I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle Page A

right.
    â€œThen can you tell me why the hell Mizz Cooper is doing over seventy?”
    Rich’s hopes of ever answering two consecutive questions correctly were dashed.
    â€œI’m not doing seventy,” Beth responded. “I’m only doing—” She stared down at the speedometer: 71. “The flow of traffic.” The vehicle meanwhile drifted off the highway and onto the loose gravel shoulder; Beth tugged the wheel and popped the car back into its lane, more or less.
    â€œPull over!” Coach Raupp screamed. “Now!”
    Beth pulled over, now. She neglected to signal or to decelerate. Coach Raupp overcompensated for this by slamming on the instructor brake, sending the car into an uncontrolled skid. Beth tried to steer back onto the highway. The car slid sideways and began to roll, tumbling side over side several times before erupting into an enormous fireball.
    â€œIt did not,” Denis said at lunch that day, as Rich related the story. “You’d be covered in third-degree burns. Your nerve endings would be exposed. You’d look like this.” Denis held up his slice of school pizza. “Only more sauce.”
    Rich took the slice, folded it lengthwise and funneled the grease unto his tongue. “I was thrown clear. Everybody else got crispy creamed.”
    â€œVictoria is right over there.” Denis nodded furtively, so as to not attract her attention. Victoria was sitting with Patty Keck, his secret shame, eating her Diet Coke while Patty finished both of their lunches.
    â€œHalf of Beth’s face is…just gone,” Rich said. “Like Mel Gibson as the eponymous Man Without a Face .”
    He held the pizza over one eye.
    â€œIs it this? Is this what you see? I assure you it is human. But if that’s all you see, then you don’t see me.”
    Would Denis still love Beth if she were The Girl Without a Face?
    â€œWhich half?” he asked.
    â€œThe good half.”
    Denis decided he did not have to decide. “And this has been another Richard Munsch dramatic presentation.”
    Rich swallowed the last of Denis’s pizza. “Car didalmost tip over.”
    RICH WAS IMAGINING he was in the scariest, goriest, least educational driver’s ed film ever made:

    In it, Rich played himself. Treece was played by Shanley Harmer, the actress who starred in Bitches on the CW, and then went on to movie fame in Holy Mallory and that Internet mp4 with Licks’ front man Brent Koz. He was mentally casting Denis—that kid from Geek Camp?—when he suddenly flew forward, bounced his face against the front seat and slammed back next to Treece. She buckled him into his seat.
    Beth had overshot the red light by a couple of car lengths. Black SUVs coming in opposite directions very nearly crashed into the front passenger and rear driver’s sides, tearing the little Cabriolet in half like two wolves fighting over a plump bunny. Beth gave a cursory my bad wave and rapidly backed out of the intersection, coming within five-eighths of an inch of hitting a third black SUV behind her.
    Denis crawled out of his hole. The last few seconds had brought back Rich’s Driver’s Ed Tales (there were several) and so he was currently struggling with the conflicting emotions of:
    1) intense joy that Beth had just saved his life,choosing him over a former boyfriend;
    2) fear.
    â€œThat was…with the car back there, but—”
    â€œThat wasn’t for you,” Beth cut him off. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Kevin can’t have another incident. One more, and it’s court-martial for sure.”
    Joy left and fear reigned.
    â€œOne more what?”
    THE LIGHT TURNED GREEN and Beth floored it. Denis, perched between the two front seats, was thrown into the back.
    â€œSo,” Treece said when he landed next to her. “That was fun.”
    â€œSome fun,” added Rich, partially recombobulated.