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

out of the field and up the road to try to talk with her best friend.
    Tinted glass in the windows made the black car like a hooded thing, impenetrable. When Alisha knocked on the driver’s-side window and it rolled down, she was still facing tinted glass she could not see into, Jessie’s expensive eyeglasses on a hard face that might as well have been Jason’s.
    â€œJessie,” Alisha appealed, “what are you doing?”
    â€œWhat’s it look like?” The hard voice was Jason’s.
    â€œPlease, Jessie, talk like yourself.”
    â€œYeah, yeah.”
    â€œPlease!”
    â€œOkay, Alisha.” Jessie’s face softened along with her voice. “Would you stop worrying about me so much? I’m all right.”
    Alisha didn’t think so. “You’re going to try to run Dead End Bend?”
    â€œYes. So Jason’s friends will let up on me.”
    â€œBut, Jessie, are you really going to push the car?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œBut you can’t!”
    â€œWho says?”
    â€œI mean, you know what could happen!” How could Jessie, who was so smart, intend to do the same stupid thing that had gotten her brother killed? But Alisha found herself reluctant, no, afraid, really afraid, to speak of Jason, as if mentioning him might be bad luck. “Jessie,” she appealed, “do you want to crash?”
    Jessie breathed out through puffed lips as if dealing with a dense kindergartener. She spoke with exaggerated patience. “I won’t crash. I won’t get hurt. I won’t get killed.”
    â€œWhat makes you so sure?”
    â€œI just know. Alisha, stop bothering me and get out of here.”
    â€œThe hell I will. I’m coming with you.” Alisha started toward the passenger-side door.
    â€œ No .” The hard voice also might as well have been Jason’s. With a click of a switch, Jessie locked both car doors, then said more softly, “Alisha, don’t be an idiot. He’ll protect me, but he won’t protect you.”
    Alisha froze, staring at the dark surface of a pair of sunglasses that might have hidden anyone’s eyes, unable to force her voice through her throat to whisper, “What do you mean?”
    She couldn’t speak the words. Because she didn’t really have to ask what Jessie meant. She knew.
    â€œProtect?” she wanted to cry. “You call it protection?”
    But she could not bear what she was thinking. It was crazy, impossible. She could not face Jessie another moment. Blindly she turned away from her friend and ran back into the night.
    Jessie’s laughter after the cops had pulled her over had spun out of the dark joke at the core of her recent life, irony she hadn’t appreciated before that moment. Jessie the perfectionist had done very little giggling in her life. Jessie the idealist had taken everything very seriously. Jessie the scholar had even looked up “stark” in the library after school today. “Stark” meant stiff like starch, severe, grim, and also rigid like a dead body.
    But Jessie speeding the powerful car toward danger along the country road laughed out loud with delight that she felt no need for any of the usual Jessie worries. She laughed because she was not Jessie right now; she was Jason, and therefore she could not possibly get killed, because Jason was already dead . So what was the worst that could happen?
    Waiting at Dead End Bend, she wanted to go strutting over to Shane, but she was sure to go all blushy girl if she tried to really talk with him, and she couldn’t let that happen yet. Maybe later tonight, or tomorrow. Wow, he had finally noticed her; he was finally talking to her! Her whole life was changing so fast–
    The first car got moving. Jessie watched intently as a yellow Firebird zoomed back up the road to get a good start, then came tearing down past the red-bandanna flag, flashed its brake lights