I wanted to feel good about his compliments, but dread was creeping its way into my shoulders, tightening them with each passing second. “It’s not over yet.”

“What are you going to do? About your parents? How are you going to talk to them? Are you going to leave the truck for them to find?”

“No. Maybe. I have no idea.”

“Someone once told me that you didn’t need to know the future, you just had to move forward.”

“Smart advice.”

“I thought so.”

“You should keep that person around in case they have other smart pieces of information to share.” I had started the sentence as a joke but realized I was unsure of where we stood, what he wanted moving forward. Was this just a unique, rule-breaking night because of the mask and the challenge?

He pushed the hair back from my forehead, his eyes on mine. “I have to keep her around. She owns me.” He kissed the corner of my mouth. “You own me.”

I let out my breath and leaned into his kiss.

His phone rang again.

“It’s like she knows.” He laughed and answered it. “Mom, I’m home. I’m right outside just saying good night to Hadley.”

Had he ever used my first name before? It sounded weird coming from him.

“More like forty-five minutes. And I’m here.” He paused to listen to whatever she was saying. “Well, if I’m already grounded for a week, then I’m just going to make out with her for ten more minutes.”

I gasped. He put down his phone.

“You did not just say that to your mom.”

“No, I didn’t. She’d already hung up.”

I grabbed a handful of the front of his shirt and pulled him toward me. I gave him a soft kiss.

“I thought you were going to hit me. This is way better.” He kissed me twice more. “I better go, though. I wasn’t kidding about the Mom-being-mad part.”

“I know. Good luck with that.”

“You too.”

“Thank you.”

He started to get out.

“Wait!” I called.

“What?”

“I need your phone number.”

He laughed. “We did this way backward.”

We switched phones and entered our numbers, then he left, throwing a smile over his shoulder as he did. A few minutes later my phone rang. Across my screen the words My Hot Boyfriend calling came on. I laughed and answered. “Hello.”

“Do you agree?”

“About which part?”

“All of it.”

“Yes.” My cheeks hurt from the smile there. “Did you get in trouble?”

“Just a week. That’s doable. Are you home yet?”

“No.”

“Call me if you need me, after your parents get home,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Good night, Moore.”

“Night.”

Thirty-Four

As I pulled up to my house, I expected sirens to sound, my parents to come rushing out yelling and screaming. But all was quiet, as I had left it. Everything was exactly the same. Not even Amelia’s car was back. It was almost like it hadn’t happened at all. Something should’ve been different to reflect how different I felt.

I sighed. Now I had to decide what to do with the truck. I had been planning on putting it back on the platform, but maybe I should leave it in the drive. It would force me to have the conversation with my parents that I’d been putting off practically my entire life.

My dad would be the first to see it the next night. It would shock him. Maybe even put him on the defense right away before I had a chance to share my feelings. Or maybe it would make him sad or scare him. I thought about every possible reaction my dad might have to seeing the truck, after eighteen years, not where it belonged. And regardless of how I felt, I didn’t think that was fair to him. I couldn’t go from saying nothing to doing the most dramatic thing possible. Both he and my mom deserved to be eased into what I needed to tell them. They didn’t deserve a lightning strike.

I put the truck in park and got out. The ramps were where I left them in front of the platform so I moved them around to the back. Then ever so slowly, positioning the truck just right, I drove it forward. When I got to the top of the ramps, the truck stopped, not having enough power to get over the lip. I needed to give it more gas. I gripped the wheel and pressed gently on the gas pedal. It still wasn’t enough. I’d gone up the ramps too slow. I thought about backing up and going up again, a little faster. First, I tried one last time with a little more pressure on the gas pedal. The truck lurched forward. I gasped and slammed on the brakes. It stopped just in time, inches from the front edge. I caught my breath.

Now I needed to back it up just a few inches. As I started to shift the truck in reverse, a set of headlights swept across the yard and a car pulled up to the front of the house. Amelia. Her eyes were wide as she climbed out of her car and saw me, the headlights of my brother’s truck like a beacon across the lawn. I held up my finger, telling her to wait a minute, then looked over my right shoulder to back up. I lifted my foot off the brake pedal, but instead of moving backward, the truck jumped forward. The wheel jerked and the left front tire was off the platform and on the ground before I could step on the brake. The right tire was now suspended in midair in front of the ramp. I slid to the left, my body slamming into the door, my head hitting the window.

No. This couldn’t be happening. I applied the gas, slowly trying to ease the truck forward, hoping to just get it all on the ground and start again. The left tire spun and spun, obviously not fully on the ground, which meant the platform must’ve been holding up some of the center of the truck. No.

Amelia knocked on the driver’s-side window. I rolled it down with the cranking handle.

“What are you doing? Your parents are going to kill you.”

“Not helping. How do I move it?”

She backed up, assessing the position of the truck. “One of the back wheels isn’t fully grounded. You’re stuck.”

“Thanks. I caught that.”

“Your parents are going to kill you.”

“You already said that.” I turned off the engine and opened the door. I fell out, barely catching myself before hitting the ground. Then I, too, backed up to assess the position of the truck. “What if I moved one of those ramps so it’s facing backward under the left front tire and then drove forward a little?”

“Then what?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” I grabbed a fistful of my hair and a pain shot through my right shoulder. I pinched it hard. “Then put the other ramp forward under the right tire?”

“Then you’d just have this same situation but in reverse.”

“You think?”

“I don’t know. We can try it.”

At two o’clock in the morning we gave up. The truck hadn’t moved from its original lopsided position and I was pretty sure the only thing we’d managed to do was tear up a section of grass under the left tire. “It’s fine. We’ll fix this. We have all day tomorrow.”

“Is it time to tell me yet what you were doing?”

“I was facing my fear. Being Heath Hall.”