Identity Theft and other stories (collection)

And just before he was about to get in and drive off, he saw Ashley. She was walking with a couple of other girls, books clasped to her chest. She looked up and saw the car sitting there. Then she saw Jerry leaning against it and her eyes—beautiful deep-blue eyes, he knew, although he couldn’t really see them at this distance—met his, and she smiled a bit and nodded at him, impressed.

Jerry got in his car and drove home, feeling on top of the world.

* * *

The next morning, Jerry headed out to school. This time, he thought maybe he’d get the attention he deserved as he came up Thurlbeck Street. After all, even if the cross was still there—and it was; he could just make it out up ahead—the novelty would surely have worn off.

Jerry decided to try a slightly faster speed today, in hopes that more people would look up. But, to his astonishment, he found that the more he pressed his right foot down on the accelerator, the more his car slowed down. He actually craned for a look—it was a beginner’s mistake, and a pretty terrifying one too, he remembered, to confuse the accelerator and the brake—but, no, his gray Nike was pressing down on the correct pedal.

And yet still his car was rapidly slowing down. As he came abreast of the crucifix with it wreath, he was moving at no better than walking speed, despite having the pedal all the way to the floor. But once he’d passed the cross, the car started speeding up again, until at last the vehicle was operating normally once more.

Jerry was reasonably philosophical. He knew there had to be something wrong with the car for him to have gotten it so cheap. He continued on to the school parking lot. Not even the principal had a reserved spot— it made his car too easy a target for vandals, Jerry guessed. It pleased him greatly to pull in next to old Mr. Walters, who was trying to shift his bulk out of his Ford.

* * *

Jerry was relieved that his car functioned flawlessly on the way home from school. He still hadn’t managed to find the courage to offer Ashley Brown a lift home, but that would come soon, he knew.

The next day, however—crazy though it seemed—his car developed the exact same malfunction, slowing to a crawl at precisely the same point in the road.

Jerry had seen his share of horror movies. It didn’t take a Dr. Frankenstein to figure out that it had something to do with the girl who had been killed there. It was as though she was reaching out from the beyond, slowing down cars at that spot to make sure that no other accident ever happened there again. It was scary but exhilarating.

At lunch that day, Jerry headed out to the school’s parking lot, all set to hang around his car, showing it off to anyone who cared to have a look. But then he caught sight of Ashley walking out of the school grounds. He could have jumped in his car and driven over to her, but she probably wouldn’t get in, even if he offered. No, he needed to talk to her first.

Now or never, Jerry thought. He jogged over to Ashley, catching up with her as she was walking along Thurlbeck Street. “Hey, Ash,” he said. “Where’re you going?”

Ashley turned around and smiled that radiant smile of hers. “Just down to the store to get some gum.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

“If you like,” she said, her voice perfectly measured, perfectly noncommittal.

Jerry fell in beside her. He chatted with her—trying to hide his nervousness—about what they’d each done over the summer. She’d spent most of it at her uncles farm and—

Jerry stopped dead in his tracks.

A car was coming up Thurlbeck Street, heading toward the school. It came abreast of the crucifix but didn’t slow down, it just sailed on by.

“What’s wrong?” asked Ashley.

“Nothing,” said Jerry. A few moments later, another car came along, and it too passed the crucifix without incident.

Of course, Jerry had had no trouble driving home from school, but he’d assumed that that was because he was in the other lane, going in the opposite direction, and that Tammy, wherever she was, didn’t care about people going that way.

But …

But now it looked like it wasn’t every car that she was slowing down when it passed the spot where she’d—there was no gentle way to phrase it—where she’d been killed.

No, not every car.

Jerry’s heart fluttered.

Just my car.

* * *

The next day, the same thing: Jerry’s car slowed down almost to a stop directly opposite where Tammy Jameson had been hit. He tried to ignore it, but then Dickens, one of the kids in his geography class, made a crack about it. “Hey, Sloane,” he said, “What are you, chicken? I see you crawling along every morning when you pass the spot where Tammy was killed.”

Where Tammy was killed. He said it offhandedly, as if death was a commonplace occurrence for him, as if he was talking about the place where something utterly normal had happened.

But Jerry couldn’t take it anymore. He’d been called on it, on what Dickens assumed was his behavior, and he had to either give a good reason for it or stop doing it. That’s the way it worked.