A week after they got the Mustang.
It was a Saturday night, the last day of school before winter break finally began.
We were all gathered in the living room, half-watching some show on the television, the whole house wrapped in that particular warmth that only really shows up when it's cold outside and the heater's working overtime inside.
I was reading The Lord of the Rings, something I'd never actually gotten around to reading in my previous life, having only ever seen the movies. The book, it turned out, was even better than the films, which was no surprise as always.
Everyone seemed genuinely content just to be home, myself included, along with Georgie, Missy, and Dad, all of us content to just exist in the same room for once. Sheldon was the lone exception, spending most of the evening grumbling about having nothing productive to occupy his time.
According to him, an evening with no homework wasn't a gift so much as a waste. On top of that, it had already been over ten days since we'd mailed our package off to NASA, and the continued silence on their end was clearly eating away at him more with each passing hour.
He aimed most of his frustration directly at me, since I was technically his partner in all of this. Most nights lately, the routine played out roughly the same way.
"It has been ten days, Charlie. Ten. Is our package lost? Should we send it again?" he said, pacing back and forth in front of the couch.
"No, it's not lost. Just have some patience, Sheldon," I told him, not even bothering to look up from my book.
"What if somebody stole it, or dismissed it without even opening the envelope?" he pressed.
For the first few rounds of this, I let him vent without much pushback, mostly out of pity more than patience. Eventually, though, I had to grab him in a headlock and give him a proper noogie, like any responsible older brother would, just to get him to drop it and leave me in peace. Dad didn't so much as glance our way, far too absorbed in whatever was playing on the television to notice the commotion.
Sheldon marched straight off to tattle to Mom about it. She emerged from the kitchen a minute later, lectured me briefly about leaving my little brother alone, let out a tired sigh, and settled down onto the couch beside Dad. Sheldon seemed satisfied at this.
Cock-a-doodle-doo~~
"Herschel's chickens are loud tonight," Mom said, not looking up from the television. I knew better. It was not Herschel's chicken.
"Yeah, I'm gonna head to bed. I'm wiped out after working on the car all day. Night, Mom," I said, standing up and starting toward my room.
"You boys need your rest. You've been working so hard lately. Georgie's already asleep," Mom said, since Georgie had turned in a while earlier.
"That's good. Hard work's good for a man, Mary. When I was their age, I did a lot more than that," Dad said, nursing a single light beer, the one drink Mom allowed him most nights these days. Ever since Dad had slimmed down and started feeling more like himself again, Mom had only doubled down on keeping him disciplined about it.
"Somehow I doubt that," Meemaw said, eyeing Dad with open skepticism. The two of them traded jabs like this so often it barely registered as an actual argument anymore. Dad ignored the comment entirely, turning his attention back to the television like she hadn't said a word.
"Goodnight, Charlie," Missy said, narrowing her eyes at me as I passed by, watching a little too closely for comfort. I slipped a dollar bill out of my pocket and left it on the table without a word, quick enough that nobody else noticed. Missy could be sharp when she wanted to be, sharper than she had any business being at her age, and the last thing I needed tonight was her getting curious enough to go looking for answers.
I got into my room, grabbed the duffel bag sitting on my bed already packed with a change of clothes, and eased the window open. Two houses down, Kevin's car sat idling at the curb, headlights off, Kevin himself leaning out the window waving me along to hurry up.
He really did make a terrible cock. That came out wrong even in my own head.
"We're gonna be late at this rate. Jump out already," Georgie whispered from right behind me. He was already dressed for the night, standing there waiting like he'd been ready for the better part of an hour. We'd planned this whole thing out earlier that day, down to the last detail.
I didn't make a habit out of going to parties, not with everything else I usually had going on, but Helen had spent the better part of a week talking me into this one specifically, promising it would be worth my while if I actually showed up instead of making excuses.
If Mom ever found out, she'd have more than enough ammunition to ban me from working on the cars for a few days straight, so getting caught simply wasn't an option tonight. Still, whatever risk came with it, I figured a night off was overdue, and Helen's company alone was more than enough reason to take the chance.
"Let me show you how it's done," Georgie said, swinging one leg over the windowsill and dropping down onto the lawn below with the easy confidence of someone who had clearly done this exact thing before, more than once.
We crept across the yard and slipped into Kevin's car without either of us making a sound. Kevin greeted me with a high-five the second I climbed in, grinning like he'd finally managed to drag me out of the house to do something fun for once.
Georgie claimed the front seat, Kevin pulled away from the curb, and I spent the first few minutes of the drive changing into my actual outfit in the back seat, wrestling my way out of pajama pants in a moving car with considerably less grace than I would have liked.
Georgie and Kevin tossed out a few comments at my expense along the way, laughing at my expense, though I did my best to ignore both of them.
When we pulled up outside Helen's house, Kevin leaned out the window and let out that same rooster call again, clearly proud of himself for keeping the running joke alive.
"Hey, hey, hey, there's no chickens anywhere near this neighborhood," I hissed at him, glancing nervously at the dark windows up and down the street. Getting caught tonight was the last thing on my list of acceptable outcomes.
A moment later, Helen's window on the first floor slid open, and there she was, climbing out onto the ledge with a confidence that made my stomach drop a little. I was already halfway out of the car, fully prepared to catch her if anything went wrong, but she didn't need the help. She made her way down the trellis and dropped the last few feet onto the grass like a ninja who'd done this a hundred times before.
She came straight over to hug me the second her feet hit the ground, tripping slightly right at the end of it, which struck me as funny given she'd just scaled an entire wall without a single misstep only to stumble on perfectly flat ground.
