Free Monster by Christopher Pike

my house in your car. We can go for a walk.”
    “ Along the lake? ” he asked.
    “ Wherever you'd like, Jim .”
     
    Jim almost killed them both when he arrived at her house. He tried pulling in beside her in the driveway, but there wasn't room. He ended up banging her grandfa ther’s propane tank with the front bumper on his four-wheel drive. He leapt out of the vehicle when he saw what he'd done .
    “ Did I break the seal on it?” he asked. Reaching inside his tr uck, he eased the vehicle back slightly.
    Angela dashed over to the tank. Being from a city, s he wasn’t experienced with propane. She studied the tank in his he adligh ts . He had definitely dented the metal, and it worr ied her. He joined her a moment later, touching the tw isted white curve with his big hand.
    “ I think it's OK,” he said.
    “ Ar e you sure ? Should I wake my grandfather?”
    “It’s fine for now. If it was leaking, we'd know it. But it should be checked in the morning. If it needs t o be repaired, I'll pay for it.”
    “ It won't explode? ” When she had originally moved into the house she had felt as if she were sleeping next to an atomic bomb.
    “It’ d take a full collision to get a tank like this to explode .” Jim paused to study the length of the forty-foot prone cyl inder. “ But I'm surprised y our grandfather has such a big t ank. You usually find ones this size on a farm, where a huge ba rn has to be heated.”
    “ My grandfather explained to me that until ten years ago there use d to be five houses around here. They all used the same tank.”
    “What happened to them?”
    “I think they burned down, ” Angela said. “ You would have been eight then. Do you remember anything like that?”
    “Vaguely.”
    “ You have lived in Point all y our life, haven't you?”
    “ Yeah. ” He nodded to the tank. “ A big fire could have set this sucker off.”
    “ What would such an explosion do? ” she asked.
    “ If the tank had just been filled, it would blow away the house.” He snapped his fingers. “ Just like that. ”
    “I thi nk my g randfather just had it filled.”
    He laughed. “ Then I ’ II try not to run into it again. ”
    Angela had visions of huge explosions in her head. For no reason they excited her. “ If it blew, would it make a crater in the ground? ”
    “ What? ”
    “ You know, like a small meteor had hit here? ”
    “I don't think it would do that. Why do you ask? ”
    “J ust wondering, ” she said.
    Angela ran inside to use the bathroom before they went for their walk. Jim followed her in. Plastic was asleep on the living-room sofa. The dog didn't even stir. Na turally, her grandfather wasn't home. Jim made a joke about him and said he had quite a reputation around town. He al most sounded envious.
    A few minutes later they were walking hand in h and along the shore of the lake. Angela didn't know who had reached for whom, but together felt right. Her guilt a bout Mary stayed with her, but she tucked it aside. She co uld worry about it later. H er fingers almost disappeared inside Jim 's. They walked without saying much, and that was nice. A half moon hung low in the west, the silver rays glitte ring on the water, on the bare skin of their arms. The sound was the rhythmic swish of oil wells high up on the hil l s that overlooked the lake. Although partly hidde n by trees, Angela felt the wells were an unnecessary blight on the local beauty. She said as much to Jim .
    “ Those well s make a fortune,” he said. “ They've pum ped better than a thousand barrels a day for the past five years. And they don't make much noise. You can only hear them now because it's late and everything's q uiet. They're modern wells and work on air pressure ra ther than gasoline moto rs.”
    “You sound like you like them.”
    He grinned . “ My dad owns a twenty per cent interest in all twelve of them. That car I drive came from mone y from those wells.”
    She let go of his hand and shoved him