Tom killed a man with his Chrysler.
Then he stood on the icy road, looking at the twisted body.
They were both frozen in place, staring. The dead man gazed up from the asphalt with bloody eyes. Tom stared down hoping his stare could raise the dead. Nope.
She went home, thinking that it was all a mistake. Lilit would be home when she got there. As she stood at the bus stop, she turned to look in the window of the appliance store on the corner. A dozen televisions showed the traffic on the street, captured by a camcorder at the top of the window. Mrs. Abernathy did what she always did at this bus stop, sizing up herself in her wool coat and knitted cap, then scanning the street behind her. Cars passed, business people talked on cell phones, but her eye went to a couple walking down the opposite side of the street.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “He’s just a kid, Toby. There’s still hope.”
“There’s no hope for that fucking kid,” Toby said and ripped a line up his left nostril.
The death toll is estimated to be more than 530 million in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, New Guinea, the northern and western territories of Australia, and areas of southern China, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Millions of environmental refugees are flooding China, Myanmar, Burma, Eastern Europe, India and the Middle East. Many of these countries—already struggling with pockets of epidemic poverty and a grave imbalance of resources—are certain now to topple over into total chaos.
To be completely honest about it, I lied the first two times she caught me.
“It had to be Shane,” was what I said the first time, shaking my head at the screen like I, too, was disgusted beyond belief. And, believe it or not, I was, in my own way, disgusted.
We’d been going to a new church every Sunday and I didn’t like it, but this church was different. My teacher was sixteen and pretty. She had the sweetest face and sweetest freckles in the entire universe. She was even prettier than the girl at the park. I knew this was the right girl to hear my phrase. I couldn’t wait to see what she’d look like after I made her freckles glow.
