Mountain Road
an excerpt

Headlights lit up the road ahead of us. I grabbed her arm and pulled. “Let’s find a bush.” She shook me off and kept walking forward. “Come on, Vic. Quit it. My parents will kill me if we get caught.”
She turned around to face me. The lights were moving closer behind her. “No, they won’t. They love you.”
“Come on.”
“Go ahead. I’m going to talk to them.” The car was slowing down.
“Are you crazy? You can’t.” Why did she always have to do this – pretend to be brave, or not care? She was always doing it – walking up to strangers. Talking to seniors in the cafeteria. Just stupid stuff like, “Hey, the popcorn chicken looks good today.” I felt stuck. I froze. There was a stand of shrubs in a straight line on someone’s hilly front yard. Tall enough that we could squat down behind them and be invisible. But they’d seen us. I could see the passenger side window sliding down. My brain came unglued. I made another grab for Vic’s arm. “If we walk up the driveway, they’ll think we live here.”
She shrugged me off again, walked toward the car, said, “He looks cute.” I couldn’t see anyone’s face in the dark car. The car stopped at the side of the road, window still down. It was a dark color. Maybe brown. Boxy. Beat up. The door looked dented. The engine chunked as it sat there, on the empty road. My brother Dan would know what make, model and year. It was tapping, like fingers tapping rhythmically on a keyboard. Danny would know what that meant. He told me once. Something with the engine. The car must’ve been older.
“Hey,” I heard a voice call. A man. I was striding halfway up the stranger’s driveway, still trying to make it look like we were supposed to be here. Like we belonged here, not like we were wandering around an empty neighborhood in the middle of the night. Oh, god. This couldn’t be happening. All of a sudden it felt hot. My armpits were sticky. I wanted to throw up.
“They’re waiting for us,” I called to Vic. I tried to make my voice sound confident, tried to sound convincing
She waved dismissively at me. Maybe he just wants directions, I thought. I looked at the house again, trying to look like I didn’t care cause I knew where I was going.
Maybe he’s some old guy, someone’s grandfather, and he’s thinking, this girl shouldn’t be walking down the road in the middle of the night, I’m just going to check on her. But whose grandpa was driving around in a beat up car at 2 in the morning? If I knew Vic, cute meant he was 22 with dark curly hair and killer biceps showing through a tight t-shirt.
The window slid up and the car started to roll forward. Vic stood there, her back to me, and waved at the driver. I let out a breath.
“Stop!” I don’t know if she said it first or if she said it because the back door opened in one motion and someone a person I hadn’t noticed, was grabbing at her from the back seat. Vic’s arms and legs moving in crazy directions, like a Johnny jump up toy. Someone in dark clothes, a ski mask, pinning one arm behind her and kicking her behind the legs. Her knees buckled. She was kneeling on the concrete. “Vic!” I called.
“You’re hurting me,” I heard her growl. Vic’s head and shoulders pulled into the car.
Bite them, I thought. Yell, scream, kick. Smash them with your guitar. Get away get away get away. I was running back down the steep driveway, across the grass yelling “Stop! Stop, Stop!” Turning quick, hoping the lights in the house would come on. “Help!” I screamed.
“Shut up,” more a growl than a yell. Vic? “Tell her to shut the fuck up.” I froze. Was it a woman she was wrestling with now in the back seat. Vic’s legs and feet hung still out the door, like she was being pulled on board a boat. I could tell she was stomach down because her guitar was still on her back. It slid into the darkness. Vic’s legs were still. She wasn’t kicking. They weren’t moving.
“Run, Trish. Just run,” Vic’s voice called to me, far from me – deep in the car somewhere. Then her high-tops disappeared. The door closed and they were gone. Through the window I heard someone crying I thought or maybe laughing and the sound getting thinner. The red lights smaller. Gone.