Free Call Me Jane by Anthea Carson

was sliced off. It dripped down both the outside and the inside of the door. Gay screamed in terror, wiping as much of it away from her and onto the floor as she could.
    “What do we do?” I screamed. “I can hear them inside the car! I can’t drive home like this.”
    “Drive to my house. Maybe it will be better there.”
    “Why would it be better there?”
    “I don’t know. There are more trees here.”
    I drove the rest of the way through those creepy woods till I came to her yellow house, and pulled into the long drive that ran alongside it, my car facing Lake Winnebago. It was better there.
    “Do you still hear them?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Turn on the dope light,” Gay said.
    She inspected the disgusting mess, took off her jacket, opened the door, and flung the thing outside.
    “Open your door and get some of them out. I will run into my house. I will try not to let anymore in when I shut the door,” she said. She took a deep breath, opened the door, and flew out, slamming it behind her. I knew there still might be some frog’s body in the car, but I would just have to drive anyway.
    It didn’t matter if I sped up or slowed down, I killed the same number of them either way. I drove out of the creepy woods, hearing them pop and seeing them land on my windshield. I turned left onto the highway and sped up, driving as fast as I could away from that memory, pushing it down as far as I could into my subconscious.
    As I drove away from her house, I remembered something Krishna once said. “Have you ever been inside her house?” she had said.
    I said, “No, have you?”
    “Yeah, once,” she said. “There was trash all over the place. I mean a lot of trash. Up-to-your-ankles type thing. It was gross.”
    “Wow, really?” I said, and tried to imagine it in there.
    Gay always ran in, she never walked. And she never entered by her front door. She went up the unkempt, gravel drive, turned the corner, and was gone. The house was a long, yellow, one-story rectangle, with the square end facing the street and disappearing into the distance, into the lake. Lake Winnebago, which encircled all of our properties, or, I should say, we encircled it.

FOURTEEN
    Gay and I sat, stoned in the afternoon as usual, at Krishna’s coffee table and stared out at the beautiful backyard. Things always looked so much prettier when you were stoned.
    Krishna put on a Beatles album, for once. We were all singing along.
    “I just don’t understand,” I said. “How can anybody say that anyone is better than the Beatles?”
    “Of course the Stones are better,” she said matter-of-factly. “In fact,” she continued, “why are we listening to four mop-topped morons?” Whenever she used this imitation of what Raj said, she giggled. She reached for a Stones album instead, and fairly tore the Beatles off the stereo.
    “Hey,” yelled Gay. “Watch it! Don’t destroy a Beatles album.”
    Gay grabbed for it and put it away. Krishna put on “Sympathy For the Devil”. “Ahh,” she said, “much better.”
    I was very stoned, so I started to think maybe this was a hidden reference to me. Maybe I was a mopped-top moron.
    “I don’t even know why I am over here,” I said.
    “Ugh!”
    “You couldn’t possibly hate the Beatles and like me.”
    “Oh God!” and then she started giggling.
    “Smoke another bowl,” Gay said. “Let’s get a little more paranoid.”
    “No! It’s true! The way you feel about the Beatles is the way you feel about me!”
    “You’re insane.”
    “You use me for my car.”
    The phone rang. It was Lucy, and she needed me to pick her up from her house and take her over to...
    I couldn’t even hear Raj yelling up the stairs over Krishna and Gay’s laughter. It was loud. It was rude. I picked up my purse and my keys to go.
    “Hey wait a minute,” I heard on my way down the stairs. No way. I wasn’t waiting. I was getting out of there before they could jump in my car. At least Lucy loves the