“We should watch it,” I say, grinning at him, satisfied. “Together. Sometime.”
George meets my eyes for a long moment, still catching his breath.
“Yeah,” he says, too low for how sure it sounds. “I think I’d like that.”
24
George
Torres and Hayes Auto has been on this building in Fourth Avenue for just under five years. It’s long enough that people around the block know the sound of the bay doors rolling open in the morning. Half the neighborhood calls us before towing a car anywhere else.
Saturday afternoons are louder than most weekdays.
Compressed air hisses near the far lift. Carter’s radio is buried somewhere under impact guns, rattling tool carts, and three teenage boys arguing over who stripped a bolt on the brake caliper.
“I barely touched it,” Noah argues.
“You leaned on it with an impact gun like you were breaking into a bank vault,” I say from underneath the raised Civic.
“That feels a little unfair.”
“The bolt agrees with me.” I mutter back.
A couple of the boys laugh.
I slide out from beneath the car and grab the ratchet off the cart beside me. Across the bay, Carter catches a socket one of the boys tosses without looking and immediately points it back at him.
“Hey. Hands, not airborne deliveries,” Carter calls out.
“It was a short distance.”
“Try that again and George is gonna ban you from touching anything more advanced than windshield wipers.”
“I was thinking of saying it,” I tell him.
That gets another laugh out of them.
The youth mechanics program started about two and a half years ago after one of the middle school teachers in town came in for brake work. She mentioned some of the boys in her class had nowhere to be after school except getting into trouble.
I told her Saturdays were slow enough, then that stopped being true pretty fast.
Now, we get kids every weekend. Some genuinely love cars. Others just like having somewhere to show up where people expect something from them besides screwing up.
Most of them need both more than they realize.
“George,” Carter calls from the next lift over. “Trent’s asking why the battery light’s still on if the alternator tested fine.”
“Because the terminal connection’s probably loose.”
Trent immediately frowns at the engine bay. “I tightened it already.”
“Then tighten it properly.”
I walk over and crouch beside him near the Corolla he’s working on. Thirteen years old, a quiet kid. Sharp when he slows down long enough to think things through.
“The alternator’s charging,” I tell him, tapping the battery terminal lightly. “But if this connection shifts while the car’s moving, the battery stops getting fed consistently. That warning light comes on because the voltage drops.”
He nods carefully.
