The Bottle Imp of Bright House by Tom Llewellyn

Author:Tom Llewellyn [Llewellyn, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2018-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

“Hooooly coooow,” I said, through clenched teeth. I glanced down at the speedometer. We were already doing seventy miles an hour. I shifted into the next gear and hit the gas again. The speedometer climbed higher. Seventy-five, eighty, eighty-five.

“I think you should slow down now,” said Joanna. My eyes flicked over to her. She was holding the armrest so tightly, it looked like she was trying to crush it between her fingers. I smiled. Joanna, the tough girl, was scared. I pushed the gas pedal all the way down. The speed kept climbing. Ninety. Ninety-five.

“Slow down!” shouted Joanna.

“Almost there,” I said. The buildings and streetlights whizzed by in a blur. Just as the speedometer crept past one hundred, the yellow car pulled out.

Dear Reader, everything in my field of vision seemed to flip into slow motion right then. The yellow car was less than thirty feet in front of us. The driver of the yellow car turned our way. Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened in a noiseless scream. I noticed that she had a little wooden cross hanging from her rearview mirror. The cross caught the glare of my headlights and I thought, I’m about to smash into that woman’s car. When I do, that little cross will be destroyed and the woman will die. Joanna and I will die, too.

Somehow, I pulled one hand from the wheel and jammed it into my pocket. I touched the bottle. The roar of the engine cloaked my words as I whispered, “I wish we wouldn’t crash!”

I don’t know what happened next. I don’t know if we swerved around the car, jumped over it, or just passed through it like a ghost. All I know is that we were on the other side of it, driving along unhurt. In my rearview mirror, I saw the yellow car, safely cruising away in the opposite direction.

I slowed the Ferrari to a stop. Joanna was still trying to crush the armrest. “How—how did you do that?”

“That was too close,” I said. “I thought we were gonna—you know…”

“Yeah, me too! So what happened? Why didn’t we—you know?”

“It was too close,” I repeated, hoping the shaking in my voice would make Joanna stop asking.

We drove the rest of the way home in silence. I kept the speedometer under twenty-five the whole way. I thought, I wished not to crash. Does that mean I made someone else crash, just to save myself?

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