23

Amanda sat alone on the back deck. It was more peaceful on the deck than in her room: it was four o’clock in the morning, and around her the night was very quiet. She felt safe in the silence. Below her floated the pale glimmer of the driveway, and the vague gleam of the car. Beyond that was the deep black of the trees, high and dense and murmuring. Beyond the black trees was the road, though she couldn’t see it. She imagined it, hard and shining in the moonlight.

In the dark, Amanda held up her last joint, its jeweled tip glowing secretly. It was the only one her father had not found; Amanda herself had forgotten she’d had it. It had been in a plastic bag, rolled small and stuffed in an empty tape case. On the label Amanda had written DREAMS. She had hidden the joint there months ago, at school, and had only found it that afternoon, when she was going through her tapes. She had spread them all out on her bed. She’d picked each one up and looked at it, remembering the music. She couldn’t play any of them, because her father had taken away her Walkman.

Peter had taken away her Walkman, her cigarettes and, of course, her dope. It had been a real scene, her father looming over her, his fists clenched, shouting. His knotted red face, his body sending out waves of fury. He was huge and hot: Amanda had felt as though she stood before an open furnace, the heat blasting against her own face, as though at any moment she might be devoured by that ravenous flame.

She tried not to think of it, but flickers of it kept recurring, playing in her mind like scenes from a horrible movie. Her father had been all dressed up for his cocktail party, in his striped tie and beautiful shirt, he’d looked so handsome, it made it worse, somehow. He had shouted at her, and his voice had been terrible, loud and flat and terrible.

Amanda had stood still, her jaw clenched, all her muscles locked, as though she had braced herself before a big wind. He had gone on and on, once he found her things. Dishonesty and betrayal and shame: he had shouted those at her. Amanda had said nothing. It was something she had learned. You just stood and waited, and let them yell at you. There was nothing they could do to you in the end. She did it with her mother, she did it at school. You said as little as you could get away with, and let them talk as long as they wanted. You waited for them to finish, and then it was over.

When he had said that since he could no longer trust her he was going to search her room, Amanda had wanted to scream at him. Her skin had burned at the thought of him pawing through her things, his big clumsy hands touching her private things—her cosmetics, her jewelry, her underwear, her things that were hers, set out in her own private order. She had wanted to run upstairs before him, stand in front of her door and stop him, her arms stretched out across it. But he would only have pushed her aside. There was nothing she could have done but wait. She’d stood with her arms crossed, watching him walk out of the kitchen. He had turned and looked back at her.

“You come too, Amanda,” he said, and so she had to.

When he found the plastic bag under the mattress, she thought he would hit her. “Damn you,” he said, for the second time, his voice thick as leather. It was a terrible thing to say, and Amanda felt her throat tighten, and tears start behind her eyelids, though she kept them back. She blinked. She was ready for him to hit her, in a weird way she wanted him to. It would be almost a relief, an end to this farce. She had always known how he really felt about her, and this would be proof. It would show that everything else was false, as she had always known. This pretense of affection. This insistence on her coming here, this pretending that they were, the four of them, a family, that he loved her. A farce, Amanda would whisper to herself. A total farce.

Her father did not hit her, in fact he stopped yelling. He had come to the end of his anger. He had gone as far as he could. He held the dope in his hand and said, “What have you done, what have you ever done in your whole life, Amanda, to make me proud of you? What have you ever done but disappoint me?”

The silence in the room was crystalline, revelatory. Tess, in the doorway, was frozen. Emma stood mute and still behind her, her eyes fixed on Amanda.

Then Amanda drew her breath and answered him. She wanted to rise proudly to her father’s level. She meant to use his weapons—power and accusation. She wanted to speak as his equal, to challenge him and reveal his hypocrisy. She wanted to point out that the word betrayal was not one he could use any longer, that a man who had abandoned his wife could not talk about betrayal and shame and disappointing others. She meant to accuse him now, out loud, of all that he had done. She meant to list his unforgivable acts, so that no one here would forget, so that here in his own little circle he would stand condemned, forever.

