Chapter 1
The sweat began, as always, in my palms. It was 11:00 a.m. on Friday, June 13, and my drippy hands had now existed, ex utero, for precisely sixteen years and five hours. I wiped my palms on my tank top and smiled weakly at the driving evaluator.
Honestly? I wanted a driver's license about as much as I wanted to join an ashram in Tibet and be forced to greet the dawn every morning in a state of spiritual enlightenment. That is to say, not at all. It's not that I didn't understand the need to drive. I had waited for enough rides and walked home from enough bus stops to understand the allure of climate-controlled motion. And I certainly didn't mind being in a car with someone else driving. It's really what happened when I held the steering wheel that was a problem. At this exact moment, I could feel the points of my fingers burning against the wheel, an epicenter for all the queasiness and sweat flooding my body.
Deep breaths were proving radically unhelpful.
The examiner's squeaky voice interrupted my daymare.
"Reverse," she said. She had on a "Doris" name tag and the sort of tight gray curls that involve sleeping on a scalpful of foam curlers. She looked like the kind of person who would complain, after winning a day at a spa, about the quality of her seaweed wrap. With another nervous smile, I slipped the Honda from Park to R and lightly touched the gas pedal.
The car whirled out of the parking space. Reflexively, I smashed on the brakes, and the Honda bounced into position. Doris, who presumably had endured plenty of rough reversals in her career, bobbed her sausage curls and made a conspicuous mark on her pad.
"You're facing the wrong way," she said, oozing displeasure.
"Huh?" I responded articulately.
"This is a one-way aisle. You're going the wrong way."
My newly dry palms began to moisten themselves again. I reparked, carefully, and reversed again.
More teenagers die in car accidents than by anything else every year, including alcohol poisoning or general humiliation. I don't understand why we continue to insist that it is socially advantageous for people with undeveloped frontal lobes and overeager physical reflexes to be in control of what is basically a metallic, earthbound Death Star.
Doris continued to make small marks on her pad as she directed me down to the main road. I'd driven on Skyland Boulevard before and been just fine, but suddenly, at this precise moment, it looked like the Autobahn. Biting my lip, I turned into the appropriate, far-right lane. I wondered how Doris would react if I put on the radio to help me relax. Gas pedal. Rearview check. Breathe. Count pounding heartbeats. More gas. This was OK. Really. Like Gloria Gaynor, I would survive.
"You missed the turn," Doris said loudly.
I pushed down on the brake pedal. "What?"
"Don't brake!" Doris ordered. The car behind us honked loudly and swerved.
My foot reached for the gas pedal again. I could feel a tremendous nauseous wave curdling over me.
To my knowledge, I was the only person at my high school who did not anticipate my sixteenth birthday with excessive glee. This single fact suggested that it was entirely possible that I had some kind of irrevocable birth defect. Probably, the adventure portion of my genetic code had mutated into dorkiness during the months my mother spent reading Jane Austen during her pregnancy.
"Didn't you hear me telling you to turn?" Doris's curls were wagging in indignation. I concentrated on not puking all over the windshield. Aside from being humiliating, that would dangerously impair visibility.
"No," I whispered.
"I said it four times."
"Oh."
My foot was still tapping the gas pedal in great, shivery jumps.
"Maybe I should pull over," I said, glancing at Doris.
Signaling like a far more in-control driver, I moved onto the shoulder of the road and sat there for a second, the sweat streaming down my neck, willing the nausea to subside. It didn't.
"Excuse me," I said to Doris, and opened the door. Leaning as far away from the Honda as possible, I started retching and heaving. The sickness seemed to last forever. When it was over, I leaned back against the car seat.
The word mortified comes from the Latin, mors, mortis—meaning "death." Never had I been more mortified, in the actual deadly sense of the word. It would have been marginally preferable had I truly croaked during my driving test, which would at least have spared me explaining the current catastrophe.
"Maybe I should forget about taking the test," I whispered.
"Honey," Doris said tartly, "you've already failed."
Copyright © 2007 by Jane Mendle. All rights reserved.
