Free Finn by Matthew Olshan Page A

her—she was still very freaked. She thought that the explosion upstairs was the Devil come to destroy her. “And you, Chica, are my angel, sent from God as a sign that coming back here was the right thing.” I thanked her for that, because thinking someone is an angel is pretty nice, even if it is a load of baloney.
    I told her we had to get out of the house because it was still on fire. “Whatever you say, anything. Really,” Silvia said, brushing my shoulders. I was a mess, there’s no denying it, but she was treating me like a Hollywood celebrity or something, so I told her to please cut it out.
    Silvia objected to taking the Dodge. She never called it “stealing,” exactly, but that was clearly what she was thinking. I told her we had to take it. I asked her if she wanted me to be kidnapped again. It was a low blow, but we had wasted too much time already playing twenty questions. “Oh, no,” she said. “In that case, the car is necessary.”
    This was my escape, my plan, and I wasn’t about to let Silvia drive, but I banged my wrist against the steering wheel as I was climbing into the Dodge. The pain was so harsh I had to twist my legs out of the car and put my head down between them to keep from throwing up. I had never seen a bruise like the one that was coming in—it was all yellow-green and nasty. Now there was no question about my driving. Even I knew better than to try it one-handed.
    I wasn’t sure Silvia could fit behind the wheel, on account of her enormous belly, but together we managed to push the seat back. Just as we figured out how to tilt the steering wheel up and out of the way, we heard the first fire truck pulling up around front. Its idling engine made the hanging garden tools rattle against the wall of the garage.
    The Dodge started up fine, but instead of getting going, Silvia sat there with her head bowed. “Can we please just go?” I said. Silvia said she wasn’t going anywhere without saying a prayer first, and that I had to say it with her. She could be extremely stubborn. I helped her say her stupid prayer. At least I let her glom onto my good hand while she said something very fervent in Spanish. She looked up at me with her big gooey eyes when she finished and squeezed my hand until I said “Amen.” I was annoyed with her for holding me hostage to a prayer like that. People shouldn’t do that to one another. It’s bad manners.
    Then there was nothing holding us back. I got the garage door going. Silvia wasn’t quite used to the new distance to the pedals. When she released the emergency brake, the Dodge gunned forward. We shot out of the garage and down the driveway, narrowly missing a fireman who had made his way around the house. I waved to him as we lurched around the corner. I meant it as an apology. The fireman waved back with his yellow-handled ax. He didn’t seem too angry, but then, I might have been reading into it. He mouthed the words, “Take it easy,” like a teacher whose students are crazy for recess.

Chapter Twelve

    G o! Go! Go! was all I could think as we left the house behind. My stomach muscles were all tensed up from wanting to go faster. It didn’t feel much like freedom, at least not at first. I ducked down at the first sign of anything remotely resembling a van. After a while, though, Silvia’s constant chatter about Roberto, and the familiar insides of the Dodge—the creaky vinyl, the smell of cherry cough drops—all went to work on me and I began to relax. I stared out the window while Silvia drove. She took us up on the freeway. The road hummed reassuringly. The highway lights smiled down on us. Everything started to fall away: the explosion, my mother, the whole sleeping city, with its empty factories and broken down houses.
    I was feeling a strange mix of lightness and heaviness, as if I had just hauled myself up onto a sun-baked raft after a long night treading water. It was a while before I even asked Silvia where we were going. She