The Heartbreak Messenger

Chapter 2

"Seriously, Noah, what do you know about breaking up with high school girls?" Jack asked me later that afternoon as we walked down to David's. "You're in ninth grade."

"Age matters not," I said in my best Yoda voice. "No... no."

"Yoda didn't say that. He said, 'Size matters not.'"

"No way. It was when he was talking about being nine hundred years old or something."

"'Size matters not.' It was when Luke was trying to carry Yoda on his shoulders."

Jack and I passed the glass doors that opened into the front of David's Quality Service Garage. It's the only auto garage in the county that's open until midnight. Plus they give you a complimentary pine-scented air freshener with each oil change. The poster in the window says while supplies last, but David got a smoking good deal on half of warehouse of those air fresheners on eBay. I've seen the boxes in the storeroom and, believe me, supplies will last a good long while.

We turned the corner of the building and walked around back where the four garage bays opened up into a cement parking lot. Next to the office door in the first bay stood a tall man in green coveralls and a red Cardinals baseball cap. As always, he chewed on half a cigar. Unlit, of course, because only an idiot would light up in a garage. Besides, he'd quit smoking years ago.

"Hey, David," I said as I walked past.

He looked up from his clipboard. "Noah, my man, how's it going?" He glanced behind me at Jack. "And... Jacky Boy. Always welcome at David's Garage."

Jack scowled and followed me past David to bay four. There was an old Chevy Malibu up on the lift. It looked like an inline fuel filter job. The woman underneath it was also dressed in green coveralls. Her plain brown hair was pulled up in a ponytail and threaded through the back of a white baseball cap that didn't have a logo on it. Just grease. She looked both young and old - thirty two to be exact - and she handled the wrench in her hand like a pro.

"Hi, Mom," I said.

She stopped cranking the wrench just long enough to look over and give me a piece of a smile.

"Hi, Noah. Hi, Jack. How was school?"

"Okay," I said.

"Guess what Noah's going to do for my brother?" Jack blurted out.

I jabbed my elbow in his ribs before Mom looked over at us again.

"What's that?"

I shrugged. "Nothing. Just help him with some school stuff. "

Mom turn back to the underside of the car and I pulled Jack across the parking lot to an old picnic table resting in the shade of a grove of poplars. The trees went out for at least a hundred yards on town land. A dirt path cut through the trees, crossing a wooden on its way.

Jack rubbed his chest. "I think you cracked a rib."

"That's not something my Mom needs to hear about," I said, pulling notebooks from my backpack.

"Sorry. It's not like you're doing something illegal."

"What are you doing that's not illegal?" said a familiar voice.

Millie stepped out from the poplar path and joined us at the picnic table. Her soft brown hair fell just to her shoulders and her dimples stuck in her cheeks as if a thumbtack held them there.

Back in second grade, when Jack and I got in that scuffle over daring me to kiss a girl, well, Millie was the girl. Somehow that had endeared us to her, and we've been friends ever since. She was also my best friend, the other one of two.