Five Nights at Freddy's Fazbear Frights Collection, page 174
“Yeah, but that’s a figure of speech. I’m looking forward to it, but I also can appreciate what I have now. I just think sometimes your anger blinds you to what’s good is all.”
“What the hell do you know about it?” Joel snapped.
Zach held up his hands in surrender. “Dude. Just sayin’ … if you slow down in life, you can enjoy the scenery on the way to where you want to be.”
Joel snorted. “What are you? Some kind of guru?”
When Zach just smiled and shrugged, Joel slammed his guitar into its case and stomped out of the barn. Joel was grinding his teeth when he got into his truck under a star-filled sky and a quarter moon. Where did Zach get off telling Joel what to do? Joel got enough of that from his parents.
“See you guys tomorrow night!” Evan called as he and Wes headed toward their own vehicles.
Joel grudgingly waved at his friends, pulled out, and headed toward the gates of Zach’s family’s farm. He could see Evan’s headlights behind him. Evan drove an old red sports car that had bug-eyed headlights set close together. Tall and lanky, Evan barely fit in the thing, but he loved it—inherited it from his grandpa. Too bad Joel didn’t have a grandpa. His parents’ parents were all dead … long dead. He hadn’t inherited squat from any of them. How was that fair?
Behind Evan’s little car, Wes’s jacked-up truck shot light over the top of Evan’s car and in through Joel’s rear window. The searing light reflected into his eyes from the rearview mirror, pissing him off—he should have a big truck like Wes’s, instead of this old piece of garbage he was driving. He shoved his foot down on the accelerator in anger, and as he shot through the gates of the farm, he fishtailed onto the country road and punched it back toward town.
Rattling just enough to piss him off even more, Joel’s truck attempted to reach 80 mph on the straight stretch of narrow road that ran along the edge of the farm on one side and an old forest on the other side. If Evan or Wes had been coming this way, too, Joel was sure they could have caught up to him in a nanosecond and blown him off the road. Thankfully, though, they lived on the other side of town, and they took a different route home.
Lowering the passenger side window so he could feel air rushing through the cab, Joel let out a shout. Whether it was a shout of rage or a shout of glee, he couldn’t have said. His emotions were a mess. He hated his truck, but he was loving the feel of its 435-horsepower engine rumbling under his control.
The country road leading back to civilization came to a fork in the road near town. One branch of the Y led to more farms spreading out into the valley. The other led abruptly into one of the town’s outlying subdivisions, an expanse of twenty-year-old ramblers that all looked alike and sat too close together. Joel hated the subdivision, but even though the speed limit in the area was just 25 mph, cutting through it got him home faster, and he needed to get back and catch some sleep if he was going to make it to work before dawn.
Joel slowed as he downshifted for the turn into the subdivision, but he didn’t slow enough. Just as he had earlier in the week, he slid around the corner out of control. Fighting to keep the truck on the road because he sure as heck didn’t want to go in the deep ditch he knew ran along the shoulder here, Joel cursed at himself for being so reckless. He knew better than to take the corner at this speed.
At one point, he felt the tires come off the road, and for a split second, he thought the truck was going to flip. His heart stopped beating for an instant. But then the truck settled, even though it was still in a skid.
Joel let the truck have its way with the asphalt, and he even began enjoying the adrenaline rush of the slide. He enjoyed it, that is, until he saw the child caught in his headlights.
A child?
What in the hell was a kid doing out after midnight?
As soon as he saw the kid, Joel jammed his foot on his brakes. He didn’t even downshift. He just hit the brakes. The truck bucked, but it didn’t slow fast enough. The front bumper slammed into the child with a thud that seemed to reverberate through the truck and right into Joel’s body.
As soon as he heard the impact, Joel wanted to squeeze his eyes shut and pretend he was someplace else, but he couldn’t. It was like his gaze was tied by a string to the trajectory of the child’s body as it flew up and out, away from the truck and then disappeared off the road. He assumed they landed in the deep ditch just off the pavement.
