“Dammit, he’s still coming after us, ” Dana said, her eyes glued to the back window.
A point he illustrated by surging forward and ramming into my back bumper.
Dana and I both whipped forward.
“Unh.” My head snapped back against the headrest so hard it rattled my teeth. I pushed the gas pedal down as far as it would go, quickly making another right and swinging into an alley behind an all-night diner.
The Rover followed and, since it had about fifteen horses on my little Jeep, easily caught up to us. Only this time instead of ramming us from behind, it pulled up alongside us, so close that Dana could reach out and touch the white metal beside her window. She let out a whimper and ducked as the driver swerved left, bumping us against the side of the building. I could hear the sickly sound of metal scraping as we careened out of control down the alleyway.
“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ” Dana chanted in the seat next to me.
Ditto. Only my adrenaline was pumping too hard to form actual words. Instead, I closed my eyes, prayed, and slammed on the brakes, pulling hard to the right.
The Rover sailed past us as my little red Jeep whipped around in a circle, tires squealing against the pavement. When the world stopped spinning, we were facing the opposite direction. I switched to the gas again and surged out of the alleyway as fast as I could, making a hard right into the parking lot of a Hollywood Video before pulling the car to a stop.
I cut the engine, the only sound Dana and I panting like Rottweilers as we both tried to bring our heart rates to something slightly lower than a Pomona drag race.
Dana was the first to recover, digging her fingernails out of the dash and slowly flexing her limbs. “Ohmigod, Maddie. He could have killed us!”
A vision of my squirrel friend with the tread marks flashed through my head. “I think that was the general plan.” I pried my hands off the steering wheel, doing a slow mental check of my person. My neck was starting to tense up, but other than that everything else seemed to work. Toes wiggled, arms moved. I looked down. Miraculously, I hadn’t even wet myself.
“Are you okay?” Dana asked, rubbing her temple.
“I think so. You?”
She nodded, even though I could see a bump starting to form on her temple.
I tried my door handle. Wouldn’t budge. Not surprising, since what I could see of the driver’s side looked like it had been shoved in a trash compactor. My poor baby!
Luckily, Dana got hers open, and, after navigating over the gearshift, we both climbed out on legs that felt like overstretched rubber bands. I gingerly walked around the car to assess the damage.
“Wow, ” Dana said.
All I could do was stare. The driver’s-side door was smashed beyond recognition, the front lights busted out, the back bumper hanging on by a thread. The entire rear quarter of the Jeep was twisted at a forty-five-degree angle, and my back tires were flat.
“It’s, like, totally totaled, ” Dana said.
I felt tears well behind my eyes. She was right. The Jeep was toast.
That was it. I was so gonna get this guy.
“Do you think we should call the police?” Dana asked.
I thought about it-for about half a second. Calling the police meant calling Ramirez. And calling Ramirez meant another chapter in the “what’s Maddie gotten herself into now?” book. I was already verging on tears; the last thing I needed was another confrontation with Ramirez to top off my day.
Instead, I pulled out my cell and dialed the one person any independent, competent adult calls when a true crisis hits.
Mommy.
Fortunately, Mom picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”
“It’s me. Listen, I’ve been in a little bit of an accident-”
“Oh my God, you’ve been shot!”
“No, no, I haven’t been shot.”
“The pepper spray, you sprayed yourself?”
“No, Mom, I-”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been mugged?”
“No!” I yelled. “It’s my car.” I looked down at the carnage that was my Jeep and felt that lump in my throat return. “It’s been in a little accident.”
“An accident? Oh, honey, are you okay? Do you have whiplash? Did you get their insurance information?” Mom fired off in rapid succession.
“Yes. Maybe. And no. He sped off.”
“A hit-and-run? My baby’s been in a hit-and-run!”
I felt my neck growing more tense and wondered if maybe this wasn’t the wisest person to call after all. “Mom, I’m okay. Really. I just…Dana and I need a ride.”
“Baby, don’t move. I’ll be right there.”
After I gave Mom the address, I hung up and dialed Information for the nearest towing company, who said they’d be there in half an hour. I sat down on the curb to wait next to Dana, who was digging in her purse for an aspirin, and stared at my crushed baby.
“Look on the bright side, ” Dana said. “At least he didn’t have a gun.”
You know your day sucks when the high point is that you haven’t had a gun pointed at you.
Ten minutes later Mom’s minivan screeched to a halt beside the remains of my Jeep. She barely had the engine turned off before she vaulted out of the car, followed closely by Mrs. Rosenblatt. And Pablo the Parrot.
“Squawk. Love my lady lumps.”
Mrs. R held Pablo’s cage by the top and waddled toward us.
“What is that thing?” Dana asked, peering between the bars.
“This here is Pablo. Marco said he’d give me twenty dollars to take him for the afternoon.”
“Maddie!” Mom yelled, wrapping me in a rib-crusher hug. “Are you okay?”
I winced as my neck seized up again. “I’m fine.” I think.
“What happened?”
I gave Dana a sidelong glance. But before I could send her the psychic message to wait until I’d formed an edited-for-Mom version, she flipped her hair over one shoulder and launched into dramatic-monologue mode.
“Ohmigod, it was, like, totally out of a movie or something. This SUV, like, totally slammed into us, and we were like, ‘Holy crap, he just slammed into us!’ and then he did it again. So then Maddie did, like, this total street- racer move down this alley, and then this SUV, he jumped a curb and comes up beside us and totally starts trying to smash us against the wall! So then we, like, slammed on the brakes and did this killer spin, then flew into the parking lot. I totally think he was, like, trying to kill us or something!”
Mom blinked. Then she grabbed me in another fierce hug.
Mrs. Rosenblatt shook her head. “I tell you, that Mercury in retrograde makes people nuts. Did you try shootin’ him with your pepper spray?”
“Oh, well, I, uh, I kinda lost my spray.”
“Lost it?”
“Um, yeah. Sorry.”
Mrs. R dug around in her purse, pulling out a canister. “This here is from my personal stash. I always carry one. I used this sucker on a creep in this bar once. Knocked him flat. Course, I took him home after that and he turned out to be my second husband, Carl.”
I rolled my eyes. But considering I was still dealing with adrenaline aftershocks, I slipped the spray into my purse.
“Really, it was her car that took the brunt, ” Dana said, gesturing to what was once my Jeep.
Mom took one look at the smashed Jeep and hugged me again. Honestly, though, this time I didn’t mind. Staring at my car, I kind of needed a hug.
After the tow truck arrived and hauled my mangled Jeep to the nearest service station, Mom, Mrs. R, Dana, Pablo, and I all piled into her minivan and she drove us back to the studios. All to the tune of Pablo singing his little
