Overdrive by Eric Walters

Author:Eric Walters
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: JUV000000
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2004-04-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

I sat bolt upright, my heart racing. I looked around. I was in my bed. In my bedroom. It was light, which meant it was morning.

My brother was in his bed on the other side of the room. He must have come in pretty late. I was awake until after three in the morning—I couldn’t stop thinking about the accident—and when I finally closed my eyes, he still wasn’t in. I guess when I did fall asleep I was really asleep because I hadn’t even heard him come in. He was gently snoring and there was a smile on his face. He always had a smile on his face the morning after a date with Natalie.

I was completely awake. The scene on the street—the tangled metal of the cars, the police, firemen, the ambulances, everything—all seemed like a dream. A nightmare. I needed to know more about the accident.

I climbed out of bed and quietly left the room. The whole house was silent. As I came down the stairs I could hear the clock ticking on the mantel. It was a few minutes before 8:00. That was way too early to be up on a Saturday morning. Everybody else was obviously still asleep, and in my brother’s case would stay asleep for hours to come.

I went to the front door and opened it just wide enough for me to reach out and get the paper from the mailbox, but not so wide that anyone outside would see me in nothing but my boxers.

I grabbed the paper and let the door close as I retreated inside. I put the folded paper under my arm. I wanted to look— especially at the front page—but I didn’t want to look even harder. I was afraid of what I might see.

I sat down at the kitchen table, took a deep breath and opened up the paper. There on the front cover was a gigantic picture of some guys, and a headline that said “Peace Slipping Away in the Middle East.” How could something that didn’t exist slip away?

I was relieved to see that there was absolutely nothing on the front page about the accident. I turned the page and scanned the stories. Nothing there either. Quickly I went page by page through the whole first section. Nothing. I put aside the sports pages and the classifieds. It wouldn’t be in either of those sections. The last section was titled City. That’s where it could be. Slowly I looked from story to story, page by page. There was nothing about the accident. How could that be possible? I worked my way backward through the whole section. Nothing.

I didn’t know whether I should feel relieved or disappointed. Instead I felt both. It was like the accident never happened—which I knew was wrong. Maybe it hadn’t been as big or bad an accident as I thought and I was just overreacting.

Then I thought of something else. The accident took place pretty late in the evening. Maybe

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.