Chapter 22: My Classmate Is Way Too Careful
Summer 1990
Time in a comfortable routine has a way of disappearing quickly.
A full semester had passed. Adam was sixteen, and like most American teenagers hitting that milestone, it was finally time to learn to drive.
In the US, a driver's license functionally serves as your primary ID — it's the document you hand over for everything. Getting one at sixteen was less a convenience and more a rite of passage.
"Adam, are you sure you don't want me to teach you?" Bob lingered near the front door, looking mildly deflated. "I'm actually a very good driver."
"I'm good, Dad. Emmett's got it covered. He has the time and he's already licensed."
Bob accepted this without much argument, which didn't mean he wasn't disappointed.
The honest truth was that the past two years had quietly widened the gap between them. The Adam that Bob had raised — the goofy, predictable, slightly hapless kid — had been replaced by someone noticeably more composed and self-directed. Things they used to do together, weekend fishing trips, backyard football, random drives to nowhere in particular, had gradually stopped happening. Bob told himself it was normal. Boys grew up and wanted their peers around more than their fathers. He understood it even while it stung a little.
He didn't know, of course, that the distance had a different explanation entirely.
Adam genuinely liked Bob. The warmth of the Duncan family had made it easy to settle in, and Bob's straightforward decency made him easy to respect. But fishing and football held zero appeal for Adam in his current form, and manufacturing enthusiasm for them felt dishonest in a way that other performances didn't.
Beep beep.
"That's Emmett." Adam gave Bob an apologetic smile. "I'll be careful."
"I know you will." Bob patted his shoulder. "Go on."
Adam got in the passenger seat. Emmett pulled away from the curb immediately.
"I genuinely don't understand," Emmett said, after about thirty seconds of silence. "Why aren't you learning with Gretchen? Her car is incredible."
"Not safe," Adam said casually.
Emmett went quiet. Then he glanced sideways and made a sound of pure disgust.
"You knew the answer before you asked," Adam pointed out.
"You're unbelievable," Emmett said, with the tone of a man who found the situation both incomprehensible and personally insulting. "Completely unbelievable."
Adam let him have it. He'd been tutoring Gretchen a couple of times a week for months now, which Emmett had never fully accepted as the real explanation despite it being entirely accurate. Gretchen had shown up to the first session with a textbook and a genuine question about it, which had surprised Adam slightly, and they'd been doing it consistently ever since.
"Speaking of which," Adam said, "how are things with Ivy?"
Emmett's expression darkened immediately. "Do not bring up Ivy."
"That bad?"
"I am completely done. This time is different. I mean it."
"Okay."
"You don't believe me."
"I believe you," Adam said.
Emmett could tell he didn't and knew better than to push it, so he changed direction. "Have you noticed Juno's been disappearing a lot lately? She keeps skipping band practice."
Adam's eyes shifted slightly.
He'd noticed. He'd been noticing for a while.
Since the afternoon in the library when Juno had pushed that medical textbook in front of him, she had gradually become harder to account for. Skipping group sessions with vague explanations, turning up occasionally and then vanishing again. Emmett and Sheldon treated it as a minor annoyance. Adam was less relaxed about it.
He had a general sense of what she was probably doing. The medical book had made it fairly clear, and Juno's biology dissections in class — which their teacher had described as displaying technique she had no business having at sixteen — confirmed the rest of it.
The question was whether he should say something.
He thought about it honestly.
Juno was not impulsive. She was possibly the least impulsive person he'd ever encountered. Whatever she was working toward, she'd been building it methodically for at least a year, probably longer. The research, the preparation, the careful assembly of skills — it was all very deliberate, and very Juno. In the movie that bore her other self's name, the parallel character had been equally measured, equally prepared, and had known exactly what she was doing at every step.
Adam was not going to change that outcome with a conversation.
And if he was being completely honest with himself — which he tried to be, even when it was uncomfortable — he didn't have clean motivations for interfering. He wanted the wisdom points. He wanted the daily 0.005. Getting involved in something this complicated, with someone this perceptive, for reasons that weren't entirely selfless, was a recipe for consequences he couldn't predict.
He let it go.
Whatever is happening, she's thought it through more carefully than I have.
"She'll turn up," Adam said.
Emmett honked twice at nothing in particular. "You're very calm about it."
"One of us has to be."
Emmett pulled into a wide, flat stretch of empty parking lot behind the old fairgrounds — plenty of space, no obstacles worth worrying about.
"Alright." He killed the engine and got out. "Your turn. We'll start slow, first gear, get comfortable with the—"
Adam had already slid into the driver's seat, adjusted the mirrors, checked his positioning, engaged the clutch, and shifted into second.
"Hey!" Emmett grabbed the door frame. "What are you doing? I said first gear! You're a beginner!"
"Second gear is fine," Adam said, and eased off the clutch smoothly. "Trust me."
The car moved forward without any drama whatsoever.
Emmett sat in the passenger seat in silence for a moment.
"You've done this before," he said flatly.
Adam said nothing, which was its own kind of answer.
End of Chapter 22
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