Page 29 of Again with Feeling

It felt like his pause was longer this time (which was very satisfying). “I’m having a hard time hearing you. Could you roll the windows up?”

“What do you want, Bobby?”

“I want to know where you are.”

“I’m in the Jeep. Didn’t we already have this conversation?”

The silence was definitely more significant this time. Then he said, “I understand you’re upset—”

“Great. We’ve covered all our bases, then. I’m in the Jeep. I’m upset. And you, as usual, know everything.”

“Did you drive up to Astoria by yourself?”

“I don’t know, Bobby. Maybe.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know!” That was a little less cool, calm, and collected than I liked, so I took a deep breath. “You know what? I don’t have to tell you where I am. I don’t have to check in and report my location and keep you up to date on everywhere I go. Just like—”

I thought I could hear his frustrated exhalation, even with the wind whipping through the Jeep.

“—you don’t have to tell me when you’re moving out,” I finished. “That’s not the kind of friendship we have, it turns out. And that’s okay. As long as we both understand the parameters of our friendship.”

“I’m sorry you found out that way,” Bobby said. But then he ruined it by adding, “Kiefer’s sorry too. I’d like to talk to you—”

“Kiefer’s sorry too.” A laugh ripped its way out of me. “Okay, Bobby. Goodbye.”

“Are you coming to sandcastle practice?”

Somehow, that hurt more than the rest of it. He wasn’t worried, a little voice said inside my head. He wasn’t fretting. Concern wasn’t eating him up as he moped around the house. Instead, he’d been going about his day like normal. With Kiefer. It probably wasn’t until I hadn’t shown up for stupid sandcastle practice that he’d even wondered where I was.

“You know what—” I began.

Then sunlight flared in the rearview mirror: a flash of gold that left a spot dancing in my vision. Then the light was gone. It took me a moment to realize that the light had bounced off atruck that had come up behind me while I’d been on the phone. And now it was trying to pass me.

Returning my attention to the call, I tried to summon up whatever nasty thing I’d been about to say. But movement in my peripheral vision drew my attention again. The truck was speeding up as it tried to pass me. My automatic reflex was to ease my foot off the gas. In the low evening light, the driver was nothing more than a shadow. I made an impatient gesture for them to hurry up, and the truck’s engine roared in response.

And then the truck swerved across the center line. I had an instant of clarity, when I knew it was going to hit me. Then the truck connected with the side of the Jeep. Metal shrieked. Rubber squealed. A fountain of sparks sprayed up. Instinct took over, the primitive need to get away. I yanked the wheel to the right, and too late, I realized my mistake. The shoulder dropped off abruptly, and a moment later, the Jeep rolled over and began its tumble toward the ocean.

Chapter 9

Strapped into my seat, all I could do was clutch the steering wheel as the Jeep rolled over again, and again, and crashed its way down the steep slope. The airbags exploded almost instantly, followed by the smell of burning fabric. I clipped a baby lodgepole pine, and the impact shook the Jeep and whipped my head to the side. It slowed us for a moment, and then with a vast, splintering sound, the lodgepole snapped, and the Jeep kept going. My field of view spun: trees, sky, water, trees, sky, water—

And then the Jeep hit a rock hard enough to shake my teeth in their sockets. I wasn’t sure how much time passed before I processed the fact that we were no longer moving. Adrenaline buzzed through me, making me feel like I was floating, but I forced myself to take stock of the situation. That floating feeling, it turned out, was because the Jeep lay on its side, and I was dangling from my seat by the seatbelt. I’d lost my glasses, but even so, I still had a pretty good view of the ocean on the other side of the windshield—it was almost at eye level, which gave me an idea of how close I’d come to my, uh, final destination. Twisting around—and fighting gravity in the process—I managed to get a look out my side window. Pine needles blocked my line of sight, poking in where I’d had the window down, and it took me a moment to understand that the lodgepole pine I’d taken out in my slide to the bottom had somehow ended up on top of the Jeep.

Which was pretty much perfect.

Until, of course, the sound system crackled, and Jimmy Buffett came on, singing about Margaritaville.

It lost the Bluetooth signal, the rational part of me thought. That’s why it switched over to the radio.

That was when the adrenaline ran out. I started to shake. The aches of bruised flesh and wrenched joints crowded forward. The seatbelt bit into me where it supported my weight. I fumbled with the buckle, braced one foot against the passenger seat, and got myself free. I was shaking harder now, so I eased myself down until my feet rested on the passenger window and I could sit on the center console. A moment later, my stomach lurched, and I had to fight down the need to do someExorcist-style ralphing.

When the worst of the nausea faded, I wiped the cold sweat from my face and tried to pull myself together. I found my glasses in the footwell, miraculously unbroken, and put them on. Without the rush of adrenaline, my body hurt worse than ever, and I had the fragmented thought that I might be in shock. Get out. That seemed like a clear thought too. You need to get out of here.

The passenger door wasn’t an option, since it was pressed flat against the ground, so I climbed up toward the driver door. The airbags had already deflated, so I pushed them out of my way. When I got to the door, it opened, which meant it hadn’t gotten warped during the crash, but after about a quarter inch, it hit the tree that had fallen on top of us. The lodgepole couldn’t have been that big—sinceithad snapped rather then, well, snappingme—but it was still too heavy for me to lift. I rolled the window down further (amazingly, that worked too) but all I got for my efforts were more pine needles in the face. Even pushing the smaller branches out of the way, I couldn’t clear an opening big enough for me to crawl through. A quick glance toward the back of the Jeep didn’t offer any help either. The tailgate didn’t have an interior latch, and the window had shattered and showed only a blank face of rock now. I turned back to the frontof the Jeep and gave the windshield a few kicks—it worked in books and movies sometimes—but didn’t have any luck. If itwaspossible to kick out a windshield, I certainly wasn’t going to be able to do it. I decided to blame it on the lack of leverage.

I was trapped.

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