As his classmates promptly imitated rush hour on the Tokyo subway in their concerted mob sprint for the door, a rising Hosney manfully tried to make himself heard above the familiar delirium.

  “Thank you, everyone! Might be a pop quiz tomorrow. Might not. Sleep in fear tonight. Bye.” As he resumed his seat behind the desk he cast a jaundiced eye on the classroom’s other remaining occupant. “Saved by the bell, Mr. Witwicky. Enjoy it for now and mark it well. It is an occurrence that will not follow you through life.” He let out a jaded sigh.

  Sam lingered, on the cusp of desperate curiosity and fear. “So, if it’s okay to ask—what’s my grade?”

  Leaning forward and looking to his left, Hosney took a moment to appraise the carefully crafted cardboard chart and spare a glance for the exhibition of banged-up old instruments. “I’d say a solid B-minus.”

  “B-minus?” Sam blurted it out as if he had been shot. Which in a manner of speaking was exactly the case. He gestured desperately in the direction of sextant and spectacles, compass and quadrant. He’d spent hours cleaning them up, polishing what could still be polished. Maybe he should have added the dirty clothes and the empty can of Brasso to the display. “What about all the visual aids?”

  “Interesting exhibit,” Hosney conceded, “but poorly utilized. You would have done better to emphasize the historical context as opposed to potential monetary reward.” Turning away, he bent to study the stack of papers piled up in front of him. “I wasn’t really feeling it. No—passion.”

  Sam was beyond worrying about whether he gave offense. He had really worked hard on the presentation and now … “No passion? I’m all about passion!” With Hosney displaying all the interest of a dozing mollusk, Sam grew desperate. “Can you just do me a favor? One favor. Look out the window really quick? Please!”

  Swiveling slowly in his seat, like an old construction crane badly in need of lubrication, a reluctant Hosney complied.

  “See that man sitting in the car?” Sam pleaded as he pointed. “The one straight ahead, at the inside curb?”

  Hosney squinted through his glasses. There was indeed a man sitting in a car parked at the curb. This meant nothing to him. Turning back, he eyed his—suddenly passionate—student expectantly.

  “That’s my dad,” Sam informed him. “When I turned sixteen last year he said if I saved two thousand bucks and got three A’s, he’d help me buy half a car. I’ve locked in everything else, it’s all good to go, but I need at least an A-minus in your class.”

  Hosney turned unexpectedly reflective, staring off into space as though a genie might appear and whisk him away from the four-walled torpor in which he found himself imprisoned.

  “Ah, I remember my first car. A 1970 Gremlin.”

  “Don’t you still drive that?” At the teacher’s fiery glare Sam hastened to recover. “What I mean is—please, Mr. Hosney. My future—my freedom—the furtherance of my education—is now solely in your merciful hands. Think back, Mr. Hosney. Think back—and try to remember.”

  Hosney met his gaze. Not teacher-to-student, this time, but man-to—well, not to man. But close.

  “I hate begging, Mr. Hosney,” Sam finally whispered into the continuing silence.

  Wondering what could be keeping his son, Ron Witwicky sat in the car and checked his watch. Sam was a far from faultless progeny, but he was commendably punctual. When the glum-faced youth finally came jogging down the slope of grass outside the school and climbed in, Ron eyed him evenly.

  “So?”

  His son was silent for an unusually long time—almost two seconds. Then, unable to conceal the erupting grin any longer, he held up the cover sheet from his final report of the last class of the day. A big A– had been written boldly across the front.

  “Last class, Dad. End of quarter. You owe me half a car.”

  His father’s expression did not change, but if possible he was even more gratified by the grade than was his beaming son.

  When he was much younger Sam had delighted in pressing his face to the glass of the car window and staring at storefronts as they whipped past. Drugstores and boutiques, cafés and garden centers, fast-food outlets and real estate offices: all shooting past the family car in a blur of bright colors and what were back then incomprehensible letters as he waited eagerly to catch sight of the one tourist shop in Tranquility that sold embroidered clothes, gimcracks, T-shirts, and—specialty candy. Today he was still looking for candy, but of a radically different kind.

  As the sign in front of the local VW-Porsche dealership loomed larger ahead, Ron started to swerve in its direction—only to veer at the last moment back into the northbound lane.

