Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
I put it aside to think about later. I still wanted answers about her. “Spill.”
She let out another breath and stopped picking at her knee, turning her head so her cheek rested there.
I glanced over and met her eyes. “Is it bad?”
A half shrug. “Pretty bad, yeah. Not as much for me, but when I was twenty-two, the summer after I graduated from college, I was driving home from a night out with some friends. It was me and my roommate. Rachael. I was driving. She’d had a few too many margaritas. We were celebrating her new job, so I offered to be the designated driver. I stopped at a light—she didn’t remember to lock her door. My car was older, not the kind that auto-locks the door when it’s moving.”
I let out a grunt, knowing where this was going and hoping I was wrong.
“He was there before I realized the door was opening. He leaned in, unsnapped her seat belt, and dragged her out by her hair. He—”
She cut off, sucking in a ragged breath, her eyes squeezed shut.
“He shot her. Just pulled a gun and shot her. She was on the ground in the intersection, screaming, and then nothing… Silence. Then he was in her seat, jamming the gun against my neck. He tossed my phone out the passenger door and told me to drive.” She sat up, raised a hand to rub the side of her neck. “It was hot, and it hurt. And he was yelling, ‘Drive, drive.’ But the light was still red. It was like my brain went on the fritz. Obviously, I had to drive because there was a gun. He’d shot Rachael. He was probably going to shoot me. But the light was red.”
“What did you do?” I asked, trying to imagine a twenty-two-year-old Sylvie, buoyant from a night out with friends, then suddenly— “That must have been terrifying.”
“It was. Later. At first, it was just panic and this sense of unreality. I couldn’t understand what I was supposed to do. Jump out of the car? I wish I had. I didn’t want to leave Rachael. I didn’t know if she was dead or hurt or okay and staying quiet. But he was screaming, and the gun was hot and smelled like smoke and…”
She rubbed the heels of her palms over her eyes.
“Instead, I hit the gas and tore through the intersection, praying we didn’t get into an accident and terrified a cop would see and pull us over, because then… Would I get away, or would he shoot me? I didn’t know. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know anything except this man, not that much older than me, was screaming at me. His eyes were wild. His pupils were huge.”
“High?” I asked.
“I guess. I don’t really know a lot about drugs other than what I saw in high school and college, but that was, you know, normal stuff. Not whatever this guy was on. He wouldn’t stop screaming. He kept saying, ‘They’re following us, they’re following us,’ but there wasn’t anybody there. Then he just made me drive.”
“How long?” I asked, suddenly not sure I wanted to know where this was going—not when we were talking about a young Sylvie barely out of college. The things that could have happened spun through my head. I had to let her tell the story, not jump ahead to the worst possible outcome.
“I drove for hours,” she said.
“What about gas?”
“I had a full tank,” she said. “My dad made me promise. Especially when I was out late. He was worried I’d run out of gas or have to go to the gas station late at night.”
“But he forgot to warn you to lock your doors.” I was suddenly curious about Sylvie’s parents.
“No,” she said, sighing. “He did. Keep your keys between your fingers when you’re at the pump or in the parking lot. Park under streetlights, always lock your door, check the car to make sure nobody’s hiding in the back seat. He’s a dad, you know, telling me all the ways to stay safe, but I was twenty-two. I thought I knew everything. Stuff like that didn’t happen where I lived. I mean, maybe it did, but I didn’t know about it. Until it was me.”
“The guy just made you drive?”
“Yeah. Kind of. It was—he took me to a section of town I’d never been to before, made me park behind a warehouse, took the keys, got out, ranted, paced back and forth, made a phone call. I was afraid more people were going to show up. I tried to get out of the car, and then he shot.”
“He shot you?”
“He didn’t hit me. He shot near me, I think, just to scare me, which it did. I got back in the car. God, there’s so many things I remember from that day. The cold sweat under my arms—I stank of it. And it just got worse. My palms were slippery on the steering wheel. I was so scared. Every time he yelled, it was like fingers on a chalkboard. I just wanted him to stop, to be quiet, to let me go.”