Ringo Wheeler had enough problems - she was named after a member of a band she doesn't even like, she can't find her favourite record in any store along the East Coast and she pissed her parents off enough to be shipped to Indiana.
Now, she has a ne...
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"OKAY, SO THIS IS THE EMERGENCY BRAKE," Steve explained once again, having previously mentioned that object in particular a grand total of three times.
His car was his most prized possession, easily the best in the school parking lot - outside of Summer break, of course. As much as he trusted Ringo with almost anything, letting her behind the wheel of his car was not one of those things.
After whining profusely about her complete inability to drive, Steve had finally caved and agreed to teach her. After all, how bad could she have been? Perhaps the fault was with her teacher, rather than her personal ability.
So the very next day, which was a mild Thursday in August, he drove onto a thin, practically empty road that once belonged to the farm it led up to. With the farm house now empty and void of any life, it was the perfect place to allow Ringo to learn some of the basics.
"Oh? Is it? So I should just yank on this if I want to slow down?" She asked falsely innocent, eyes widened as she placed her hand over the metal stick. Steve's nervousness had completely overshadowed him, as he failed to see the joke behind her words.
"No!" He shouted worriedly, shaking his head and batting her hand away. "Never ever pull on this in the middle of a drive! It's an emergency brake!"
"Calm down, Jesus," she scoffed, flipping her hair over one shoulder and returning her hands to the wheel. "You've been spending too much time with Nancy, that's exactly what she sounded like when I told her I borrowed her bra."
"You borrowed her bra?" He echoed, desperately trying to push aside the rising images that came into his brain. "Isn't that gross?"
"That's what she said, but I mean, what's a bra between cousins?" Ringo shrugged carelessly. "If I borrowed Mike's panties then that's a whole different story."
"Okay, concentrate!" He commanded, pointing at the steering wheel with a forceful glint in his eye that made Ringo want to burst out laughing. He was taking the lesson entirely too serious.
"Okay," she agreed, placing her hand on the emergency brake and lowering it finally, the car slowly beginning to roll forward. She beamed brightly at the sensation, it having been a full year since she was last driving.
The previous summer, at least once a week, her father would take her in his car to teach her to drive in dilapidated parking lots. But try as he did, Ringo was a tough cookie to crack. Her driving was once described as, "how a blind person would drive if they were also one-handed".
After the incident that led to her being sent off to Hawkins, the lessons had ceased, and when she returned before Christmas, the hostility between them was no basis for a driving lesson.
