Crash Read online

  He seems satisfied. “And Mom and Dad are good with this?”

  I open my mouth to say yes, but I can’t lie to him, so I just close it again.

  He shakes his head at me and sighs. “Just go. Pizza’s getting cold.”

  “Thank you.” I hop in the car as he turns to go inside.

  “If anything happens to you, they’ll blame me,” he calls out. “Do you really want that guilt hanging over you?”

  I smile a little so he knows I heard him and close the door, drive down the alley. My mind is not on getting robbed. I head straight to Angotti’s and pull down the side street, into the back parking lot.

  When I stop the car and take a good, long look at the building in front of me, I don’t need the sketch in my pocket to confirm it.

  This building is going to explode.

  Eleven

  But when? And what am I supposed to do, wander around telling people to stay away from Angotti’s because it’s gonna blow?

  I point my headlights at the building, and with the aid of the streetlights and building lamps, plus the light coming through the restaurant windows, I stare at it, thinking about the scene I’ve watched dozens of times.

  There’s the evergreen-and-white-striped awning, solidly attached above the back entrance. The windows above, definitely an apartment—probably where Sawyer and his parents live, just like our family. There’s a glow up there, maybe from night-lights or a hallway light left on while they work the wedding reception.

  I look into the wide restaurant window and see happy people at the tables, but all I can think about is the truck crashing into them and the glass flying. I see Sawyer walk past like a blur, but I know that walk, that flip of his head, that easy, tossed-off smile that charms all the teachers. Not me—only the crooked, real smile charms me. I think about it, think about him, and my stomach quakes so hard that an aftershock runs down my thighs.

  I swallow hard. “Don’t die,” I whisper. But I don’t know how to save him.

  In my head I check off everything that’s supposed to be in this picture. The only things I don’t see are the light fixtures hanging down over the window tables. But they probably had to hook them up to the ceiling to change the seating arrangement for the special event. And I realize that probably means it won’t happen tonight, at least. A shuddering sigh escapes my throat, and I realize I’ve been so tensed up, I barely have a neck anymore. I drop my shoulders and take a breath, trying to shake it off.

  I glance at the pizza next to me, knowing I’ve got to get it delivered before the customer calls to complain—that would make Trey freak out. I take one last look at the building. Even faded, the black words painted on the side are clear without the veil of snow: “Angotti’s Trattoria, est. 1934.” A year before ours. They’ve always been a step ahead of us, and we’ve been chasing them ever since.

  I look for one last glimpse of Sawyer, but he’s nowhere to be seen, and then drive out of the parking lot to deliver this pizza. Luckily, the roads are good and I hit almost all the lights green. I call Trey and get his voice mail. “I’m on the way back. No problems.”

  Biggest lie of the century.

  • • •

  In the middle of the night the vision runs through my dreams. I startle and sit straight up in bed, wide awake, with one thought on my mind. Snow. “Oh my God,” I say. “Don’t be so stupid, Jules.” In the scene, it’s snowing.

  In her bed, Rowan lifts her head off the pillow, and I can see her sleepy face scrunch up, confused. “Huh?”

  I glance at her, but my mind is occupied. “Sorry. Go to sleep.”

  Obediently, she drops her head back on the pillow and is asleep again a moment later. I sneak out to the living room, move a pile of newspapers from the desk chair, and flip on the computer, hoping the sound is on mute like it’s supposed to be. It takes forever, but finally the page loads. I dim the screen light and search for the weather forecast.

  When I find it, I pull up the extended forecast and all I can do is stare. There’s a chance of snow nine out of the next ten days.

  “Wow. That’s just great.” I’m so disgusted I turn the computer off without shutting it down properly, which would really piss Rowan off. And then I just sit there in the dark, wondering how much time I have to solve this life-or-death puzzle.

  And wondering how I’m going to convince people who hate us that I’m trying to save their lives . . . because I saw a vision. A vision of their restaurant, which supposedly my family has hated for generations, exploding.

  Yeah, that’s going to be easy.

