Hide and Seek

bottom sill and shattered. The shouting sounded almost hysterical

tome.

I watched her walk back to the car. She took her time.

There was a moment when I almost left her there I glanced back to her

place and saw that her father was gone from the window. The porch

lights went on. Soon he would be standing there. I leaned out to

her.

"Get in, goddamn you!"

Sympathy can turn so quickly. Just add fear. Stir.

By the time she was back in the car I was burning. Burning and scared.

I had just enough control left not to gun the thing to get away from

there. We slid away from the curb nice and slowly.

See no evil, hear no evil.

I wondered if anybody was buying it but me.

I wanted to hit her.

I wanted to slap her so bad my shoulders twitched. I wouldn't even

look at her. I kept thinking how she'd involved me, how she'd done

this to me. Not just to the people next door or to her parents for

whatever idiot reason, but to me. I hadn't done anything. I hadn't

asked for it. ,_, ..p

All kinds of things went through my head. I felt like opening the door

on her side and giving her a push. Never mind that the car was moving.

Fuck her. If she could do that to me. Just fuck her.

I drove two blocks under the most careful, most frantic control of my

life, absolutely boiling inside, and then hit it hard and went looking

for the highway.

I hit sixty on the quiet streets of Dead River and pushed it up to

seventy-five on the coast road. The road was not nearly good enough

for seventy-five. Neither was the pickup. I realized what I was doing

and pulled over.

I cut back the engine, cut the lights. We sat there in the deep black

of emptynighton the shoulder of a bad road with noonearound but the

crickets and the frogs, and I had not lost an ounce of my delicious

anger. I held out as long as I could, hoping she'd say something to

make it all right again, knowing in my heart that there