ʙᴇᴇᴘ ʙᴇᴇᴘ, ʀɪᴄʜɪᴇ (trashing) wrote in valloic, @ 2020-12-06 10:12:00 |
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Adam and his crew did good work at Boyd’s. You’d never know the mustang, Richie’s baby for all intents and purposes, had plowed right into a creepy-ass skeleton thing - he’d been most worried about the roof, the convertible top that went up and down, and how sharp bones sort of shredded through the upholstery when the monster went skidding, but it was good as new. Everything was, including the beautiful red metallic paint job - reminded him of candy apples, of those old bikes from the 60s. What could he say, he loved his car - and he was happy to share it with Enola from the 1800s, who was very new to driving but she was a teenager and probably liked going out with her teenage friends and shit, so. May as well have a method of transportation in the city, especially if the waypoints remained suspect to her. Maybe it was complete madness to trust a driving newbie with his precious automobile so soon after it had been fixed up, but Richie wasn’t that anal retentive about it. Or about much in life, admittedly. It’d be fine. Probably. There wasn’t really anything around to crash into, however, so that was lucky. Enola wasn’t the type to take him hostage in the passenger seat and then go roaring into traffic - she was a good kid. If he ever had a kid (that was a big if) he hoped that kid was like her but, even so, he liked looking after her and packing her lunch for school and was ever-so-glad she was pretty grown and not like, in diapers and shit. That kind of child-rearing experience, he’d be happy to skip. Anyway. They sat in the car, in an empty mall parking lot (because malls were often sad and empty - it was early in the morning, on a Sunday, so it didn’t open for a few hours yet), the car in park and idling. Richie was in the passenger seat, pushed back quite far because he was all legs, and he already had Enola adjust the mirrors and seat to accommodate her smaller self. “Okay, so - “ he started and, shit, he’d never taught anyone to drive before. But! He could do this, he was sure of it. “Brakes, fat pedal on the left. Gas, slim pedal on the right. Here’s where you switch gears, which tells the car to stay still or go forward or in reverse. P is for park, R for reverse, N for neutral but no one really cares about that one, D for Drive and I don’t even know what the fuck the others are but we don’t really use them. Just worry about P, R, and D mostly.” Good start so far. A bicycle seemed far less complicated than a car. There had only been wheels and pedals for that, handlebars and learning how to break. Now there were gears and pedals and a myriad of other buttons along the dashboard that they hadn’t gone into yet. The steering wheel had even more gauges behind it and other handles that she wasn’t quite sure what they were for yet. Enola wanted to touch each and every one of them, to ask a million questions about what this one did and how it was connected to the parts of the car under the hood in front of them. How did the wheels--which there were four--manage to roll? Why did one have to keep their foot on the gas pedal to make it go? How did the lights turn on or off? Which was the button that turned the music on? Though maybe it was best not to have music on just yet. It could be rather distracting. She looked down at the gear shift, noting the letters and their meanings and put them to memory. She’d need to look up what the others meant if Richie didn’t know. Surely there was a book about them or she could use the Google to figure it out. It helped to have all of the facts, no matter how minute they might be. “Is it the amount of pressure placed on the gas pedal that accelerates the automobile?” she asked, glazing down at the pedals under her. Her feet ghosted over both, wondering if she was supposed to have one near the gas pedal and the other near the break. “Yeah, that’s exactly it,” Richie replied and aw, so proud. He’d just try to contain his emotions and not have need for tissues as he taught the young baby bird to fly. Or wrangle a severe amount of tonnage that could be used as a weapon, whatever. “You use one foot though, for both pedals. Only old men drive with two feet and it’s a real bad idea. If you need to speed up, tap the gas. If you need to slow down, take your foot off the gas and kind of gently give the brakes a pat - don’t do a slam, not unless it’s an emergency and you need to stop suddenly.” He’d go over what to do on a slick, icy road later. Because the answer for that quandary definitely wasn’t ‘slam on the brakes,’ and he knew that shit thanks to growing up in Maine. There were also a shit ton of buttons, but Enola was a studious student so he’d give her the mustang’s manual so she could study what was what - it’d be easier than him pointing everything out now, and