it sat wrong with me. Boyfriend. She said the word like it tasted bad, like she was reading it off a card somebody handed her.
I knelt down by the flat and pulled my flashlight off my belt. The tire was destroyed. Not just flat. Shredded down to the steel belt, rubber hanging off it in strips. She’d been driving on it flat for miles, long enough to chew the whole thing apart. Whoever taught this kid to drive hadn’t taught her to pull over when something underneath the car starts screaming.
“How long you been out here?” I asked.
“Couple hours.”
“Couple hours? In this cold?” I looked at her thin hoodie. “Why didn’t you flag somebody down? Call somebody?”
She didn’t answer. She just wrapped her arms tighter around herself and looked off down the dark highway, north, the way we’d both come from. She kept doing that.