  Twelve

  When I get up in the morning, I hardly have time to think about it, because today is one of the busiest Sundays on the pizza delivery calendar. Super Bowl.

  Mom and Dad and Rowan go to mass. Trey and I won’t go anymore out of protest—if the church won’t accept my brother, they can’t have me, either. Mom and Dad support our decision. I wish they’d join us. But old habits are hard to break, and their religious fear runs deep. They’ll come around eventually, I think—I mean, we don’t really talk about it. They’re not horrible like some parents. But it still hurts Trey. Rowan wants to stay home in protest too, but they won’t let her until she’s sixteen, and then she can decide.

  But I don’t have time to think about that, either. Trey and I get our homework done and meet Tony in the restaurant at ten to start making dough and chopping vegetables. My mind wanders as we work in silence, everybody a little sleepy this morning. I wonder if Sawyer is doing the same thing as I am today.

  Sometimes I picture him and me working in a kitchen together like this, and we’d be laughing and flirting and leaving sweet little messages to each other on the cutting board in words made from green pepper slices. And I hate when I do that, because it hurts so much when reality comes crashing down on my little scene. It always does. I wish I could stop liking him. God! I just can’t. I pulverize the hell out of a mushroom and have to put my knife down for a minute before I cut all my fingers off.

  “Everything okay over there?” Tony asks. “I feel sorry for your cutting board. He didn’t mean anything by it.”

  I grin. “Yeah, everything’s great.” I shake my hands, letting the anxiety flow out of them, and pick up the knife again.

  Angotti’s is bigger and has more employees than we do. I think Sawyer has two older brothers, but Sawyer is the only one left living at home, and I’m not sure if his brothers still work there. All I know is that Sawyer doesn’t have to work quite as many nights as I do, because I overhear him at school talking about places he’s gone. Dances he’s been to. Parties, and stuff like that. But I bet he’s working today.

  I shouldn’t say I have to work as much as I do. Mom would give me a night off anytime if I asked. But I don’t have a life or really many friends—no close friends, anyway, unless you count Trey. So I figure I may as well earn some tips for college, because there won’t be enough money to go around for all three of us.

  Today I’m actually kind of excited to work. It’s my first Super Bowl doing delivery. I remember last year Trey was insane. Our cousin Nick—Mary’s son—helped out as a backup driver like he does sometimes. This year, the backup driver is me. Last night, after my successful delivery, I told my mom I was ready. She was a little skeptical, but I think I convinced her I’m fine, so she called Nick and told him he had the night off, which he seemed really happy about.

  So they need me. By the time Mom, Dad, and Rowan get down to the restaurant after mass, the phone is ringing off the hook with big preorders for later.

  It’s funny—sometimes I see how it is at fast-food restaurants and on those reality cooking shows when the aspiring chefs are slammed and yelled at constantly. Everybody’s running around, not communicating, and it’s supertense. Usually somebody’s barking out orders—and everybody hates that guy. Here at Demarco’s we sort of go into superhero mode when we’re slammed, and it’s really pretty fun. Today, Trey and I play a game to try to get Rowan to laugh
when she’s on the phone, because if we can really get her going, she’ll snort. “Hey, Trey, do you wanna see—” I say.

  “Harry Potter?”

  “No—”

  “Boobies?”

  I crack up, and Tony shakes his head and gives a reluctant laugh, but Rowan stays concentrated on her phone order. She’s always been wound up pretty tight, and it takes a while to get her loose enough. Apparently today is not that day. By the time the lunch crowd dwindles and we’re all in the kitchen stocking up supplies and making boxes and chopping more veggies, Rowan is answering call after call, ignoring us while we’re making dumb “dot-com” and “that’s what she said” jokes after every twelve-inch meatball sub order she reads back.

  Yet, in the back of my mind, I’m agonizing. Wondering if tonight is the night.

  When it’s time to start, we get serious. “I’ll take the east-side deliveries,” I say to Trey. “I know the streets better.” I lean against the door with my first loaded-up pizza sweater—that’s what Tony calls the insulating bag.

