Read Online Possessing Jessie by Nancy Springer - Free Book Online Page A

dead brother. Might be some sort of coping thing.”
    â€œWell, I can’t cope with it! This whole thing’s too damn Twilight Zone for me.” He thrust Jessie’s license and registration back at her. “Girl, I’m letting you off with a warning. I don’t ever want to see you again. Shut your mouth, don’t say a word to me, and get out of here.”
    Jessie did as instructed. Although she did not actually lay a patch, unmistakably she exhibited excess speed as she pulled away. And she managed to get only a short distance down the road before laughter exploded from her. Driving fast, faster, she laughed and kept laughing, louder.

Chapter Eleven
    Shane already had things set up down at Dead End Bend. He had stuck a homemade bright-red bandanna flag in the shoulder of the road on the downward slope, and directly opposite on the upward slope, another flag. Distance between the flags, exactly half a mile. The turn was so tight that both flags could be observed by one guy with a stopwatch who stood in the middle of the vacant field in between. The contestant’s speed in miles per hour around Dead End Bend could be figured by the time it took him to do half a mile between the two flags. They didn’t teach math at school for nothing.
    Shane was of course the guy with the stopwatch, and Alisha stood nearby. In fact, Shane had brought her down there with him in his pickup truck. Alisha had been standing near the bus stop but not quite at it, not wanting to go home and face her mother’s anger and her grandmother’s voodoo pits full of ghost snakes, when Shane had pulled over and offered her a ride.
    â€œThanks,” she had said, getting in, and then, because it mattered so much she had to tell somebody, she blurted, “Guy from the bar came after me and gave me the phone number.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œJessie’s father’s phone number. I called him about five times.”
    â€œJessie’s father!”
    â€œYeah. But he’s not answering. I keep getting his voice mail, and it cuts me off after about three seconds. Not that I know what to say to him anyway.”
    Amazingly, Shane seemed to follow. “I don’t know what the hell anybody can say.”
    Alisha wondered if Shane had any clue about Jessie’s crush on him. Jessie had good taste. Shane seemed like a super-nice guy as well as a hunk. Jeez, just when Alisha thought life couldn’t get much weirder, here she was in Shane’s pickup truck. Poor Jessie; she would be jealous if she were in her right mind.
    Alisha said softly, “I have to try to call again. Later tonight. I have to try to do something.”
    At Dead End Bend, standing in the bed of Shane’s pickup truck parked in the field, Alisha watched others arriving. Word had gotten around even faster than usual. There were plenty of kids interested. Like, really interested, wanting to see whether Jessie would show up. Those who planned to compete waited along the roadside uphill from the starting flag. Those who wanted to watch bumped through a ditch and over ruts and grass to park in the field. Whoever owned this land had put up fences that had been torn down, placed concrete barriers that had been pushed away, and had finally given up trying to keep the kids out. The people in the few neighboring houses had likewise gotten tired of calling the cops, who never showed up in time anyway. This night, this wasteland, this unobstructed view of Dead End Bend belonged to the teenagers.
    Kids sat on the hoods or tops of their cars, talking, joking, flirting, or play-fighting, drinking soda or beer, smoking cigarettes or joints. Some, like Alisha, kept a watch on the cars lining up to compete, more or less visible in the glare of one another’s headlights. When Alisha saw the Z-car blacker than the night coming down the hill, she was not the only one who exclaimed aloud. But she was the only one who took off running, running