Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan(17)

***

We're the first ones at the raceway, Tommy too eager and too stupid to be anything but early, even with me in the seat beside him still begging him to find another way. His heart is set. "I don't know anyone who's ever gotten out of here," he said earlier, eyes wide and earnest and too young to understand what he was getting into. "People say they will, but they don't. We all wind up working for our daddies, if our daddies are still alive. We drink in the bars where they drank, we sit on the porches where they sat, and we get old swearing we're going to get out one day. Meanwhile, our sons grow up just like us, and the cycle never gets broken. I don't want that. I want roads I've never seen before, and a house where the walls don't always smell like grease and old butter, and I want my girl to be proud of me. I want her to say 'that's my man,' and have it be pride speaking, not shame."

"You want more." That's what I said to him then, and if I could take those words back, I would, because he took them as permission to do what he'd been planning anyway. He took them as permission to drive out here to this empty road that sunset turned into a raceway, and all the while, the smell of ashes and lilies gathered deeper and deeper around him. I'd take them back if I could.

The world doesn't work that way.

Tommy's car is beautiful, a 1985 Toyota that he's rebuilt so many times that even the air inside the cabin feels custom. She trusts him, this blue-back beauty with her wheels set solid on the pavement. She believes in him. The love of a car may be the truest love there is, save maybe for the love of a dog for its person--and even there, there's a divide, because the love of a car proves that the car has been loved. A dog loves because dogs exist to love man. A car loves because man exists to love the car. I touch her hood, fingertips only slightly warmer than the engine-heated metal, and I want to tell her that everything will be all right, and I can't do it. Everything isn't going to be all right. Everything will never be all right again.

"Tommy, I got a bad feeling about this. Let's just go. You can find the money some other way. I know people, people who maybe could help you. I--"

"If you know people, why were you standing off the Interstate with your thumb up in the air, Rose?" The look Tommy gives me is challenging and cold. "You're wearing my jacket, and you ate that grilled cheese like nobody'd fed you in a month of Sundays. If you can find that kind of money, what are you doing here?"

There's not an answer for that question in the whole world, because he's standing in the daylight, and in the daylight, "I'm here because I'm dead" isn't an answer, it's a joke. I swallow, shift, look toward the horizon, and pray for a miracle, even though I don't believe in miracles anymore, if I ever believed in them to begin with. The age of miracles has been over for a long time, and the final nail went into that coffin in February of 1959, when the world asked for a Valentine and got the death of Buddy Holly in its place. "Tommy--"

"No, Rose. No. I don't want to get old in this ten-cent town, and there's no way I'm gonna marry my girl knowing what I'm sentencing her to. She deserves better, and I'm going to get it for her."

"Or you're going to die trying. Did you ever think of that, Tommy? How proud of you is she going to be when you're six feet underground?"

Tommy shakes his head and steps away, moving toward the rear of the car, where he can watch for the other racers. They'll be coming soon. The road is singing so loudly of their arrival that even I can hear it, and I'm no routewitch. "You don't understand."

He's right; I don't. I may understand poor, and I may understand frightened, but if someone had begged me to stay home the night I died, I would have listened. I know I would. I would have locked the door and waited until Gary came to apologize, and if I'd missed the prom, so what? I would have so many other opportunities to dance. I would have listened.

I hope.

But he won't. The night has fallen, the stars are shining, and Tommy's going to die tonight. And there's not a damn thing I can do.

***

Stepping through the door of the diner is like sticking my entire body into a swarm of biting ants. The pain is brief and intense, and shocking enough that I finish my step, stumbling forward, hitting the ground on my knees. It doesn't hurt as much as dying did, or even as much as being shot in the chest by a crazy strigoi who doesn't know he's dead, but it hurts enough to make my vision go blurry. The broken linoleum covering the old diner floor cuts my knees through the denim of my jeans as I fall, and I have to catch myself on my hands to keep from scraping my face across the floor.

With everything that's going on, I don't notice that my heart has started beating until I'm pushing myself back to my feet. The scrapes on my hands and knees burn dully, a familiar childhood feeling that calls forth the memory of parental kisses and Mercurochrome. When I wipe my hands on the tail of my shirt, they leave trails of blood behind, and my breath plumes slightly in the chilly springtime air.