But when Amanda opened her mouth, none of that was possible. As she tried to speak, her throat closed, and panic rose inside it. Her eyes stung. All she could do was cry out, in a strangled voice, “Fuck you, Dad.” Her throat closed up entirely after that, and of course she began to cry. He was too much for her.

But Amanda had since closed this off from her mind. She did not want to think about her father. It was so clear to both of them that she was not the daughter he wanted. He wanted someone else, someone like Tess—someone with perfect grades, who was so cute and charming, someone who was not Amanda. All Amanda could do was wait until she was old enough never to see her father again. That was what she longed for.

She had been sitting on the porch for some time. She had read up in her room until quite late, when she was sure everyone else was asleep. It was hot, and Peter had turned on the big attic fan. The cool steady hum drowned out the noise of Amanda’s footsteps, but it also meant that the bedroom doors were wide open. She had to tiptoe past the dark unreadable space of her father’s bedroom, the open doorway full of threat, his and Emma’s invisible, imminent presence. She had done it, walked past, her gaze fixed ahead of her, holding her breath. Her pulse surged and she imagined her father’s stern voice, coming suddenly through the sound of the fan.

But once she was down the stairs she was out of danger, and out here it was calm. Amanda listened to the small wind shifting the leaves and thought of the night air, rising into the brilliant spaciousness of the sky. She felt peaceful now. After smoking half a joint she was beginning to see a deep comforting connection between herself and everything around her: the murmuring trees, the grainy texture of the wooden steps, even the empty road beyond the trees, shining silently in her mind.

She looked up at the darkness, as it rose and expanded. She liked the way the sky at night came right down to the ground, right down to where she sat. In the daytime, the sky and the air were different: the sky was blue and the air transparent. But at night they were the same. The same luminous darkness was the sky and also the air you walked through. Right now Amanda was sitting in the night sky. All around her might be stars, drifting airily nearby, just out of sight. This made her smile. Alone in the dark, Amanda felt peaceful and free, as though she had no body at all, as though she had dissolved into the breathing darkness.

A car went slowly past, down the hill. She wondered who it was, so late. There was no restaurant on the island, no nightclub, nowhere to go but someone else’s house. It must be kids, she thought, and wondered who. She wondered if she were to meet them now, out on the road, at this secret time of night, the car door opening and the interior light creating a private world just for themselves and her, if they would now recognize each other as kin, creatures of the night.

The other kids here were alien creatures. There was no one here whose eyes Amanda would meet. She lifted the joint and set her mouth to it. It was funny how you held joints differently from cigarettes. Cigarettes you held carelessly, dangling between two knuckles; joints you held tightly, pinched between your thumb and forefinger. There was something mean-spirited about that tight pinch; Amanda preferred the negligent knuckle clasp. She tried it; the joint felt lumpy and unbalanced between her knuckles, and she took it again in her thumb and forefinger. She took in a long slow breath, hot, harsh, exalting. She squinted against the smoke, holding it deep inside her chest, feeling it rise mysteriously into her head. She closed her eyes.

An image came slowly into her mind. She saw the dark road up the spine of the island, as though she were driving it. The long flat stretch, the pavement shining in the moonlight. On the ocean side, long grass bending in the sea wind. Silence. The image was stationary, like a photograph. In the headlights everything was bold and sudden in black and white.

Amanda opened her eyes and thought of driving. She could, actually, drive a car. She knew how. Earlier that summer she had stayed with a friend in Stonington, Alison Ferguson. Alison’s father had taken them both out and taught them to drive. He had them start and stop, start and stop, all over an empty parking lot.

When it was Amanda’s turn, she gripped the steering wheel tightly, as though she could control the car through the strength of her fingers. She put her foot down carefully on the gas, further, then further, then further still. Nothing happened. She turned and looked anxiously at Alison’s father, and the car jerked and shot forward.

