While I'm Falling Part 5

It wasn't as if she didn't have any furniture. On the other side of her living room sat the leather armchair she had purchased from Pottery Barn, 15 percent off, just three years ago. She'd convinced Dan they needed a new chair for the living room-they had to get rid of the stuffed armchair they'd had for over a decade, which still had large red marks across the cus.h.i.+on-Veronica, when she was three, had gotten to it with one of Elise's Magic Markers. Dan agreed, so Natalie had gone out and bought a new chair. They needed a chair, and so they'd gotten one. As simple as that. And she still had the chair. But right now, coming home from the mall to her own apartment, she hadn't wanted to sit in a chair. She wanted to lie down in the living room, and to do that, she needed a couch. But she didn't have one. She was forty-nine years old, and after the divorce, she'd been saddled with almost three decades' worth of family furniture and mementos and a Ping-Pong table and a bunch of other junk that was a ch.o.r.e to get rid of; and yet somehow, she didn't have a couch.

Dan, she imagined, had a couch. He'd moved into a furnished condo, leaving everything from their old life behind, like a crab scooting out of a sh.e.l.l. She had been left with the mess, the garage sales, the sorting, the throwing away. And in the middle of all this, the dog, moments after a seizure, had peed on one of the emerald green cus.h.i.+ons of the living room sofa. Natalie had actually been a little pleased, the dog's infirmity providing her with an excuse to get rid of the sofa, which was symbolic, she'd decided, of her old life with Dan, which also seemed a little peed-upon, ready to be thrown away. It would be fun, she thought, and equally symbolic, to replace it with something new, something striped, maybe, something contemporary, with a hide-a-bed for when one of the girls came to visit.

She'd tried. Sometimes, after work, instead of leaving the mall, she headed straight to the furniture sections of the big department stores, just to see what was out there. She'd sat on striped cus.h.i.+ons and pressed her fingertips against cotton twill. She'd quickly gotten overwhelmed by the selection, and also the ma.s.siveness of the decision. In those first few months, she was still so raw, and so unsure of herself. After the divorce, such a big failure, she just didn't want to make a bad choice.

So she'd waited too long on the couch. Now, even if she found one she liked, she wouldn't be able buy it.

She'd started to make new friends, other subst.i.tute teachers and sales a.s.sociates at DeBeck's. When they stopped by, they teased her about not having a couch. "You're waiting for Prince Charming to bring his own sectional?" Maxine had asked. "I don't know. As cute as you are, it's a tough market, honey. You may want to break down and get your own." Natalie laughed, politely, and blamed Bowzer, though it wasn't as if he peed in the house all the time. He was still a proud dog, full of dignity, waiting by the door when he needed a walk. But still, with a couch, once would be enough.

Bowzer was beside her now, lying on his side, one ear flat against the beige carpet. She scratched the back of his head and looked up at the television. A man pointed at map of Kansas City, the word "ICE" spelled out in all caps, the letters themselves appearing frozen, hovering in the foreground. A crawler at the bottom of the screen warned of freezing rain coming earlier than expected, just before early morning rush hour. "...treacherous sidewalks, downed power lines, a good day to stay home if at all possible..." "...treacherous sidewalks, downed power lines, a good day to stay home if at all possible..." Natalie frowned, looking out the dark windows. Tomorrow was Friday, a big day for teachers calling in sick. She would probably get a call for a job in the morning. Beside her, Bowzer started to tremble so violently that the tags of his collar jingled. Chasing rabbits, Dan had called it. Maybe mild strokes, said the vet. Natalie frowned, looking out the dark windows. Tomorrow was Friday, a big day for teachers calling in sick. She would probably get a call for a job in the morning. Beside her, Bowzer started to tremble so violently that the tags of his collar jingled. Chasing rabbits, Dan had called it. Maybe mild strokes, said the vet.