  Trey shrugs, distracted by the crap ton of orders that are piling up. “That’s fine. We need to move it. Don’t speed, but don’t linger.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’m heading out.” With a wave, I push out the back door into the cold, snowy afternoon. I try to drive by Angotti’s every chance I get.

  Thirteen

  The afternoon flies by. Mom keeps up with the few tables in the dining room, and Rowan stays in the back pulling pizzas out of the oven, cutting them and boxing them up, keeping watch out the back door so she can see us coming and run them out to us so we don’t have to park and come in for our next load.

  The slick roads are slowing us down. I’m not afraid to drive in snow, but it’s frustrating when customers don’t understand that weather is a factor in how fast we get the food out. But the upside is that the later into the evening we get, the drunker the customers get, and for most of them that means they tip more.

  I manage to drive by Angotti’s twice even though I really don’t have time, and everything looks okay inside. If the crash is going to happen tonight, there’s nothing I can do about it. And somehow, in the midst of all this driving and thinking today, I realize that I absolutely do have to do something about this. I have to tell Sawyer. Because what if this vision thing is not just a big weird nothing? What if something really happens to him? To all nine of them? How’s that going to make me feel for the rest of my life? It would be worse to do nothing and feel horrible forever than to say something and make a temporary fool out of myself. And, hell, maybe I am nuts. Maybe I just need to do that one over-the-edge cry-for-help thing that’ll get my illness noticed and give me the treatment I apparently need. That’s what all the experts say on TV, you know. Here’s my big blaring chance to be heard.

  I head toward Traverse Apartments, which is across the street from where “the incident” happened on Christmas Eve. My thoughts turn to that night, that walk through the shadows of the apartment complex trying to find 93B, that prickly feeling at the back of my neck and the sweat that came out of nowhere when I heard pounding feet and felt the guy grab my coat.

  It all went really fast. The guy shoved my pizza bag up at my face and slung his arm around my neck, staying behind me so I couldn’t see him. He ripped my little money belt off me and shoved me into a snowy bush, face-first. And then I heard a click of a knife by my ear. I couldn’t even scream—my throat was paralyzed. My whole body was paralyzed. I was so scared I couldn’t even react to wipe the burning snow from my face. I was like some stupid bunny in the street when he sees the lights of an oncoming car and waits for a tire tread to hit him in the face.

  I heard a door slam and a rush of footsteps as apparently some stranger came flying out of one of the buildings and tackled the guy. They rolled around while I scrambled to wipe the snow off my face, and the mugger managed to get up and get away. The stranger chased after him, and I never saw either one of them again.

  I wasn’t hurt, and I wasn’t much help to the police. It had been really dark, and I didn’t get a look at the mugger’s face, didn’t really have a concept of how big a dude he was. The police guessed it was probably a random incident—some meth addict who needed money for supplies and was waiting for anybody to come along.

  I shake away the memory and squint at the signs in this complex until I find the right building and a parking spot nearby. I don’t give myself time to get nervous, I just grab the warmer bag, zip out of the car. I jog up the three steps to the building and nearly wipe out on a slick spot right by the door, where a bunch of icicles must drip during the day and make a big ice patch on the step at night.

  When I grab the door handle to steady myself, it swings open hard, right at me, knocking into the corner of my pizza bag and sending it sliding off my gloved fingers just as somebody plows out of the building into me, more startling than scary.

  Out of instinct I reach out as I fall back, my focus on catching the pizza bag rather than on how I’ll land, and it’s one of those slow-motion moments where everything is blurry, my hands won’t move where I want them to, and my body is going in the opposite direction from the way I want it to go. Meanwhile, whoever plowed into me is now tripping over my leg and falling too . . . and his shoulder or arm or something takes my precious red bag with it.

  My elbow takes the worst hit when I land, then my back, and my head smacks on the cement, but I’m wearing a hat so it’s cushioned, thank the dogs. The wind rushes out of me and I lie there for a moment trying to get it back, stunned. Immediately I think it’s another attack, but there’s no menacing feeling here. A second later I’m sure it’s just an unfortunate collision.

