All the Rage(72)

“I saw you,” he calls. “Your bike’s out here.”

I move back and my rustling interrupts the safe quiet I’ve carved out. I can’t see the road from here. Maybe he can’t see me. I listen for him, for his footsteps, ready myself to run, if I have to, and pray I’m fast enough.

Pray I’m fast enough.

“You think this is funny?” he demands. And then, “Think it’d be funny if I took your bike? How about I take your f*cking bike?”

I hear it; my bike lifted from the road and tossed into his truck bed. The loud, ugly clatter of it makes me take another step back.

“I don’t f*cking believe this. I know you’re there.”

And then the—graceless sound of him coming down the bank, slipping the same way I did. His curses fill the air and he’s furious and I don’t care how noisy I am, I run.

I crash through a good half mile of woods before I see hints of light, the trees getting sparser. I break through them and there’s a different bank, overgrown and wild. I can’t tell if anything’s behind me because all I hear is the struggle of my own lungs gasping for air, and when they’ve finally settled, I listen.

There’s nothing.

And then I’m crying, I’m crying so hard and I can’t stop. I just want it to stop. I turn and there’s nothing there to turn to. I try to get a hold of myself as much as I can and I see—I see—

Pebbles skitter under my feet. I walk forward until I’m standing over a white Vespa, half-hidden in the trees, slopped onto its side, wearing weeks of neglect.





“you know that was there before? This whole time?”

“No,” I say.

“What were you doing out on the road in the first place, if you didn’t know?” Before I can answer, Sheriff Turner asks, “Was Penny with you that night? Were you lying to me?”

I’m in the backseat of his Explorer, behind the cage, and the space is getting smaller and smaller every mile. I try to think of anything but what I know. Penny’s Vespa in the woods. I shiver. I’m freezing but my skin is damp, sweaty. My eyes are swollen and sore from crying.

“I don’t feel well.”

“Answer the question.”

I don’t know if it’s right, that he’s asking me the question in the first place. But it never matters if it’s right, not in this town.

“I don’t—I can’t remember anything about that night, I told you…”

“Then what were you doing out there in the first place? How could you just happen to find Penny’s Vespa like that, if you didn’t know it was there the whole time?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

They came when I called them. I sat on the road, waiting until I saw the police and then I had to show them the Vespa, had to tell them if I touched it and where. Some of the questions, I didn’t have answers for, couldn’t think around the shock. Sheriff Turner shouldn’t even be here, but when he heard it was about her, and that I was involved, he came. He’s post-funeral; jumped out of one suit and into another. His whole face is pinched and ugly. Makes me afraid. I hate this man and I’m afraid of him.

“She was like a daughter to me.”

“I know,” I say.

“You best pray this don’t come back around to you, Romy.”

Mom and Todd pick me up at the sheriff’s department and by the time they get there, I’ve thrown up and they only find out because Joe Conway tells them. Mom puts her hands to my face and says, soft and surprised, “You have a fever.”

On the ride home, I struggle to keep my eyes open.

“Go upstairs, Romy,” Mom tells me when we get there.

I do what she says.

I go to my room and I peel out of my clothes.

By the time I’ve found my way into bed, I hear my mother in the bathroom, the water running. I drift. She comes in a few minutes later. The mattress dips and she starts me awake, a little, when she presses a cold washcloth against my forehead.

“What are you thinking?” she asks quietly, like she always does. “What on earth were you thinking?”

“It was a funeral,” I say because nothing feels like the wrong thing to say anymore. It’s not long before I hear her crying and it breaks my heart. I break her heart. I grip her hand and tell her it’s okay and don’t cry and you don’t have to cry but I can’t make myself convincing enough.





time passes or it doesn’t, but it must—because it has to.

When the fever breaks, I don’t know what girl is left.

I don’t know what I’ve done to myself.

*


on friday, i open my eyes to the late-afternoon sun and the sky is empty. No clouds, no blue, just white nothingness stretched across town.

I hear Mom’s and Todd’s voices drifting through the window, along with the crackly sound of music playing from Todd’s old radio, some golden oldies station. I get out of bed and follow the song to the front porch. They stop talking when I come out.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You could use the extra rest,” Mom says. “And now you should eat. Let me make you something up.”