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"Here, try it again."

"I'd rather not," I said.

"C'mon, Alice. Loosen up. We have a great night ahead of us."

"That's the way I want to keep it," I said.

"Wow."

He shook his head in disappointment, but he didn't argue. I could see he was very annoyed with me, but he didn't say anything nasty. Instead, he smoked faster and held the smoke in his nostrils longer. "You don't know what you're missing," he sang and bounced about in the seat, leaning over to kiss me and then offer me the joint again and again.

I tried to ignore him. Finally, he turned up the radio and laughed.

"Look how fast Jack Montgomery is going," he said, nodding at one of the cars quite ahead of us. "I know what's on his mind. He wants the best guest room for him and Brenda. That creep.

"Wait a minute," he said. "We're the king and the queen of the night. We shouldn't be following them. They should be following us."

With that, he pulled out and accelerated, passing two of the cars ahead of us and leaning on his horn. They did the same. Jack Montgomery's car was the last one ahead of us. Craig sounded his horn, but Jack refused to move to the right. Craig drove up to his bumper, practically colliding, and tapped the horn continually. Jack only accelerated.

"The bastard," Craig said and accelerated too. "You're going too fast," I said. "It doesn't matter, Craig. Let him go."

"It matters," he said. "Everyone is trying to box me in. It's like my mother is in that car," he muttered. "What?"

What a strange thing to say, I thought.

He didn't respond. He drove faster.

The back roads were far more narrow than the main roads in our area. Some of them hadn't been attended to for years and were broken up. The shoulders of the roads were soft, and on both sides there was deep ditching, but because the ditches hadn't been cleaned out for some time, they were disguised with mud, leaves and dead branches.

Craig drove with the joint dangling from the corner of his mouth like any ordinary cigarette. When he took a deep and hard draw on it, the smoke streamed out of his nostrils, making him look like a mad hull.

Gradually, he caught up to Jack's car again, only this time, instead of trying to get him to pull to the right, he swerved radically to the left and began to pass him. We were side by side, and when I looked over, Jack was laughing, but his girlfriend Brenda was just as terrified as I was, and she was pounding him on the shoulder to get him to slow down. I saw him turn to push her away, and when he did, he jerked his car dangerously close to ours. Craig compensated by moving to the left, only our front left wheel fell into the ditch.

It was as if someone, some great invisible giant, had reached through the darkness and taken our car into his huge hand, spinning it around. The wheels froze on the macadam nd the car literally lifted off the ground and turned over, crashing into the large oak and hickory trees. I screamed. I heard the sound of glass and metal smash

ing and felt myself being lifted and thrown about. My eyes were closed. I never felt any pain when we stopped thrashing about. I was simply in the darkness.

When I opened my eyes again, I was looking at a white ceiling, and I heard the sound of some sort of beeping. Slowly, I began to focus, but with it came a surge of pain along my left side, up my leg and into my hip. I groaned. When I turned my head, I saw my grandfather sitting near me in what was obviously a hospital room. He had his head lowered so his chin nearly rested on his chest. I closed and opened my eyes and then called to him. At first I thought I was in a dream and calling in my sleep, because he didn't respond. Then he raised his head slowly and looked at me.

He looked exhausted, looked like someone who had been up for days and days. His face was unshaven and his eyes drooped, but he managed a smile and stood up slowly to come to the bed and take my hand.

"Hey, princess, how are you doing?" he asked.

"Where am I?"

"You're in the county hospital. You've been in and out of a coma for two days. Your grandmother is out in the hallway speaking with the doctor," he said.

"What happened?"

"Don't you remember?"

I shook my head. Was this that famous selective amnesia again?

"You were in a very bad car accident, Alice. Very bad. We're lucky to still have you. Don't you remember any of it?"

I stared at him The pain seemed dull now. I noticed for the first time that something was stuck in my arm, and I followed the tube up to a bag hanging on a stand. I wanted to ask about it, but I felt my eyelids closing, and my effort to keep them open was futile. In moments I was asleep again.

When I woke this time, my grandmother was standing there with the doctor. My grandfather walked into the room and joined them.