She waited until he calmed, and then moved her hand over his head, her fingernails gently working through his soft fur. She'd known, when she signed the lease, that the complex did not allow pets. She had not thought Bowzer would still be with her. She had planned to take him to the vet as soon as the house sold. They would give him the shot. It would be a clean end, Maxine had advised, humane. Dogs were physical creatures; they didn't live in their minds, but in their bodies; and we weren't doing them any favors when we kept them around long after the fun was gone. "Kind of like husbands," she'd added, laughing, but then grew serious again. She said Natalie needed to start thinking about herself. She knew what she was talking about. She had been through a divorce herself. And Natalie was still young. She still had so much potential.

Natalie said she didn't feel young. Maxine had waved her off.

"Trust me," she'd said. "You'll be surprised how young forty-nine seems once you're sixty-seven."

It was a nice thing to say, but something about this had gotten to her. Maybe it was that forty-nine did not seem so far away from sixty-seven, especially when she considered that she and Dan had raided his retirement account during those last, expensive years. She looked away from Maxine, at her own short nails, and tried to think of something else. But she could feel the tears welling. She bit her lip. She hated that she was a crier. They were on break, sitting on a table in the windowless back room of DeBeck's, their mocha smoothies already finished. Natalie had to be back on the floor in five minutes. She would refold scarves. She would verify credit cards. She would smile and say, "Can I help you find anything?" to teenage girls in designer jeans who would look through her as if she weren't there.

"Okay, then." With that, Maxine scooted herself off the break room's table and back into her high heels. "Be smart. Look out for you. You wanted an apartment with good security and a month-to-month lease? And miracles of miracles, you found one? You need to take it. Honey. Listen to me. You're hanging onto the dog because you're hanging onto the past. This is a big time for you, a crucial time. The dog, Methuselah, he has to go."

She knew Maxine was right. Yes. That was what had to be done. And really, how had she ended up with the dog anyway? Veronica was the one who had wanted the dog. Dan had told Veronica she could have a dog. Why, Natalie wondered, should she be the one left with him after everyone else had moved on?

And yet, when the time came, she hadn't been able to do it. Days after the house sold, when she was starting to pack in earnest, Bowzer rallied. He jumped up beside her in bed one night, just as he'd done as a puppy, nestling against her chest. During the day, he lay on the floor next to whatever box she was packing, chewing his rawhide, his very presence so rea.s.suring, concrete proof that she was not as completely alone as she felt. During that month of packing, she'd tried hard to be ruthless. She had a garage sale and sold everything of Dan's. He had left only what he had not cared about, and there was little satisfaction in selling, for two dollars, the leather briefcase she had bought him upon his graduation from law school. Or in throwing away the poem she had written for him on their fifteenth anniversary. As for the photo alb.u.ms, she couldn't throw them away-most of the pictures of Dan had Elise and Veronica in them. So she packed them all in a box and drove them to Veronica's dorm. She did not ask. She just handed them over, repeating in her head the mantra Maxine had taught her. Be smart. Start looking out for you. Be smart. Start looking out for you.

The day before she moved to the apartment, she'd actually taken Bowzer to the vet. Maxine had offered, several times, to come along; but Natalie had wanted to go alone. That was her first mistake. And then, instead of giving the vet instructions, she'd asked for his opinion. The vet had sighed, bent over, and looked deeply into the dog's cataracted eyes. "He's still eating. And getting around okay. I'd say the old boy has some good times left." He'd scratched the dog's ears and looked down at him fondly. It was the same vet they'd gone to when Bowzer was a puppy, when the girls were young. Veronica, still in grade school, had cried when he got his distemper shot.

Veronica. Natalie looked out the window again, worried about the coming storm. She reached for the phone, but stopped herself. Veronica would be fine. She took the bus from her dorm to her cla.s.ses. If she went to her cla.s.ses. Natalie frowned. Veronica had warned that her grades would be low this semester, and Natalie wondered if she was spending all her time with the boyfriend. She herself had moved in with Dan when she was in school. She'd lied to her parents, her sorority sisters covering for her. They got married a year after she graduated. She'd been in such a hurry.