expecting her to cram it all into her head. Plus maybe it was a good idea if she learned what all the gears were - especially N, if she got stuck someplace and needed to push the car. Yeah, he’d definitely make sure she knew that one after all. “Wanna give it a try? Put the car into Drive and then give the gas a little tap. See how it feels.” Alright, one foot only and gentle movements for both the gas and the break. That seemed like it should have been easy enough. She put the car into Drive and gently placed her foot on the gas pedal but nothing seemed to happen. As she put even more pressure onto it the car lurched forward quickly, bouncing her forward and she removed her foot immediately. There was going to take some practice in figuring out exactly how much pressure to apply to it for it to make the car move smoothly. She experimented with it a few more times, hopeful that she wasn’t making Richie sick with the amount of jerking the car did in those first few moments before finally settling on a pressure that seemed to give the vehicle a fairly smooth, slow ride. They were in a parking lot. An empty one but still going as fast as the cars on actual roads didn’t seem warranted just yet. “Like that?” Holy hell, it was crash test dummy time. Richie found himself grabbing the oh shit handle just out of habit, even though it wasn’t like they were going to careen off a cliff or anything. But his stomach leaped into his throat to hang out there for a second while Enola got used to how much pressure to apply to actually get a smooth ride going. There really was no other way to figure it out though, you kind of just had to experiment. Still, he was glad he was wearing his seatbelt, just in case. He had her buckle up too, before they started - best to get into the habit of doing that early. “Yeah, that’s pretty good. Look, you’re doing it,” he said cheerily, relaxing his grip. He’d just hold onto the armrest on the door instead, and if he went a little white-knuckled that was his business. “Maybe take a few laps around the parking lot, and then when you’re ready - see how the brakes feel? Come to a stop?” He imagined more jerking in that scenario too, but again - trial and error. That was why they were doing this shit in an empty parking lot. She did as directed, getting a feel for turning the steering wheel as well. In her opinion this entire endeavor was fairly dangerous considering how many opportunities for error that there were. Which, honestly, made the whole thing sort of thrilling. Though she wasn’t going to say that part aloud. If she crashed her bicycle the most damage she was probably going to do was to the bike and possibly break a few bones. Crashing a car seemed like it would be much more deadly. Breaking went about as well as the gas pedal had, though it took significantly less tries for her to get a feel for it. “I think I still might prefer the bicycle or horseback,” Enola told Richie as she parked the car--or well, put it into park in the middle of the lot. It wasn’t exactly between the lines. “Though a horse can fairly temperamental depending on the beast.” “Cars can be fairly temperamental depending on the beast too - but ol’ Sally here, she’s really good. Aren’t you?” Richie purred at the car in general, giving the dashboard a loving pat. “You just gotta get used to it though.” It was probably more environmentally-friendly to use public transit or ride a bike in the city, but you know what? He loved his car and it came in handy when, say, it was raining or snowing or he just wanted to not deal with waiting for a bus or a train, being jam-packed in there with a bunch of other weirdos. Plus, cruising with the top down was amazing. Belting Celine Dion songs at top volume, speeding along, wind in the hair. Truly a wonder to behold. But Enola hadn’t failed yet so they could keep going. “Want to try reverse?” he asked. “Maybe see if you can back up into a parking space?” Like. That was kind of a challenge and he expected it to be uh, completely not in between the lines but it was something to shoot for. Enola was still getting used to living in a city. She might have come from London, but her time there had been rather short. She’d grown up most of her life in the country setting of her family’s home, far from the hustle and bustle. As intriguing as learning everything new was, sometimes she yearned for the far simpler days when it had been just her mother, her and the cook. Running through the fields and learning basic defensive moves or playing tennis in the living room. But there was no going back. All anyone could really do was move forward. “I suppose it would be good to try out that feature as well.” Though. She glanced over at Richie. “How am I supposed to see what’s behind me?” Did she just look over her shoulder? “Yeah, give it a try,” he encouraged, and he hoped to be something of an encouraging