Pop the Clutch

by Eric J. Guignard

  Lap after lap they played hardball dodge-’em, throttles wide open. The other drivers couldn’t keep up, or dropped back a notch on purpose so they wouldn’t get caught in the grudge duel. The crowd loved the action, making so much noise you could hear them shouting over the roar of the engines. Brenda’d be hollering loudest of all, that frenzied look on her face, urging Flint to make good on his promise, which he damned well would.

  The opportunity came on the seventy-sixth lap. Gianetti, his patience gone, pressed him hard and recklessly toward the wall. At the speeds they were traveling it would have been impossible to overtake him. Flint didn’t even try. He eased off the gas, letting Gianetti prod him even closer to the wall, their fenders scraping and raising sparks, then he double-clutched into second, trusting the gears to hold, and shoved the accelerator pedal to the floor. A sharp wheel flip to the left caught Gianetti unprepared, made him lose control. The Dodge bounced back, spun, narrowly missed two other cars before it skidded off into the infield.

  The yellow caution flag was out when Flint came back around the north turn, well in the lead now. None of the other drivers could overtake him. He had the race won.

  Except that he didn’t. Without warning, that crazy bastard Gianetti floored his Dodge out of the infield and back onto the track, right in front of the Deuce on the straightaway.

  There should have been just enough time to avoid a collision. Flint yanked the wheel hard right, or tried to, but it seemed to lock up in his hands. And then it was too late.

  The Dodge fishtailed sideways and the Deuce smacked the driver’s side head on.

  Crash of rending mental, burst of searing heat and flame—

  —and then somehow Flint and the Deuce were out of it, still upright on all four wheels, still moving fast with the track clear ahead. He couldn’t believe the Deuce had come through with no visible damage, that he wasn’t hurt, not even a scratch. He tried to hit the brakes and gear down, but the impact must have screwed up the hydraulics and the gearbox. The accelerator linkage, too—he couldn’t slow down. He could still steer some, but not enough to pull off the track.

  The Deuce went hurtling around again, Flint fighting the half-locked wheel to get past cars that had slowed for the red flag. When he came through the south turn he saw the fire truck and the ambulance rushing across the infield, people running toward the two flaming wrecks melded together ahead—two wrecks, two drivers trapped inside. But that couldn’t be, one car was Gianetti’s Dodge and the other looked like the Deuce—

  Then he was past them and rocketing around the oval again, and when he barreled through the south turn this time the wrecks weren’t there, the ambulance and fire truck and running people and other cars and drivers were all gone, nobody was there but him and the Deuce. And the track ahead . . . the track had become an inferno.

  “Faster! Faster!”

  He heard Brenda’s voice shrieking inside his head, only it wasn’t inside his head, it was coming from the stands . . . but the stands weren’t there anymore either. Where they’d been was a massive wall of flame, Brenda towering in the middle of it, screaming in a voice loud as thunder, “Faster, faster, faster!”

  Flint started screaming too. Because now he knew who the hot babe really was, and what she’d meant when she said, “You’re mine,” and that he’d never stop driving this oval of fire.

  * * *

  A full-time professional writer since 1969, BILL PRONZINI has published more than 80 novels, four nonfiction books, and 350 short stories in a variety of genres; he has also edited or co-edited numerous anthologies. His collection of horror and dark suspense stories, Night Freight (Leisure, 2000), was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award by the Horror Writers Association. In 2008 he was honored as a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, their highest award.

  * * *

  THE PROM TREE

  by Yvonne Navarro

  “You don’t really believe that nonsense about The Prom Tree, do you?”

  * * *

  KATIE SITS ON THE EDGE OF MELISSA Richardson’s bed, secretly picking at the satin bedspread. Or maybe, she thinks vaguely, it’s silk, or something so expensive she’s never heard of it.

  “What do you think of this one?”