Someone knocked at the door. Bowzer raised his head and barked, looking in the wrong direction. She put the phone down and stood, peering through the peephole. She recognized the apartment manager's puffy face and jerked her head away.

"I know yous in there, lady." He sounded both bored and annoyed. "You want to talk with me through the door so everybody hears, that's fine. But in the end it's the same."

"Uh, just a moment. I'll be right there." She picked up Bowzer, one hand supporting his bad hip, and ran back to the bedroom. She'd already put a pillow for him in the closet. "Stay," she whispered, though she shut the door. Even before his senility, the dog had never been particularly obedient. She ran back to the front room. The hallway in front of her apartment was unheated, and when she opened the door, she felt a wave of cold roll over and through her. Oddly, and unhelpfully, she thought of Twain: Shut the door! Not that it lets in the cold but that it lets out the cozyness. Shut the door! Not that it lets in the cold but that it lets out the cozyness.

"Yes?" she asked brightly. She knew she had a friendly face, a bright-eyed suburban-mom-liness about her that many people liked and trusted. Her whole life, she had been asked to watch strangers' bags, bikes, and children. "What is it, dear?" she asked, maybe, in her desperation, piling it on a little hard.

"You know what it is." He didn't smile. The apartment manager was in his twenties, maybe, unappealing in every way she could think of, a red ski hat pulled down almost over his eyes. He stood with his legs spread wide, his arms crossed, his chin jutted out so his head tilted back just enough to gaze at her from underneath the hat. "I just talked with the owner. No dogs means no dogs."

"Oh." She didn't say anything else. She was thinking they could come up with some reasonable plan together. She smelled curry cooking, maybe coming from the apartment across the hall. When he said nothing, she started again. "Yes. I'm sorry I lied." She smiled. "I don't usually lie. I didn't know what else to do. You see, he's old. I thought...I just need to..."

"You just need to move out," he said.

She shook her head. She continued to smile. This was a misunderstanding. "No no," she said, as if he'd asked her a question. "I'll take care of this soon, maybe, um, within the week..."

"The owner doesn't care what you do now. He doesn't care if you ice the dog or not. You lied on your application, lady. For months I been telling you to get rid of the dog. Now we're done talking. You got twenty-four hours. The dog goes and so do you."

She stopped smiling. She stared at him, angry, and then, when she realized her anger would not affect him, afraid. It was true-she'd heard correctly. He'd actually used these words, "iced," "you got twenty-four hours." And something about this, his low language, punctured her where she was still soft, making her realize all at once that she had truly slipped down into a different world where kindness held no currency and age earned no respect. She would have to stop expecting mercy. She would have to adjust the way she talked, and the way she thought, about everything and everyone.

Be smart. Start looking out for you.

5.

ON THE WAY TO THE AIRPORT, Jimmy blasted electronica from the car's stereo. I rode behind Haylie. The sky was still dark, the controls of the car a green glow, and only Haylie's swinging, glinting earrings were visible between the seat and the headrest. I couldn't see her face; there was no way of knowing what she thought of the music or the volume. But when we were on the final curve of highway, the lights of the economy parking lots for KCI already in sight, she made a sudden whimpering sound.

"Can we turn it down at least?" She made a quick swipe at the volume k.n.o.b with a fingerless glove.

Jimmy turned off the music, saying nothing. We rode the rest of the way in absolute silence.

At the airport, he handed me the keys without a word.

"Bye!" I waved, the keys jingling in my hand. "Have a good trip! Call my cell if you want to check on things!"

But he was already walking up to the doors, the metal chain attached to his wallet swinging behind him. If he heard me, he did not turn around. Haylie was still getting her bag out of the trunk. When the automatic doors slid open for Jimmy, she looked up, and almost lost her balance. She was wearing jeans tucked into velvety black boots with spike heels that looked hard to walk in.

"He's not really a morning person," she said. She lifted her bag and glanced at me.

