Read Thrill-Bent for Free Online Page B

lapse into one of his paroxysms, he’d simply take his foot off the gas and we’d coast for a few seconds, his hands tapping the wheel, his elbows flapping as he cawed and cursed into the tunnel of wind. Then his toe would gradually crawl onto the clutch, expertly upshifting until we were speeding along as before. Like a smooth DJ transitioning between songs, the Condor would grease the fold, erasing any harsh lines of demarcation between one velocity and another. But every once in a while the spell would come over him right in the middle of an intersection, and it was as if his body knew that to abandon the pedals would be potentially deadly. So he’d bank into his turn as usual, his forehead furrowed just enough so I could tell he was concentrating, and then he’d incorporate the drumbeat tapping of his limbs into the driving skills required for bringing us through the intersection to safety. On this Wednesday, however, something happened in between the stop sign and the right turn lane. Just as we were stammering into the middle of the road, a bright light careened out of the lavender dusk; it was like the sky split open and released a lightning bolt. A blaze of headlights marked us, an arrow tagging its prey, and then claimed us. A shiny maroon Buick hurtled through the stop, barreling into the left nostril of our poor Fiat with a resounding crack, so loud and blinding I thought for a moment we had burst into flames. We spun like a coin thrown onto an ice-skating rink. My dad’s arm was thrown across my chest like a plank across a door, strong and brown, with bright red polka dots blossoming all along its length. Glass was everywhere—in my hair, my eyes, my lap. Through the frame of the missing windshield, I saw the blue jangle of ocean and the purple sky, and then the color wheel repeated itself as we spun: blue, purple, gray buildings, white sidewalk. Blue-purple-gray-white. Blue-purple-gray-white. We gradually slowed to a stop, and my father’s hand dug into my shoulder, his bloody face pressed up against mine.
    “Okay?” he whispered. “You okay, sweetie?” And I think I answered yes, yes, I’m fine, I am here with you, but I may not have found the words, because people came streaming in from everywhere, shouting and barking commands. Get out, Stay in, That was crazy, Not your fault, Oh shit, Call an ambulance, Stay, Go, I saw everything, Jesus, Look at the blood, Look at the little girl.
    It was strange being at Besta-Wan then, with the sky crow-black and endless. The sun had set and even the streaks of dusklight were gone from the horizon. I was perched on an ornate wrought-iron chair at a table on the porch of the restaurant, eating lukewarm pepperoni pizza and being told by the proprietress what a good girl I was. My father was still down the street, lit from above by a streetlamp so that his hair looked like a shiny black helmet. In the middle of a crowd, he gestured wildly to a policeman while two paramedics tried to persuade him onto a gurney. I had been told that my dad had to go to the hospital and that my mother would be coming to pick me up in a few minutes. I wanted to go to the hospital, too, to be hustled onto a white-sheeted gurney, to ride in a screaming ambulance, to be rolled through metal saloon doors into a bustling, sterilized environment. But it seemed that the blood all over me was my father’s blood, the prickling I’d felt in my eyes must have been the wind whipping through the fast vortex of our spindle. I did have a Band-Aid on my cheek where my dad had accidentally ground glass into my skin when he pressed his face to mine. The proprietress had Mercuro-chromed me in the pizza kitchen, telling me to take a sip of Fresca whenever I felt a sting.
    I picked a piece of pepperoni off the edge of my slice. I didn’t like it when the pepperoni hung over the line of the cut crust; it meant that half the round orange disc rightfully belonged to another slice. And I hated to see the