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“Did you guys just memorize the manual, or what?” Ray asked tiredly. “Like, jeez, leave some questions for the rest of us.”
“You could’ve answered every one of those questions if you’d felt like raising your hand,” Norman said. They made their way to the bus stop—something which, pretty soon, they wouldn’t have to do anymore. Ray’s toothless scoff was his only response. “No more questions now, anyway. Driver’s Ed classes are officially complete.”
“Next up—” Emma pumped both fists in the air. “Practice hours!”
Emma had been ready to get behind the wheel for years, really. She was so ready to be one of those upperclassmen who could say, “There’s room in my car!” or “Sure, Coach, I can take some of the equipment!” or “Who wants ice cream? I’m driving!” Ray was kidding about memorizing the manual, in his own Ray way, but Emma kind of did. After acing her permit test, she made sure that Norman and Ray took their tests at the same time so they could go to Driver’s Ed together. She’d also taken the liberty of comparing their schedules for optimum driving hours.
“Student council meetings are on Mondays,” Emma counted off, pointing between herself and Norman. Then, just pointing to herself, she added, “Tuesdays and Thursdays are field hockey, games on Fridays.” At Norman, “Debate team Tuesdays, chess club Wednesdays, bird-watching club Fridays.” And lastly to Ray, whose smug comment she could see coming from a mile off. “Library club Thursdays.”
“Guess we’re on our own for driving and observation,” Ray said.
“Not quite!” Emma replied.
Which brought them to seven-thirty, Saturday morning, standing in front of the school for pickup.
“Emma, why did you do this.” Ray’s dull tone couldn’t even be called questioning.
“She suggested it. You agreed,” Norman said cheerfully.
“You guys! We have to do our hours together! Think about it, it’s perfect.” Emma wagged a finger in their direction. “Every Saturday morning, we do three hours together. Everybody gets one hour of practice and two of observation. We’re going to be ready for our licenses way before everybody else doing half-hour sessions after school. I can’t believe it was so easy to get this time slot for us!”
“I can,” Ray said.
“Oh,” Norman said, reaching into his bag, “while we’re waiting…” He proffered a white paper bag with an owl insignia stamped on the front. Emma shrieked when he opened it.
“Donuts!” She reached in and shrieked again, Ray leaning away from her. “Maple! They’re always sold out of maple!”
“Well, I know it’s your favorite,” Norman said.
“So he went to the bakery at five this morning to clean them out,” Ray said. Norman elbowed him gracefully, but the blow must have landed harder than it looked, because Ray let out a quiet “ oof.” Emma beamed around sticky fingers and gooey frosting, and Norman turned the bag over to Ray, who looked inside and blinked. “Oh. You got a jelly one, too.”
“And napkins,” Norman said. Ray repaid the earlier elbow, his favored jelly donut already in his mouth. Norman took the remaining donut, a plain one, and the three ate on the front steps of the school.
Just about the time they finished, the driving school car pulled up in front of them, the name and number of the school plastered on the front and both sides of the vehicle. The passenger-side window rolled down, and the woman inside waved from the wheel.
“Emma, Norman, and Ray?” she guessed. When they nodded, she parked the car and got out. “The seven forty-five slot on Saturday mornings...you three must be real go-getters!”
Emma felt Ray’s eyes on her and chose to ignore him. “You bet!”
“I’m Ms. Krone,” the woman introduced herself. She held up the car key fob, jingling it, and winked. “Who’s up first?”
“Me!” Emma said, at the same time that Norman and Ray chorused, “Emma.”
Krone tossed the keys. After catching them in midair, empowerment coursed through Emma’s fingertips. She jogged around the front of the car to the driver’s seat while Krone slid into the passenger seat and Norman and Ray got into the back.
“First things first…” Krone said, tone leading. She pulled a clipboard loaded with paper and a pen out of the glove compartment.
“Seatbelts!” Emma said, clicking hers into place. “Mirrors and blind spots…” She adjusted the seat, moving it up so that she could put her hands at nine and three o’clock, and fixed the mirrors accordingly. Krone nodded with approval as Emma moved through the pre-driving safety checklist. This part of the manual was one of the first things she’d memorized and what Ray blandly told her was one of the first things she’d forget when she was driving for real.
