2 TOOL 4 SKOOL

My heart leapt up to my throat as I waited by that car with the student driver stickers on it. This was where I was supposed to be, right? Right?

I waited for about ten minutes before anyone showed up, all while kicking at some loose pebbles and pieces of gravel in the parking lot. A man with a button down shirt and clipboard cleared his throat, and a girl with an upturned nose appeared behind him.

My jaw fell to the ground. That girl...looked so familiar, but in the worst sense. She looked like Brandi Schumann, my sworn enemy and limbo-contest-fame-taker-awayer. I couldn't pry my eyes off of her.

The teacher tapped his fingers on his clipboard. "Are you going to keep staring, kiddo? I don't have all day."

"Yes," I mumbled out.

He lifted his eyebrow behind his clipboard.

"I mean, no?"

"Good. Now you'll drive first today since Dana started last time. Alright?"

I didn't get to answer before he was chucking some car keys in my direction. My hands fumbled with them, threatening to drop them to the parking lot.

I heard a sigh. "Any day now, kiddo."

Getting a grip on myself and the keys, I opened my door. Dana was still in my mind: she just looked too much like Brandi.

With a slight smile, I started to do all of the things my parents and Nell did before they drove, like adjusting my mirrors and the seat. That was soon done, so I put the key into the ignition and beamed as the car roared to life.

"Ease it," called the driving teacher who was hardly inside the car. "Don't start the engine until all your passengers are buckled up."

Reluctantly, I killed the engine and fastened my seatbelt. And as the teacher clicked his own, I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel.

I felt my eyebrows dance up my forehead. "Now?"

"Does everyone have their belt on? Are you being a safe, cautious, and courteous driver?"

Glancing his direction, I concluded that the both of us were fastened up. That just left that Brandi look alike in the backseat: Dana.

We made eye contact in the rear view mirror. "You done?"

She tugged a strand of hair from inside her mouth, and I was too revolted to look away. It was like a train wreck: just too horrific to tear your eyes from. My jaw fell to the floor.

"I'm ready now." And then she smiled, revealing a gap between her two front teeth. Just like Brandi had. I guessed that evil could be found anywhere, including wherever the hell this suburban high school was.

"Kiddo," the teacher scolded. I ripped my eyes away from Dana in the rear view mirror, just in time to feel some saliva spray from his mouth. "It's now or never."

Right. I couldn't let myself get distracted by people in my mirror; it was driving time. I had been pumped for this ever since Nell had gotten her license a few months prior. It was now my time.

I turned the engine back on, this time with no hiccups, and managed to pull out of the parking lot. I was then directed to drive the car to the back of the school building where a narrow road came into view.

"Pretty quiet route. Shouldn't be able to kill anyone here."

Despite the grim-sounding joke, I cheesed even harder. I was driving a car — an actual car! Most of the suckers in my grade back in Iowa (excluding Brandi Schumann. Ugh) hadn't experienced this yet, but here I was; I was on top of the world.

The quiet road became a winding one, which also proved to be a shaky drive. The teacher grabbed a handle on the ceiling, and Dana clutched her schoolbag to her chest.

The teacher clenched his teeth. "No better way to learn, kiddo," he said as he waved back and forth in his chair. He lacked the gusto to sell this to Dana.

"Can you please go below the speed limit, Clarke?" she squeaked out, and I obeyed. At least for a few minutes.

The road led us to a large body of water, a lake, I assumed. That did nothing to help me with figuring out my location. All I could cross out was that it didn't look like that pretty lake on that postcard from Montana that my dad had gotten from his cousin. So I probably wasn't in Montana.

I looked back in front of me, just to jerk the wheel to the right a bit. Seemingly, I had gotten distracted by the lake. My fingers tightened around the steering wheel.

"Have you checked your mirrors for cyclists?" the teacher asked.

I shrugged. "Am I supposed to?"

"Yes, every so often. You gotta remember that you're not the only person on the road."

And so I did what he asked. Nothing to my left, and nothing to my right, but there was some wide eyed freak staring back at me in the rear view mirror. I almost leapt up from my chair.

"What was that?" he asked.

"I don't know," I answered one second before realizing that I had just spooked myself. I was the wide eyed freak.

Letting out a large exhale that became a whistle somewhere in there, I leaned back into my seat. Everything was a-okay, well, except for the fact that I was kind of ugly.

Blonde shaggy hair covered my ears, and there were also the bajillion freckles splattered across my skin. Looking the starry night sky wasn't a good look for me, especially when it was accompanied by the dumbfounded look on my face. That whole ensemble made me look like a tool.

But my criticisms of Clarke ended right there. Somebody shrieked, forcing me to jerk the wheel again.

"Jesus, kiddo," the teacher muttered as I snapped back into reality. He pressed the brakes from the passenger side and pried the wheel from my hands.

What just happened? My chest felt funny, and I could hear Dana panting like a dog in the backseat. Oh, was she the one who'd shrieked?

We made eye contact in the mirror again. "Sorry about that," I said to her.

"Sorry?" the teacher butted in. "You just had a slight death wish, didn't you, kiddo?"

His saliva sprayed me like a sprinkler. It was like the man was wearing braces.

"No," I said, as quiet as a mouse.

"Well, it sure seemed like you wanted to kill us back there. How is it that when there's only one other car on this entire godforsaken route, you nearly manage to crash into it?"

"I said I was sorry."

"I don't care what you said. Get in the back. Dana, it's your turn."

The two of us caught eyes briefly as we traded spots. But as soon as I settled myself in the back (my seatbelt on tight, per the teacher's request), I had to cover my freckled face with my hands.

The waterworks were coming, and there was nothing I could to stop the flow. One tear fell, then two, then one hundred. Soon I was a loose cannon with a waterpark on my face.

Both the teacher and Dana shot me occasional glares, with the latter staring at me as if I was a puppy in an ASPCA commercial. The former and I, however, managed to not butt heads for once; we both agreed that I was as big of a tool as I looked.

• • • •

The teacher couldn't have been more excited to get rid of me. By the time Dana had safely escorted us back to the school, he threw open all the doors, shouting, "Alright. Back to class. Can't kill anyone there, can you?"

I almost wanted to prove him wrong out of spite.

Shuffling my way out of the backseat, I was just in time to collide with Dana.

"Sorry," I mumbled.

"It's alright."

I raised an eyebrow. Had I heard her right? Was she actually greeting me in a friendly manner after I had been close to killing her in a car wreck? I doubted that if Tegan had survived the fall, she'd be kissing my feet.

"I'd like to talk to you, Clarke. Come with me."

And so I followed Dana away from the parking lot. In reality, I had no choice, no other clue of where to be. No longer did I have a conveniently placed mother to push me along.

"Were you just crying?" Dana asked. She plopped down under a shady oak tree.

I rubbed my nose with my sleeve. "No," I said with a sniffle or two. Suddenly feeling awkward, I sat down opposite her and crossed my legs.

She leaned forward. "It's okay, Clarke. You can be sensitive with me."

Dana then grabbed my wrists. I jerked them back, but her grip was too tight.

"I like it when boys show their feelings."

My breakfast threatened to come back up. This could not be happening right now. As much as I had once daydreamed about being hit on and dating in high school, this was the polar opposite of how I wanted it to go. I could not be getting hit by a Brandi Schumann lookalike when I was in an ugly freckled tool's body.

Our faces were nearly touching. "I just saw you get all emotional for the first time. It was almost...intimate."

I gulped.

Dana gazed into my eyes. "And it made me see you in a new way. I think I might like you, so how do you feel about me?"

I laughed. "Ha. Touché."

Her stare didn't break.

"Good one," I said softly this time. My heart pumped faster.

"Really?" Dana's eyebrows danced up her forehead. "So you like me back?"

"Er..."

With hindsight being twenty-twenty and all, I knew she wanted to kiss me. But at that moment, I was none the wiser, and so I let it proceed.

She was a little off, but she'd been the first kind person I'd met since the ole switcheroo with Tegan and I. She wasn't like that teacher who I punched, or that rhino-mother, so I liked her back. Not enough to full on make out with her, but uh...that was enough about the subject.

Dana leaned forwards and kissed me, and I did nothing to stop it. And after she pulled away, she loosened her grip around my wrists.

"Wowza," I said as I pushed myself off the ground. This felt strange. Every aspect of it. I wished Nell were here; she'd give me some guidance.

I kicked a pebble with my shoe. "I got to go." I had nowhere to be.

Dana nodded like she understood, but I knew that never in a million years would she understand what was going on because I didn't either.