Songs Only You Know Read Free

dilated at the entryway, beaming up the street.
    I thought it might be him.
    I began crossing the intersection as the lights rushed forward. The engine whined at an anxious frequency, pushing too hard for that time of night, on that kind of street. But whether or not this speed demon decided to turn, the right-of-way was mine; I drew the bat close and slowed my stride.
    The vehicle steered wide to turn up the cross street. Twin rays swept the pavement, and I saw what was what: a cherry-red minivan, accelerating on the turn, its chrome grille charging straight for my bony ass. Walking defiantly—a half step more—I hoped for the sound of squealing brakes. Until my instincts rebelled, lunging my body headfirst the instant the headlights flooded entirely over me.
    The bat left my hand as I tucked into the dive. Aluminum clanged, tires ground. The clunk of my bones. I felt the pavement scrape over my back, and then I was reeled onto my feet again, jogging forward to keep balance.
    That flightlike thrill as adrenaline rushes through …
    I’d never felt so purely the nearness of my own death. Truly, though, I’ll never be certain just how close I came to being run down or if I was taunting the moment, provoking it to be become something it was not. The minivan—now unmistakably a Ford Aerostar—sputtered on without apology, which at that instant seemed the most psychotically rude thing I could imagine.
    “Motherfucker.” I raised a fist.
    The screams I’d been perfecting with my band had leathered my vocal cords, providing me the dubious ability to summon bestial howls at the cue of a snare drum. I could go from amucousy, guttural roar to a high, nasty pitch I’d feel right in the center of my face. My next words ran the scale, echoed through the streets: “Watch where you’re fucking going!”
    The van’s tires squeaked out one harsh, staccato yip.
    Its rear end fishtailed. Reverse lights flared as the vehicle revved backward, giving me time to snatch the bat from a patch of damp grass. Then the van braked hard, lurching before going still. What I heard most was the snapping of my pulse while the driver’s-side window peeled down revealing a man a few years younger than my dad. Crew cut, curly up top. Red T-shirt. From the look in his eyes it appeared there’d been a tough day at the office, the factory, the eighteenth hole. He was quite possibly shitfaced.
    “Stay outta my goddamn street,” he said.
    I cocked the bat to make certain he saw it, and the guy smiled. He didn’t look the tough-dad type. My old man could have taken him, but this mindfucker had one of those normaljoe faces that at certain telltale moments will reveal its ulterior sicko—and here it was: a hateful grin widening by the second.
    I’d gone out miming a search for trouble, and so it was delivered, along with implications on what it would mean for me to back down. Gripping the bat I counted
one-two
repeatedly, something I’d done before lighting Dumpsters afire or skateboarding down the shingles of Will’s roof.
One-two, one-two
. Sooner or later,
three
usually came, and I’d be mindless, tossing the match or rocketing toward the crash.
    “Screw you, man.”
    “Little prick,” he said.
    The minivan’s interior lights snapped on as he opened the door. One leg stepped to the pavement while the other remained bent, rooted inside the van. An arm extended. He had something to show me: a handgun. Not pointed at my heart. Not ordering my hands to the air or anything of the sortbut harmlessly dangling from his fingertips as if it were a piece of evidence he’d plucked from a lover’s underwear drawer. His wrist was limp. The gun hung black against his red shirt. If he’d turned the barrel on me, there’s a chance I’d have stood like that until he fired.
    I flashed him my wildest eyes, channeling Manson—any number of maniacs I’d seen pictures of. That’s how I gave up. Glaring was as brave as I could be.
    “Now,” he said, face