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he slowed, then stopped. The sight of the new car resting on its top, its tires still spinning, turned Ellis’s stomach and made his heart pound as if it were trying to shatter his sternum.
    Then he saw movement near the front passenger window. He was out of his VW in a heartbeat.
    His first steps were tentative. Images from movies and television shows of exploding cars strobed in his mind. Indeed, fuel dripped from the back of the car. Oil and antifreeze bled from the front. Bits of safety glass and shards of headlight glass and taillight plastic carpeted the black asphalt. These things he saw in the harsh rays of his headlight beams and the soft glow of a streetlight. Ivory light of a one-day-old full moon glistened in the car’s fluid and fragments.
    Although he tried not to let them, horror-movie images of what must remain of the passengers pushed to the front of his mind. Dare he look? Yes. He had too. It was the right thing to do, to see if by some miracle someone survived.
    He had taken only two steps closer when a hand appeared in the shattered passenger side window. A delicate hand. A woman’s hand with plum nail polish—a color he had seen before, but was too addled to remember where.
    â€œHe-help. Some . . . one . . . please.”
    The sound of a young woman’s voice swept away his hesitation. Not even the sparking of something in the engine slowed him. Eight strides later, he reached the overturned Camaro and dropped to his knees. Bits of glass and pebbles of asphalt gouged up by the overturning car dug into his knees. Small pain, he figured, compared to what this poor woman was going through.
    â€œTake it easy. Try not to move. Help is on the way.” He had no idea if the last statement were true.
    The hand was followed by a wrist, then a forearm. The skin was scratched and the arm shook. Blood covered much of it. Still, Ellis could see it belonged to a someone around his age. He bent and peered through the narrow opening, an opening made all the smaller by the car rolling over and over at high speed.
    Very little light made it into the passenger area. Ellis could make out a form, blonde hair tinted pink by blood, and something twitching beyond. To get a better angle, he lay on the debris-populated asphalt. Pointed things stabbed at his bare arm and tried to press through the McDonald’s uniform shirt.
    â€œI have to get out. I have to get out!” Her voice wobbled with fear and wooziness. Her slurred speech made Ellis worry about a head wound. How could there not be a head wound?
    â€œYou need to remain still—”
    The arm retracted. Then something dropped from the inverted seat. The woman had released her seat belt and fallen to the ceiling-now-floor of the car. She was coming out whether Ellis thought it was wise or not. Helping her might limit further injury. He didn’t know. Working at McDonald’s hadn’t prepared him for a situation like this.
    â€œEasy. Take it easy.” Ellis smelled gasoline. He pushed to his knees.
    He had no idea how she managed, but the passenger crawled on her belly through the opening, then pushed to her knees. Blood dripped from the tip of her nose, a nose that looked several degrees off straight. Her arms shook as if the air temperature hovered around freezing instead of in the fifties.
    She looked up and Ellis gasped, first at the sight of the gash that ran from the hairline of her forehead to a quarter inch above her left eye. He could see wet, white skull peeking through the wound. Then he gasped again for another reason: he knew her. More than once in his high school career, Ellis had directed his gaze to the eighteen-year-old beauty. She never looked back. Bright, popular, the beauty of the senior class, she was the desire of every student with a Y-chromosome.
    â€œShelly?”
    She tried to make eye contact. “I have to get out of here. Help . . . help me.”
    The car jostled. A deep groan emanated from