserved it, but that I’d probably embarrassed her, made her come get me, given people something to gossip over.
    â€œI want to know what that was about,” Mom said.
    I felt myself flush. There were things you never said to your mother, words you never used in front of her. But this was even worse than that.
    â€œIt was stupid,” I said hurriedly. “It was nothing.”
    â€œPeople don’t fight about nothing – or you don’t.”
    â€œI don’t want to talk about it, all right?!” I was getting mad. I was just trying to protect her.
    My mother swung over onto the gravel shoulder, thrust the shift into park and put on the blinking hazard lights.
    â€œThen we’ll sit here until you do,” she said simply.
    For minutes we waited, engine idling. I shifted in the front seat, feeling huge and awkward. Why did she have to know? Why couldn’t I just be punished? Underneath, it was more than that. I was fifteen. I thought about sex a lot. I talked about it a lot with my friends. But there’s this mental circuit that keeps you from thinking about sex and your parents at the same time. It just seems so impossible.
    And yet they were both in the car with me. The heat was on and my skin was curdling. I was trying to think of the least painful way out of this.
    â€œWas it about you?” Mom said finally.
    I shook my head.
    â€œWas it about Daniel?”
    â€œIt was about Dad,” I blurted. “Chris said that maybe he isn’t…you know, my real dad.” Igrinned sheepishly and shrugged. “I know, it’s so stupid. People will say anything to bug you. I don’t usually pay attention to garbage but…he caught me by surprise. Pissed me off.”
    There was no sound except the engine, and the rush of a passing car. I was waiting for her to say something but she was looking at her hands.
    â€œI’m really sorry,” I finished. “It won’t happen again.”
    â€œBut you might hear it again,” she said softly. “From other people.” She looked at me, dark eyes clear and careful. “Jens, I had another… boyfriend. I had a few boyfriends, all at the same time,” she started.
    She talked about growing up in the town of Antelier with her sisters, four Catholic girls living with their silent mother, all under the watchful, possessive eye of their father, Gerard. Jewels in his crown, he called his daughters. He was so strict, so old-fashioned that people talked about it; even the