Apparently, despite all the pretense, some part of Haylie b.u.t.terfield remembered enough of her old life for her to worry what I thought of her new one. I walked around the front b.u.mper to the driver's seat. Haylie was still looking at me. I shrugged, and lowered myself into the car. I didn't know what it was she wanted me to understand. She didn't need to apologize for him, or make excuses, if that's what she was doing. I didn't care if Jimmy was a morning person or not. She was the one spending the weekend with him. I just had the keys to his house and car.

When I was ten years old, I left my bike unlocked outside the library, and someone stole it. My parents refused to buy me another. "How many times did I tell you to keep it locked?" my father asked. My mother seemed distressed by my sadness, but she held firm as well: "I know you loved that bike," she said. "But if you have to earn a new one, you'll be more careful with it. You'll appreciate it more."

When I bought a new bike the following spring, I did appreciate it more, and I never once left it unlocked. And though my parents believed I was more careful because of what the new bike had cost me in hours spent raking, vacuuming, and picking up Bowzer's p.o.o.p in the backyard, that wasn't really it. It was the year I spent without a bike, having to run fast alongside my friends when they all biked somewhere, or get on the back of someone else's, which was easier, but humiliating. The day I got my new bike, I rode until dark, energized on pure happiness, my legs coiling and uncoiling like springs.

I felt that same pure happiness when I was finally alone in Jimmy's car, slipping my own CD into the stereo. I know some people hate driving. But I would guess most of them have cars. When they want to go somewhere, they do not have to sweetly ask for a ride, or figure out a bus schedule, or just stay home. They get in their cars and go. And maybe they don't appreciate it, even if they paid for their cars with hard work. After a while, they don't think about the ease. But I did. By the time I rolled out of the airport's exit, I might as well have been flying, loving every second of all that freedom and speed.

I was just coming down the entrance ramp of the turnpike when a raindrop froze on the winds.h.i.+eld. I saw another, and then another. And then there were so many that the glaze caught the winds.h.i.+eld wipers, stalling their rhythm. An SUV in the eastbound lane fishtailed for several seconds before the driver regained control. I glanced in the rearview mirror, at the stretch of interstate behind me. There was just farmland on either side, barren fields, a silo. I wasn't even sure if there was a decision to make. It wasn't as if I could turn around.

I turned off the CD player. I sat up straight. I could do this. My mother had driven Elise and me home from school in an ice storm once. She'd held the steering wheel with tight hands and told us not to make a sound as we slowly pa.s.sed cars in ditches and cars that had spun into each other. She talked as she drove, her voice calm, her eyes never leaving the road. If you started to slide on ice, she said, you couldn't just hit the brakes. Braking was the first instinct, but sometimes you had to override it. You had to just keep going, she said, and make yourself steer your way through.

The MINI Cooper, cute as it was, was hardly made for icy roads. But moving very slowly and going easy on the brake, I steered it through several miles of slick bridges and slippery turns. I pa.s.sed a semitrailer jackknifed on the median, a van on its side in a ditch. I didn't stop at either of them: from a very young age, Elise and I had both been captive audience to our father's frightening stories about what could happen to a girl on the highway once she left the safety of her car. Don't stop for anyone, he'd told us. He knew it sounded harsh, but there were people out there who would fake a wreck, fake an injury, just to get you to pull over, and once you so much as rolled down your window, they had you if they had a gun. I don't care if it's a man or a woman, I don't care if it's a man or a woman, he said. And anyone could dress like a nun, or look elderly. Ted Bundy had worn a cast. It was nice to help people, my father allowed. But on the road, you had to look out for yourself. he said. And anyone could dress like a nun, or look elderly. Ted Bundy had worn a cast. It was nice to help people, my father allowed. But on the road, you had to look out for yourself.

