The Fast and the Ridiculous

Jules Kendall bursts in with big news for her sister Connie: she has found a car. It's a convertible the high school auto shop class has been learning on, and it costs only fifty dollars. Connie is doubtful, since a car that has been taken apart and "experimented on" by student mechanics hardly sounds safe, but Jules insists she is a responsible young adult now, with better grades, finished chores, and good work at Whit's End to prove it. Connie agrees to look at the car, where the shop teacher, Mr. Richards, admits that after three years of student tinkering even he doesn't know what hidden surprises might be built into it. He warns them to have a qualified mechanic check it over. Jules happily buys it anyway, and Connie makes one firm condition: it goes to a mechanic right away.

The very first drive home shows why. A mysterious button releases a blast of perfume, and the horn turns out to be a foghorn that gets stuck blaring through traffic while embarrassed neighbors stare. Connie orders Jules to get the horn fixed, and everything else that's wrong with the car.

The next morning Jules brings her friend Buck to the mechanic, Mr. Wankel, who says the horn is an easy fix but a full diagnostic costs $125 before any repairs even begin. That's more than Jules paid for the whole car. Instead of asking Connie for help, Jules pays sixty-five dollars to fix only the horn and lets Connie believe everything was taken care of. Buck is uneasy, especially after the glove compartment turns out to be a secret ice maker, but Jules brushes him off. Connie will never ride in the car anyway, she figures, and she is tired of being treated like a child.

Naturally, Connie needs a ride to work the very next time Jules sees her. Jules spends the drive frantically steering her sister away from every button, even refusing the radio in favor of awkward sisterly bonding, but the rain forces her to turn on the wipers, which blast a prank song installed by the shop class. Then comes the perfume, and then the ice. Connie realizes the truth: Jules never got the car fully checked, which means there could be hidden dangers she is ignoring. She tells Jules that being safe means preventing danger, not waiting to feel scared, and orders her to take the car home and leave it there.

Jules doesn't. She takes Buck on a joyride toward Connellsville instead, speeding along with the top down until a text arrives: Connie is getting off work early. Desperate to beat her home, Jules turns on the car's GPS, which announces, "Initiating New York cabbie mode," and starts barking rude directions in a cranky accent. After a wild, rain-soaked race through town, tracking Connie's location the whole way, Jules screeches into the driveway, and she and Buck fling themselves onto the porch swing looking as innocent as possible just before Connie walks up. The trick works, but Buck is done. He tells Jules she lied to a sister who has been nothing but gracious, and leaves her with words that sting: "If you wanna look responsible, just be responsible."

That evening Jules finds Connie working on an ugly paper chain the two of them started one silly, sleep-deprived night before last Christmas. Jules asks for extra shifts at Whit's End to pay for the wipers, then finally confesses everything. "I figured," Connie says gently; she had been hoping Jules would come to her first. Jules admits, "I was so determined not to be treated like a child that I ended up acting like one." Connie then reveals why she dug out the old paper chain: Jules's first college letter arrived in the mail, and it reminded Connie that someday her sister will be grown and gone. She admits she does treat Jules like a child sometimes, and that watching her grow up is a little scary, but this moment of honesty is exactly how freedom is earned. She promises that whenever Jules is in a jam, she can always come to her for help.

Weeks later, after many shifts of bussing tables, Jules has paid a real mechanic to fix the car properly, and the sisters and Buck head out for a celebratory ice cream ride. Then someone pushes the wrong button, and the GPS crackles to life in "military mode," ordering Jules to pull over and do twenty push-ups. Apparently Mr. Wankel missed one. Jules scoffs, wondering what the car will do if she refuses, but with this car, nobody wants to take the chance.