Alexander Plansky - Arcadia

“Shit!” Jenna swore as she looked back. She turned to him. “Does this thing go any faster?”

“Working on it,” he said, pushing the pedal all the way.

The Jeep revved forward, its speed ticking past 100 miles per hour. Even the slightest twitch of the wheel caused the vehicle to sway wildly in the lane. The car behind them continued to gain ground, closing the gap between them.

Lewis looked ahead. There was nothing but empty road in front of them and bumpy, open desert on either side of the lanes. Nowhere to turn, nowhere to hide. The car went as fast as it could; it felt like he was steering a rocket with wheels. Air violently battered the front window, wind whipping around the sides of the Wrangler.

The black sedan got closer in the mirror every time he glanced at it, gliding forward at a frightening pace like a vehicular angel of death. Soon it was right behind him, and he saw a gun-wielding hand reach out of the front window and begin firing. The rear window cracked. He and Jenna ducked as shots sailed over their heads and made bullet holes through the front windshield.

Lewis felt the vehicle swaying wildly side to side, and looked back up to get it under control. In the side mirror, he saw the driver of the car behind them leaning their full upper torso out the window to get better aim, their other hand remaining on the steering wheel inside. More shots rang out in the night.

Past the glare of the pursuing vehicle’s headlights, Lewis could make out the snarling face of Blackwell. He’d ditched the fedora and exposed his bald head to the roaring air, and in that instant Lewis knew he’d seen him somewhere before. He just couldn’t place–

“Des!”

He whipped around. Jenna stared back at him, looking both sad and dreadfully scared. One of her palms was red with blood. Hers. A stray shot had gone through the back of her seat and come out toward the side of her abdomen.

Lewis opened his mouth but never got the chance to speak.

The rear left tire burst in that second, a well-placed round by Blackwell having found its mark. The Jeep swerved wildly, fishtailing like a beast from the sea. He tried to wrangle it, tried to keep the front aimed straight, slammed on the brakes, but it was little use. He lost all control and the car veered off the road, the wheels useless to direction, and the whole world spun on the other side of the windshield. He closed his eyes, his worst nightmare come true, and felt his entire body restrained against the terrifying force of the crash as the car tumbled and rolled and glass and steel and bones cracked all around him. Something heavy collided against his chest, cracking a rib, as long strands of hair brushed across his face. Finally, the Jeep came to a halt on its roof. He kept his eyes squeezed shut, ignoring the pain all over his body, pushing the dark memories deep back down the well.

And then, in that awful instant, he realized he never saw Jenna put on her seatbelt.

Lewis’s eyes flashed open. Everything was upside-down; all the blood rushed to his head. Dazed, he looked up – down, really – toward the ceiling and at that moment a terror he had not felt in years gripped his body.

Jenna lay face down among the glass shards at an awkward angle, her head turned to the side. Her eyes were open and devoid of life.

“No,” he said, unable to fight back the tears. “No, no, no, no, no, no.”

Lewis desperately fumbled for his seatbelt and finally found the release. With a click , he was free and falling toward her. He just managed to put his hands out to land to reduce the impact, but it still hurt. At that moment, he didn’t even register his broken rib.

“No, no, no…” He turned her over but her dead eyes stared up past him, a saddened but ultimately peaceful expression cemented on her face. He stared at her for several long moments, unable to comprehend the sight before him. But ultimately, deep down, he recognized that she was gone.

Lewis squeezed his eyes shut, tried to hold back the deluge of tears welling up in his eyes. It was no use; the dam burst. Memories flooded his mind. He saw himself on that Friday evening five months ago, when Ricky had introduced him to some of his gamer friends as they went bar hopping through Santa Monica. Jenna had been there, and it wasn’t just how pretty she was that made him fall for her. She had had a certain energy about her, a vivacious spirit in her eyes that complemented her broad smiles and infectious laughter.

He’d been so worried about making a good first impression that he’d accidentally spilled his drink on her while turning around at the bar. A couple months later, Jenna told him that she’d found it endearing. In the moment, she’d laughed it off and they wound up have a long conversation while the others were back at the table. They’d traded numbers before they each departed for the night and made plans to meet again, just the two of them.

And now here she was, lying broken inside an overturned car.

Not again .

The astronaut laughed maniacally somewhere off in the distance. The tears streamed down Lewis’s face now, just as they had that night so long ago. The night his mother held him tightly by the side of a lonely forest road, directing his attention away from the twisted wreck of her car toward the stars above.

The night he caused the death of his baby brother.

If he held it up against the window just right, it almost looked like it was flying through the stars. He could imagine himself at the helm of a real space shuttle, the whole three, two, one takeoff, the blue sky fading into blackness, and then the lights of distant galaxies and supernovas all around him.

That was going to be him someday.

Desmond Lewis, Astronaut.

At age seven, it was all very certain. He could see his whole life ahead of him. First, he was going to graduate high school as a Valedictorian and then go to Stanford, where he would double major in Astrophysics and Engineering. He was going to get an internship at NASA and then go right into their astronaut program right out of college. He would move to Cape Canaveral, that beautiful place he and Mommy and Daddy and Georgie had visited two years ago, the place with all the palm trees and the beach, the place that was only an hour’s drive to Disney World, the place where he’d convinced them to buy the plush space shuttle.

The space shuttle was his favorite thing in the whole wide world. He took it everywhere, except school. The kids there were mean and might try to steal it or throw it in the garbage because they knew he loved it so much. He wore NASA t-shirts and talked endlessly of space and Star Wars and sci-fi. Some of his other friends were into that stuff too, but the other kids made fun of him for it. It didn’t matter. One day he was gonna blast out of this world and leave them all behind.

And when he did come back from his adventures colonizing the Moon and Mars, and establishing space stations at Lagrange points so that they stayed in the same spot relative to Earth, everyone was going to think he was so cool. His science teacher said she was impressed he even knew what a Lagrange point was at his age.

He was going to marry his friend Virginia who once kissed him on the cheek and said she loved him. They were going to have a big house on the beach with lots of palm trees and have kids and a dog and a wonderful life. And at Christmas, Mom and Dad and Georgie would all come to his place because it would be the nicest house out of all of theirs.