She had on an oversized blue denim jacket layered over a short white dress covered in a bright, abstract pattern, paired with white high-top sneakers, slouchy light pink socks, oversized pink hoop earrings, and a colorful scrunchie holding half her hair back. She looked effortlessly put together, like she'd barely tried and somehow ended up looking better for it anyway.
"That climb down was reckless and hot. You look absolutely gorgeous, though," I told her, and she just laughed, pulling me into another hug and murmuring against my ear.
"You look pretty dashing yourself," she said.
I'd actually put some thought into it for once, choosing a crisp white turtleneck under a fitted blue jacket, paired with dark, slim black jeans and a pair of clean white sneakers to finish it off. Unlike Georgie, who tended to blow whatever cash he had on arcade tokens and junk food, I'd set some of my own money aside specifically for nights like this one.
"Get in the car already," Georgie hissed from inside, clearly done waiting on the two of us.
The party turned out to be at a place everyone just called the Delgado house, a big two-story place near the edge of town belonging to a senior named Rick, whose parents had apparently left town for the weekend without a hint of suspicion. Cars lined both sides of the street for a full block in either direction, and even from outside, the bass from whatever was playing thumped steady enough to rattle the porch windows.
Kevin parked a full street over, partly out of necessity and partly out of some unspoken teenage instinct not to park anywhere that might draw attention. The four of us walked the rest of the way together, Helen's arm looped through mine, Georgie practically vibrating with excitement beside Kevin.
Inside, the place was packed wall to wall, kids from every grade crammed into a living room that had been cleared of furniture to make room for dancing.
Someone had strung colored lights along the ceiling, and a folding table off to one side held an overwhelming spread of chips, cookies, and enough two-liter soda bottles to survive a small siege.
"There he is," a voice called out over the music, and I turned to find Tom, of all people, pushing his way through the crowd toward us, grinning.
"Charlie Cooper, showing his face at an actual party. Never thought I'd see the day," Tom said, clapping me on the shoulder hard enough to nearly knock me sideways.
"Special occasion," I said, glancing at Helen, who just smiled and squeezed my arm.
"That Maverick got me a girlfriend, you know. Best money I ever spent," Tom added.
"Glad to hear it," I said, and meant it.
Georgie disappeared almost immediately into a crowd of guys from the football team. Kevin peeled off toward the snack table, leaving Helen and me to make our way further into the party on our own.
A few different girls drifted over at various points to strike up conversation, apparently curious about me. I was pretty famous because I was a genius and handsome guy who dressed well.
One of them even went so far as to blow me a small, sneaky kiss from across the room, which Helen caught out of the corner of her eye without a moment's delay. She had my arm looped through hers and was steering me toward the back door before I'd even finished processing what had happened.
We ended up out back for a while, where somebody had gotten a small bonfire going in a metal pit despite the cold, a loose circle of kids gathered around it trading stories and passing around a bag of marshmallows nobody seemed to have actual sticks for.
A few of them had a joint going as well, passing it lazily around the circle. Someone offered it my way at one point, and I waved it off without much thought.
Helen and I found a spot on an old wooden bench a little removed from the noise, close enough to feel the fire's warmth without getting stuck in the thick of the crowd.
It was quiet out there, comfortable in a way the party itself hadn't quite managed to be, and Helen leaned her head against my shoulder without either of us saying much for a while.
"I've got something to show you," I told her eventually, and pulled the harmonica out of my jacket pocket, the same one she'd gifted me for my birthday. I'd been practicing on it in secret ever since in my free time, and it had turned out to be a lot more fun, and a lot easier to pick up, than I'd expected going in.
"You actually played it?" Helen said, breaking into a wide smile.
It was quiet enough out there, just the two of us and a handful of kids scattered nearby, so I lifted it to my mouth and worked through a couple of simple tunes I'd taught myself that week. She loved it, practically glowing with pride at having talked me into trying it in the first place. It turned out to be a genuinely nice way to pass the rest of the evening.
"You look like you're actually having fun," Helen said, taking in the whole scene around us.
"I am," I admitted, and it caught me off guard how true that actually felt. Most of my life these days revolved around engines and homework and skills nobody else knew I had. Sitting here, doing absolutely nothing productive for once, felt like its own strange kind of luxury.
"See, this is exactly what I meant. You need this sometimes," she said, leaning her head against my shoulder again.
We stayed out there a good while longer, trading easy conversation about nothing in particular, until the cold eventually chased us back inside, where the music had shifted into something slower.
"Dance with me," Helen said, already pulling me toward the cleared floor before I could come up with any excuse.
I let her lead, the two of us swaying more or less in time with the music while half the room around us did the same. It wasn't smooth or particularly impressive, but it didn't need to be.
We went to a corner and kissed each other and Helen made a point of aggressively kissing to mark her territory when she felt something girls watching us. I was definitely not complaining.
At some point, Georgie reappeared just long enough to make a face at me from across the room, mouthing something at me that I chose to ignore entirely.
Closer to midnight, things started winding down. A few kids had already slipped out, Rick was making increasingly obvious rounds trying to get people to start heading home.
Kevin found the three of us again a little after midnight, jingling his keys.
"Time to get everybody home," he said, nodding at Georgie and me.
The drive home was quiet, all three of us worn out in that particular way that came from an actually good night.
This time around, I gave Helen a boost getting back up to her window, and she made it inside without any trouble at all.
Kevin dropped us a block from the house, and Georgie and I crept back across the lawn and through my window with far more care than we'd used sneaking out of it in the first place. By the time my head hit the pillow, the house was still and silent, nobody any the wiser. As far as anyone in the Cooper household knew, both of us had been asleep in our rooms since eight o'clock sharp.
I had a feeling I wouldn't be getting up for my usual run in the morning.
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AN: This chapter is sponsered by SAI1999. You get one extra chapter today because of him. I slept only 4 hours because of him.
All hail SAI1999.