Once Emma was done with her checks, Krone gave her the go-ahead to start the car. Emma pushed the startup button with relish, the engine roaring to life beneath her.
“When you’re ready, signal and pull out into the parking lot,” Krone said.
Emma put on her blinker, shifted into drive, and pulled out towards the parking lot entrance, first at a crawling pace as she toed the gas pedal, and then a little too fast with more pressure. Jerking to a stop that the rear-view mirror told her had Norman and Ray pitching forward and then back in their seat, Emma squeaked, “Sorry!”
“That’s all right, it takes a bit to get used to the gas,” Krone said. “We’re only in the parking lot. Try it again, in between what you did before.” Emma shifted from brake to gas and proceeded towards the entrance. “That’s it.”
She’d been riding in cars her whole life, but driving one was a very different experience. The angle of the driver’s seat was unlike any passenger position, and the machinery around her felt heavier with her foot on the pedal. Controlling the car’s speed somehow made it feel like the car was going faster than it did when she was along for the ride and counting lampposts as they passed.
“Take a left here, and then a right at the end of the street to enter into traffic,” Krone said. Emma did, using her signals. Her driver-side turn was a little sharp, and her passenger-side turn was a little slow, Krone instructing her to add a little gas for speed as she pulled into a line of cars waiting at the light. “We’ll go straight through the intersection.”
Driving a real car was also very different from challenging Norman and Ray to racing games at the arcade. It took Emma a few blocks to figure out just how sharply to turn the wheel.
“That was really good,” Norman said after her fifth turn.
“Yeah, just enough gas,” Ray added. Tension Emma hadn’t noticed seeped out of her shoulders, and she relaxed in the driver’s seat. Her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel eased.
“They’re correct,” Krone said. “You three are good friends, huh?”
“The best,” Emma said, braking a little too hard at the stop sign.
“Let’s chat later,” Krone said, her motherly tone never faltering. The embarrassment of following up a success with more floundering didn’t hit Emma as hard as it could have.
After half an hour, Krone suggested switching drivers. “It’s tough to go third after sitting through two hours of observation,” she said. “And, on the opposite side, it’s tough to drive first and not have the advantage of observation. We’ll do two rounds of half-hour shifts.”
Norman drove as calmly and effortlessly as if he’d always done it, even when somebody cut him off as he was shifting lanes. Emma and Ray—well, mostly Emma— oohed and ahhed at his easy turns and smooth braking. Ray’s half-hour was somewhere in-between Emma’s and Norman’s. He completed most of Krone’s instructions with ease, a textbook example, but stuttered at the wheel when another driver went off-script. Krone helped him brake when a car coming the opposite way was going too fast, and guided him step-by-step down a narrow street where cars were parked on both sides.
By the time Emma was up again, she was ready to go. From her spot in the backseat behind Krone, she’d had a perfect view for studying Norman’s posture and Ray’s hand placement on the wheel, and in both instances, she’d watched their legs as they applied more gas or braked. Krone had the right idea, splitting up their hours this way. In her second half-hour, Emma’s pressure on the pedals was much better. Instead of hunching forward, she leaned back in the seat like Norman, and tilted her wrist the way Ray did when turning the wheel to move it more smoothly.
“That was excellent, Emma,” Krone said when Emma turned into an intersection to merge into traffic. “Well done!” When she came to a stop, Emma glanced into the rear-view mirror, where Norman’s and Ray’s matching grins met hers.
Trouble didn’t strike again until Emma came to a complete stop at a stop sign at perpendicular streets. The driver behind her leaned on his horn and revved his engine at her. Emma startled, and she’d only just been able to glance in her mirror when the car screamed around her, the driver yelling something unintelligible out the window. Emma’s breath caught at the flash of anger on his face.
“Ignore him,” Krone said, her voice hard. “Some drivers are like that, but you did everything just right.”
“He flipped me off!” Emma said. “I didn’t think people did that in real life.”
“He did what?” Norman growled from the backseat.
“I got his license plate number,” Ray added, his voice just as dangerously low. Krone handed a piece of paper from her clipboard and a pen into the backseat for him.