  “Got a surprise for you, Sam. You’re not getting a Porsche.” He broke out in gentle hysterics. Okay, so maybe the gesture and its follow-up inclined toward child abuse—but he still couldn’t quite stop laughing.

  Sam pressed back in his seat, sour-faced, sour-voiced. “That is just so—so—wrong. Teasing your own flesh and blood, your biological descendant, the bearer of your family name. What’s happened to you, Dad?” He peered over at his father. “You used to be so—so—paternal.”

  His father returned the look. Fully intending to respond seriously, he took one look at the piteous expression on his son’s face and cracked up all over again.

  Neither Ron, buoyant in his present glee, nor Sam, sunk in a transitory funk, happened to notice that they were being followed at a discreet distance by a battered, dented, intensely yellow ’75 Camaro.

  The garish sign out in front of the car lot identified it as BOLIVIA’S AUTO RESALE. Gazing morosely at the train wreck of a selection on offer, Sam was hard put to decide if the name referred to the owner’s patrimony or to the country from which the vehicles on display had been imported. The venerable machines packed too closely together facing the street were a long, long way from those shining on the lot of the Porsche dealership they had passed. Most of them were a long, long way, he decided as his father slowed down, from even the now-sanctified Mr. Hosney’s archaic Gremlin.

  Standing out front on one side of the main driveway was a man in a clown suit. The suit had seen better days, and so had its occupant. His amateurishly applied face makeup was melting in the hot sun. Sam knew just how he felt: he was melting inside. Employing both gloved hands, the clown held up a sign that read CHEAP WHEELS 4 U. As Sam and his dad pulled into the lot, the clown flipped over the sign. The reverse declared, I’M NOT CLOWNING AROUND!

  Oh God. Sam’s stomach sank to somewhere in the vicinity of their car’s transmission. “Here? Nonono, you said you’d buy me half a car, not half a piece of crap.” He gestured, a bit insanely, at the clown’s sign as it receded behind them. “That’s what it should say, ‘Cheap Crap 4 U.’ Crap on wheels. Crap that …”

  Having heard just about all the crap he was prepared to tolerate, Ron turned to his son. “When I was your age,” he began sternly, “I would’ve been glad just to have had four wheels and an engine. You oughta count yourself lucky. You’re gonna get one with a roof, and windows, and maybe even a radio.”

  “A radio?” Sam was beside himself now. “You mean so I can, like, listen to The Lone Ranger and The Shadow?” Straightening in the seat, he would have been shocked to learn that he had unconsciously adopted a teaching pose not unlike one favored by Mr. Hosney. “Dad. Lemme explain something to you. ’Cause you’re like an ancient person and even though that isn’t your fault I need you to try and understand this: the right car says to girls, Get to know me. Touch me. These cars say, Run! Run away from the spaz! Run like the wind! A car needs to say, Want something to drink, baby? not The Pepto-Bismol’s right there, in the cup holder.”

  As always, Ron had a ready reply. “On the contrary, I think they say you’re the guy who knows the value of a hard-earned buck, accumulated after much diligent and honest labor by father and son. Remember: no sacrifice, no—”

  “—no victory,” Sam finished for him. It had been his grandfather’s favorite saying, and now it was his father’s. “I know, I know. The old Witwicky family motto.” Deflated by tradition, defeated by reality, he sank back into his seat and stared glumly at the dash. He should have been looking at the cars in the lot, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. They hurt his eyes too much.

  His father’s next comment as he parked the car was not encouraging. “Maybe you’d be happier with a new—Schwinn.”

  Sam refused to dignify the suggestion with a response. Sullen if not exactly acquiescent, he opened the door and climbed out as Ron exited from behind the wheel. They were met immediately (confronted was more like it, Sam felt) by the lot’s owner. Professional welcoming smile plastered from ear to ear, the man approached to greet them, open hand extended to a willing but wary Ron. At that moment the owner noticed the condition of his clown and whirled to yell in the direction of one of the yard’s mechanics.

  “Manny! Get your cousin outta the damn clown suit! He’s havin’ heatstroke again, scares the white folks!” The instant smile (just add money) was back in place in less time than it took the mechanic to put down his power wrench.

