The Ridge Pack owned eleven trucks, four generators and one snow plow, and every one of them ran because I skipped breakfast and got my hands dirty.
I liked that. I liked being the person things needed.
Benny: Mom says if you skip breakfast again, she's coming down here herself.
Josie: Mom has been saying that since I was twelve, and she has never once done it.
Benny: She made a whole speech, Josie. There were hand gestures.
Josie: About what, exactly?
Benny: About how you'll work yourself sick and then who fixes the plow.
I laughed and took the mug and told him he was a terrible messenger.
Benny was nineteen and he thought I hung the moon, which is a lot of pressure on a person who mostly hangs engines.
Then Dane walked by on his way to the training field, the way he did every day, and my whole chest did something stupid.
Dane: Josie.
Josie: Morning, Dane. Engines again.
Dane: They keep breaking.
Josie: That's what I'm for.
He nodded and kept walking, and I watched him go and told myself I was not watching.
That was the trouble with fate. I could feel the pull of him, and I never knew if it was real or just me wanting something I couldn't name.
Tom: How's the plow?
Josie: Alive. Barely. It has the temperament of a wet cat.
Tom: Sounds like the plow I know.
Tom: You know what I think when I look at you?
Josie: That I need a bath?
Tom: That I've got the best mechanic in this pack, and she happens to be my kid.
Josie: That's nepotism, Dad.
Tom: That's truth.
My dad had lost more jobs than I could count, standing up for people when it would have been easier not to, and he never once made it feel like my fault.
Ellen: If you don't sit down and eat this, I'm telling Ada you can't cook.
Josie: Ada already knows I can't cook, Mom. It's the first thing I told her.
Ellen: Look at you. Grease to your elbows and still the best thing I ever made.
Josie: That's a weird compliment.
Ellen: It's not a compliment, it's a fact.
That night somebody at the long table made a joke about the pack's only wolf-less mechanic, and I laughed loudest, because if you laugh first nobody can tell it stung.
Josie: I've got two good legs and a wrench, which is more than most of you can say after training.
Benny: You know you're enough, right? Like, exactly how you are.
Josie: Yeah, yeah. Eat your dinner, Benny.
He meant it. Everybody meant it. That was the thing about my family, they said it so often it should have sunk in.
I stood outside after and looked at the mountain and let my face do whatever it wanted, since nobody was watching.
Being told you're enough and believing it are two different jobs, and I was only good at one of them.
I went back to lock up, and Dane was already there, and the room got smaller around him.
Dane: You should let somebody else close this place down once in a while.
Josie: Sure. Who, you?
He reached past me for the switch and stopped close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off his arm.
Every hair on my arm stood up. I did not lean in. It cost me something.
Dane: Get some sleep, Josie.
Then he was gone, and I stood there with a rag and a racing heart, feeling like a fool.
I told myself it was enough. The plate my mom brought, my dad's hand on my shoulder, Benny saying it like he was reading it off a card.
And I mostly believed it. Mostly.
But there was a small cold spot in me that didn't, and it kept whispering that whoever fate picked for me would be the first one to find out I wasn't enough.