“Lift your foot up, lift it up,” Mr. Ferguson said.

It seemed for a moment that Amanda had done something wrong, as she always did, something terrible, and that the car was rushing forward, roaring, unstoppable, carrying the three of them toward extinction.

But Mr. Ferguson’s voice was calm. “Lift your foot,” he said again, patient.

Amanda lifted her foot, and magically the car slowed to a purposeless roll. Amanda put her foot on the brake, and stopped the car completely. Her heart was pounding, and she looked at Mr. Ferguson, expecting him to frown.

But he said mildly, “Amanda wants to be a race car driver.” He looked into the backseat at Alison, who was giggling, and said, “Your friend is a wild woman.”

Then he taught her to press the pedal and move the car forward docilely. She had learned to start, to stop; she had even learned, unevenly, to back up, the car yawing artlessly across the parking lot.

Now Amanda lifted her head and squinted across the pale gravel at the Volvo. It glinted in the dark.

Inside Amanda’s head was a song, and she laid her head down on her folded arms. With her eyes shut she sang quietly. “You, only see what-you-want-to-see,” she sang. She heard the words, not in her voice, but in the voice she heard singing the words on the radio. The grass was now doing calm fogging things inside her head, and she felt peaceful. “You, only see, what-you-want-to-see,” she sang to herself again. Her voice was high and gentle, a narrow ribbon of sound.

Amanda raised her head and stared out into the black trees. Again she thought of the long straight road up the island. The unswerving line unrolling rapidly, like in a movie. At high speed the peripheral landscape jumped, but the road itself kept hypnotically steady, centered, focused, rushing away before her eyes. She thought of it, surrounded by darkness, its mysterious path lit up by the headlights. Everything around it would be silent.

It was what she wanted to do: rush away, rush away from here. She wanted to rush ahead with her life, rush on until she was a grown-up and this was years in her past—these horrible times, her father’s disappointment, the look in his eyes of blame, endless, endless, there forever.

A magical thought came to her: she could walk across the driveway and get into the car. The keys were always in it. She could drive it. She could feel herself walking across the driveway, the gravel cold and sharp beneath her bare feet.

She opened her eyes: she had not moved. She was sitting on the steps. She smiled to herself and put her head down again on her crossed arms. She imagined, again, walking across the gravel, feeling the stones against her bare feet. The driveway went in a curve; there were two entrances, and the car faced one of them. She wouldn’t have to back it up. The sound of the fan in the house would, she hoped, drown out the sound of the engine starting. She would be on the road in a moment. She saw again that empty black road. Things were taking on a slow inevitability.

It was getting chilly, and Amanda wrapped her arms around her legs, hugging them. Now she felt affectionate toward her body. She liked her legs, even. She forgave them. She breathed in the comforting smell of her body. She felt the sudden roughness of her skin, rising into tiny humps of chilliness. Goose bumps, she thought. She rubbed her arms, but she wasn’t cold enough to go inside. At least there were no bugs.

At Alison’s house they had climbed out on the roof one night to smoke. They’d had a candle with them, and moths had flown into it. Excited, insane, they had tried clumsily to get at the flame. They had singed and blackened their wings, then staggered off, flying in horrible crippled patterns.

“What are they doing?” Amanda asked, trying to brush one away from immolation. She hated the feel of it, the buzzing vibration of its dry wing.

“Trying to kill themselves,” said Alison. “Yuck.” She swatted at one.

“They’re not,” said Amanda, making a face. “They’re trying to maim themselves. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“And suicide does?”

“I mean, nerdhead,” said Amanda, “if you wanted to get out of here, then you’d kill yourself. But why make things worse than they already are and then go on living?”

There was a pause.

“Have you thought of it?” Alison asked.

Amanda nodded. Of course she had, they all had. A girl in their class had run away from school. She’d been found a week later, at home. She had hanged herself in the barn. Amanda had thought of it over and over: the dim stillness of the barn, that dark silhouette.

