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1
MAY 1991
The tires skidded over the asphalt. They jumped and screeched over the worn-down road, leaning the car too far to the side—so far that the girls inside screamed in unison, ready to be flipped right over.
Billie yanked the car back in place. Hands so tight on the steering wheel, her hands were blotched red and her knuckles searing white.
Her grip was as tense as her shoulders, as angry as her twisted face. “Answering machine?” Disbelief clung to her pitch. “That fucking asshole couldn’t even give me the respect to do it over the phone. He just… left a message on thegoddamn answering machine?!” Her ramblings ended with a shriek of frustration.
The girls in the back didn’t seem to be paying Billie much mind. But Kate, as always, listened to every word she said.
“Bee,” started Kate—sat in the passenger seat and her slender hands gripped onto the dashboard—“Did you expect otherwise? He’s away at boarding school, it isn’t exactly possible for him to end things in person, is it?” Lifting one hand from the dash, she reached out and rested her hand on Billie’s tense arm. “It’s your pattern,” she added. “You both do this to each other every year—”
Cutting her off, Gigi shoved herself forward between the two front seats. Her arm flailed around for Kate’s fuzzy cardigan.
Sighing with a slight roll-back of the eyes, Kate fished out a small, clear packet of white powder from her cardigan pocket. She tossed the group’s coke supply over her shoulder and into Gigi’s cupped hands.
Gigi’s retreat was instant. The girls in the back silenced in their cries and started to bicker and giggle instead. Except Carmine—
“Can’t anyone else drive?” Carmine’s shout was drowned out by the excited screams and laughter bubbling up inside the car. “Christ, Billie—crows!”
Billie swerved around the half-dozen crows pecking at some roadkill on the side of the road. Above, on the telephone lines, a murder of them were perched, and they watched the brown wagon speed by.
“I know how to fucking drive,” Billie spat, her mouth twisting to match her grim face. “Maybe next time, you can stay sober and drive!” Her blue eyes narrowed into shards of glass as she turned on her preppy bestie in the passenger seat, Kate. “And no,” she all but growled, “dumping me over the answering machine is just another Preston-Dick-Move. He’s a cu—”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Ploughing through Billie’s rampage, Carmine leaned forward and smacked the back of the driver’s seat. “You’renot sober.”
There was a ripple of ‘watch it’, ‘don’t spill it’ from Gigi and Tonya in the back.
That caught Kate’s attention and she warped herself around the passenger seat, her mum-vibe fast to grip her, and sternly warned, “Sit back, Care. You knock over that baggie, and you’re buying me out of my share.”
Carmine fell back into her seat, moodiness settled over her like a storm.
“I’m not saying I’m sober,” Billie argued, speeding up the long, straight road that led to the old harbor. She turned her head, her chin resting on the bone of her shoulder, and glowered back at Carmine. The angle twisted the slight scar that ran from her ear down to the corner of her mouth into something grim and wrinkled. “But I’m the only one not ondrugs. So if you want me to pull over right now, and you can drive instead, then just say the word.”
Carmine paled. Her mouth parted, not to speak, but to gape at whatever she saw ahead.
Billie’s glassy eyes turned to focus through the windshield. Her eyebrows shot up, mouth fell open and a blank stare of horror stole her face. A silent scream came from her lips…
But it was Kate’s voice that boomed throughout the wagon, “Watch out!”
Billie didn’t hesitate. She twisted back around in her seat. Her hands gripped the wheel tighter a mere second before she brought her foot down. She slammed down on the brake. Her horrified stare stayed fixed on the person ahead as she yanked the wheel to the side, hard.
A harmony of cries split through the cabin and pierced her eardrum—
“Watch out!”
“Oh, fuck!”
“Turn, turn, turn!”
Billie cringed, spinning the wheel… but it all happened too fast, and … it was too late.
In the darkness of the unlit road, the slim figure had already staggered onto the middle of the gravel road and—
The wagon struck him.Hard.
The car’s nose cracked into the body.
