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flashing and flashing past me, rumbling out onto the bridge, the whole long beast going on and on and on it seemed forever.
    I lay on the ground, staring up at the massive, murderous wheels. I was okay. I had played a game of chicken with a freight train and survived.
    Pretty stupid, yes?
    But it was still not the stupidest thing I ever did.

3

The Red Camaro
     
    It was long, long moments before I could catch my breath, before I could stop shaking, before I could slowly climb to my feet and look around me.
    When I did, I gazed back across the bridge. The long freight filled it now end to end. As my eyes rose to the far hill, I expected to see Jeff and his fellow thugs standing there, watching me. Maybe shaking their heads. Maybe muttering, “Curses, foiled again!” Or something like that.
    But to my surprise, they weren’t there at all! They weren’t anywhere in sight. They had vanished. They were totally gone.
    I panned my gaze over the ridge, searching for them. Nothing. Not a sign. Just hillside and trees. Just the sky through the lacework of winter branches. Just the freight train now moving off across the hillside, to disappear on the downward slope into the next valley over.
    I stared, my mouth open, my breath still coming fast. My mind ratcheted into overdrive, trying to figure it out. Jeff and Ed P. and Harry Mac—they’d been there a moment ago and now they were gone as if they had never existed. As if I’d imagined them or dreamed them. But I knew I hadn’t.
    And then my mouth clapped shut.
    And I thought: Oh no .
    It wasn’t easy to start running again, but I did it. At least it was downhill this time—steeply downhill. I plunged down the slope, taking long strides over the rough ground. My ankle ached. My lungs burned. My hand throbbed with pain because of the splinters still buried in my flesh. I ignored all of it and just ran.
    I’ll tell you why. There’s a road up beyond the McAdams Trail. Right up there beyond the trees and the bushes where Harry Mac had tripped me. It’s an old road of broken asphalt and gravel that leads to several other roads, dirt roads, that go into several wilderness areas where there are farms and abandoned farms and campgrounds and other stuff like that.
    I felt pretty sure that Jeff and Ed P. and Harry Mac hadn’t hiked to the spot where I had found them. They didn’t strike me as the healthy, happy hiking types, if you see what I mean. No, they had probably driven up the old broken road and parked nearby and walked into the trees to sit and smoke and drink beer or whatever it was they’d been doing that I wasn’t supposed to see. So that meant they probably had a car up there, maybe the hot red Camaro Jeff was always driving to school, the one that had the muffler modified so you could hear it roaring three counties over. And if they had a car up there, well, then they could get in that car and drive it down the hill, couldn’t they? Down the hill to the road below. Which was where I had to go now. It was the only way I could get back to my bike from here. In other words, if they got to their car fast enough—if they drove fast enough—they could still catch me on the road.
    So I ran down the hill.
    It was so steep, I must have stumbled a dozen times on my way. I nearly fell down half a dozen. As I reached the denser trees by the roadside, I had to dodge between their trunks, leap over their roots, and push my way through the underbrush that tore at my sweatclothes and my hands. But I kept on going, fast as I could. And at last I spilled out onto the road at the bottom of the hill: County Road 64.
    I had to stop there. I was gasping for breath. I leaned forward, my hands on my knees, trying to recover. I turned my head and looked up the road. It was two narrow lanes of pavement winding through pine trees and out of sight. I turned and looked the other way. It was the same: two narrow lanes, pines on either side. Not a car to be seen. No one coming from either