She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t hang herself, turning suddenly heavy and terrified. You’d change your mind, and it would be too late. Your face would turn black, and you’d shit. No, she’d use pills. Her mother had sleeping pills, and Amanda had gone into her bathroom cabinet and poured them out of the bottle and into her own hand. They were shiny capsules; she’d listened to the dry weightless slithering sound as they piled into her cupped hand. They were yellow, blue, the colors intense, clinical. In her hand they had felt light but serious. She’d held one in her fingers and squeezed. It had yielded; it would give up its contents. What was inside could kill her. Amanda held her own death in her fingers. It beckoned. She was very close to it. It was in her fingers.

She had put all the pills back in the bottle and screwed on the childproof cap. She’d put the bottle back where she had found it, between a jar of Nighttime Rejuvenation and a lipstick called Mellow Mallow, which she sampled, rolling it smoothly along her lips and then smacking them precisely together. She knew where the bottle was. Sometimes she checked on it, to make sure; it was always there.

Amanda looked up now at the Volvo. It was still there, and she was still here. She still hadn’t walked across to it. She put her head down on her knees and closed her eyes. The road. Halfway up the island, the road was flanked on one side by a meadow that stretched out to a little cove. There were oyster beds there, wooden trays of young oysters set in the shallows. She tried to imagine them. Were they in stacks, or spread out in rows like cookies on a sheet? Could they move? Did they mind being stacked up? How could you tell if they minded? She felt tender toward the young and helpless oysters, massed unprotestingly in the wooden trays. She hoped they were well treated; she feared they were not.

She had heard what was done to chickens, to veal calves. She had stopped eating veal. Not that she ever ate it anyway, but on principle. Lab animals. At school they had seen a movie showing what the cosmetics companies did to lab animals. First they took out the vocal cords, so the lab workers wouldn’t be bothered by the sounds of their screams. After the movie the teacher talked to them about what they could do about this. Some of the girls wrote angry letters to the cosmetics companies, but it made Amanda feel helpless and sad. It seemed that the world was like this, that everywhere there were small creatures that were tortured. It seemed that there was too much of it for her to do anything about it. It was the way things were. She tried not to think about it.

Amanda wondered if the oysters could tell when it was night. Did they have eyes? She tried to remember how an oyster looked. She couldn’t remember an eye anywhere. Was there an obvious one somewhere that she had missed? Maybe there were eyes inside the shell, maybe the oyster could only see when it was open. That made sense. It wouldn’t need to see when it was shut. Or maybe that was exactly when it needed most to see. It was hard to tell, hard to imagine how oysters felt.

Behind her Amanda heard the back door click open. At once she cupped her fingers protectively over the joint and lowered her hand.

“Amanda?” It was Tess.

“What?” Amanda did not turn around.

“What are you doing?”

Amanda did not answer. Tess let the door sigh closed and came out on the deck. Her bare feet made a soft padding sound. She sat down next to Amanda. She was in her nightgown. In Amanda’s hand the tip of the joint glowed.

“What is that?” Tess asked.

“Guess,” said Amanda. She spoke slowly. The grass had slowed her tongue down, made spoken syllables roll off it delectably.

“Oh,” said Tess, her voice changed. “Can I try it?”

“No,” said Amanda. “You’re too young.”

“Come on,” said Tess. “I am not.”

“No,” said Amanda. “Look at the trouble you got me into over that stupid dog book. Why are you up, anyway? Are you scared again?”

“I just woke up. I wasn’t scared. Anyway, I’m sorry about the dog book. I didn’t tell.” She paused and sniffed. “I can smell it,” she said, impressed at the rank strangeness of it.

“Really,” Amanda said.

“Let me try it,” Tess said. “Just a puff.”

“All I really need,” Amanda said, “is for them to find out I’d given you dope. That is really all I need. Dad would have me executed.”

Tess frowned.