  Katie looks up to see Melissa holding a pink chiffon dress even with her shoulders. The dress has white ribbons running every couple of inches from top to hem; a pretty double wide ribbon serves as a belt. Before Katie can answer, Melissa spins away to show it to the other two girls in the room, practically skipping to where they’ve emptied Melissa’s jewelry box on the floor and are poking through its contents. The girls look up and squeal appropriately at the same time Katie grimaces to herself and hopes Melissa doesn’t pick that one. The color makes her skin look mottled, as though she’s spent the last couple of hours dipping into Daddy’s rec room bar. Melissa is new in town and her father is a colonel on Post. Sally and Belinda have been best friends since Belinda’s family arrived in town a year and a half ago, and Katie wouldn’t put it past them to intentionally convince Melissa to wear the most hideous dress possible. Sally is a shuckster—a word she heard her father use when he was talking about someone dishonest—and Katie has known her since her father was stationed here on Fort Huachuca almost four years ago.

  Katie slides off the bed and walks over to where all three girls are cooing over the pink dress, then drops to the floor next to Sally and Belinda, ignoring the annoyed look Sally shoots her.

  “Let’s get this stuff back into the box before something gets lost,” Katie says evenly. She also knows Sally sometimes has sticky fingers, so she leans forward before anyone can react and quickly scoops up the jewelry—rings that are no doubt real, a pair of diamond studs, and more. Little things that individually are worth more than her mother earns in months as a secretary at the furniture store off Fry Boulevard. If Sally wants to sacrifice something to The Prom Tree, she needs to look closer to home.

  It’s funny—but not in a good way—how one of the circles of the most popular girls in Carmichael School always pulls Katie in with them for a school year. The next year, it’s a different circle . . . but again, a popular one. It’s like she’s the token townie. For the millionth time Katie wishes she had a real best friend, a girl she could talk about boys with, share secrets with, borrow clothes from, who would sit with on her own worn, comfortable couch and eat popcorn while watching The Millionaire every Wednesday night. Do these girls hang out with each other? Of course they do . . . but they never invite Katie. They include Katie now and then because her family’s been here for six years; her dad has managed to guarantee his billet for another two, until she can graduate high school and get settled into college. So she is a townie—there aren’t that many people who remember Sierra Vista when it was Fry, Arizona—and they exclude her for the very same reason: she’s old news, boring as reruns of My Little Margie and the dust that hangs in the air for most of the school year. As for Katie herself, she continues to let it happen, always in search of that elusive true best friend.

  “Definitely the pink one,” declares Belinda. Katie cringes inside but knows better than to protest. One more year, she tells herself. Then she’ll be out of this town and away from these shallow, spoiled girls. Maybe at college in Flagstaff she’ll find the friend she’s always wanted.

  “Let’s head to the soda shop,” Melissa says. Her tone is bright but with a hint of a question; she’s only been in town a month, so she knows her place—and it’s not at the top. Not yet.

  “Cool,” Sally says, and Belinda nods in agreement.

  “I have to pass,” Katie says. She has zero money right now, and her small allowance is a long way off. Her dad is a staff sergeant, and her parents’ combined salaries aren’t bad, but they don’t support a lot of extras. “I need to get home and help Mom with stuff.”

  All three girls make sounds of disappointment as she follows them out of Melissa’s house, but there’s a tone in there that only Katie catches: the one t
hat makes her realize they don’t care, and it hits her in the heart.

  Katie heads home on her bike, wheeling easily along the relatively well-maintained roads on Post, then getting her teeth jarred as she comes out of Fort Huachuca and bumps along the poorer streets of downtown Sierra Vista. She goes down Fry but makes sure to turn north on one of the side streets so she won’t pass her mom’s workplace and run into her boss, Mr. Wright. Her mom is home by now, but Mr. Wright looks at Katie longingly every time he sees her, letting his eyes study parts of her body that he shouldn’t—never in front of Mom, of course. Katie doesn’t say anything because her mom has what her dad calls “that damned Irish temper that’s gonna get you in trouble someday.” Katie thinks her mom would probably pick up the heavy Underwood typewriter on her desk and throw it at her boss’s head if she saw him licking her daughter up and down with his eyes.

