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“Don’t give me that cutesy nonsense. Why do you keep moving your hand around in your pocket like that? You planning on pulling a knife on me?”
“It’s just my phone,” I said. “Why would I be carrying a knife with me to school?”
Lucas shook his head. “The way you’ve been around me since yesterday, it wouldn’t be the most shocking thing. Even before we had the accident, you’ve been acting like you expect me to jump on you at any moment. I know we don’t talk much at school—”
“Ever,” I corrected.
“—but that doesn’t mean there’s some nefarious reason I wanted to hang out with you yesterday. I just thought you’d been so nice to me, telling me all about your car repair guy, and maybe I did start to think it was dumb that we’d been going to school together for so many years and we never talk. Maybe it was time to turn that around.”
The arsehole was just as full of it as he’d been when he was ten years old. Always another explanation for what he wanted to do. And now he’d turned things around so all my recording would capture was him being afraid I would harm him!
“We both know there’s more to the story than you’re letting on,” I said. “You know perfectly well—”
And then Lucas leaned in fast and thrust his hand in my pocket, pushing my fingers aside.
“You bloody idiot,” he said, “this is boiling hot, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
He yanked the phone out of my pocket and flipped it over the side of the car onto the road. The smack of it hitting the concrete did not sound healthy.
“Lucas!”
Lucas had his belt back on and was starting the car.
“Lucas,” I screamed as my hair was dragged back out of my face and the acceleration of the car yanked my stomach out too, “that is my phone.”
“You’ve got cloud sync on, right?” Lucas said. “For photos and stuff.”
“Yeah, I back things up,” I said, letting him assume we had a good enough connection at home for cloud sync, “but I still need my phone—”
Lucas spun the car around. My backpack at my feet tipped over. “Lucas,” I said, “you—”
He was driving the car wildly, swinging it back and forth over the centre of a thankfully empty suburban street. Panic was rising up inside of me. He’d been completely careless about his own car with himself inside… why should I expect any better with his sister’s car and me?
I shrieked as he veered even more to the wrong side of the road to avoid a parked car… and then there was a crunch.
“My phone! Stop, stop.”
He actually stopped the car,
right where it was, and I jumped out to run to what was, from a distance, still a phone-shaped object.
I plucked it up from its facedown position and nearly fumbled it to the ground again as my fingers slid over some unexpected texture. Most of the phone was only a little scratched, but one corner was shattered, the screen bent inward. Lucas must have run over that part.
I managed to keep my head enough to save my recording, close the app, and turn off my screen. I wanted to run then… but I wasn’t sure if he would turn the car around and come after me next. That seemed like a crazy sort of thing to worry about, but I’d heard of guys sometimes doing crazy things if they liked a girl and she didn’t respond the way they wanted. It had always seemed like the sort of thing that happened on those ‘true crime’ TV shows with the dramatic opening music, not the way anyone I actually knew would behave. And Lucas didn’t like me, I was just someone he’d only just happened to remember existed. But… how much further was running into someone in a car really from running into someone out?
I turned and walked back over to the car. I had to get my bag back, either way. He was just sitting in the driver’s seat, arm resting on the top of the door, so by the time I arrived any fear I had of him, any panic he’d stirred up in me with more terrifying car antics, had all coalesced into rage.
“You fucking psycho!” I shouted. “You’ve destroyed my phone!” I held it by a safe corner and brandished it at him.
“Well, shit,” Lucas said. “Those things are supposed to be indestructible though. I’ve seen videos.”
“Of course you are the sort of person who watches videos of phones being run over by cars,” I said. I stopped by the car. I’d left the door hanging open in my headlong race to stop any other drivers who happened to come by from finishing off my poor phone.
“Trains, usually,” Lucas said. “Like I said, they’re usually fine. You must just have a crappy phone. Get in the car, we’re going to be late for school.”
“I don’t want to get back in this car with you,” I said, and folded my arms—and then dropped the phone again when a ridge of the shattered corner slid against my finger.
“I’m seriously not playing around this time,” said Lucas. “We’ve got to get out of the middle of the road before someone comes along. I’ll buy you a new fucking phone, just move.”
