“You’re cold-blooded,” Gay said. “Seriously, Jane, you should have been there. He came in the room and asked Krishna to turn her music down. He was serious. We were smoking a bowl and she turned the music down and he said ‘Can I have my arm back?’ We were like, ‘What?’”
“Yeah, I should have been there,” I said.
There was silence for a few minutes. Gay stared out her window at the Christmas lights.
“I can’t wait to see Ziggy,” said Krishna. Ziggy. What did he matter now? Not at all. Nothing.
Gay said, “I know, neither can I. Jane! You’re going ninety!”
We were passing the park. A streak of Christmas lights zipped by on the right. The park was veered off to the left. I didn’t want to leave the park, so I swerved left to continue following it. My tires spun out. For a moment, I lost control of the wheel—
loss of control, controlling nothing, helpless
—then regained it.
“Slow down, crazy. Where are you going?!” Krishna yelled from the back. Her voice was distant, as if she stood far away. She reached up and put her hand on my shoulder. The tips of her fingers brushed the skin of my neck, cold as icicles. “Why are you turning here? We’re going to Ziggy’s. Go straight.”
“Never go straight!” Gay shouted. “Go forward.”
“This isn’t funny,” Krishna said.
“Slow down, there’s ice on the roads,” Gay said.
Were those Christmas lights or red-and-blue police sirens in my rearview mirror?
Police. “Oh my God,” I whispered. Then something snapped within me, and I screamed. “Oh my God! What have I done?”
“You’ve been driving ninety miles an hour, what the fuck do you think you’ve done? Pull over,” Gay said.
“Oh no, we have drugs in the car, and open bottles of booze!” Krishna shouted. “We can’t pull over!”
“Oh my God, oh my God,” I screamed, putting my hands over my eyes.
Blood, streaming down my father’s face. His shock. Collapsing to his knees. My mom rushing forward.
“Put your hands back on the wheel!” Gay and Krishna shouted.
Was he dead?
Gay grabbed the steering wheel. “Just pull over.”
Had I killed him?
“No,” Krishna said. “We have open bottles and we’re drinking. We have drugs.”
Dad?
“Throw them out the window.” Gay rolled down the window and started throwing things out of the car.
“Don’t do that! It will only make it worse. Drive on the ice; they can’t follow you on the ice,” Krishna said. “It’s illegal for them to follow you onto the ice.”
The ice. The cold, smooth, nothingness of the ice. Yes, I would go there. I would go there to escape the police and the memory and the blood, blood, blood—Dad!
My rigid leg jerked harder against the accelerator and we sped up. Ninety-five. One hundred.
The car jolted beneath me, vibrating through my stiff muscles, blurring my vision.
That was why my vision blurred. Nothing else. Nothing.
“I thought the police weren’t supposed to follow you,” Gay cried. “This is insane. Pull over; you’re getting us into worse and worse trouble.”
There it was, stretched out before me, shining with gentle luminance under the ghastly moon. Smooth, perfect. No flaws at all.
I couldn’t feel the accelerator pedal under my foot anymore. I couldn’t feel anything. I could feel nothing.
I could feel everything.
There had been so much blood.
The road cleared away, the last of the trees passed, and we were suddenly gliding out on the perfectness of the ice. There was a moment of smoothness, where not even gravity could touch us. We might have been floating in nothingness!
“Are they following us?” Krishna asked. “They’re not! It worked!”
Hydroplaning. What a word. We were flying through the vacuum of space—
The car juddered beneath me, bouncing over a ridge in the ice. I slammed forward, then back, knocking my head on the headrest. The back tires slid and the car spun, faster and faster, in a circle—then floated sideways, once more skimming across the perfect nothingness of the lake.
Gay and Krishna screeched, terrified.
No—excited!
“Do it again!” Gay exclaimed. “Do another donut!”
“Or a figure-eight!” Krishna cried. “Do a spiral! It feels like we’re flying!” She threw up her arms, leaned back her head, and shrieked with terror, with excitement, with sheer joy.
Far overhead, the ghastly moon watched us. It knew everything we did. It had seen everything I’d done. Nothing escaped it.
My foot was still stuck all the way down on the accelerator, my leg too numb to move. But now my arms were lax and heavy, and the car spun again and again, whipping us from side to side, making the girls with me scream with delight.
I couldn’t see the shore. We must be close to the center of the lake, where the ice was thin. Out in the middle of nowhere, where no one could see us, and no one could hear us, and no one could help us.
And still, they shrieked.
My mother had shrieked.
But my father . . . my dad . . . my daddy, he hadn’t made a sound. Nothing.
“Again, again!” Gay and Krishna chanted.
Didn’t they realize how dangerous this was? The car. The ice.
Me. I was dangerous, wasn’t I? I hurt people. Maybe killed them. Him.
The wheels slid and slid and the girls shrieked and shrieked.
And beneath us, the ice cracked.
We’re going to die, I thought. We’re going to go through the ice, into the freezing water. We’ll drown, drown, drown in the cold blackness until there’s nothing left.
“Did you hear that?” Gay asked.
“I can’t hear anything. Why did you stop?” Krishna asked. “Why are you crying? Would you chill the fuck out? Would you just chill? Don’t be so fucking emotional. Don’t be so fucking boring, Jane. Keep doing donuts. Come on!”
Boring. No, I certainly I wasn’t boring. I wished I was boring.
I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, my leg at last relaxing from the pedal.
The ghastly moon lowered. The ice cracked.
They were screaming again; I could hear them, distantly. They were trying to escape.
“There is no escape,” I wanted to tell them, as the car tipped forward, as the ice parted beneath us. “Can’t you see?”
But I didn’t tell them. I said nothing.
Thin Ice (The Oshkosh Trilogy) Page 10