“Anyway,” Amanda went on, “this is my only one, and I’m putting it out now. I want to save it.” She stubbed the ember out carefully. She waved it in the air to cool it off and then put it back in the plastic bag.

“That’s all you have left?”

Amanda nodded. “Dad took everything I own. This was hidden somewhere else. I’d forgotten I had it.”

Tess sighed. She banged her knees together. The dark air around them was cool. She stared out into the darkness.

“No fireflies,” Tess observed.

“They’re all up there,” Amanda said, pointing upward. Tess looked up.

“Those are stars,” she said.

Amanda did not answer. There was no point in trying to explain things when you were stoned. She understood a lot of things right now, but she could not explain most of them. Tess banged her knees together again.

“Let’s go for a drive,” Amanda said.

“In the car?” Tess asked.

Amanda laughed.

“You can’t drive,” Tess said.

“Of course I can drive,” Amanda said. “I just don’t have a license. I can drive.”

Tess looked at her. Amanda looked out into the darkness. It came to her suddenly how easy, easy, it had been to drive. She could feel the steering wheel in her hands, that perfect circle of power, going around and around, held between her two hands. Moths would fly toward the windshield, and the airstream would swoosh them right past, they would turn into stars, effortlessly, beautifully, without pain.

She stood up. Tess watched her but did not move. Amanda started down the steps. It was so easy. She felt as though she were riding a secret invisible wave. She walked down the steps without feeling them. She forgot about Tess. She walked across the gravel, marveling at the feel of it, so sharp. Sharp beneath her bare hard soles, her toes. Sharp but it didn’t hurt. This was her secret.

“Wait for me,” Tess said. Amanda heard the rapid descending thumps of Tess’s feet on the steps. “Yikes.” Tess slowed to a hobble on the gravel. “Ouch.”

Amanda opened the car door and got in.

“Cool,” she said, settling herself. It felt great in the driver’s seat. It was entirely different on this side of the car. The steering wheel was here. The road was in front of you. She thought of the black road, the soft grass beside it, bending in the sea wind. She closed her door as Tess slid in beside her. The girls looked at each other and laughed.

The keys were up on the visor, they fell into her hand as though they were her property—heavy, intricate, magic. She had no trouble with the ignition, the engine flared at once into obedient sound. She looked out into the blackness. Lights, she thought, charmed. She felt among the instruments along the dashboard. She nudged a stalk coming out of the steering wheel. The windshield wipers sprang eagerly to life, dashing back and forth across the glass.

“Amanda,” Tess said, worried.

“Hold on,” Amanda said. She turned off the windshield wipers. She turned on the turn signal. It blinked greenly to the left. “Hmm,” she said. “Wait a minute.” She found the knob. Ahead of them the row of spindly lilacs suddenly awoke, and in the corner by the road, the trunk of the big maple. “There,” Amanda said, but she was not quite certain. There was something limited and restrained about the patch of light.

“It’s supposed to be brighter,” Tess said doubtfully. “Those aren’t the real lights.”

“Yes, they are,” Amanda said. “These are what you use when you’re not on the highway. I know how to drive, Tess.” She could see well enough.

She put both hands on the wheel and set her foot carefully on the gas pedal. The car moved, obedient to her wishes. Amanda felt sublime. She had never felt so powerful, so easy in her strength.

Now everything began to gather around her, the smooth dreamlike parts of what was happening. There was the deep night, there was the perfect circle held in her hands. The lights revealed a magic path. The engine hummed its orderly incantation. It came to Amanda, her foot poised, that now everything would happen exactly as it was meant—perfectly, without error.

She felt something rising slowly inside, she felt brimming, exultant. Things were changing, right now. Things were now going right. The part of her life, the bad part, when everything she did was wrong, was over. Now things were altered, and she was in the part of her life when everything was right. Now everything was possible to her. She eased her foot down, and the car’s energy rose obediently. She was part of something large and marvelous. The car rolled smoothly forward on the gravel. Amanda took her foot off the pedal; the car stopped.

