He got in the car—his car—and started it, pulling out of the driveway. A left onto Schumann Street, a right onto Vigo. Jerry didn’t have any real choice of how to get to school, but was delighted that some of the other kids would see him en route. And if he happened to pass Ashley Brown … why, he’d pull over and offer her a lift. How sweet would that be?
Jerry came to the intersection with Thurlbeck, where there was a stop sign. But this time he was trying to impress a different audience. He slowed down and, without waiting for the front of the car to bounce up, turned right.
Thurlbeck was the long two-laned street that led straight to Eastern High. Jerry had to pick just the right speed. If he went too fast, none of the kids walking along would have a chance to see that it was him. But he couldn’t cruise along slowly, or they’d think he wasn’t comfortable driving. Not comfortable! Why, he’d been driving for months now. He picked a moderate speed and rolled down the driver’s-side window, resting his sleeveless arm on the edge of the opening.
Up ahead, a bunch of kids were walking along the sidewalk.
No … no, that wasn’t quite right. They weren’t walking—they were standing, all looking and pointing at something. That was perfect: in a moment, they’d all be looking and pointing at him.
As he got closer, Jerry slowed the car to a crawl. As much as he wanted to show off, he was curious about what had caught everyone’s attention. He remembered a day years ago when everybody had paused on the way to school as they came across a dead dog, one eye half popped out of its skull.
Jerry continued on slowly, hoping people would look over and take notice of him, but no one did. They were all intent on something—he still couldn’t make out what—on the side of the road. He thought about honking his horn, but no, he couldn’t do that. The whole secret of being cool was to get people to look at you without it seeming like that was what you were trying to do.
Finally, Jerry thought of the perfect solution. As he got closer to the knot of people, he pulled his car over to the side of the road, put on his blinkers, and got out.
“Hey,” he said as he closed the distance between himself and the others. “Wassup?”
Darren Chen looked up. “Hey, Jerry,” he said.
Jerry had expected Chen’s eyes to go wide when he realized that his friend had come out of the car sitting by the curb, but that didn’t happen. The other boy just pointed to the side of the road.
Jerry followed the outstretched arm and …
His heart jumped.
There was a plain white cross on the grassy strip that ran along the far side of the sidewalk. Hanging from it was a wreath. Jerry moved closer and read the words that had been written on the cross in thick black strokes, perhaps with an indelible marker: “Tammy Jameson was killed here by a hit-and-run driver. She will always be remembered.” And there was a date from July.
Jerry knew the Jameson name—there’d always been one or another of them going through the local schools. A face came into his mind, but he wasn’t even sure if it was Tammy’s.
“Wow,” said Jerry softly. “Wow.”
Chen nodded. “I read about it in the paper. They still haven’t caught the person who did it.”
Jerry finally got what he wanted at the end of the school day. Tons of kids saw him sauntering over to his car, and a few of the boys came up to talk to him about it.
And just before he was about to get in and drive off, he saw Ashley. She was walking with a couple of other girls, books clasped to her chest. She looked up and saw the car sitting there. Then she saw Jerry leaning against it and her eyes—beautiful deep-blue eyes, he knew, although he couldn’t really see them at this distance—met his, and she smiled a bit and nodded at him, impressed.
Jerry got in his car and drove home, feeling on top of the world.
The next morning, Jerry headed out to school. This time, he thought maybe he’d get the attention he deserved as he came up Thurlbeck Street. After all, even if the cross was still there—and it was; he could just make it out up ahead—the novelty would surely have worn off.
Jerry decided to try a slightly faster speed today, in hopes that more people would look up. But, to his astonishment, he found that the more he pressed his right foot down on the accelerator, the more his car slowed down. He actually craned for a look—it was a beginner’s mistake, and a pretty terrifying one too, he remembered, to confuse the accelerator and the brake—but, no, his gray Nike was pressing down on the correct pedal.
And yet still his car was rapidly slowing down. As he came abreast of the crucifix with it wreath, he was moving at no better than walking speed, despite having the pedal all the way to the floor. But once he’d passed the cross, the car started speeding up again, until at last the vehicle was operating normally once more.
Jerry was reasonably philosophical. He knew there had to be something wrong with the car for him to have gotten it so cheap. He continued on to the school parking lot. Not even the principal had a reserved spot— it made his car too easy a target for vandals, Jerry guessed. It pleased him greatly to pull in next to old Mr. Walters, who was trying to shift his bulk out of his Ford.
Jerry was relieved that his car functioned flawlessly on the way home from school. He still hadn’t managed to find the courage to offer Ashley Brown a lift home, but that would come soon, he knew.
The next day, however—crazy though it seemed—his car developed the exact same malfunction, slowing to a crawl at precisely the same point in the road.
Jerry had seen his share of horror movies. It didn’t take a Dr. Frankenstein to figure out that it had something to do with the girl who had been killed there. It was as though she was reaching out from the beyond, slowing down cars at that spot to make sure that no other accident ever happened there again. It was scary but exhilarating.
At lunch that day, Jerry headed out to the school’s parking lot, all set to hang around his car, showing it off to anyone who cared to have a look. But then he caught sight of Ashley walking out of the school grounds. He could have jumped in his car and driven over to her, but she probably wouldn’t get in, even if he offered. No, he needed to talk to her first.
Now or never, Jerry thought. He jogged over to Ashley, catching up with her as she was walking along Thurlbeck Street. “Hey, Ash,” he said. “Where’re you going?”
Ashley turned around and smiled that radiant smile of hers. “Just down to the store to get some gum.”
“Mind if I tag along?”
“If you like,” she said, her voice perfectly measured, perfectly noncommittal.
Jerry fell in beside her. He chatted with her—trying to hide his nervousness—about what they’d each done over the summer. She’d spent most of it at her uncles farm and—
Jerry stopped dead in his tracks.
A car was coming up Thurlbeck Street, heading toward the school. It came abreast of the crucifix but didn’t slow down, it just sailed on by.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ashley.
“Nothing,” said Jerry. A few moments later, another car came along, and it too passed the crucifix without incident.
Of course, Jerry had had no trouble driving home from school, but he’d assumed that that was because he was in the other lane, going in the opposite direction, and that Tammy, wherever she was, didn’t care about people going that way.