Fishing for Clues by Carolyn Keene

Author:Carolyn Keene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

8

Treading Water

Instinctively I hit the brakes. My tires screeched, then my car started to fishtail on the wet, curving road. My pulse was thundering as I eased up on the brake, then tapped it lightly. “Pump the brake and steer into the skid,” I said aloud, the voice of my driver’s ed teacher echoing in my mind.

Of course, my driver’s ed teacher never told us what to do when someone in a big SUV was trying to shove us into a drainage ditch. . . .

I took my eyes off the road for a second to glance left again. The SUV was still there beside me, crowding my lane. My rearview mirror showed me that there were headlights behind me, so I couldn’t just stop. And we were on the scenic stretch of River Road—the part that ran along a bluff high above the river. There was no place to pull over.

What could I do? My hands on the steering wheel were wet with sweat. “Think, think!” I muttered to myself.

Then I saw the scariest sight of all: the headlights of a big truck coming toward us. Its horn blared an urgent warning, and its lights flashed on and off. My mind went blank. This is it, was all I could think.

The SUV’s engine suddenly roared and it shot ahead of me. I hit the brakes again as it swerved into my lane. A shower of spray flew at my windshield. Then the SUV was accelerating away into the night, its taillights shrinking.

It was over!

Somehow I managed to keep driving until I could steer my car into the scenic pull-over spot a quarter of a mile ahead. I put the car in park and just sat there for a few minutes, trying to breathe. My whole body was shaking, and I felt cold all over.

Did that really just happen? Did someone really try to run me off the road?

Slowly my heartbeat stopped thudding against my ribs. And as I calmed down, I began to think again.

Maybe it wasn’t what I had thought at first. If the driver of the SUV had really wanted to make me crash, he could have done it, I realized. His vehicle was so much larger than mine that it would have been no problem to push me right off the road. Instead, he had hovered beside me, crowding me without our cars actually ever touching.

“Maybe he was just trying to scare me,” I said out loud. I held my hand out in front of me. It was still trembling. “Well, guess what? It worked!”

Finally I put my car into gear and drove the rest of the way home. But it was a long time before I could fall asleep.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.