“I been down to Liam’s party,” I said.

She nodded and climbed up in the chair across from me. After she lit the candles, I let them burn for a while, just to look at them reflected in Wavy’s eyes. When the wax started to run down to the cake I blew out the candles in one big go.

The knife was there to cut the cake, but neither of us reached for it.

“You wanna know what I wished for?”

“Won’t come true if you say,” she said in this husky voice.

“I don’t believe that. Lean across here and I’ll whisper it to you.”

She got up on her knees in the chair and put her hands on the table to lean across. I put my hands on either side of the cake and met her half way. I put my mouth up to her ear, like I was gonna whisper something, but all I did was blow a big puff of air into her hair like it was more candles. She ducked her head down against my chest and started laughing, so I kissed the only part of her I could reach: the top of her head.

“It already came true. You remembered my birthday,” I said. “And I got cake.”

6

KELLEN

July 1981

Wavy walked around the garage bay, looking at herself in the finish on the Barracuda. I picked the thing up cheap at an insurance auction and bought a new back end from a salvage yard down by Tulsa. For a good six months, Wavy had been watching me put it together in the evenings. I was all the time teasing her about how I was gonna paint it Moulin Rouge.

“That’s a factory color,” I’d say. Just to get her to roll her eyes, thinking about me driving a pink car. I ended up painting it black with metallic gray striping.

I’d planned to sell the car, but the way she looked at it once it was painted and ready to go, I wasn’t sure. She looked impressed.

“Wanna take it out?” I said.

She nodded and gave me that squinty look of hers that meant, “Let’s go fast.” She was like me that way, kind of a speed fiend, and the Cuda was built for it. We took it easy out around the lake, taking in the view, but the damn thing was champing at the bit. So I took it out to Highway 9 and opened it up a little.

Wavy leaned back in the seat, smiling, the wind blowing her hair around. I put my foot in the gas, kicked it up to about eighty. Then we came over a hill, damn near on top of a cop sitting on the shoulder. I braked hard, got it down to somewhere around sixty, and coasted past the cop.

I held my breath, but a mile on, the cop hadn’t come after us. I looked over at Wavy, who’d sat up to see why we slowed down.

“You tired?” I said.

She shook her head. She was a night owl.

“Feel like doing some drag racing?”

Hell yeah, she did. We ran the Cuda into Garringer and down to the flatlands where they drag on the weekends. It’s not legal, but the cops mostly look the other way, because it keeps the draggers off the main roads. And if you’re looking to sell a car like the Cuda, that’s where you find buyers.

The place was nothing but hard-packed dunes and old gravel pits. Not a tree to cut the wind and just ugly. When we pulled in, there were probably thirty cars, guys talking trash and checking out the competition. I parked and got out, went around to put up the hood. Let people know I was thinking about selling. Behind me, I heard some guy say to his buddies, “Look, it’s that big goddamn Indian.”

That was Billy, still wearing a letter jacket for football, when he’d been outta high school longer than I had.

“What’re you driving tonight?” he said.

“You’re looking at it.”

I didn’t know him from anywhere else, but I’d seen him out there plenty of times when I had my ’64 Polara. Summer before I met Wavy, I was out there nearly every weekend, dragging that old Dodge.

While Billy and his buddies checked out the Cuda, Wavy came up and slipped her hand into mine. Right away, Billy got his eye on her.

“Say, what’s this little girl’s mommy gonna do if you lose her in a race?”

“I ain’t losing nothing tonight,” I said.

“She’s a little young for my taste,” his buddy said, “but she’ll be worth racing for in a couple years. I do like blondes.”

Wavy glared at them, even though it was just a joke. Nobody ever won somebody else’s girl. The drags were strictly about the money and the winning, showing your car was faster. I mean, I’d won plenty of races, and only ever took home two girls. One was done with me as soon as she sobered up. The other one went home with a different guy every week.

Billy wanted to put fifty bucks on our race, so while me and him queued up for the track, Wavy headed off to where all the spectators were.

The track was shaped like a D. A loop around the big gravel pit, then a quarter-mile straightaway. It was a good track, except for this tight spot early on. About a hundred yards from the start, the track cut into the side of a dune. It meant you had to ride close to the other car until you passed it.

As I pulled up in the line, I glanced out of the corner of my eye and caught Wavy staring up at the stars. She was the prettiest girl there easy, with her hair blowing back like a flag. Amazed me how fast she was growing up. She’d be twelve in a couple weeks and she was gonna be long-legged like Val. Every time I looked at her, the gap between the bottom of her skirt and the tops of her boots was bigger. As soon as I thought it, I got to worrying about all the other guys there looking at her and thinking the same thing. We had a minute before the flagger sent me and Billy around the loop to the straightaway, so I called her over.