Educated

milkshakes. The conversation was calm, comfortable, like it had been years
before on those dusky evenings in the corral. He told me about running the
crew without Dad, about Peter’s frail lungs—about the surgeries and the
oxygen tubes he still wore at night.
We were nearly home, only a mile from Buck’s Peak, when Shawn
cranked the wheel and the car skidded on the ice. He accelerated through the
spin, the tires caught, and the car leapt onto a side road.
“Where we going?” I asked, but the road only went one place.
The church was dark, the parking lot deserted.
Shawn circled the lot, then parked near the main entrance. He switched off
the ignition and the headlights faded. I could barely make out the curve of his
face in the dark.
“You talk much to Audrey?” he said.
“Not really,” I said.
He seemed to relax, then he said, “Audrey is a lying piece of shit.”
I looked away, fixing my eyes on the church spire, visible against the light
from the stars.
“I’d put a bullet in her head,” Shawn said, and I felt his body shift toward
me. “But I don’t want to waste a good bullet on a worthless bitch.”
It was crucial that I not look at him. As long as I kept my eyes on the spire,
I almost believed he couldn’t touch me. Almost. Because even while I clung
to this belief, I waited to feel his hands on my neck. I knew I would feel
them, and soon, but I didn’t dare do anything that might break the spell of
waiting. In that moment part of me believed, as I had always believed, that it
would be me who broke the spell, who caused it to break. When the stillness
shattered and his fury rushed at me, I would know that something I had done
was the catalyst, the cause. There is hope in such a superstition; there is the
illusion of control.
I stayed still, without thought or motion.
The ignition clicked, the engine growled to life. Warm air flooded through
the vents.
“You feel like a movie?” Shawn said. His voice was casual. I watched the
world revolve as the car spun around and lurched back to the highway. “A
movie sounds just right,” he said.
I said nothing, unwilling to move or speak lest I offend the strange sorcery
of physics that I still believed had saved me. Shawn seemed unaware of my