I ran even faster back to the hotel parking lot. After I sailed one of Whore-reen’s bags out the window, I gunned the Z28’s engine like I had pole position at the Indy 500.
Then I did what any self-respecting, suicidal, recently orphaned, currently being-cheated-on twenty-one-year-old girl would do.
I neutral-dropped my boyfriend’s Camaro out of the lot in a cloud of rubber smoke.
Chapter 4
AFTER A FEW FISHTAILING TURNS, I found an open road next to a beach and drove the Camaro properly—namely, like I’d stolen it. I didn’t drop the hammer. I very nearly busted it through the meticulously vacuumed floor.
Its 5.7-liter V8 engine roared hungrily, demonically, as it rose in pitch, the intro to a heavy metal song.
“Crazy Train,” I thought as I slammed back into my seat. Or was it “Highway to Hell”?
Parked cars that I blurred past started making that zip zip zip zip NASCAR sound.
I tried to decide what I wanted to wreck more at that moment: Alex’s pride and joy or myself. The notion of ending the utter silliness of my bad-luck life seemed very tempting. From where I was sitting without a seat belt, life was pain, and I was seriously thinking about ending mine as visibly and messily as possible.
The Z28’s speedometer was hitting three figures, its rear end starting to rise like an airplane on takeoff, when I caught some movement on the dark beach to my right.
I squinted at the motion through the windshield. It was a blur, something small running. Was it a rabbit?
No, I realized as I got closer very quickly. It was a dog, a collie with a red bandanna around its neck. I recognized the belly-flopping dog from the bar at the exact moment it changed course, like a guided missile, and shot out into the beach road.
Directly in front of the car.