in. I went in through the bulkhead, to the basement.”
“No key?” The key was usually on the rack with the spares. It was there now.
“No key. Crowbar. No lock now, either.”
A crash in the dining room. We looked: Tony was up, covered in blood. He shoved the air-conditioner out of the window. Before I could move, he threw himself out down to the driveway.
Brian and I untangled ourselves, stumbled toward the window. I shoved myself through, got hung up on a ragged piece of torn-out windowsill. Brian was smarter, went for the back door, pulled the wedges out, found the locks.
“Derek! Temple! He’s getting away!” I screamed. I pulled myself back through the window and tried to tear the snagged fabric off the splintered wood. No luck—then it gave. “Temple!”
There was no sight of him. No sign of the stranger Tony claimed was waiting for us outside.
I heard a gargantuan bellow down the street, saw Brian run down the driveway. I tore out the back door, took the steps two at a time, and hit the gravel before I remembered I was barefoot, knee screaming. I didn’t care, there was no way Tony was going to get away from me.
Headlights were coming down the street toward us. I could hear sirens now, but the car coming toward me was no cop car. Derek was down the street, where the car had come from, now charging back after it.
Tony shot out from behind the old oak tree to our right. Headed for the car—he was going to get away.
Brian and I started after him, but the car didn’t slow down.
Tony ran in front of the car and seemed to pause.
The car never slowed down. Plowed right into him, and then over him. Dragged him a bit, before something—a shirttail? A finger?—gave and Tony’s body fell away behind. Something—shock, perhaps, or a chunk of Tony getting wrapped around the axel, I hoped—made the car veer. It almost cleared the ditch, but instead, slammed into the far side of it.
I watched as the back of the car flipped up, nearly made it to ninety degrees, before gravity claimed it and the rear end fell back down, leaving the car upright. Whoever was inside had probably experienced a full-body chiropractic adjustment but didn’t go through the windshield when the car slammed into the ditch.
I reached out for Brian, waited for Temple to join us. He didn’t stop, but went straight through to the driver’s side of the car. He tried to open it, couldn’t do it, slammed himself against the window. That only made him bellow the louder.
“Derek! The door—don’t worry about it! The cops will be here in a second, they’ll get him out!”
“The police are on the way, man!” Brian shouted. “You’ll hurt yourself!”
“I don’t give a toss about the police! The malignant bastard tried to knife me!” He groped around on the ground, found a stone, and smashed the window open.
The cops arrived just as Mr. Temple succeeded in pulling a very large man through a very small car window.
Chapter 19
I SPENT A LOT OF TIME AT THE HOSPITAL AFTER that. It’s not like they could let me into ICU to see Tony, and of all the people there—cops, detectives, doctors—I didn’t think he’d want to see me. I went all the same. Brian wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but I couldn’t see any way around it. Tony was still out of it, attached to all those tubes anyway. I had to do something, so I sat in the waiting room when I finished with school for the day. I tried to figure out what I would say to him, when I finally got the chance, that seemed to be the most important thing, so I stopped pretending to do work and brought a notebook with me and wrote.
At first my journal was completely random, like I was just trying to make the whole thing make sense—or go away completely. An exorcism or an imposition of order? Both and neither, page after page it came and it all boiled down to a few troubling and enlightening thoughts.
Against what seemed all logic to me, I felt guilty. Oddly, it wasn’t over the fact that I had tried to kill Tony, but that he had come back for me. If I’d been smart enough or strong enough, I could have prevented the terrible things he’d done to everyone around me, couldn’t I? If I hadn’t provoked him somehow—what was I, to