  The Arizona sun is high and hot and Katie’s sweating by the time she turns into the driveway of their rental house, skidding to a stop just like she did when she was a kid. She drops the old bike in the middle of the driveway and goes around to the back, where the windows are open and she can smell fresh apple pie.

  “Hey, Mom,” she says as she bangs through the screen door.

  “Hay comes from a barn,” her mother says. Gloria Morgan is elbow-deep in dirty dishes. She wipes the back of her hand across her forehead. “You’re late. I told you to be home by three to put the pie in.”

  Katie glances at the clock above the cabinets—dancing chickens, how stylish—and sees with a start that it’s almost five-thirty. How times flies when you’re with your friends. “Sorry.”

  “I got the pie in the oven so that it’ll be done by the end of dinner, but the house is going to be hot. I don’t want to hear any complaints about it.”

  “I won’t,” Katie tells her. “I promise.” What her mom doesn’t say is that Dad is going to be ticked off. He’s been out on the Fort Huachuca rifle range all day, working what her mom affectionately calls baby soldiers until they can actually hit something—hopefully not one another—they shoot at. He’ll like the pie but not the heat bleeding from the kitchen into the dining room. And Staff Sergeant Frank Morgan could complain all he wanted, thank you very much.

  Katie turns toward the hallway with her mind already wandering back to the three girls she was with after school. She hears her mom say something almost as an afterthought before she stops and goes back. “What?”

  “I asked if you would please dry these so I have more room.” Gloria inclines her head toward the mound of mixing bowls and plates next to the single metal sink. From the looks of it, her mom had been cooking since she’d gotten home from work.

  Katie takes a spot on her mom’s left and starts wiping the dishes, something she has never understood in the Arizona climate. In mid-May, when it was already blistering outside, they’d dry on their own in no time if they were just spread on the counter for a little while. “Are you sure you don’t want to—”

  “No,” Gloria says firmly. “Your dad will want to see a clean kitchen when he comes home, not a mess.”

  “Okay.” There’s no point in arguing.

  “Besides,” her mom adds as she puts another clean dish on the stack, “it’ll also mean fewer dishes to wash after dinner.”

  Katie nods although she thinks to herself that the only reason that’s true is that every dish in the house is either in the sink or on the counter.

  “So how did school go today?”

  Katie shrugs. “Same old thing.”

  Gloria smiles slightly. “Same teachers, same classes?”

  “Sure.”

  Gloria looks at her out of the corner of her eye. “Boys?”

  Katie feels her face turn red, the heat going quickly up from her jawline to the tops of her cheekbones. “Mom!”

  Gloria’s small smile widens into a grin. “You think I don’t know about boys, hon? It wasn’t so long ago that I was sixteen, too.”

  Katie shakes her head. “Well, no boys.”

  Gloria rinses another couple of dishes in silence, then swishes a handful of silverware around in the dishpan. “Prom’s next week.”

  “I know that,” she says sharply.

  “Tone, please.”

  “Sorry, Mom.” Katie waits for her mother to drop the small bundle of spoons into the towel. “I just . . . no one’s asked me,” she finally admits. Her hands are a little too tight around the towel and she forces her fingers to relax before her mom notices. The look Gloria gives her conveys that her mother is sorry; still, there’s no pity in her eyes, and for that Katie’s grateful.

  “Is there a girlfriend you can go with?”

  Katie bites back a sarcastic reply and instead simply says, “No.”

  Gloria’s face falls. “Oh.” For a moment she doesn’t say anything. “I suppose it’s hard to find a friend when the adults are always PCSing.”

  PCSing—Permanent Change of Station. Katie knows the military term well, although it hasn’t applied to their family for some time. Most military brats like her move with their parents after four years. Katie doesn’t know how her dad had managed it—something to do with Post being unable to fill the Range Master billet—but he’d gone to his Commander and gotten held over for a second term. Her mom told Katie they wanted her to be able to go to high school with her middle grade friends.

