Afterward, Greenmantle realized he had forgotten the dog was there, which seemed vaguely distasteful.
“So you’re going to be a spelunker,” he said.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Cavewoman. In the most basic linguistic sense, you’re going to be a cavewoman.”
“Whatever. You’re coming with me.”
23
Blue was not so much a terrible driver as a terrified one. Because she had not, as Jesse Dittley pointed out, eaten her greens, she had to adjust the seat as close to the pedals as possible. She clutched the steering wheel with the grace of a performing bear. Everything on the dash shouted for her attention. Lights? Speed! Air on face? Air on feet! Fuel-oil-engine! Strange bacon symbol?
She drove very slowly.
The worst part of her terror was how angry it made her. There was nothing about the process of driving that seemed confusing or unfair to her. She’d aced her driver’s test. She knew what everything apart from the bacon symbol did. Road signs never perplexed; right of way was logical. She was a champion yielder. Give her forty minutes and she could parallel park the Fox Way Ford in any place you liked.
But she could never forget that she was a tiny pilot in a several-thousand-pound weapon.
“It’s just because you haven’t practiced enough,” Noah said generously, but he was gripping the door handle in a way that seemed redundant for the already dead.
Of course she hadn’t practiced enough. There was only one car at 300 Fox Way, and so it was in high demand. Blue could bike to school, work, and Monmouth Manufacturing, so the car generally fell to people who worked outside of the house or were running errands. At her current rate of practice-acquisition, Blue imagined she would be comfortable behind the wheel of a car sometime in her forties.
This afternoon, however, she’d managed to stake a claim on the car for a few hours. Noah was her only companion on this field trip: Gansey had some raven boy activity, Adam was working or sleeping off work, and Ronan had vanished into the ether as per usual.
They were headed to Jesse Dittley’s.
“We are going so slow,” Noah said, craning his neck to observe the inevitable queue behind them. “I think I just saw a tricycle pass us.”
“Rude.”
After a protracted journey, Blue pulled into Jesse Dittley’s rutted driveway. The farm looked less mystical in the sun, less gloomy and cursed, and more grubby and rusted. Engaging the parking brake (“We’re not even on a hill!” protested Noah), she got out, and headed onto the porch. She pounded on the door.
It took a few attempts before he opened it. When he did, she was shocked by the height of him again. He was wearing another white tank top, or perhaps it was the same one. Their height difference made it difficult to discern his expression.
“OH, YOU.”
“Yep,” Blue reported. “Here is my bargain: You let us explore your cave, and I’ll clean up your yard. I have good credentials.”
He leaned and she stretched and he accepted the business cards she’d made and cut herself to convince old ladies in her neighborhood to pay her for putting in bedding plants. While he read it, she studied his face and his body, searching for signs of underlying illness, some preexisting condition that might strike him down later. Something besides a cursed cave. She saw nothing but height, and more height.
Finally, he replied, “ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME YOU DON’T LIKE WHAT I’VE DONE WITH THE PLACE?”
“Every yard can use some flowers,” Blue replied.
“DAMN STRAIGHT.” He shut the door in her face.
Noah, who had been standing unobserved beside her, said, “Is that what you meant to happen?”
It wasn’t, but before she had a chance to formulate her next plan, he re-opened the door, but this time he was wearing some camouflage-printed rubber boots. He stepped out onto the porch.
“HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE YOU?”
“Today.”
“TODAY?”
“I’m super fast.”
He stepped off the stairs and surveyed the yard. It was hard to tell if he was analyzing if Blue could accomplish it in an afternoon or contemplating if he would miss the ruin once it was gone.
“YOU CAN PUT THE THINGS IN THE BACK OF THAT TRUCK OVER THERE.”
Blue followed his gaze to a rusted brown truck that she’d mistaken for yet more junk.
“Great,” she said, and meant it. It would save her time if she didn’t have to slowly drive the car to the dump four times. “So, it’s a deal?”
“IF YOU GET IT DONE TODAY.”
She gave him a thumbs-up. “Okay, then. I’m going to get to work. Time’s wasting.”
Jesse sort of seemed to look at Noah, but then his eyes slid off and back to Blue. He opened his mouth, and for a moment, she thought he had seen Noah and was going to say something about him, but in the end, he just said, “I’M PUTTING WATER ON THE PORCH FOR YOU. MIND THE DOGS DON’T DRINK IT.”
There were no dogs in evidence, but it was possible they were hiding behind one of the discarded sofas in the yard. In any case, she was touched by the gesture.
“Thanks,” she said. “That’s kind of you.”
This gratitude apparently gave Jesse the confidence he needed to say what he’d been thinking before. Scratching his chest, he squinted at her in her shredded T-shirt and bleached jeans and combat boots.
“YOU’RE A TINY THING. YOU SURE YOU CAN DO THIS?”
“It’s forced perspective. It’s because you ate your greens. I’m larger than I look to you. Do you have a chain saw?”
He blinked. “YOU’RE CUTTING DOWN TREES?”
“No. Sofas.”
While he went looking for a chain saw within his house, Blue pulled on her gloves and got to work. She did the easy bits first, picking up bits of scrap metal the size of puppies and cracked plastic buckets with weeds growing through them. Then she dragged timbers with nails jutting from them and broken sinks with rainwater film in their basins. When Jesse Dittley appeared with a chain saw, she produced oversized rose-tinted sunglasses from the car to serve as eye protection and began to hack the larger things in the yard into more manageable pieces.
“MIND SNAKES,” Jesse Dittley warned from the porch as she paused to catch her breath. Blue didn’t understand what he meant until he gestured toward the weeds around the porch with an ominous shake of his hand.
“I get along with snakes,” Blue said. Most animals weren’t dangerous if you knew how to give them safety margins. She dragged the back of her hand over her sweaty forehead and accepted the glass of water he gave her. “You don’t have to babysit me, you know. I can manage this.”