teacher anyway, throughout the whole thing - a gentle guiding hand? Richie had basically relied on driver’s ed courses in high school to learn how to operate this heavy machinery - not like his parents were going to take time out of their day to teach him. His mother especially - maybe his dad could blame it on work (being a dentist meant you were Very Busy with teeth) but Maggie Tozier pretty much didn’t give a fuck. He tapped the rearview mirror. “Use this,” he said. “It’s kind of a combo of looking in the mirror and also looking over your shoulder - also when you put the car in reverse, it automatically activates the backup camera.” Richie waited until the gearshift was actually in the position of R, and motioned toward the dashboard. “You shouldn’t rely on it entirely, but it’s nice to have too. I mean. When I was first learning I backed into plenty of trees and shit, so. They didn’t have cameras in those days. Oh, and - you turn the wheel in the direction you want the ass-end of the car to go. To the right, the back of the car goes right. To the left, the back of the car goes left.” Maybe it seemed obvious, but when you were actually doing it, it could feel a little disorienting. The camera that recorded everything happening behind them was still a little jarring--though in a nice way. Something that she wanted to endlessly analyze, take apart and understand better. Everything about it seemed useful, though she could think of plenty of instances when being constantly able to use the camera would be more of a nuisance than helpful. She did as Richie suggested though, trying to use the mirror, camera and glancing behind her shoulder to get into the parking spot. She over shot the lines by at least a foot, but there were no rear ended trees and no cars for her to scrape against either, so it seemed like a pretty good accomplishment. The lack of accuracy annoyed her though and she tried it again, working meticulously to get the car between the white lines. The car jerked a little more than necessary as she pulled in and out, shifting the steering wheel the way she needed it to go before she managed to get the car parked right on one of the white lines. That seemed good enough for her first time ever behind a wheel. “Like that?” Oh, heeeey, that wasn’t bad at all. Richie was pretty proud - seemed like Enola’s determination to master whatever she put her mind to would do her well. “Better than my first go at it,” he grinned. “So yeah, pretty much like that. Keep at it and you’ll be a pro in no time.” If there had been actual cars in those spaces, sure, it’d mean a nice metal-on-metal scraaaaaaape, but there weren’t - and she managed to color sort of inside the lines so it was a pretty big accomplishment. They’d wait a bit before trying in an actual parking lot filled with cars but you know. Not bad for now. Gotta work up to it - baby steps. “I don’t want to overwhelm you with the majesty of the mustang though, so - wanna switch places and I can take us to the McDonald’s drive-thru, and we can hope the ice cream machine is working?” he asked. Celebratory ice creams. It sounded like a decent idea to him. “I think I’ve earned an ice cream.” Even if she didn’t quite get the appeal of them in the freezing temperatures. The car was heated though so it probably wouldn’t be like trying to eat one if she’d been in a carriage or on her bicycle. “And thanks, Richie, for teaching me.” It was nice to have someone who thought she could do and learn these harder tasks and not someone who just wanted her shipped off to boarding school so she’d learn her place. At least Sherlock had come around in the end, but she still didn’t quite trust him either. Ice cream was good all year round, in Richie’s view. But it was McDonald’s and ice cream from their usually broke-ass machines was hardly a guarantee there, even in Vallo - they might have to settle for Starbucks. Well, he’d come up with something as a reward, either way. Ain’t nothing gonna break his stride. “You’re welcome,” he added, kind of overwhelmed with emotion, a little bit - was this what it was like to have a kid and be proud of them when they accomplished something? He wouldn’t exactly know for sure, since it wasn’t like his parents followed those rules. “I’m like, here for you. And stuff.” Enola probably knew that, but just in case. It was important to reiterate. Then he opened the passenger side door and did a fire drill to run around to the driver’s side and switch places with her - though he had to lean in and push the seat back, because no one in fuck could he actually get into the car and fold himself up that way. But alright, his ass was in the seat and he adjusted the mirrors back - plus made sure they were both buckled up. “Alright, here we go. Let’s hit the road.” Well, not literally hit the road - his car had sustained enough damage for a lifetime, thanks very much. |