The truck lurched to a stop, and because Joel hadn’t depressed the clutch, the engine died. A few clicks sounded from under the hood, and Joel’s panting breath filled the cab. Outside, crickets chirruped. In the distance, a dog barked.
Joel forced himself to quiet his breathing. He needed to listen. Was there any sound coming from the ditch? Was the kid … ?
Joel closed his eyes tight, but that didn’t do anything to make what had just happened go away. As soon as his lids came down, his mind replayed the impact of his truck against the kid … in slow motion. Joel was able to see details he’d missed when it had happened in real time.
In this slo-mo replay, Joel was able to see that the kid’s body was small. The kid couldn’t have been more than six or seven, maybe. And what was it? A boy or a girl? It was impossible to tell. The kid was wearing dark pants, maybe jeans, and a dark jacket. He … she? Joel decided to stick with it. Thinking it didn’t feel as bad as he or she.
Again, what in the hell was a kid doing out at this hour?
Joel sat behind the wheel and thought about the body his truck had just tossed into the ditch. He should get out and check on it. Shouldn’t he? Of course he should.
But he couldn’t. He just absolutely couldn’t. The very thought of trying to get out of his truck made him start to shake. No, that wasn’t true. He already was shaking. But the idea of getting out of the truck made him shake even more intensely.
It suddenly occurred to Joel that he should check and see if anyone was watching. Had anyone witnessed what he’d just done?
The entry to the subdivision was flanked with two big stone monument-like signs that announced the subdivision’s name—Glenwood Fields. A decorative area filled with seasonal flowers—daffodils now—surrounded the signs. The first houses on the street were well beyond the decorative area. This meant no houses looked directly out at the corner. And even the nearest houses were dark. No one seemed to be up … except the crazy kid in the middle of the road.
Joel realized he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his palms were starting to hurt. He let go of it and stretched his hands.
“What are you going to do, dude?” he asked himself out loud.
His stomach felt heavy; the pizza he’d eaten was gurgling around and threatening to climb back up into his throat. He pressed a hand to his stomach.
What should he do?
For some reason, he glanced in his review mirror. And his decision was made for him.
Headlights were coming down the country road, heading toward the corner. No way was he going to be caught sitting here.
His legs feeling weak and rubbery, Joel managed to position his feet on the clutch pedal and the brake pedal. With a trembling hand, Joel reached for the key and turned the ignition. To his surprise, it started immediately.
Joel put his hands at two o’clock and ten o’clock on the steering wheel and eased out the clutch as he gently accelerated. As soon as the truck was rolling, he sped up, and in spite of what had just happened, he raced home at double the posted speed limit the whole way.
* * *
Joel should have fallen asleep the second he threw himself on his bed. He was beyond tired.
Apparently, however, he was so far beyond tired that he’d circled back around to wide-awake. His eyes just wouldn’t close. It was like they were taped open or something.
Most Friday and Saturday nights, because of the long days and late nights playing music, Joel went to sleep so fast that he’d wake up the next morning on top of his covers in the exact same position as when he fell into his bed. This drove his mom crazy, usually triggering one of her “why did we bother” lines: “Why did we bother getting you nice sheets and blankets when you’re just going to sleep on top of them?”
Joel turned over for the third time since he’d flopped in his bed. It didn’t do any good. He was still wide-awake. No matter how much Joel squirmed around in his bed or scrunched and re-scrunched his pillow to get his body in a comfortable position, his eyes remained open, staring at the shadows in his overstuffed room. But no, his eyes weren’t staring at the shadows. That was the problem. His eyes apparently were still back at the entrance to Glenwood Fields, and they were stuck in a time loop there, watching the little kid get flung into the ditch over and over and over.
Joel groaned and wiped his eyes with the back of his knuckles, as if he could erase his inner film loop by scrubbing it away. It didn’t work. Not only was the kid still flying through the air in Joel’s mind, now Joel’s eyeballs felt like they’d rolled in gravel and been stuck back in his head. His eyes felt scratchy, and they stung.