  If only they’d just let things be.

  “That’s not the problem,” Katie mutters before she can stop herself. Maybe her mother doesn’t hear her, but no—the shocked look on the older woman’s face as she glances at Katie says otherwise. Katie is finished with the drying and now she just stands there, caught, her eyes suddenly stinging with tears she doesn’t want her mom to see. It’s too late, of course. Moms are like that.

  Gloria’s arms are around her in an instant. “Oh, honey.” She nudges Katie toward the table and fishes a tissue out of her apron pocket. “How can I help?”

  Now Katie’s leaning on the battered Formica table, unconsciously adjusting when one edge lists a little. It’s funny that she flips between loving and hating its pale pink color. Right now it looks familiar and comforting—how many nights has she sat here and done her homework?—but she will always despise the nasty aqua-colored metal cabinets.

  “Katie?”

  She blinks at her mom, surprised at how wet her eyelashes feel. “Huh?”

  “How can I help?” her mom asks again.

  Katie gives the barest of a shrug. “You can’t, really. It is what it is.”

  “Which is what, exactly?”

  “Just popular girls and their pettiness. It’s no big deal, really.” Katie straightens and realizes she’s clutching the wet dish towel. She turns back to the sink and folds it, then drapes it over the edge.

  Her mom guides her back to a kitchen chair and Katie lowers herself onto it as her mother sits across from her. “I know you’re not being bullied,” she said. “So what else?”

  “Just the same old shit.”

  Instead of saying something about the swear word, her mother rolls with it. “And that shit would be . . . ” Gloria pauses, thinking it over when Katie stays silent. “Ah.” She leans back. “Not fitting in.”

  Katie stares at her. How does she always seem to know what’s happening in Katie’s head? She’s spooky that way.

  Her mother sighs. “Katie, why do you always try to socialize with those uppity girls? You’re way too good for them. Put two or three of them together and they still don’t make a complete brain.”

  Despite her misery, Katie can’t help giggling. Sometimes her mom can really fling the insults. She sucks in a breath, then blurts out what’s really making her heart slam.

  “It’s a leap year.”

  Gloria does her best to keep her expression blank, but Katie sees it—that darkening in her mom’s sea green eyes, the way her lips tighten—both mean she knows more about something than she’s letting on. “You don’t really believe that nonsense abou
t The Prom Tree, do you?”

  “I—I’m not sure. A lot of people believe it. They say someone stacks up and dies every leap year on prom night, and the only way to keep it from happening is to put something personal—something really meaningful—on The Prom Tree.”

  Her mother actually laughs. “Sounds like a great way for a person to go to the tree and collect all the valuables.”

  Katie shakes her head. “No. Once something is hung there, it won’t come off. Ever.”

  “And you’ve seen this tree in person?”

  Another shake of her head. “No.”

  “I honestly think it’s just an old superstition grown into some scary Halloween-in-May story.” Now her mom’s gaze is steady. What she says next is painful. “Honestly, honey. I thought you were smart enough not to believe stuff like that.” She gets up and goes to the oven and opens the door, checking on the pie. “Looking good.”

  “What are we having for dinner?” Katie asks, not because she’s hungry but because it’s expected.

  “Liver loaf sandwiches. I made a Jell-O mold salad this morning. The goal was not to heat up the house.” Katie tenses at the barb, then her mother continues. “Maybe I can talk your dad into waiting a bit for dinner, then we can eat on the patio. It’ll be in the shade, and remember I found that electric fan at the thrift store last weekend. I tried it and it works. If we use the extension cord, it’ll just reach outside.”

  Katie doesn’t know whether it’s a silent apology for the dig or the liver loaf sandwiches—ugh—but it soothes nonetheless. “Sounds good.” She’s shaking inside and sick to her stomach, but she manages to keep her voice level. All she wants right now is to flee to her room. Before she can escape, Gloria glances at her a final time. “By the way, have you seen my silver bracelet? I thought I left it on top of my dresser but now I can’t find it.”

  “Nope.”