Overdrive by Eric Walters Page A

were patches of body filler and primer paint, and it had all been sanded down in preparation for the new paint—the red paint—that was being put on next week. Red did seem like the right color. Certainly a lot better than the sort of off brown, sort of dark gray, hard-to-describe color it was now.
    Mickey ran down his front walk and along the driveway. His shirt was undone,he was carrying his shoes, and his pants were on so low it looked like he was in danger of tripping over them. When he said he wanted to get changed, I didn’t think he meant in the car.
    Mickey jumped in the passenger seat. “Let’s roll!”

Chapter Two
    â€œSo is this just a one shot-thing, you borrowing your brother’s car?” Mickey asked.
    â€œNope. He said that as long as I help and kick in some money for gas and repairs, I can use the car sometimes.”
    â€œFantastic! And this just about makes it official,” Mickey said.
    â€œMakes what official?”
    â€œThat we are the two coolest guys in all of grade nine.”
    â€œHow do you figure that?”
    â€œAside from our style and good looks, look around,” he said, gesturing at the car.
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œThink about it. You are the first, and so far only, grade nine kid in the entire school who has his license. Let’s say we want to take out a couple of girls. We have a major advantage over everybody else. We can pick them up in a car, man. Everybody else has to have their mommy drive them or take a bus or a bike. Now which way do you think is better, car or public transit?”
    He did have a point there.
    â€œAnd nobody else in our grade can even try to get their license until next year because nobody else is old enough. Isn’t it great that you flunked out last year?”
    â€œThat isn’t exactly the way I looked at it.” Not to mention how my parents had looked at it.
    I still felt myself cringe a little bit when I thought about last year. School had never been easy for me—actually it had always been pretty hard—but last year it all just caught up with me. In grade school the teachers had always been helpful, sort of pushing me, offering extra help. Not last year. Grade nine hit me like a punch in the gut. Or more like a lot of punches in the gut. I had eight different teachers and I hardly knew their names, so it wasn’t surprising that they didn’t know me. Or care about me.
    I tried. I really did try. But in the end I failed six of eight classes. I passed gym and technology. The rest just started badly and then got worse. The vice principal had tried to convince my parents that I should be transferred to another school, but nobody wanted that—especially me. In the end it was probably going to happen anyway, whether I liked it or not.
    Then Miss Parsons stepped in. Miss Parsons was my guidance counselor. She went to bat for me and said she’d be my “mentor”and help me out. And all of this year she’d been there for me, checking on how I was doing, arranging for extra help. She was nice and I liked her. I trusted her.
    I figured that doing grade nine for the second time would have made things half as hard. Instead it was twice as boring and almost as hard. So far I had passes in all eight courses, although in five of them—math, geography, history, English and biology—I was hanging in there by the skin of my teeth and getting marks in the low fifties. I didn’t even know why I needed to take those courses. How would history help a guy become a good mechanic? The only history I would need to know was the history of the vehicle so I’d know when to do scheduled work.
    In the other three courses—gym, technology and especially auto mechanics—I was pulling off aces. My marks were so high in those three that my overall average was 65. Maybe not great, but enough to keep everybody off my back.
    â€œI bet you never thought that flunking out a year