Joel sat up and turned on the wrought-iron lamp on his nightstand. He rubbed his eyes again, and he put his head in his hands. He breathed in and out a few times and squared his shoulders. He should go back.
He really should.
The kid could be alive, just hurt and unable to get out of the ditch. It wasn’t terribly cold out tonight, but it was still chilly. The kid had been wearing that dark jacket—dumb kid—so it wasn’t going to freeze to death or anything. But what if it was bleeding? Joel had to check on the kid.
He stood. He tried to take a step toward the door of his room, but he couldn’t. His sense of self-preservation wouldn’t let him.
Even though his morals wanted him to go do the right thing, his survival instinct had a different opinion. It was laying out the facts:
The second Joel went back to check on the kid, he was committing himself to deep trouble. Even if he could pretend that he hadn’t left the scene of the accident, the fact that he knew the kid was in the ditch would be an admission of guilt that he’d hit the kid. His skid marks would prove he was going too fast as he went around that corner. He’d be charged with reckless driving at minimum. And if the kid was dead …
Joel started breathing fast, so he sat back down. He hugged himself and rocked back and forth. He knew he was acting like a little kid himself, but he didn’t care. He was on the verge of a panic attack.
If the kid was dead and Joel admitted that he was the one who hit the kid, Joel would go to jail. No going to LA to break into the music scene. No being free to live his life. If he thought working for a living was its own kind of prison, there was no way he would last long in an actual prison.
Joel quickly reached out and turned off his lamp. He got under the covers and pulled them up to his chin. With great determination, he was able to force his eyes closed. He was doing his best to imitate a normal person getting ready to sleep instead of a guilty person too spun up to sleep.
Joel’s eyes opened again. That was the problem. He was guilty of a crime, and he knew it. He’d hit a kid, and he’d fled the scene. He couldn’t justify what he’d done the way he could justify leaving work a few minutes early or getting bad grades or not taking as many showers as his mom wanted him to take. There was no “Hey, that’s just who I am” defense for what he’d done. It was wrong. No one would argue differently.
Right now, the kid Joel hit could be dying because no one—except Joel—knew the kid was in the ditch. It was wrong … no, it was bordering on downright despicable, to leave the kid there.
But face it, that’s what Joel was going to do. He had to accept it. He wasn’t about to get out of bed and go check on the kid and risk getting arrested for what he’d done. He just wasn’t.
Besides, if the kid was alive, maybe he could get out on his own. Maybe someone else would find him.
And if he was dead, what did it matter?
* * *
When the overhead light in Joel’s room went on, it almost literally reached into Joel’s bed, scooped him up, and tossed him across the room. The brightness was so shocking that Joel catapulted from his bed and didn’t realize what was going on until he was stumbling through a pile of discarded smelly T-shirts.
“Rise and shine,” his mom said.
What the—?
Joel shook his head and blinked, squinting against the brain-searing light that assaulted his eyes. Past sleep-crusted eyelids, he could see his mother standing in the doorway of his room. Her hair was in the topknot she put it in for sleep, and she was wrapped in her red terrycloth robe.
“Your dad’s in the shower,” his mom said. “He’ll be ready to go in fifteen minutes. I didn’t hear your alarm go off, so I figured I should wake you. You’d better get ready.”
Joel moaned and began shuffling toward his bathroom. He had to pee, and he needed to do something about the cotton that must have been stuffed into his head while he slept.
“Joel?” his mother said.
He turned and frowned at her. “What? I’m up.”
“I can see that. But move a little faster, would you?”
Joel grimaced and returned to shuffling. He was almost to the bathroom. What did she want him to do? Leap to the toilet in a single bound?
“Joel?”
He whirled and glared at her. “What?”
She sighed. “Take a shower. You stink.”
Joel turned away from her without answering. He went into his bathroom and shut the door.