  “Hiya, gentlemen, hiya. Bobby Bolivia.” He pumped Ron’s hand. “Like the country, ’cept without the diarrhea.” His head bobbed, powered by relentless enthusiasm. To Sam’s surprise, no wires were visible. “At your service.”

  Ron finally freed himself from the welcoming grip. “Nice to meet you. My son’s buying his first car.”

  Though sans makeup, Bolivia’s eyes bulged wider than those of the clown. “And you came to me? Well, that practically makes us family. Call me ‘Uncle Bobby B.’ ” Reaching out, he extended an arm and wrapped it around Sam’s shoulders. Sam flinched but, trapped, decided it was useless to try and escape. A momentary vision of immolating himself in front of the Porsche dealership was discarded as pleasingly dramatic but of decidedly short-term efficacy.

  “I’ve been doing this a long time, kid.” Struggling to identify the unique odor emanating from Bolivia’s mouth, Sam finally gave up. Just like the old Japanese horror movies said, there were some things that mankind was not meant to know. “That first enchilada of freedom’s just waitin’ under one of these hoods,” Bolivia informed his unwilling prisoner. “See, drivers don’t pick their cars, nossir. Cars pick their drivers.” With his free hand he traced an imaginary arc across the cosmos. “It’s a mystical bond between man and machine, for real. A relationship no woman can hope to match. Would I lie to you in front of my mama?”

  Holding Sam’s shoulders in a death grip worthy of the current World Wrestling Entertainment champion, he spun the listless youth around and pointed toward the house that occupied the lot next to the shop. On the front porch an old woman sat rocking slowly in her chair.

  “See that lady on the porch? Mama, wave!” When the old woman failed to respond, Bolivia raised his voice. “MAMA, WAVE!” She did not bother to look up.

  Bolivia’s smile never wavered, but his tone grew dark. “I know you hear me, Mama. Don’t make me throw a rock!”

  She finally responded, albeit nonverbally, the index finger of her withered right hand rising, ascending: commenting pithily.

  Bolivia whirled his by-now-nearly-moribund young customer around once more and proceeded to escort him through the heaps of metal that pockmarked the lot. Some, a discouraged Sam decided, might once have been called cars. Ron followed, scrutinizing each minivan, each semi-fossilized coupe with the studied air of an English lord shopping for a new Rolls. Sam ignored them one and all, his eyes barely focusing, his brain on autopilot, thoughts of squiring the beauteous Mikaela Banes around town receding like the memory of a half-remembered haiku.

  And then he stopped. Slipping free of Bolivia’s grasp, he retraced his steps, darting in among the ranks of junkers and discarded soccer-mom mishaps. Despite himself, despite what his father had told him about not showing any interest in any one particular vehicle when they went shopping for cars, he found himself staring.

  Camaro. Classic. Bright yellow. Really bright. Like, bright enough to generate its own reflection. Okay, so the color was a bit out of control. There was a thing called paint. Camaro. He found himself wondering what kind of engine, dirty and unmaintained and probably in need of a serious tune-up though it doubtless was, sat under the hood. Assuming there was an engine. Black racing stripes. Cheap-looking racing stripes; a Pep Boys’ ten-dollar attempt to look cool, but still—black racing stripes. He heard a voice saying as much.

  “Least it’s got racing stripes.” The voice was his.

  He wasn’t the only one staring at the car. Bolivia gaped at it, then frowned, and finally gave vent to his confusion. “Where’d this one come from? I don’t remember anybody rolling this out on the lot.” Turning and raising his voice, he yelled toward where the lot supervisor was wiping down the hood of an Oldsmobile that had barely outlived the demise of its marque. “MANNY!” He indicated the Camaro. “What the heck’s this?”

  Ambling over, the lot supervisor stared hard at the bright yellow car, scratched the back of his head, sniffed, did everything but mutter Ah, shucks!

  “Maybe came in with that bunch of other trades last week,” he finally suggested. “You know, the ones that came off that eighteen-wheeler from—”

  “Thank you, Manny.” Bolivia hastily turned the manager around and hustled him off in the other direction, muttering harsh words in his ear. In the lot owner’s absence Sam tried the door. It was unlocked. A sign of lax security on the dealership’s part or—he was wasting his time checking out something that wasn’t worth stealing. He slipped inside the car and behind the wheel. The cushion felt good, comfortable, the seat back providing just the right amount of resistance against his spine. He didn’t even have to adjust it: it was just the right height and the ideal distance to the wheel.

