Read Online Downers Grove by Michael Hornburg - Free Book Online Page A

looks seemed sinister. At the time, Mom said he was a basketball player who suffocated a cheerleader with a pillow. We found out several years later that he was gay and that this girl had laughed at him when he couldn’t get it up, that she threatened to tell the whole school about it. The weird thing is, I can’t remember anything about his painting.

    A rusting BEWARE OF DOG sign dangled from the barbed-wire fence surrounding the junkyard. The sharp white teeth and shiny black eyes of the dogs cruising the yard were giving me the creeps. I turned up the Nine Inch Nails tape, closed my eyes, and tried to sink into Trent’s melodrama.
    My mechanic turned out to be more complex and glamorous than I expected. I knew he seemed out of place pumping gas on the corner of Sixty-third and Main. The way he talked, his body language, almost everything he did seemed to hold a hidden agenda. Even now he has to have some secret meeting with his pals.
    Whatever they were doing, it seemed to take forever. My stomach was practicing flip-flops. The car was getting cold. The dogs kept pacing, occasionally barking at a bird or some other critter crawling through the weeds. I locked my door as a precaution, then leaned over and locked Bobby’s too. The place reaked of urban legends.
    Finally, mystery date popped out of the clubhouse and made his way back to the car. When the door burst open, the interior light and car buzzer set the dogs off in another barking frenzy. Bobby clicked himself into the seat belt, started the engine, and backed out of the driveway onto the narrow road. He shifted into first and squealed the tires. My head whipped back against the black vinyl seat.
    â€œWhat kind of car was that?”
    â€œAn ’eighty-four Chevelle with a four-fifty-four engine. It’s a beater, but it always starts.” He laughed to himself.
    â€œI can’t believe you race cars,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?

    â€œI didn’t know you were into cars,” he said.
    â€œYou never asked. Can I come see you race sometime?”
    â€œI don’t see why not. It’s a free country last time I checked.”
    â€œHow long have you been racing?” I asked.
    â€œSince ninth grade.”
    â€œHow old are you now?”
    â€œTwenty-six.”
    He didn’t ask me how old I was. In fact, he didn’t ask many questions at all. It was like a long game of truth or dare, only he kept responding “truth.” We crossed over the tracks and rode along Industrial Drive, a semideserted stretch of land bordering the petrochemical plants. Across the street stood a trailer park of bread box homes haphazardly spread among patches of waist-high weeds. We passed an old red barn that was tilted sideways with its roof sagging in the center. THE TIME IS NEAR was painted on the roadside wall in fading white letters.
    â€œSo how’d you learn to be a mechanic?” I asked.
    â€œI had a beater in high school; a ’sixty-eight Fairlane. One day it started bleeding oil all over the driveway. I didn’t have any money so I got the bright idea to take the engine apart and try to fix the leak. The first thing I learned is that it’s a lot easier taking apart than putting back together.” He laughed to himself.
    â€œSo being a mechanic is sorta like solving a crossword puzzle, right?”
    Unsure of the comparison, he looked at me like I was interpreting too fast. “Every car is different. They all have their own personalities.”
    â€œYour friends, are they mechanics too?”
    â€œI met those guys from towing in wrecks off the highway.One night we sat down and killed a twelve-pack and they started telling stories about racing up in Wisconsin. They built that car out of used parts from the yard.” He made a left turn and was quiet while glancing into his rearview mirror. “The original driver kissed the wall and cracked his ribs. They needed a