Fasten your seat belts

Pam started for the door, the sirens wailing insistently. She turned to see Mickey right behind her. He was very pale, his blue eyes revealing his fear.

She saw Clay finally let go of the cashier. As the shaken man stood staring in disbelief, Clay vaulted back over the counter and ran to join her and Mickey.

A second later the three were racing across the asphalt parking lot to Pam’s car. The sirens were louder now. The police had to be only a block or two away.

They piled into Pam’s Pontiac, Clay taking the wheel, Pam beside him, Mickey in the back. Her hand trembling, Pam gave Clay the key. He jammed it into the ignition, turned it, and floored the gas pedal.

Nothing.

“Try it again—quick!” Pam cried.

The sirens were right behind them, on all sides of them, over them, under them. The sound seemed to be coming from inside the car!

Clay turned the ignition again, his steel gray eyes calmly staring into the rearview mirror, watching for the police black-and-whites.

The engine rumbled.

It creaked. It resisted.

Then it turned over.

Clay shifted into reverse, pulled back, shifted again, then roared toward the exit, all four tires whining in protest on the asphalt.

“The cops—they’re right behind us!” Mickey shouted, his voice almost as high as the wailing siren. He was twisted around in the backseat, staring out the rear window. “I think there’s only one cruiser!”

“Fasten your seat belts!” Clay cried. He tromped down hard on the gas pedal, and the big car shot forward with a jolt that sent Pam’s head back against the headrest.

“Clay—stop!” she shouted. “It’s my dad’s car. He—”

Clay spun the wheel hard, and the car squealed, making the first sharp turn. He roared through a red light and kept going, his eyes straight ahead, not blinking, not revealing any fear, any excitement, any emotion at all.

“Wow!” Mickey exclaimed from the back. “Man, you’ve got this crate up to ninety-five!”

The siren was so close it seemed to be coming from the backseat. Pam closed her eyes and covered her face with both hands as Clay squealed around another corner.

“Pull over! Pull over!” came the distorted voice of an officer from the loudspeaker on the black-and-white.

“This is the police! Pull over!”

Clay laughed a high-pitched laugh. “The police?” he cried. “I thought it was Santa Claus!”

“Pull over! Pull over!”

But instead of slowing, Clay gunned the engine, pushing harder on the gas as they roared from one narrow street to another.

Pam gingerly opened her eyes and gazed at the speedometer. The needle was as high as it could go.

Clay peeled around another corner, then made a sharp right into a narrow street that a trailer truck almost totally blocked.

They’re going to shoot us! Pam thought.

Just like on TV. They’re going to start shooting at us!

“No!” Pam shrieked as the truck slowly pulled out from the curb in front of them.

The car was heading right for the back of it.

“Clay— stop!”

Instead of hitting the brakes, Clay spun the wheel. The car swerved up onto the sidewalk, missing a mailbox by less than an inch, and rolled past the truck, quickly leaving it behind, its horn honking wildly. Then Clay spun the wheel to the right, and they bumped off the sidewalk and, sailing through a red light, took the next right.

Pam struggled to catch her breath. Mickey hadn’t made a sound in a long while. Clay stared straight ahead, his face still emotionless except for the beginnings of a smile frozen on his lips.

The car tore through a stop sign, then swerved past a group of teenagers crossing the street. The blocks rushed by the window in a blur of yellow light and dark shadow.

It took Pam a long while to realize that they had lost the police car.

Mickey was still silent. She turned her head to the back to see if he was okay. He was sitting stiffly against the door, staring out the window, both hands gripping the seat belt across his waist.

Clay didn’t slow the car until they were a block from his house. Then, peering into the rearview mirror, he took his foot off the gas, and the speedometer needle finally began to slip back.

“Yo!” Clay screamed at the top of his lungs. “Where’d they go?”

Pam could still hear the siren ringing in her ears. She wondered if the sound would ever go away.