So I kept going. But after I pa.s.sed the wrecks, I reached into my book bag to grope for my cell phone, thinking I would call the police. It wasn't there. But I kept feeling for it, hoping, for at least another two miles. That's what I was doing when I wrecked. It happened, as car accidents do, very quickly, and I doubt it would have mattered if I'd been driving with both hands. I pumped the brake, trying to steer, even as the car spun closer to the ditch and then slammed into it, front first. I went forward as gla.s.s shattered. My seat belt held. I fell back.

For several seconds, I didn't move. I just sat there gripping the steering wheel, my foot pressed hard against the brake. The impact had dislodged the rearview mirror; it rested on the dashboard, tilted up at an angle where I could see my reflection, my wide eyes, my bared teeth. I took several deep breaths. I lifted my hands from the steering wheel, moved my fingers. I eased my foot off the brake and wiggled my toes. My neck and shoulder ached where the seat belt had yanked me back, but I wasn't hurt in any serious way. I touched my head, smoothed back my hair.

I was okay. My hands were trembling. I was okay. It was not that serious. The air bags had not gone off. But I'd heard gla.s.s breaking. Something was broken. I tried not to think about Jimmy.

What to do. What to do. The engine was still running. I stepped carefully on the gas and heard a wild spitting sound, but there was no movement. I put the car in reverse, tried again. Going nowhere.

"It's okay," I said out loud. My teeth chattered. "It's okay. It's fine."

I turned off the engine, put on my hat, and opened the door. The weeds beneath me crunched under my boot; each stalk and leaf was completely encased in a perfectly smooth sheath of ice. I pressed one hand on the hood, steadying myself as I worked my way around to the front of the car. The light from the clouded sunrise was faint, but I could see that the b.u.mper was caved in over the right front tire. The gla.s.s I'd heard breaking was the right headlight.

I leaned against the car and rubbed my shoulder. It hurt where the seat belt had held. The wind blew hard, and tiny drops of cold rain hit my nose and cheeks. I rubbed my shoulder and looked around. There was just the gray ice, the low, silvery sky, and the empty interstate. A station wagon glided by in the eastbound lane. I watched it disappear over a hill in the distance. It was only fair. n.o.body should stop for anyone. I could be a murderer, for all they knew.

I got back in the car and rummaged through my backpack for my phone, hoping I'd just overlooked it. But I hadn't. I'd brought along my physiology book, my magnetic-stripped meal card, my driver's license, a pack of Life Savers, and several pistachio sh.e.l.ls. And that was it.

My father had, of course, given me plenty of advice on what to do if I ever wrecked a car. I was to stay inside with the doors locked and wait for the police or the highway patrol. When they arrived, I was to make them show me their badges before I rolled down the window. Before I did any of this, I was supposed to call my father with the phone that I was to always have with me, the phone that my father had purchased for me, not because he wanted me to better be able to, as he put it, "blah blah blah" with my friends all day, but because he wanted me to have one in case of an emergency.

I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. My nose was running. My face was pale. If he found out about this, he would yell. Later he would say he was sorry for yelling, and that he only yelled because he loved me and because he didn't want anything bad to happen to me. But before he did that, he would yell.

I'm not sure how long I sat there. I'd forgotten my watch as well. It felt like an hour, but it might have been less. The freezing rain turned into regular rain, and then stopped. I got cold. Hungry. I wanted caffeine. The rising sun was a pale dot in the sky, and I looked at it without squinting, trying to guess the time. My physiology lab started at ten. My lab instructor, a PhD candidate from Ethiopia who appeared to be maybe two years older than I was, had informed us that she was aware that people really did get the flu and grandmothers really did die and that there were all kinds of legitimate tragedies that could keep us away; but she also believed that these tragedies were not her problem. In the end, work was work, and it had to be done at a certain time.

And yet there was nothing I could do. In either direction, there was just cold highway and ice, no sign of Highway Patrol. I turned on the radio, moving the dial past country music and scratchy commercials until I heard a DJ's low voice warning of hazardous driving conditions. Bridges were especially dangerous. The storm was already in the KC metro area, moving north. People who had been in accidents were advised to wait in their cars, not to call 911 unless there was a true emergency, and to know they were probably in for a long wait.