Hoping his mother would be gone when he came out of the bathroom, Joel peed, splashed water on his face, and pulled on the jeans and T-shirt he’d left lying on the floor the night before. What was the point in showering and putting on clean clothes when he was going to be sweaty within the first half hour of working at the nursery?
Joel faced himself in the mirror. Man, he looked like crap. His usually thick, wavy hair was limp. He looked pale. His eyes were bloodshot. What was wrong with—
Oh yeah. That.
Apparently, sometime during the night, Joel had managed the miracle of finding sleep. And when he went to sleep, he’d also had another miracle—he’d forgotten what he’d done.
But now he’d remembered.
Joel dropped the toilet seat lid and sat down. He took several deep breaths.
His mind started to review what he’d done, but he stopped it. “No!” he snapped. He wasn’t doing the replay again today.
It was bad enough he had to get up before 5:00 a.m. to work. He wasn’t going to add a guilt trip on top of it.
It might not be too late, his conscience whispered to him. You could go help the kid.
He stood up and charged out of the bathroom. He still wore the socks he had on the night before, and he didn’t bother changing them. Instead, he stuffed his feet into the dirty shoes he’d kicked off before he’d dropped into his bed. He unearthed one of his D’Agostino Garden Center baseball caps from under a pile of dirty socks and jammed it on his head. He grabbed his wallet and his keys from the pile of sheet music on his desk, and he left his room.
He ran into his dad in the hallway. “Good. You’re ready,” his dad said.
Joel grunted, then said, “Let’s do this.”
He followed his dad down the hall, his shoes sinking into the plush gray carpet and his nostrils twitching in reaction to his dad’s powerful, musky cologne. He kept his gaze focused on his dad’s precisely trimmed graying black hair and the farmer’s-tanned skin on the back of his neck.
Joel kept his brain turned off.
His dad trotted down the stairs and headed into the kitchen. Joel followed.
His mom stood at the counter, still in her robe. She appeared to be watching her coffee brew. The kitchen was filled with the smell of it.
Joel’s dad stopped to kiss his wife. Joel ignored his parents and went through the utility room and out into the garage. He was getting into his truck when his dad stepped into the garage and pressed the garage door opener.
“Why don’t we head in together this morning?” Joel’s dad asked. “We can stop and get donuts on the way.”
Joel inwardly cringed, but he was too distracted by what he’d done the night before to argue. He shrugged. “Whatever.” He closed his truck door and got into his dad’s truck.
His dad grinned and slid in behind the wheel.
“Three dozen donuts coming up,” his dad said. “One dozen plain glazed. One dozen chocolate covered. One dozen jelly-filled.”
Joel glanced at his dad and ignored the urge to roll his eyes. It sounded like his dad was giving his order, and they were still in the garage.
“Raspberry jelly, of course,” his dad continued.
“What else?” Joel said, just to say something. He couldn’t have cared less about the donuts.
His mind was still stuck in the loop of the kid going into the ditch. Over and over and over. Joel clenched his fists.
Should he tell his dad what he did so they could go check on the kid?
His dad started his practically new truck with a push of a button and backed down the driveway. He pulled away from the house and accelerated.
Joel pressed his lips together and took a deep breath. He was clearly losing it. There was no way he was going to tell his dad he’d hit a kid! Why did he even think that? Joel forced himself to look out at the dark street in front of them. He shoved aside the image of the kid in the ditch.
Joel usually cut through Glenwood Fields to get to Sally’s. The café was just outside town, on the opposite end from the garden center. Going through downtown was slower because of the stoplights. Joel hated stoplights. Thankfully, though, his dad loved driving through downtown, so Joel didn’t have to face Glenwood Fields.
“Consistency is the key to a good life, Joel,” his dad said as he turned onto Main Street. “Same donuts. Same customers. Same good results.”
Joel raised an eyebrow at his dad. He so wanted to tell his dad how full of it he was, but instead he turned and looked out the window. As soon as he looked, he was sorry he did … because he glimpsed one of those plastic Kids at Play figures sitting at the edge of the sidewalk.
