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back, screaming, dropped the phone and started fighting to get out of the car when Gobi appeared next to me, gliding down into the passenger seat and yanking me back in.
    "I told you not to park in front of the window," she said.

7
Reflect on your reaction to a crisis or a critical moment in your life when thinking as usual was no longer possible. Describe the event and tell us how it changed your thought processes. (Ramapo College)
     
    Here's me: still screaming.
    "There's a dead guy on the car! Oh, man. What the hell? There's a dead guy on top of my dad's car! "
    Out of the darkness, something pinched my shoulder, hard enough to cut through the fog of panic. Gobi was squeezing me just above the socket of my arm, and when I looked over, the sunglasses were off and her eyes were drilling straight into mine.
    "You should put the car in reverse, Perry. That will get the body off your car."
    My gaze went down to the bulky bag between her knees, the only remnant of the person she'd been fifteen minutes earlier. The bag was open and I could see a gun resting on top of a bundle of clothes, next to the BlackBerry.
    " You did that? You shot that guy?"
    "Back up the car, Perry." Her voice was totally calm. "Before the police arrive."
    I was still grappling with the latch to get the door open, fighting to get out of the car, when Gobi swung one boot-clad leg over the gearshift and stepped on the gas while simultaneously dropping the Jag into reverse. We jolted backwards hard enough that I felt my incisors click together and the dead man's body flopped forward and disappeared completely from the Jag's hood. Gobi whipped the wheel hard so that we swerved around between a stretch Hummer and Lexus waiting for the valet.
    "Now," she said, "drive."
    I shook my head, thrashing like a fish in a net. "Let me out! You can have the car! Just let me out!" Where was the door handle? I'd only had to get out of the Jag's driver's seat three or four times in my entire life, counting the times that I'd worked up the courage to sneak out to the garage and sit in it, and my fingers were still raking the interior trying to locate the handle when I felt something hard and hot press against my right temple. I could smell heated steel and gunpowder very close by.
    "Do you remember when you helped me with that PowerPoint presentation for Mr. Wibberly's economics class?" Gobi said. "You were thinking very clearly then, Perry. You are not thinking clearly now." Her voice became an odd combination of gentle and didactic, as if she were explaining something completely simple to a complete simpleton. "I cannot drive a car. You know this."
    "It's New York City! Who needs a car?"
    She touched my hand. "I need you."
    I looked right and left. Outside the club, people were gathering around the broken window, staring at the body sprawled out on the street, the body that had seconds earlier been on the hood of the car. Some of them were glancing back toward us. I could feel the presence of the gun hovering just outside my peripheral vision like some suicidal thought that I was too terrified to acknowledge. "Who are you? You're a foreign exchange student! You're in high school!"
    "I am twenty-four years old."
    " What? "
    "Drive the car." The barrel of the gun pressed harder on my skull. "I will not ask again."
    I shifted the Jag into drive and pulled out into the street, every part of my body shaking at different vibrational frequencies. Gobi reached over and hit the windshield wipers, smearing the dead man's blood across the glass in a gruesome double rainbow. She squirted wiper fluid and ran them again. The glass got a little cleaner. Now I could see the lights of Broadway up ahead, shining away in drizzled bloody streaks. In the rearview mirror, the crowd in front of 40/40 was getting bigger by the second. Sirens were rising up in the distance.
    "I can't believe this. This isn't happening."
    "You can drive a little faster."
    "I am!"
    "You are driving five miles an