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When we passed it I saw that it wasn’t a convertible after all; the top had been sheared off, and lay on the other side of the road An are of glass and chro river littered with flotsa, a paperback book At the trail’s end was the pile of steel I’d never seen such a badly wrecked car

"Doesn’t look like anybody walked away fro out of the library that ti back just before the marble façade fell down She could just as well have died then It made no difference now

The luckiest person alive

The ahts alternating like crazy winking eyes We quickly left it behind, though, and eren’t speeding by any lanced up at the rear-view mirror "They’re not in much of a rush, are they?"

Just then, while atched, the lights stopped flashing I understood that I had just seen someone die No reason to hurry anymore My li to survive I kept i what that little white car o, and the driver, so her hair in the ht or whatever set up in the ?" I asked Loyd "You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you’ll have healthy guet in your car and drive down 1-10 and die Life is so stupid I can’t stand it"

"Hallie knew exactly what she was doing There wasn’t anything stupid about her life"

I practically shouted at Loyd, "I’ about that person that just died in the ambulance"

He was quiet

"Loyd, I don’t knohat I’ht tear theht senselessly of Doc Homer’s discussion of liver tissue and heart tissue As if it mattered what part of your body was the seat of emotion, all of it could be torn up, it was just flesh Doc Homer didn’t even know about this yet I’d called, and we talked, and it was clear he didn’t knohat I was telling hi kept after school Maybe he never would understand,down other happy trails Loyd handed me his handkerchief and I tried to blow my nose

"What would she want you to do?"

"She would be crying for a person in a damn ahtning erupt in the dark clouds behind the Catalina Mountains It was an i stor frozen in its terrible splendor, ripping like a knife down the curtains of the sky They say that to take those pictures you just open your caht, in a storet a wonderful picture You have no control

"Hallie isn’t dead," I said "This is a dreaainst the headrest and cried with ainst my mouth Tears ran down to my collarbone and soaked my shirt and still I didn’t wake up

Chapter 25

25 Flight

Getting on the bus was the easiest thing in the world I only took what I could carry Emelina would send ain on the way out of town They should have had a sign there: Welcoh the rusted husks of big old cars that hunched on the ground like elephants, the great dying beasts of the African plain It was early June, soon after the end of school The land was matchstick-dry and I felt the same way, just that brittle, as if no amount of rain could saturate ermination I would do fine in Telluride Carlo had lined up a job for me as a model in a summer fine-arts school I would sit still for solid hours while people tried for my skin tones

Uda Dell and Mrs Quintana, Doc’s assistant for twenty-one years, were going to take shifts with Doc Hoood, and everybody now drove over to New Mexico to be healed There were no thunderclaps when it happened; all this tiht he was indispensable Uda and Mrs Quintana revered hi up his shirt, but I knew they would do those things Somehow reverence can fashion itself into kindness, in a way that love sooodbye, he was eating a soft-boiled egg and said he couldn’t tarry, he was in a hurry to get to the hospital