Write Using the Words 'Heartbreak,' 'Brake Fluid,' 'Trust' - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

OK, so I haven’t been driving that long, but I’m gonna go all the way down this road to Albuquerque and back before my daddy gets home from his trip. He’s driving the Buick with the two nifty stripes swooping from front to back, red on the top and and gray on the bottom, a cool car, but he won’t let us take it to the creamery and do a brodie, no sir. We got to drive this old truck but it’s OK and I can get lots of friends into it in the back, although Daddy says no friends in the back.

The reason I’m going to Albuquerque is to visit my lying girlfriend, the one who said she’d be true always even though we live sixty miles apart, but I heard from Buster Young that she was NOT being true but false, and so I’m going to see for myself whether I plan to go on trusting her or just dump her the way an untrustworthy girl should be dumped. I didn’t tell Ma I was going all the way to Albuquerque, of course, just told her I’d be picking up Jimmy and Swatter and them to go to the creamery.

``Don’t you go racing, now,’’ she said, like I would, except that I would if I had to, but mostly I can keep myself out of have to by joking around and pointing to this ramshackle truck and saying, ``Hey, now, you wouldn’t want to get beat by this old truck, would you? No sir, I’ll spare you the humiliation, and we’ll just get another Coke, viejo. I can drink mine faster than you can drink yours.’’ Sometimes a sense of humor can just save your ass.

And so it goes, until Buster tells me that Lucella is stepping out with some university fella and she only 15. I’m 15 too and don’t know if I can hold a candle to some university fella but I’m gonna try. If you don’t try you just run into heartbreak for no known reason. If I’m gonna have my heart broken, I want to know why.

I can drive to see this girl because you can drive in this state at 14, because we’re a farm state even if we don’t have a farm, even if we do have a truck. My mom wanted the truck for her garden business and it says right on the door, ``Amy’s Top Gardens,’’ so everyone always knows it’s me and that I borrowed my mom’s vehicle. A little humiliating, I’d say, but you gotta do whatever to get your wheels.

Here we come to La Bajada that makes the brakes whine and squeal ‘cuz you got to pump ‘em for a couple miles going straight down this old red huge hill. I can feel the brakes acting squishy and I’m pumping like crazy but the truck looks to me like it’s goin’ faster and faster. I wonder if there’s any brake fluid in these ancient brakes and if there’s not, I gotta throw this baby into gear and hope like hell it works to keep me from hurtling over the edge of the road into the ditch. God, help! There! I got the gear switched and we’re bucking back and forth and the gears are grinding like a squalling cement mixer but we’re slowing down, down, down. And stopped. You know, you can’t trust a really old truck if you don’t check the brake fluid first. Say, maybe I could apply that to Lucella and women in general. You never know when you’re gonna learn something useful.