“Wow!” Mickey cried, finally speaking. “Wow! Wow wow wow!” He had a silly grin on his face, and his body seemed to collapse. He slumped down in his seat and let go of his grip on the seat belt.

“We lost them!” Pam cried, her heart pounding. “We really lost them!”

Clay pulled the car to the curb in front of his small redbrick house. He threw back his head and laughed with triumph, a laugh Pam had never heard before.

“Man, that was great!” Mickey declared excitedly. “Great!” He pounded Clay on the shoulder. “You did it, man. You did it!”

“When that truck pulled out, I thought we’d had it!” Pam said, squeezing Clay’s arm.

“That’s when we lost the police,” Clay told them, his eyes glowing with excitement. “The truck cut them off—and we were outta there!”

All three of them laughed, a mixture of relief and victory.

“That was awesome!” Mickey declared. “Awesome!” He reached into the front seat to slap Clay a high-five. Then his expression changed. “Pam—your license plate. The police—they must have gotten the number during the chase.”

“Bet they didn’t,” Pam replied, smiling. “The plate is off in back. It fell off last week. Dad hasn’t had a chance to replace it!”

All three of them burst out laughing. They were too worked up to stay in the car. They bounded out onto the sidewalk, whooping and cheering.

“I was so scared!” Pam confessed. “I’ve never been that scared before!” Secretly she admitted to herself that she also found the car chase really exciting.

The wind had died down a bit, but she tightened the wool muffler around her sore throat.

Clay suddenly had a very devilish expression on his face. “Hey, guys—look what I got!” he said. He reached deep into his coat pocket and pulled out a can of jalapeño dip.

“Clay!” Pam cried, truly shocked.

Mickey gaped, swallowing hard. “You mean—”

“It was supposed to go with the chips,” Clay said. He laughed and tossed the can high in the air, catching it one-handed when it came down.

“Whoa. I don’t believe it! The 7-Eleven guy was right!” Mickey said, shaking with laughter.

“I didn’t like his attitude,” Clay said, grinning and twirling the stolen can in his hand.

Pam suddenly didn’t feel like laughing anymore. A picture flashed into her mind of Clay grabbing the cashier by the throat and pushing him into the cash register.

Earlier, she had thought that maybe Clay was justified in losing his temper. Nobody likes to be accused of stealing.

But Clay really had been stealing.

Pam leaned back against the car. “You have to learn to control your temper,” she told Clay softly.

He stepped toward her out of the shadows, and his face glowed under the streetlight. “Hey, I’ve got to have some fun,” he said, sounding bitter.

Pam started to say something, but Mickey interrupted. “Clay is right, man. That ride we had tonight, that was the most fun I’ve had in years.”

“But, Mickey,” Pam started, “we could’ve been arrested. We could’ve been—” She didn’t finish her thought.

“Big deal,” Mickey said, kicking a small rock over the curb. “At least we had a little fun. You know what kind of holiday I’m going to have? My dad was just fired. Do you believe it? He worked at your uncle’s store for twenty-five years, and he gets fired a month before Christmas.”

Pam put an arm around Mickey’s shoulder and gave him an affectionate hug. “Don’t mention my uncle’s store to me,” she said softly.

“How come?” Mickey asked.

Pam groaned. “Well, I can’t even get a vacation job there.”

“Huh?” Clay tossed the stolen can to Mickey, who missed. It dropped onto the street.

“You heard me,” Pam said bitterly. “I said I couldn’t get a job at Dalby’s. My cousin said—”

“But Mitch Castelona called me just before I met Mickey,” Clay told her. “Mitch said your cousin Reva was giving out jobs. Mitch got one and so did Lissa.”

Pam felt her throat tighten in anger. “Reva gave them jobs?” she asked shrilly. “When?”

“Tonight,” Clay told her.

Pam let out a cry of disgust. “She gave them jobs tonight?”

Clay nodded.

Pam furiously tossed the end of the muffler back over her shoulder. “I’m going to get Reva,” she said in a low voice she didn’t recognize. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But somehow, I’m really going to get her.”

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20