Free Specter (9780307823403) by Joan Lowery Nixon Page A

around the driveway and pulls onto the road. Anger swells through me like the blue norther winds that strip the sky as they rush through winter. It’s not fair. Even my retreat has been taken from me. I think of my room, and all I can see now are the yellow walls, the stiff gauze curtains,the tidy green and yellow spreads, which have obliterated any part of me that clung to that room.
    “Well, well,” Dr. Paull says into the silence. “Dina, you must tell us what you did today. Did you have a good time?”
    I am trying to dredge up words through a deep pain, but Dr. Lynn quickly says, “I think we should let Julie tell Dina what we did.”
    Julie turns toward me. Whoever wiped off her face forgot a spot of frosting over the left corner of her mouth. It wiggles as she talks. “We went to a park,” she says. “There were swings and slides, but the slides were too hot. And when we got hungry, we bought hamburgers. Mine had pickles and onions on it. And we did a lot of riding around in the car, and I got tired of all that riding.”
    Dr. Lynn laughs. “We saw quite a bit of the hill country, and I like it.” She rattles on about Texas and what she’s learned about Texas history. Grateful to her, I lean back against the seat and close my eyes. Good-bye, Holley Jo. Good-bye, yellow room.
    “The day after tomorrow we go to Mrs. Cardenas’s house,” Julie tells me. She slips her hand into my left hand. “It’s a real house,” she adds. “I’ve never lived in a real house. Have you?”
    “No,” I answer.
    The car gives a sudden swerve and speeds up. “There’s that fool driver again!” Dr. Paull snaps.“I recognize the car. I thought we’d seen the last of him near Fredericksburg.”
    “Surely he wouldn’t be following us,” Dr. Lynn says.
    Julie’s eyes grow too large for her face, and I know what she’s thinking.
    I twist around and see a dark green sedan behind us. He’s tailgating, and he’s all over the road.
    “Maybe you should slow down and let him get past,” Dr. Lynn says.
    Dr. Paull is hunched forward, concentrating on the wheel. “This is a lonely stretch out here,” he says. “I’m not about to give him the chance to force us over.”
    “You think he wants to rob us?”
    “I don’t know what he has in mind.”
    It’s like watching a movie, but we’re suddenly the actors. I’ve seen this before, over and over on television. Two cars, careening down the road, the one behind surging forward, just missing any cars coming up the other side, falling back and trying again.
    Our car lurches so violently that Julie and I are thrown across the seat. The car wobbles, slows, and Dr. Paull mutters something under his breath.
    Julie starts to cry. “That was Sikes!”
    “Did you see him?” I manage to pull myself up and watch the green car speeding out of sight around the next curve.
    “I know it was Sikes!”
    Dr. Lynn turns around. “How do you know, Julie?”
    “Because I know.”
    “That idiot tried to force us off the road,” Dr. Paull says.
    “Did anyone get the license number?”
    “No.”
    “Did any of us get a good look at him?” Dr. Lynn asks.
    No one answers. We drive in silence.
    We’re close to the junction where the road meets the highway into San Antonio when Dr. Paull shouts, “Look!”
    Ahead is the dark green car, tilted drunkenly on the shoulder of the road. A highway patrol car has nosed in ahead of it.
    Dr. Paull pulls to the side of the road and turns off the ignition. “I’m going to talk to that officer,” he says. “I want to report what happened to us.”
    Julie flies forward and grabs him around the neck so tightly that he coughs and gurgles before he can break her hold.
    “Don’t go out there!” she says. “Sikes will hurt you!”
    He sidles out the door, keeping a firm grip on her hands. “If it is Sikes,” he says, “then we’ll see that the officer keeps him in custody.”
    “But—”
    “I’m not afraid of Sikes.”
    I put an arm