“Emma, are you okay?” Norman asked. When Emma looked over her shoulder at him, his face was carefully neutral.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” She flashed a toothy smile to punctuate her point, and Norman’s expression eased back into a smile.
“All right,” Krone said, taking her things back from Ray, the license plate number and what looked like the make and color of the car scribbled down there in Ray’s staccato print. “This is an important lesson for all of you, how to handle a situation with an aggressive driver. It’s always better to let them get ahead of you and be on their way. Don’t ever engage. Right?”
“Right,” they chorused.
“Right,” Krone repeated. “Okay, Emma, take a left.”
*
“Should I have brought coffee?” Emma asked when Ray yawned over his book. Since Norman brought donuts the week before, she’d volunteered to get them this week and told Ray he was on duty for the next round.
“Nah, I’ll wake up while you drive,” he said, pulling the jelly donut out of the paper bag in her hands.
Once again, when Krone pulled up, Emma raised her hand to go first. Krone smiled but put a finger to her chin thoughtfully.
“I’d like to have someone else go first so that they can go through the pre-driving safety protocol,” she said. “And the third of you will go first next week.”
Norman slid into the driver’s seat and clicked his seatbelt into place. He adjusted the mirrors and the seat, checked his blind spots, and went down the exact list of safety precautions. Krone nodded as she made notes on her clipboard, and then she instructed Norman to pull out onto the street.
They pulled into a quiet cul-de-sac where Krone had Norman back up in a straight line and perform a three-point turn to get back onto the road from which they’d entered. A while later, she had him park behind another car on the side of the road, then back up and pull out, and later parallel park. Norman followed her instructions with his usual serene smile.
With every driving technique Norman masterfully performed, Emma got more excited for her turn behind the wheel. Three-point turns weren’t her favorite thing, but Krone was a good instructor and would give her the right advice to fix her technique. She studied Norman closely as he shifted gears, looked over his shoulder, and checked his mirrors.
“You’ll be fine,” Ray said quietly as Krone gave Norman directions in the front seat. Emma blinked at him. “Just relax. You know what you need to do, and now you just need practice.”
“Right!” Emma clenched her fist and reached out to him. After a moment, Ray made a looser fist of his own and bumped his knuckles against hers.
“All right, Norman, I’m going to have you pull over here,” Krone said. “Who wants to go next?”
*
By week five of driving hours with Krone, Emma was pretty sure she could do three-point turns in her sleep. The rhythm of looking over her shoulder and shifting gears had become familiar to the point of automatic. Ray didn’t hesitate anymore on narrow or crowded roads. Norman just kept getting smoother on his turns and accelerations. Saturday morning donuts were the taste of victory and improved skills.
Emma figured they had to be coming up to another skill at this point, now that the three of them were driving so confidently around neighborhoods. Which probably meant...
“You’re really doing well, Norman,” Krone said. “If you’d like, I think you’re ready to try highway driving.”
“The highway!” Emma gasped. “Ooh, Norman, do it, take us out on the highway!”
“Yeah. Show us what this regulation driver’s ed vehicle can really do,” Ray said.
“It’s up to Norman,” Krone said firmly, casting a disapproving look over her shoulder into the backseat. To Norman, she added, “We’ll do what you’re most comfortable with.”
“Let’s try the highway,” Norman said. Ray grinned. Emma whooped and threw her hands in the air, clapping them down around either side of the headrest to land on Norman’s shoulders.
“You’re a wild man, Norman!” she cheered.
“Emma!” Krone said. “Don’t grab or startle the driver, especially a student, while he’s behind the wheel!” Emma squeaked out an apology and dropped back into her seat.
“You okay up there, Norman? You look a little flushed,” Ray said slyly.
“You’re imagining it, Ray,” Norman said in a bright voice that ferried an undercurrent of shut up. His fair skin was a little pink, his smile a little wider. Emma figured he was pretty excited to get out on the highway.
*
“I can’t believe you guys always get maple,” Emma said, rifling through the bag of donuts Ray offered her. “I got there at six-thirty last week, and they had nothing!”
“Some days they just don’t make them,” Ray said.
