It rained like we had all done something terribly wrong. Like God was punishing us. My windshield wipers could hardly keep up. Nobody was out. The roads were ours.
“Stop the car,” Solomon said, after fifteen wordless minutes. I’d tried talking to him—asking him questions, about what went on back at the precinct—but he hadn’t answered. Just cried, as quietly as he could.
I couldn’t take him to my house. That’s the first place Mr. Barrett would have gone to. And I’d turned my phone off, so my parents couldn’t reach me when he told them about the idiotic thing I’d done. And I didn’t know where else to go. Where it was safe. So we kept driving.
“Please, Ash,” he whimpered. “Please stop.”
“Solomon, we’re in the middle of nowhere,” I said. We’d somehow ended up along the river, on the narrow rarely used roadway between the railroad tracks and the Hudson River, south of the Rip Van Winkle Bridge.
“Stop the car,” he said again, and reached for the handle.
Too late, I thought to lock the door. He’d already opened it, and the wind howled through the opening like a savage monster that had been waiting for its chance to get in. Only the seat belt he’d forgotten to unbuckle stopped him from leaping out.
“Okay, okay, Jesus,” I said, slowing down. “You’d fucking break a leg if you tried to get out at that speed.”
He sat back in his seat. Unbuckled his seat belt. He did not shut the door. As soon as I’d slowed to a stop, he was out of the car and off again.
“Shit,” I said, turning off the car, following him into the rain. I screamed: “Where the hell are you going?”