five.
Jade Miller might've just made the most irrational decision of her life.
All her life, studying in an elite private school with girls crying over different boys every week, she has learnt that you must not trust someone too easily. Especially if he's a boy. Especially if he has a face that says he's been breaking hearts since the stoneage era.
Lucky for her, she never believes any girl at her school, not even her good friend Elise.
So really, if this boy next to him is a liar, she has no one to tell her all the I-told-you-so's she deserves.
The greasy, plastic-burning and lemon refreshener scent of the Impala reminds her of a friend's house, the house of a friend that, just somehow, forgets her whole existence. The vinyl seat of the car burns the back of her knee despite the chillness. The boy tentatively grabs the crumpled Mars bar wrapper from the bottle holder between them, near the hand break, and throws it out of the half-opened window.
The inner environmentalist of Jade gasps, just a slight, shocked gasp, then purses her lips together when the boy shot her a look. She winces as she bites her tongue, making up a long lecture of why and how we shall or can makes our Earth a better place. Among her self-ramble, it comes to her that she had also polluted the Earth, by driving and burning gas for hours. She mentally slaps herself.
An hour later, like the boy proposed, they arrive at a small town Jade couldn't read the name due to the faded block font of the welcome signboard. The boy probably knows the name, Jade thinks, but of course, she isn't bothered to ask him.
"Goodness, finally, actual human beings and brick buildings!" he shrieks. Jade's head snaps at him for the sudden outburst. Soon after she realizes that he's probably talking to himself, not to her. He might not even remembers that she’s here.
"Do you see any workshops?" he says, and it occurs to Jade that he's talking to her after all, asking her a question. So much for thinking that he doesn't remembers that she's here.
But maybe he is talking to himself. Jade doesn't know him, so the probabilities of him being a psycho hangs around in Jade's mind. After all, he did say that Jade's fucking crazy. People say that all the time, that it takes a fool to know another fool - or maybe in this case, it takes a fucking crazy person to know another fucking crazy person. Jade'll never know.
"Oi," he says, "it might help if you actually respond. It's your car that's toasted."
"Sorry," she mutters, looking up to him before turning her vision back to the side door mirror, searching for a workshop. The boy takes another turn.
"Oh, there it is!" Jade says, pointing at the old, snow covered signboard of a workshop.
"Where?" he says, trailing to where Jade's pointing.
Like every other store they’ve come across, High Wheels’ billboard is dusted with snow, thick on the topmost of the billboard. The workshop is open, only a half railing is open, the other half pulled down to the cemented floor. Amongst the delicate tires’ rims on display inside the workshop, there’s a Honda parked at the mouth of the shop, a pair of grease-stained blue-jumper dangles below it, an opened toolbox beside the hip. Jade looks around for someone else, but it looks like only that man is working today.
“Hi,” she calls as she approaches, the boy falls into step beside her. “Hi,” she says again.
The man slides down and lifts himself up from the car. A spanner in one hand, he wipes the oil of his other hand on his jumper. His sight flees from Jade, to the boy, then to the boy’s car a few feet from hers. He turns to them again.
