Son of Tesla

SON OF TESLA: Chapter 5

IT WAS THE BEST day of Jem Parsons's life.

Jayne Wilmer had finally agreed to go out with him, and that was practically as good as getting tickets to Comic-Con. Jayne was tall. She was blonde. She was a cheerleader. She had all the ingredients Jem's seventeen-year-old brain figured girls were meant to be made of. And he had a pretty good handle on women, he thought. He'd seen movies. A lot.

Jayne wasn't the captain of the cheerleading team, but it was her second year on the squad now and that meant she was head and shoulders more important than the freshies.

She was social status.

Even better, she was hot.

Jem's Firebird coughed as he rounded a turn onto East Hart Street and eased the automatic transmission up a gear. A thin cloud of bluish smoke spewed out of his tailpipe and hung over the road behind him as he sped away. The warmth of summer was easing into the burbs of NYC with the graceful fingers of a painter, brushing small, bright green leaves onto the ancient oaks that lined Hart. Jem cranked down his window – with the hand-lever, of course; the Firebird was a clunky '95 with no power systems – and let the wind ruffle his sandy blond hair.

Jayne Wilmer. Jem let the name waltz through his head like a silk dress caught in the wind. Maybe she spoke a little ditzy. Said "like" too many times in front of too many words. Maybe she and Jem weren't going to have any in-depth conversations about world peace or human rights, but Jem didn't care much about those anyway. Maybe she wouldn't be excited about every update from the Curiosity rover currently trolling the surface of Mars, which Jem did care about, but he wasn't above sacrificing. That's how relationships were supposed to work.

No doubt about it, Jem thought as he swung off Hart and put the skyline of the city in his rearview, this was the best day of his life.

Even better, it was Friday. They weren't going out in the far-off realm of Next Week, or Sometime. They were going out Tonight. 

The Firebird coughed again as Jem turned off the main road at the elegant wooden sign announcing the entrance to Roadwood Terrace in flowing red script. Something behind the dash rattled as the brittle suspension bounced over a small hump where a fresh layer of asphalt had been laid the previous summer, but Jem was too busy mulling the chances of post-movie activities (Jayne Wilmer had an SUV with one of those reclining back seats) to notice. The towering oaks of Hart and Greenbriar gave way to rows of low, ranch-style houses, manicured lawns, and mulch-strewn flower beds where the year's first tulips were just peeling tentatively out of their closed buds. Houses and lawns and flowers he'd seen hundreds of times as he drove home this way from school.

Since it was Friday, Jem had had yearbook club after school, and he was getting home late. He'd been useless at the club meeting, where they'd been discussing the layout for the senior ads to go in the back of the book. Who cared about pictures of Billy Greeson hanging from the football field's goalpost when Jayne Wilmer was probably already getting ready for their date? Not him.

Twice the club president had yelled at Jem for daydreaming. Twice he'd snapped away from tantalizing visions of Jayne smiling at him as she climbed into his car later that evening. Would he kiss her? Who was he kidding? Probably not. But maybe, maybe he would. After all, summer vacation started next week. What did he have to lose? And those lips...

Miles inside his own head, Jem didn't see the grayish-blue car speeding down the cross-street ahead of him. Its lights were off, and it all but blended into the gathering dusk as it barreled toward the intersection. Jem only had a slight sensation of movement out of the corner of his eye before the two vehicles connected with a screeching crunch. It was over as soon as it started.