he hadn’t let the guy screw him over with the price, because that’s not how we do it around here. The Ford sounds like it’s alive, and it is angry. Big Eddie would have loved that sound.
“Oh my Jesus,” Abe breathes, beginning to brace himself for impact as the black truck crosses halfway over the center line, barreling down the road.
“Trust me,” I say through gritted teeth as I move over to meet it head-on.
As the trucks race toward each other, an eerie calm befalls me, belying the sweat that drips down my back. I can’t hear the wind outside or the scream of the engines. I can’t even hear Abe shouting next to me anymore. All I can see is the light, and it is so blue, everything is blue, and I think of Cal and everything I should have said. I think of everything I should have confessed to him. I open my mind as widely as possible and think Cal. I say Cal. I scream Cal.
I jerk the wheel to the right at the last possible second. It’s almost a good plan. It almost works. Everything tells me it should work. But physics is an impossible thing.
The Ford whines as we swerve to the right, the tires squealing along the roadway. The front corners of the vehicles miss colliding by inches. There’s a brief moment when everything around me slows down and I look into the driver’s window of the black truck and see the vague outline of a person. They seem to be looking at me as we flash by each other, and then they are gone.
Even as I look ahead to correct our path, there’s a jarring impact on the driver’s side truck bed. The steering wheel jerks in my hands, causing my palms to burn as I struggle to hold on. The bed of the Ford begins to fishtail to the right, toward the cement divider that separates the road from the walkway. This all only takes a second or two, but it goes on forever in my head. The black truck, I think. Must have hit the back. Won’t be able to buff that ou—
The right side of the Ford smashes against the divider, and Abe cries out as he is slammed into the door. There’s a moment when all motion seems to stop, but then the world tilts as the truck flips up and over the divider with a metallic shriek. The windshield shatters. I’m upside down in a haze of sparkling glass before I even know what’s happening. The world tries to right itself as the truck barrel-rolls into the metal girder. The seat belt snaps harshly against my hips, but all I can see is stars and all I can feel is heat and all I can see is blue because sparks have showered in through the broken windshield, pouring onto my face, like a—
cross your heart hope to die stick a
—thousand needles in my eye.
There’s a sickening sense of vertigo as the metal girder splits at the weight and impact of the Ford. The truck starts to slide to the right and catches on something. There’s another pause before I hear another metallic moan and the truck slides again, and the back window implodes in on us as the truck begins to tip at a precarious angle.
Then it’s almost quiet aside from the ticking of the engine. A tinkling of glass.
I’m confused. I don’t know what has happened. I think of angels and wings and rivers. There’s a cross too, a cross I hate because it’s always covered in feathers and I can’t make it stop. I want to sleep. It would be so easy to just sleep. Maybe I should. This is probably just a dream. I dream big. I dream in color. Like my father. Big Eddie is my father. He sleeps under a stone angel in a place with no hills. Sleep, the stone angel whispers. It’s okay just to sleep. You’ll feel so much better if you do. I’ll hold your hand and protect you from everything while you sleep. It is what I was made for. It won’t just be for fifteen words that mean nothing. Those fifteen words don’t mean a thing. Just sleep.
I do. I want to. I do. I will. I am falling—
My face feels wet but the moisture is dripping up my face. The sensation makes my skin crawl. I open my eyes. I’m upside down, my back resting against