“And others they just sell earlier,” Norman added cheerily. The boys exchanged a look over Emma’s head.
It was hard to believe they’d been driving for two months now. The hours were getting way easier, all three of them driving around the neighborhood with more confidence and relaxation. Norman pretty much took them out on the highway every week, and last week, Emma had finally tried it. Ten minutes gave her a whole new respect for Norman; highway driving was fast and loud, and her heart pounded the whole time Krone gave her instructions on where to shift lanes and how to take exits.
That left one more driver in their group. Sure enough, during his rotation behind the wheel, Krone asked, “How do you feel about trying the highway, Ray?”
“Sure.”
Emma cheered in the backseat as Ray put on his signal and followed Krone’s directions to the highway. He merged into traffic as if he’d been doing it his whole life and comfortably increased his speed without sending Emma and Norman crashing into the seats in front of them.
“Ray, that was perfect,” Krone said.
“I’m a wild man,” Ray said.
“You’re not wild, you’re just unfairly good at everything on your first try,” Emma groused. Norman laughed beside her.
“You’ve been practicing hard, haven’t you, Ray?” Krone asked. “In fact, when I was out grocery shopping the other night, I thought I saw you driving through the square with your mother.” Ray’s mom was a teacher at the school, and also kind of Emma’s hero. It would make sense that the driving instructor would recognize her, but the back of Ray’s neck and his ears lit up just the same.
“Yeah, well,” he muttered.
“Ray! You’re practicing extra without us?” Emma lifted a hand, then remembered Krone’s reaction the last time she’d touched the driver. She’d get Ray later when Norman was driving.
“You wild man, you,” Norman said.
Ray applied a little too much gas and braked, sending his friends in the backseat forward and thumping back into their seats.
“Kids,” Krone said sharply. They chorused apologies, mostly sincere.
*
Emma’s license was beautiful. The plastic was shiny, her smile in her picture was huge, and it was legal, undeniable proof that she was a driver.
“Look, look, look!” she kept saying, flashing it at Norman and Ray. Norman laughed every time and flashed his license back at her. Ray smiled and shook his head, but flapped his hand at her the third time around.
“We’ve seen it already, Emma,” he said, no genuine annoyance in his voice. She didn’t miss how tightly he clutched his own license in his hands.
“It’s a big accomplishment,” Norman said. “If Emma wants to show you her license, she’s earned it.”
“That’s right! Thank you, Norman.” Emma tapped the front of her license against his, picture to picture, and made a kissy sound effect like in the old-timey movies when a damsel would say, My hero. Norman startled, fingers fumbling, and dropped his license. He ducked down to grab it and straightened with pink cheeks.
“Smooth,” Ray said. Emma swatted him, and he laughed. “Hey, look, three driver’s licenses. Since it’s such a big accomplishment, I think we should celebrate.”
“Now you’re talking!” Emma said. “Ooh, let’s go get ice cream!” She gasped. “ I’m driving! ”
“We still need an adult in the car right now,” Norman reminded her gently.
“I’ll ask Mom,” Ray said, and Emma beamed.
“Softie,” Norman teased. Ray grumbled but did go get his mom, and the four piled into her car.
“You three did so well today,” Ray’s mom said. “You must be proud of yourselves.”
“Yes!” Emma agreed, pulling out of the parking lot and signaling her way onto the road.
“I’m glad we did it all together,” Norman said.
“At first, I wasn’t sold,” Ray said. Emma glanced at him in the rear-view mirror, hunkered down in his seat. “The lessons were so early...it was Saturday...but, yeah.” He smiled down towards his lap where Emma knew he was cradling his license with the utmost care. “I’m glad, too.”
“Me three!” Emma said.
“It was your idea,” Ray pointed out.
“Yeah, well, I’m still glad about it! This is a nice moment for us, Ray!”
“Eyes on the road, Emma,” Ray’s mom said gently.
“Right!”
“You don’t want to celebrate getting your license by losing it, Emma.”
“I will turn this car around, Ray! Ooh, I’ve always wanted to say that.”
“To me, specifically?”
“Yes, you! Ray!”
Norman laughed. “We’re going to be great drivers,” he said.
“We are!” Emma agreed.