  “Shit,” I hear. “I’m sorry.”

  I try to sit up, and flames shoot through my arm, tears of pain and frustration over the lost merchandise and lost time starting to sting. My pizza bag rests upside down in the snow about five feet away. I close my eyes. “Shit,” I echo. My brain rushes to calculate the time wasted. At least forty minutes before I can get back here again with a fresh pizza. Maybe thirty-five . . .

  “Are you okay?”

  I freeze as it registers: I know that voice. And now I can’t speak at all, because Sawyer Angotti is tossing his empty pizza bag aside and kneeling on the icy step next to me. And I’m furious.

  • • •

  Five reasons why I, Jules Demarco, am furious:

  1. The pizza I was ten feet away from delivering properly is now something only Trey would eat

  2. My stupid wenus* is broken and hurts like hell

  3. It’s a snowy Super Bowl Sunday and I’m already running forty-five minutes behind

  4. Some loser (even though I’m in love with him) wasn’t watching where he was going, and I’m the one who has to suffer for it

  5. That loser just delivered his pizza without consequence, and also? Does not have a broken wenus

  “I’m fine,” I manage to say. Embarrassed, I ignore the pain, roll away from his outstretched hand, and get to my feet, holding my sore elbow close to my side. I reach out and gingerly pick up my pizza bag. I close my eyes once again and swallow hard. The inside of that box will be pretty gross right now. I don’t want to think about it.

  “I’m really sorry—I was in a hurry . . .”

  It’s true that he’s being ridiculously nice about this. I almost wish he weren’t. If he were a jerk about it, I could stay furious a lot longer.

  “Me too,” I confess with a sigh. “I was already off balance from the ice when you barreled through the door.” Shut up, shut up, I tell myself. Now I’m mad at myself for taking part of the blame. What the hell, Jules?

  It’s love! I cry back to myself. How can I help it?

  I hate you, I say to inner Jules. Hate. You.

  Sawyer cringes when he sees how not-floppy my bag is. “Oooh. Been there. Sorry. I really am,” he says. He dips his head and looks into my eyes.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” I’ve dropped a few pizzas in my
day. “Not the best day for it, but there it is.” All of a sudden I sound like my dad talking about the weather. I drop my eyes because I can’t stand to look at him being nice, knowing what I know.

  “Want me to pay for it?” Sawyer comes to life and whips out a wad of tips from his pocket, and all I can do is stare at him.

  “Who are you?” I say, almost under my breath, but he hears me, and I see his lips twitch.

  “I’m just a clumsy guy,” he mutters. “I hope your parents don’t freak out.”

  I narrow my eyes, not sure if he’s just concerned about me dropping a pizza and getting yelled at, or if there’s another layer there. “They won’t,” I say slowly. “Why would they? And put your money away. It’s fine. It happens. Trey will eat it.”

  He laughs then. “So would I. You sure?” He looks at me, eye to eye again, and I remember his lashes from a long time ago when we were forced to share a library table doing research. His lashes are superthick, superlong, deep brown, complemented by the green of his irises. Every blink is a sweeping drama, a sexy ornament, a mating ritual. Dear dog, I’m so hopelessly pathetic, I’m grossing myself out.

  I nod stupidly.

  He shoves the money back in his pocket, and we just stand there, silent and awkward. Finally he says, “Need me to call in the reorder for you?”

  That wakes me up. “Shit,” I say again, and dig wildly for my phone. “No. But that would definitely make my parents freak out, if that’s what you’re going for.”

  He grins. I dial and turn away so his ropy eyelashes don’t distract me. “We have a situation,” I say when Rowan answers. “There’s a pie down at Traverse Apartments. Repeat: A pie. Is down. Reorder stat.”

  “Jules!” she says. “We don’t have time for that.”

  “Calm it down, yo,” I say, gingerly stretching out my sore arm to see if it still works. “I’ll be back in fifteen so you can load me up . . . . I don’t know what else to say. It happened. There was ice. Sorry.”