Comeback Kids

Chapter 4: Ronan

I steal the Ferrari on my last day of high school, for old time's sake.

In my defense, it's not technically stealing -- because, thanks to a glorious parental oversight, my name is on the registration for a car that looks like it was born, baptized, and raised in the Italian countryside. With a name like an overpriced coffee and a 12-cylinder engine that would make Leonardo da Vinci himself weep with joy, it would simply be a crime to let the Berlinetta Boxer stay locked up in a garage all summer, especially while the June sun is bouncing off the Manhattan skyscrapers and turning the entire city electric. And, hey, if you don't believe me, you can take it up with a judge.

Sure, a judge might also tell you that I got my learner's permit revoked two years ago after a stern reminder that "joyriding a car" is "frowned upon in the state of New York", but I haven't been caught yet, and besides, what's the point of breaking the law if you're only going to do it halfway? It's a new decade. I'm finally old enough to vote, enlist, and buy my own cigarettes. The other kids can go to college and study to get boring office jobs, but I'm going to take a page out of the Beat Generation's book and hit the road.

The Ferrari 365 GT4 BB is a spectacular machine. It cuts through city traffic like a switchblade, sunlight glinting off a paint-job as fresh and red as the tomatoes in a slice of Ray's Pizza. The universe seems to expand when I'm behind the wheel, exploding into a Big Bang of possibilities, all of them beckoning and bright and nearly close enough to touch. When I press my worn-out Converse against the gas pedal, the rumble of the engine is almost loud enough to drown out my thoughts of everything I'm leaving behind.

My friends. My family. My home.

After I drove Jesse back to his house, I packed a duffel bag and left my family's apartment for the last time. I'd dreamed about slamming that door behind me for years, but in the moment, I didn't feel angry or vindictive or really anything at all. Final moments have a funny way of never truly feeling like they're final. 

I kicked my key under the door and walked down the empty marble hallway and out the revolving glass doors like I'd done a hundred times before. Just because I knew it was going to end like this didn't make it sting any less. But if my goodbye to the city involved an Italian sports car and a double-digit speedometer, then it couldn't be all that bad.

***

You'd think that a trial involving the FBI and SEC would be full of intrigue and drama and lawyers shouting at each other across the courtroom, and not a process so drawn-out and tedious that I think I saw the judge fall asleep, not once, but twice, during the proceedings. (I'm pretty sure her favorite words are "deliberation" and "recess".) It only took a few days for me to realize that there's nothing the government likes better than paperwork, and the prosecutors were determined to subpoena enough forms and files to bury a body. Also, after I spilled my guts at the initial deposition, there wasn't much more I could do to contribute to the case except look pretty in the papers and keep showing up to school as if everything was normal, which didn't make for a very entertaining story to tell my friends. 

Back at the apartment, of course, nothing was normal. There was no point in pretending that my parents hadn't tried to set me up to be their fall guy (re my dad: "we didn't 'set up' anyone, this isn't Dick Tracy") and that I hadn't turned over sensitive information to the press, so we all mutually decided to put the lying and obfuscating aside for a bit. It was entertaining, in a way, to watch my parents struggling to say what they really meant instead of hiding their true intentions behind six different layers of litigious corporate jargon. It was like they'd forgotten how to have normal conversations, and now we all had to relearn how to talk to each other.

My dad's first words to me after I returned from Dusty Valley were: "Well, look who finally learned how to play the game." In a twisted, roundabout way, it almost sounded like he was proud of me.