After Fire - Dreamnotfound

Three|rules two and three

Clay was not the "fuckin' amazing driver" he claimed himself to be, and it showed in the way he almost got us both killed.

The happiest George had seen the typically moody teenager was when he grabbed the car keys from the key hanger by the garage door the moment he and Drista got home. Even then, he looked unnerved as he sat in the driver's seat with George sitting next to him, texting his UK friends. They kept pressuring him to call them, and he had to constantly remind them of how he had been pressured into driving around with his whiny host brother.

They had been sitting in the stagnant car in silence for a few minutes when George said, "Are we driving today, or are we just going to fall asleep by the incoming heat stroke?"

"Give me a sec, I've never driven before."

"What? You said you could!"

"I have my permit, so technically I can." Clay spun the key ring around his finger. "Like I said, George, I never had anyone to drive with me."

"Not even your parents?"

"I don't bother asking them anymore," He mumbled before clicking on his seatbelt. "No, it's going to go fine. I know the rules of driving. All I have to do is drive."

He inputted the key and turned it, and engine roared to life. George mentally spoke a prayer despite not being nearly as religious as his parents were. They drove off the driveway and down the street. "Do you have a license?" Clay asked.

"I have a provisional one."

"A what?"

George rolled his eyes. "A permit."

"Oh. You've driven a car before, right?"

"A little bit." George remembered how he used to drive his friends around before he left. He was the first of his friends to learn to drive a car, and that meant many hours of them driving through the streets late at night. They'd raid old convenient stores and joyride in ways that would have stripped George of his driving privilege had they been caught. That caused him a sickly feeling. He didn't miss many things from his home, but the weight of Wilbur and Tommy's absence was enough to fill the gaps for his loathsome town.

"Alright, that's good enough," Clay said more to himself than to the boy next to him. "Tell me if I do something wrong."

"You did something wrong," George said not even a minute later.

"What did I do?"

"You're speeding."

"We're not even going fast!"

"We're in a neighborhood," George snapped back, and Clay huffed and sat back in his seat.

At the very least, he didn't lie. It was obvious he had never driven before with the way he panicked at four-way intersections and kept getting distracted at red lights. When George agreed to sit in the car with him and watch him, he didn't think he'd end up having to teach the boy how to drive, especially since he didn't understand how Americans drove aside from the fact it was on the wrong side of the road.

They drove through the backroads, and Clay swerved through the lanes, his grip on the wheel turning his knuckles white. It was a blessing that there were no other cars on the road. And George now understood why America required their permit-holders to keep track of their hours. It was almost as if Clay hadn't read any of his driving manuals he needed to pass the permit test at all as he kept forgetting his turn signals and what lanes to turn into.

"Can't you just hire a driving instructor?" George sighed as he watched Clay accidentally turn on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal.