The next day saw a number of changes at school. Reed and Tom found themselves actually talking to each other in the hallway between classes. It wasn’t much more than a quick greeting, but it was an acknowledgement of a connection between them.
Then at lunch, Tom and his friends joined Reed at his table. Normally, Reed sat with Paige and her friends, but today was Wednesday and their schedules didn’t match. When that happened he usually ate by himself. While he looked forward to having lunch with his buddy Paige, he also enjoyed his solo lunches. He would spend time pouring over car magazines and planning the changes he wanted to make to the Suburban his parents had handed down to him. His parents needed a car that could handle the heavy hauling that was required at the stable and the Suburban had been just the thing. When they decided it was time to replace it, they had given it to Reed. Although nothing could replace the Cowstang in his heart, he was fascinated by the powerful SUV and planned to make several modifications to the car when he had the time.
Normally, Reed would have been annoyed to have his solitude invaded, but he found himself quickly warming to Tom and his crew. In no time they were all laughing and joking as if they had known each other their whole lives. He even found himself making plans with Dimitri to stage an after-hours foray into a junkyard he knew in the next town over. He still needed a new starter for his SUV. The place he had in mind had no security and bought cars mainly for their value as scrap. At this yard, the worth of a car was determined by the weight of its metal rather than the value of any functional parts. Reed didn’t consider it actually stealing when he found something there he could use. Besides, he always left a broken piece behind in exchange so in his mind everything evened out.
Halfway through lunch, Manny Trujillo joined them. Amanda was Manny’s girlfriend. She had told him about the accident and he had come over to thank Reed for showing up as quickly as he did. Even though Reed kept insisting that he had only arrived after the fact and hadn’t actually done anything, Manny insisted that Reed had done a lot. It seemed that Amanda had been blaming herself for startling Magda. She thought that her scream was what had made Magda lose control of the car. Then Tom told him how Magda had confided in him that she had felt the accident was due to her own bad driving. Until Reed had explained how the car’s defective systems had been the real cause of the crash, each of the girls had been sure that it was their fault.
Reed hadn’t realized any of this. He sat there stunned to learn that the girls had actually been blaming themselves for something he had instantly recognized was purely a mechanical failure. He had been sitting with his mouth hanging open for several moments when Tom laughed good-naturedly and clapped him on the back. Soon the entire table joined in. Reed felt his face redden and couldn’t stop himself from grinning sheepishly.
At first Reed didn’t know what to make of his sudden acceptance by the others. He had always thought of them as moving in a completely different circle. It had never occurred to him that they might have anything in common. Then he realized that he had never really given them a chance before either. He had simply assumed that their worlds were exclusive of each other and left it at that. Now he was seeing that Tom, Manny, and the others were not so different from him after all. It was an idea that was going to take some getting used to.
When lunch was over, Reed walked to Mrs. Barber’s class with Tom and Manny. This time the three of them sat together in the front row.