Free You Only Get Letters from Jail by Jodi Angel

Casper’s voice caught us. “Did you forget something?”
    She turned and looked at me, and I shrugged my shoulders.
    â€œThe beers, Ruby. You said you’d bring them.”
    I could see her wince in the darkness. “Sorry,” she yelled. “I’ll get them right now.” She handed me the flashlight. “Wait for me,” she said.
    I leaned my weight against the arm of the couch and looked at the bare walls. There were picture hooks but no pictures. Casper’s voice carried through the room. “So I see them, you know, five or six of them sittin’ on the tailgate of this pickup truck instead of working like I was paying them to do, and they got the engine running, burning up the gas so in case I show up, one of them can jump in the front and act like they were just finishing up with a load.So I just let them keep sitting there, you know, I don’t say nothing. I just creep around to the front and slide onto the seat and I put the truck in gear really gentle, so they can’t feel it, and then I hit the gas as hard as I can—I mean hard enough to put my boot through the floorboard almost, and that truck just shoots right out from under them. All of ’em hit the ground, ass over teakettle, you know? Rolling through the dirt. Busted one guy’s lip pretty good . . .”
    My mother was laughing so hard she could barely catch her breath between words. “You’re terrible, Casper, I love it. That’s too much.”
    I didn’t have to look at my mother to know that she had her hand gripped to Casper’s arm while she was laughing, her fingers pressed into his skin.
    We had been around the table for what seemed like hours, long enough for the sun to set and throw the evening into night, and when we were outside, Ruby took the flashlight and aimed the beam toward the garage. The night was cool, but not cold, and I could hear crickets all around us, chirping in different pitches like an orchestra tuning up before a show. I could smell the dampness again, but it was stronger, as though my face was pressed against ground. The sound of the crickets muffled the crisp shift of gravel under our shoes. The weak light from a bulb above the garage shined across the hood of my car, but otherwise it was dark and useless in the driveway.
    â€œI like your car,” Ruby said. “Is it really yours?”
    I thought about my mother’s overexcitement when she told me that she’d bought the car for me and we weregoing to fly out and pick it up and drive it home—a real road trip, both of us together and on our own. I had been standing in the kitchen with a glass of milk in my hand and she was talking about what to pack and when we were leaving and how this car was like a dream, and I didn’t feel anything. I just dug a calendar out of a drawer and tried to figure out how many miles we could cover each day and how long it would take for it to be over with.
    â€œIt’s okay, I guess,” I said. “I just want it fixed so that we can drive it home.”
    We walked past the car and around the corner of the garage. In the darkness the scrap parts were odd and hard to identify. The stacks of tires were humped shapes pressed against the flat wings of unhinged hoods so that their combined shadows looked like giant insects. Ruby pointed the light at the hutches and I could hear the rabbits change positions inside, shift around and come forward to watch us. We both pressed our faces against Thumper’s cage. My eyes strained to see something that hadn’t been there before.
    â€œI don’t know what I’m looking for,” I said.
    â€œHere, take the light.”
    I held the beam at an angle. Thumper looked at us with wide and wild black eyes, but she did not turn her head away. I ran the light the length of her and we could see her side heaving with her breath, and every now and then it would stop, tense, shudder, and begin