"Really," the DJ said, the opening notes to "Hotel California" steadily increasing in volume, "you're probably better off to just get out and punch the other driver, you know, work it out yourselves. You're both idiots for driving when it's like this. Admit it, cut your losses, and go home."

When the light from the sun was a little stronger, I rubbed mist off the winds.h.i.+eld and noticed what looked like a sign for a gas station rising up from the horizon. It didn't look that far away, a couple of miles at the most. I heard my father's voice in my head and stayed where I was a little longer. But the colder I got, the less sense his advice seemed to make. I put my hat back on and got out of the car.

I found I had better traction walking on the strip of icy weeds between the shoulder of the road and the ditch. I carried my backpack in front of me for better balance. I had walked for five minutes, maybe ten, when it started raining again, fat cold drops that fell on the ice and made it more slick. I pulled my hood up over my hat and pulled the string so only my eyes peeked out. Things could be worse, I told myself. I had remembered gloves. I had on the good boots my mother had given me.

I heard the semi coming up behind me long before I saw it. The sky had settled low and foggy over a hill, and when I turned, I saw headlights, two yellow eyes s.h.i.+ning through the early gray morning. I don't remember the color of the cab. I did not expect it to stop.

But it did stop, its big engine still rumbling, the cab almost right in front of me. I waited, unsure of what to do. As far as. .h.i.tchhiking went, according to my father, a girl would have to be out of her mind. "Once you get in somebody's car," he told both me and Elise, "you've got no control. You're in their world, okay? They're calling the shots."

My father hitchhiked when he was young, of course. The summer before he started law school, my father, a guitar strapped across his back, had thumbed rides all over the country. But times had changed, he said. You just couldn't do that kind of thing anymore, especially if you were female. He was sorry if that sounded unfair-here, he'd held up his palm when Elise opened her mouth. Life was unfair, he said. Get used to it. He had an a.r.s.enal of examples to prove the world was predatory, and young girls often the prey. If we didn't believe him, we could read the paper.

I looked up at the truck, my eyes squinting, the rest of my face still covered by my cinched hood. My friend Becky Shoemaker from high school had hitchhiked all the way to California and back after graduation, and nothing bad had happened to her. On the contrary, she'd been invited to tour a cave with a church group traveling through Arizona, and a truck driver who had a family in Chula Vista gave her his wife's phone number in case, when she got to California, she needed a place to stay. When Becky Shoemaker got to California, she'd called the trucker's wife, and ended up staying with her for almost a week. When I asked Becky if she had ever been scared, getting in strangers' cars, staying in strangers' houses, she'd looked at me like I was crazy. "The only way you make something bad happen to you is if you think about it all the time and, like, attract it," she'd said, with the earned authority of someone who had managed to spend two weeks in California for less than fifty dollars.

The truck driver rolled down the closer window and peered down over the edge. He was wearing a John Deere cap.

"What are you doing?" His voice was rea.s.suringly friendly.

I tugged the hood beneath my chin. "I wrecked my car." My car, My car, I thought. I had just wrecked my car. I would not think about Jimmy. I thought. I had just wrecked my car. I would not think about Jimmy.

"What?" He cupped his hand over his ear.

I cupped my hands around my mouth. "I WRECKED MY CAR!"

"Oh," he said. "You and everybody. Need a lift?"

I shook my head casually, as if refusing a cup of hot chocolate. My teeth were still chattering, and it was hard to speak. "Could you just call Highway Patrol for me?"

"Sure." He rested a hand on the rolled-down window. "But it's going to be a while." He nodded vaguely behind him. "They got their work cut out for them today."

I looked back and nodded, too, but said nothing. We were like farmers agreeing on the weather. Rain hit hard against my chin. I pulled my hood tight again. The truck's motor sighed and growled. When I breathed in, I tasted oil.

"You're going to get pretty cold out here. Where you headed?"

