The Daring Game (and all my usual lies)

Chapter 2: Riley tendencies

Jesse

If it hadn't been for the fact that Victoria was waiting, I would have just cancelled the whole thing. Sebastian wasn't exactly my first choice, and he immediately made me question my decision to invite him by packing a backpack. At least it was a backpack and not a satchel or a messenger bag or something. Or, like, a purse. Not that Sebastian exactly gave off the impression that he was the kind of guy who'd carry a purse, considering he wore his pull-on shop boots all the time, but whatever. At least Ty hadn't invited himself along, and if Kyler was going to be that way just because I'd accidentally let a drill press nearly crush him to death, then he probably wouldn't have been a good time tonight, anyway. The only reason I was letting Sebastian come with me in the first place was because even though he'd told Chris about the eyebrow-shaving situation, I'd also found out earlier in the week during driver's ed that he wasn't a total narc. We were finally getting to drive – a small miracle, considering I'd spent half the online written test looking up answers in the manual while Mrs. Driving Lady went out for a smoke. I figured I'd be able to learn all the signs while I practised driving, anyway. How hard could it be?

"I'm not getting into any car you're driving," Lauren said when I mentioned this, as though I'd been asking to be partners. Like I wouldn't have to sit in the back seat while our dad yelled at her for forgetting to check one of her eighty mirrors, anyway. I'd had plans to pair up with Kyler, but he was being annoying about the lightbulb incident, unfairly stating that I had 'Riley tendencies.' Yeah, right. Like I was anywhere near as much of a liability.

Katie was trying to catch my eye from across the room, but I pretended that I didn't notice and that I was really interested in the page in my manual on roundabouts. Not that there's anything wrong with Katie, but there was no way I was pairing up with any of my groupies, and not just because they also liked to hang out with my snitch of a sister. Honestly, I'd quit gymnastics, so it didn't really make sense for me to be hanging out with them all the time anymore. Not that I'd actually said that to any of them yet.

In the end, I paired up with Sebastian, who immediately betrayed me by volunteering us to have our first practice right after class. We went with Mrs. Driving Lady out to her SUV in the parking lot, and then both immediately failed because we tried to get into the car without checking around the vehicle first.

"There could have been a baby behind the back wheel, and you wouldn't even have noticed," she snapped. Yeah, as if. I'd probably have seen it in the back-up camera, if we were allowed to use it.

Sebastian went first. He got in and spent twelve years adjusting his seat and the mirror, then looked at Mrs. Driving Lady, who nodded, and he started the engine. He backed out of the parking spot on the first try, remembered to signal, and was out onto the road. I watched from the back seat and decided there was no way Sebastian was just a natural. He knew how to hit the brakes without throwing me against my seatbelt, switched lanes easily, and didn't have to stare at the speedometer to make sure he stayed below the limit. I'd only driven once before with my dad and the whole disaster had lasted about ten minutes, where he yelled at me until I yelled back and then he made me get out and walk home while he went for an angry drive. I wasn't exactly the pinnacle of experience, but Sebastian was way too skilled to have just practised a handful of times with his parents.

"You totally drive all the time back home, don't you," I said to him as we headed back to the dorms. I'd run over the curb when I was just trying to go straight, and Mrs. Driving Lady had made me spend most of my hour practising how to brake without giving everyone whiplash.

Sebastian thought about it for a moment.

"Yeah," he admitted. "There's no cops in my town, really."

Not to mention that his sideburns made him look way older than the rest of us. He kept them trimmed and they were thick and full, like he'd had them his whole life. Chris was always saying they made him look like Wolverine, which is a great compliment. No one ever told me that I looked like anyone cool, although people sometimes said that I looked like my mom. Which is exactly the kind of thing that you want to hear when you're fifteen, that you look like a forty-five-year-old woman. At least no one ever said that I looked like Lauren.