  His initial delight at finding that the door opened and closed smoothly and that no loose springs were going to puncture his butt vanished as he studied the dash. His expression fell.

  “Gee, an actual eight-track! The girls will swoon.” He looked imploringly out the window at his father. “The cassettes for this antique are bigger than my iPod. Where’s the hand-crank?”

  Ron smiled back comfortingly. “Think of the fun you’d have picking them up on eBay.”

  Bolivia wasn’t gone long. Returning, he saw his customer seated securely behind the wheel of the mystery car. As soon as he ascertained that the youngster wasn’t spitting up curses or his lunch, the dealership owner didn’t pause to ask questions. Okay, so maybe the actual provenance of the car still needed to be determined. A detail. In the interim, he began improvising.

  “Fits ya, doesn’t it? You look swell in there, kid. Great engine in these old Camaros, lemme show ya …”

  Moving around to the front of the car, he bent to open the hood. Then he struggled to open it. Neither muscular forearms nor the application of severe language budged the hood so much as a millimeter. As the lot owner fought with the recalcitrant sheet metal, Sam found himself distracted from the drama by a glint of light on the steering wheel. It drew his gaze to an emblem. Covered in grime, its outlines became clearer when he used a little spit and elbow grease to wipe away the grunge. He frowned as he studied it, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t the familiar Chevy chevron. Some kind of customizer’s mark, he finally decided.

  Ron had been studying both the car and his son long enough to come to a conclusion. Looking toward Bolivia, he uttered the magic words.

  “How much?”

  From a pocket Bolivia extracted a grease pencil about the size of a horse’s foreleg, made a show of thinking hard (if only for appearance’s sake), and replied as he scrawled a figure on the dirty windshield. “Well, uh, considering the semi-classic nature of the vehicle, the timeless lineage, the custom racing stripes—five grand.”

  Ron nodded once, briskly “We’re not going above four. For anything.”

  “Four? For a Camaro? The body alone’s worth that.” He peered sharply down at Sam. “Kid, outta the car …”

  Leaning out the open window, Sam gazed imploringly back at the lot owner. “But you said cars choose their drivers.”

  Bolivia was unrelenting. The trap had been baited, the trap had been sprung, and now it was time to see if the trapped quarry could free itself. He was prepared for the forthcoming struggle, having participated in many thousands of them.

  “Yeah, well,” he responded casually, “sometimes they choose one with a cheap father.” Turning, he waved toward a half-gutted Pacer. “Now, this one here’s a beautiful—”

  He was cut off in midsentence as he started toward the antique section. As he turned around, the Camaro’s passenger door swung open and slammed into the other car, nearly crushing his legs and the large spherical hind portion of his body to which they were attached. Thrown off-stride, he struggled to regain his balance, doing his best to recover mentally as well as physically.

  “Uh, no problem with that door. Loose hinge. Can hammer that out easy. Shows you how easy the door works. Some of these older models, you know, the hinges are so rusted up they have to be replaced.” He smiled at the Camaro. “This baby, they swing like silk.” He yelled at his lot manager. “Manny! Go get the sledgehammer.” In the same breath he gestured toward the far reaches of the lot, wanting to get as far away from the offending Camaro and as close to the necessary paperwork as possible. Before these two left, he was determined to have the father’s name writ large and clear on a bill of sale. And if they were finding themselves less and less enamored of the mystery Camaro …

  “Now, lay your eyes on that one,” he began as he turned up-lot.

  As he gestured, he pushed hard on the Camaro door that had seemingly swung open by itself. As soon as it slammed shut, the car’s horn started blaring. No, not blaring, Bolivia decided as he flinched. It was a sonic explosion.

  Maybe it was the volume, maybe the timbre, maybe something about the combination, or maybe a certain something they couldn’t hear. Like a sound that was pitched too high for the human ear to detect. Whatever it was, the resulting concussion blew out the windows of every other car on the lot. Bolivia’s lower jaw headed in the direction of southern Brazil as he gaped at the vitreous devastation. His cherished, beautiful, dollar-generating lot looked as though it had just suffered through a ten-second hailstorm. Sunlight sparkled and flashed from millions of glass shards.