"Just to that gas station." I raised my arm, pointing, as if there were any other direction to go.

"Come on. Let me give you a lift. I'll have you there in a couple of minutes."

I looked up at him. He was clean-shaven, smiling, and not much older than I was. He did not look like a killer. It would be frustrating to be a nice man, I considered, to go through life trying to be helpful, only to have women wonder if you were out to kill them.

"You're going to freeze," he said. "And it's not safe, walking by the highway." He laughed in a way that showed he was, in fact, frustrated. He agreed with me. I was being dumb. I took a few careful steps toward the cab, and the door popped open. I had some trouble hoisting myself up-the step seemed to be made for someone with a much longer stride. But when I finally got up, there was a pa.s.senger seat with a seat belt. I felt the blast of a good heater, closed my door, and slid back into the seat with a sigh.

"Better?" He put the truck in gear and smiled, laugh lines branching out from the corner of the one eye that I could see. The cab smelled like onion rings, and a pair of black socks had been left to dry on the dash, but the heat felt good. A plastic sack stuffed with fast-food wrappers and empty paper cups swung from a hook just over my knees.

"Much better." I was embarra.s.sed by my earlier hesitation. I hoped to make up for it with grat.i.tude. "Thank you," I said. "Really. I appreciate it." The cab was warm enough that I was already uncomfortable. I pulled my hood back and took off my hat.

He glanced at me, then back at the road. I could hear ice hitting the winds.h.i.+eld, but he appeared unfazed, even as the truck picked up speed. He wore just jeans and a flannel s.h.i.+rt, as if the weather outside had nothing to do with him.

He nodded at my book bag. "You go to school?"

"I do." I marveled at how high up we were. I had never been in a semi before. "KU."

"Right on." He snapped his fingers and made a gun with his finger and thumb. "Rock Chalk Jayhawk."

"Rah rah," I said, barely raising my arm.

"That's in Lawrence?"

I nodded.

He gave me the look of thinking I was being dumb again. "That's right up the road. Is that where you live? I'll just take you there."

I opened my mouth, but again, I could think of nothing. If he took me all the way into Lawrence, I could catch a bus to campus and probably still make it to lab. I could even go back to the dorm first. I could get some coffee and brush my teeth. We approached the sign for the gas station. He glanced at me and started to slow.

"Yes. Thank you. If you could take me to Lawrence, that would be great," I said. "Thanks." I put my balled-up hat to my mouth to stop myself from thanking him again. The cab was almost hot, but my teeth were still chattering. I felt strange, weirdly energized. I'd gotten hypothermia, maybe. Or I'd hit my head when the car wrecked, and I didn't remember. Or I was just worried about Jimmy.

I looked at the driver. His face was blank, his blue eyes focused on the road.

"I just wrecked someone else's car," I said.

He gave me a quick, curious glance, and that was all I needed. I told him the whole story, speaking too quickly, breathing in the dry heat. I simply needed to tell someone what had happened. He was an objective stranger, and I wanted his opinion.

He shrugged. "It was the ice. Not your fault."

"But you don't know know these people." And then I was telling him about Jimmy and Haylie. I did my best impression of Jimmy, about Haylie's warnings against making him mad. The driver smiled, and I felt a little better. I could lighten it all up, turn the whole thing into a funny story, something I could control. these people." And then I was telling him about Jimmy and Haylie. I did my best impression of Jimmy, about Haylie's warnings against making him mad. The driver smiled, and I felt a little better. I could lighten it all up, turn the whole thing into a funny story, something I could control.

"Ha," he said. "Tell me more. I've been driving for six days straight. It's nice to hear another voice."

I kept going. I told him how I'd forgotten my cell phone, and how my dad was going to kill me. I told him about how I was probably going to be late for physiology lab, and how much I did not want to dissect a dog shark on this particular morning anyway. He remembered dissecting a frog in junior high, he said. He felt a little bad for the frog, but he'd loved it, seeing how everything worked inside.