“You see?” she said. “I told you I could drive.”

“Cool,” Tess said. She patted her thighs through her cotton nightgown.

Amanda put her foot down again, and the car nosed forward. She was exquisitely aware of everything around her, could hear the grating shift of each piece of gravel as the car’s weight rolled forward. She heard the engine singing inside its heated cave. In her mind she saw the road shining under the high moon, reaching straight up the center of the island. She could see everything.

She eased the car out of the driveway and turned carefully up the hill. The road here was a dark tunnel, overhung with trees. The leaves were lush and dense, strange and sinister, lit up but colorless. They hung overhead in jagged intricate patterns, like stitchwork.

Nearing the turn at the top of the hill, Amanda slowed the car to a crawl. The curve here was sharp, nearly right-angled. A high privet hedge rose blackly along one side. She brought the car close to the hedge at a stately crawl and turned the wheel. She moved it too quickly and too far, and the car twisted unnervingly. But she was moving slowly, and she took her foot off the gas and corrected, turning the wheel back. The car steadied, responding. Amanda felt triumphant. Everything she did was right. The car settled into the journey. The white church shimmered past on the left, a pale angular apparition in the dark. The road curved again, less sharply here. Amanda was more confident now, and turned the wheel slower, more gently. The car turned perfectly smoothly. It was easier now, now she could feel how it was meant to be.

“You see?” she said to Tess. She felt as though she were inhabiting two states of consciousness. One was sharp and focused, like when she steadied the car, and from there she could deal with the hardness and urgency of the rest of the world. The other state was soft, vulnerable, sleepy, and from there she could not explain things to anyone, she could not even talk.

“Cool,” Tess said again, but she seemed muted. She was craning forward, peering ahead into the darkness.

The car carried radiant space before it, like a lantern in a cave. The long straight road was empty, just as Amanda had imagined it. They reached the flat strip, and on the right were the wide meadows. The grass was feathery, and bright white as they passed. Insects, fiery in the lights—moths, creatures with heavy bodies—blazed suddenly, close, and then were gone, thudding into the windshield, or simply vanishing, yanked into invisibility by speed. Along the side of the road, telephone poles appeared rhythmically, upright, solid, too close to them.

Amanda was intent on the car. It grew larger and larger in her consciousness, it grew magically in her brain. The strange feel of it in her hands, the mysterious translation of her thoughts into its movement, transfixed her. A spell glowed invisibly around her. Ahead, the dark road gleamed under their rushing lights. Beside her Tess leaned forward, staring, rapt, as though they were crossing the untraveled surface of the moon.

They passed the high telephone pole where the ospreys had a nest. Amanda had seen it, an enormous, disorderly raft of twigs overhead. The ospreys were fierce looking, with their curved beaks and muddy feathers, black frowning brows, it was hard to think of them as domestic, as good parents. They seemed to her demons, ruthless, a family from hell, shrieking and tearing things out of each other’s mouths.

The slow snakelike curves of the Big Club driveway appeared in their lights. Amanda slowed the car and turned sedately into the parking lot.

“Now what?” Tess asked. She was subdued, anxious.

Amanda shook her head. Speech no longer interested her. She could not explain to Tess that there was nothing to fear, that everything now would go right. It was something she just knew. The car in her hands was supple and obedient. The gravel lot sloped down before her into the darkness, mysterious, without color or context. The landscape was limitless, shrouded in night. In the parking lot she would be able to turn in a circle, she would not have to back up to turn around. It all worked perfectly. As they turned, suddenly the sound of the car on gravel stopped, they were making no sound, as in a dream. Amanda stared, puzzled: they were on the lawn. The car was driving on the grass.

“The car’s on grass,” Amanda said. “Like me.” She looked over at Tess to see if she got it, but Tess said nothing.

Tess was too young to understand the things Amanda did. And the vast amusement Amanda felt, the benevolent complicity she felt from the world, was private. She shut her eyes for a second and discovered the rich deliciousness of the dark behind her eyelids, textured, layered, soft.

