Free Every Little Thing by Chad Pelley Page A

that?”
    â€œOkay!”
    â€œOkay?”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œOkay. So where are we going?”
    â€œI have to drop my photos off somewhere. About an hour away. Hour and a bit. Out in Grayton, where me and Dad just moved from. Know it?”
    â€œOf course,” he said, kicking off his bedsheets. “It’s nice out there.”
    â€œI thought you slept naked,” she said, nodding at his pajama pants.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œNever mind. Twenty minutes. I’ll be out front with the car running. And I’m driving. I don’t like being driven. I’m a...very paranoid driver. And I don’t know you well enough to be all backseat driver on you, yet.”
    Yet she’d said. And they both paused at the utterance of it. Yet. The implication.
    â€œAnd, Cohen?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œNice pajamas. Very manly.”
    She winked and walked away. Who winks?
    He looked down at his pajama pants like maybe real men don’t wear pajama pants.
    ALLIE REALLY WAS a paranoid driver. Did you see that! That son of a bitch just cut me off! She’d slap the wheel and swear even though a school bus could have fit in between her car and the man who’d passed her with ample berth. Her driving anxiety was something a long-term partner, a husband, might grow sick of, but he loved it. Found it endearing: her so harmless, but uttering such well-articulated threats.
    â€œSomeone needs to tie his hands to his feet and roll him down a mountain!”
    â€œWhat?”He laughed. “They need to do what to him?”
    â€œYou heard me. A mountain!”
    She drove as if driving a fighter jet, and all the other cars were missiles. Even in the city, she imagined a moose might just jump out of anywhere. And kids, she’d told him,were death-wish fearless. She reduced her speed by 50% if she even thought she saw one.
    â€œThe problem is, kids think they’re invincible. But a quick game of Car Versus Kneecap would prove otherwise, am I right?”
    He laughed. “Yeah, you’re right all right.”He paused. “Have you...been in a bad accident or something?”
    â€œNo, why?”She had the wheel gripped so hard her knuckles were popping through her skin.
    â€œJust wondering.”
    â€œSo what, I’m a melodramatic driver. We all have our flaws. There are worse things, Cohen, like halitosis and...I dunno. Gambling addictions!”
    â€œOkkkaaay…”He put up his hands like, Don’t shoot!
    â€œAnd I hate this stretch of the drive. It’s the worst. I mean, why have an undivided highway? That’s just asking for trouble. Some dipshit in the other lane nods off or speeds and hydroplanes, and ka-bam, it’s all over for me !” She shook her head at the injustice of it. “You’ve got to wonder about a world that builds undivided highways.”
    â€œAbsolutely. You do. I mean, what kind of world!”
    â€œAre you mocking me! I’m serious, think about it. Chunks of metal, flying past each other, going more than a hundred clicks an hour!”
    He was still smirking. “What?” she said. “What?”
    â€œYou should’ve seen your eyes when that squirrel ran across the road. It was like your brain slingshot your eyes from your skull.”
    She slapped his knee, Shut up! , and he was shocked she’d taken a hand out of the 10 and 2 position.
    They’d made it to Grayton, and the town was in a state of evolution, and Allie hated it. Densely packed subdivisions were being built; the kind where you could see into a neighbour’s window through your own, and they made the more traditional saltbox houses look cheap, not practical or quaint. The old, abandoned, unbountiful farmland now housed a Walmart, and an old merchant’s house was, as of that summer, a two-theatre cinema. “One that doesn’t even play good movies,” she’d added as they drove past it.
    Her eyes followed