I pull a pretend zipper closed across my mouth. Then I unzip a tad and mutter out of the right side of my lips. “It’s not my fault you had Amandazing business cards printed.” I grin. This is fun.
Amanda collapses against her door, fake exhausted. “I give up. I’m a complete fraud. Do your worst.”
I pat her hand. “Aw, you know I say it all with love.” We both take a big inhale at the same time, recovering from our giddy fit.
What happens next probably only takes five seconds, but those seconds stretch out like the sticky hands you get as arcade prizes, where there seems to be no limit to how long they can get without snapping. I am pushing the gas pedal, almost flooring it, to get the tiny sports car up the steep hill. Then we’re at the top, and the sideways sunlight glances off the windshield. The glare fills my vision with a bright yellow blur. I grab the edge of the visor above me and flip it down hard, blinking, and with each blink, starburst fireworks flash in front of my eyes. I refocus, and everything is fine. Then it happens. I don’t know where he came from or what he’s doing, but there’s suddenly a person.
A person stands in the road in front of me, and it’s too late to swerve out of the way. My hands leave the wheel and shield my face, my body acting reflexively, unwilling to watch what happens next, to watch us run over a human being. I slam on the brakes, and Amanda’s scream fills the car. She grabs the wheel, steadying it as we skid to a stop. The industrial smell of burning rubber is immediate. I’m half gasping, half crying. I can’t get any oxygen into my lungs. Is this what hyperventilating feels like? I mouth the wordspaper bagbut no sounds come out. I might die of suffocation right here, which would be a relief. Amanda grabs my arm and gives me a shake.
“What the hell? What was that?” she yells at me, pissed. Like I don’t already know I’ve done something unforgivable. Fatal.
I shake my head again and again, wishing myself back intime so hard I might snap my wincing muscles. “Do you see them? Are they dead?” I finally manage, hoarse.
“What?” she says, easing the gearshift into park from the passenger seat and pressing the ignition button off. She opens the door and stands up, pulling her hiked-up skirt back down over her tights and smoothing her sweater. She doesn’t look behind us. I can’t look, either.
“Can you call 911?” I want to get out of the car, too, but my right foot is still smashing down the brake pedal while my other leg has gone completely numb.
She laughs then, a little bitterly, but she actually laughs. “Why, because you’re completely mental?”
Why the hell would she ask why? I can’t say why. It’s too awful. “Amanda, can you just go look?”
“Look at what?”
“At the guy!”
“What guy?”
Oh my gosh, she didn’t see him? She doesn’t know? No, no, I can’t possibly tell her that I just ran over someone with her car, that she was just witness to a murder, no, not a murder, what do they call it, what will they charge me with before I go to jail for the rest of my life—
Wait. Wait a minute. “Why did you scream just now?” I ask.
“Uh, ’cause you took your hands off the wheel, closed your eyes, and slammed on the brakes? Hello! I realize you don’t have your license, but it’s supposed to be hands on ten and two, baby, ten and two. And eyes on the road. Duh.”
Finally, all the adrenaline I’m pumping starts to work for me. The door flies open and I lurch out of the car, sprinting back up the hill. Dark skid marks attest to the scene of the crime. But where is the victim?
I spin around, bewildered. What the—?
All at once the truth becomes clear, and I start spinning again, this time laughing like a complete maniac. A “get out of jail free” card from the worst fuckup I ever made. Only I didn’t really make it. My eyes played a trick on me, and all I can think now is,Thank you, universe.
Time to do some damage control with Amanda. “I am so sorry, lady. I thought I saw something in the road. Is the car okay? Are you okay?”
Amanda looks a little less mad now. She shrugs. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Then she leans over the hood of the car and says to it, “How are you, my baby? You gonna be all right?” She looks at me and grins. “I think her tires are a little sore, but she’ll survive. You just scared her there.”
“I scared me, too! I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have been driving.”
Walking around the car toward the driver’s side, Amanda pats my head on the way. “I forgive you. But only because it’s your birthday.”
We climb back in, Amanda driving and me on the passenger side where I belong. As I pull the door closed, a voice in the back seat makes me jump out of my skin all over again. “You didn’t tell me it was your birthday today! Happy birthday!”
Instantly, I know. The person I suddenly saw, the person I ran over, wasn’t a person at all. It was actually just a snarky, always-has-to-be-right, pain-in-the-ass ghost.
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you,” Mason is singing full volume in the back seat, and being dead has done nothing to change the fact that he is completely tone deaf. “Happy BIRTHday, Hattie Murpheeeee—”
“Oh, eff me,” I let slip out.
Amanda says, “Seriously, it’s okay,” in response, but it’s hard to hear because Mason is crowing the last line of the birthday song with way too much enthusiasm.
“Thanks for understanding, Amanda,” I say, shooting a glare toward the back seat. “It’s just—I don’t know why—my head is splitting all of a sudden.”