“Amanda,” Tess said, scared.

Amanda opened her eyes. Tess was looking at her. Her hand was clenched around the door handle.

“What?”

“Open your eyes.”

“I am,” Amanda said, and laughed. She shook her head. She could not explain this. She was back on the gravel, back on the driveway, facing the right direction. They were going home. She congratulated herself.

They eased smoothly out to the road, and started back. On the right now was the mass of dense brushy woods that had taken over the interior of Marten’s Island. Wild grape, wild rose, wild blackberry: it was a thicket of bristling growth. Amanda loved it. She loved the thought of the dense green tangle. She loved chaos, she felt like cheering it on. Go, she thought giddily. On the other side of the road was soft bending grass, and far out beyond the grass were the silent oysters.

“There are the oyster beds,” Amanda said. “The oysters are asleep in their beds.” She began to laugh.

Tess looked at her soberly. Tess was just a child, Amanda thought. She had left Tess far behind. She shook her head to herself and pressed her foot down smoothly. The car surged on. “Asleep in their beds,” she repeated. It had a dreamy ring to it. Insects hit the windshield, faster than before. The thicket raced alongside. The black sky was high above them, rising and embracing everything. Everything was going right. The marijuana was singing in her head now, warm and luminous. She was singing, herself. The long black night was just outside her, and she could feel it inside her too, flowing through her in a dark fluid stream, the way the air was streaming past the windows.

The car was hers, humble, restrained, powerful in her hands. She had the perfect circle held in her hands. The perfect circle to hold forever. She thought of saying that out loud to Tess, but Tess was too young to understand it. She smiled to herself. Everything would turn out right. She was somehow protected, magically. She laughed out loud to think of this, laughed with happiness. She thought of her father, he would be pleased by this. He would be pleased by her.

The road kept coming up to them, fast, the line down the middle moving slightly from side to side, the way it did in a movie. Amanda tried to keep precisely in the center of the line. It seemed the right thing to do, it seemed symmetrical, fair. The line down the middle leapt up at her, shifting, thrilling.

“You’re going too fast,” Tess said. Her hand was on the door handle and she looked straight ahead, as if by watching the road she could control it.

“No I’m not,” Amanda said, and to prove it she put her foot down further on the gas pedal. There was lots more speed that she wasn’t using. The meadows flashed along beside her, the long dense grass, white in the headlights. Now it did feel fast, to Amanda. She could not remember what to do: what had Alison’s father said? But she felt in a stasis now, flying along in the car, along the straight road, the meadow grass standing soft and fluid beside them. It seemed right, it seemed exactly right, but it was not exactly right; at the same time there was something else she was thinking of.

“Amanda,” Tess said, her voice more urgent.

“What,” Amanda said. She knew there was something else, but could not remember. What had Alison’s father said? What had he said? She was a wild woman, but it was not that. They were coming past the church now, the white building, the sides sprang up suddenly into the black windshield.

“Amanda!” Tess said, now loud. She was frightened.

“It’s okay,” Amanda said. She heard her own voice now, high, mystical. She could hear all that she knew, it was all in her voice. “It’s okay,” she said again, to Tess.

The curve was coming up, after the church. There was the curve. She saw it in her mind’s eye, saw it coming smoothly, the car sliding decorously around it the way it did when her father was driving, or Emma. She knew how the car would go around it, without slowing, like those tiny metal cars on metal game tracks, slipping around it hypnotically. She could not tell which she was watching, which was real and which was an image in her mind. She watched the road leap along in the light. She watched the road swing around, on the curve. But everything was going faster than she meant it, the curve was jerky, things swiveled, jerking, the hedge was not where it was meant to be and then everything changed, the tempo of everything changed, and the white line moved beneath the car, it went suddenly all the way around, spinning and pivoting, and then there was the hedge, springing powerfully toward the windshield, and the tree.