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“You just what, Jeremy?”
“I just have so many goals I want to achieve.” Jeremy spoke to the sand beneath them, as though ashamed.
Alana turned on her heel, rushing toward the second-hand maroon Chevy she’d driven there without a thought for Julia. She could figure it out for herself. As Alana hustled, her keys jangled wildly in her fist. Behind her, Jeremy howled, “Alana! Wait! Let’s talk about this.”
But Alana couldn’t talk about it, not anymore. Her thoughts had spun like clothing in a washing machine for weeks on end. She’d felt this breakup coming from a mile away, yet it still felt like a bomb erupting in her belly.
Alana jumped into the car and cranked the engine. In a flash, she rushed out of the little sand-filled parking lot and headed back toward the Copperfield House, the only home she’d ever known. Behind her, Jeremy leaped into his rusty pickup truck and flashed his lights at her. “You’ll have to do better than that,” Alana muttered angrily, her hands tightening over the wheel.
Jeremy’s truck leaped forward, grunting. Alana whipped around the corner, out of sight for a long moment. Finally, Jeremy came back into view, flashing his lights all the time like a sort of Morse Code.
Back in the second and third grade, Alana had known intuitively that you had to let boys chase you for them to like you. Recess had been the time for that, of scampering just out of reach of the cutest boy in school and giggling madly from the top of the swing set. This felt like a grown-up version of that, charged with three cans of domestic beer and a very broken heart.Come and get me. Tag, you’re it.
When Alana reached the intersection, she paused for only a split second before surging through. Once on the other side, she slowed up and watched Jeremy through her rearview. He, too, just barely paused at the intersection before surging through, hot on her heels.
But just as his truck entered the intersection, a white and shining pickup truck, like something from a Stephan King novel, whipped across and smashed through the front of Jeremy’s truck. Jeremy’s truck skidded off to the right, fell on its side, then flipped upside down. The sound of twisting metal was horrible and gut-wrenching. Alana slammed her foot on the brake, her eyes closed.
That didn’t just happen.
It’s all a dream.
You’ll wake up in a moment.
Wake up.
Wake up.
But when she opened her eyes again, her rear-view mirror presented an image of thick gray smoke. In the distance, a siren blared. And in Alana’s heart, she knew that nothing would ever be the same again.
