Free In the Path of Falling Objects by Andrew Smith

him.
    “Can I get a shirt out of my pack, please?” My voice was flat and stoic.
    “You can wear that one you left there in the dirt or you can go without,” Mitch said.
    So I picked up the rumpled and bloodied tee shirt and shook it out. Then, without saying anything else, I pulled it on over my head and began walking back toward the Lincoln. I saw the glinting reflection of Lilly’s sunglasses there as she watched me and Mitch, could tell that Simon was sitting in the backseat just on the other side of the metal man, and I felt sick when Mitch put an arm around my shoulders, so fatherly, saying, “Do you know how to drive, boy? I think it’s time you take the wheel for a while.”
    “He’s driving,” Mitch said. He opened the door on Lilly’s side and got into the backseat with Simon.
    I stood behind the open driver’s door, not looking back at Simon. I knew he didn’t want me to look at him, and I was afraid of what I might see.
    “I’m sorry, Simon. I’m really sorry. Are you okay?” I said, just talking, and not looking back.
    Simon didn’t say anything.
    “I think you broke his nose,” Lilly said, and then shifted in the seat to look back at Simon. “Did it stop bleeding?”
    While I sat out in the dirt, she had taken Simon to the drinking fountain to wash the blood from his face. There was blood everywhere, in Simon’s hair, down his back and chest, drying in black grainy beads, his bottom lip cut between his teeth and my hands, and his left eye was black. She had carefully taken Simon’s shirt from him and soaked it in the warm, tin-smelling fountain water and twisted it and bathed Simon with it, wiping it across his skin and wringing it out over and over until the blood was gone.
    I turned and looked at my brother.
    Simon pressed the wet shirt, now gone completely red, up against his face and let out a muffled “No.” Simon turned away so nobody would have to look at him, holding that smooth and shining meteorite tightly in his right hand, flipping it over, tumbling it in his grasp.
    “You want a shirt, Simon?” Mitch asked calmly.
    “No.”
    I sighed and sat down. I placed my hands on the steering wheel and just sat there, trying to figure everything out, feeling punished, feeling trapped. I had driven plenty of times in my life, but there was so much in my mind at that moment that I became afraid I’d forgotten anything I might ever have known.
    Five miles down the highway, Mitch scratched his fingers through his cropped dark hair and stretched his arms out into the wind overhis head and said, “Donny boy, I feel like getting high. What do you say?”
    “He says, ‘Groovy,’ ” Lilly beamed.
    Mitch patted Don Quixote on the shoulder and said, “He never says no to me.”
    I was scared. I sat stiff at the wheel, staring down the endless road carved straight from hill to hill, lined with jagged rocks and grasses, following pole after pole stretched with sagging black wire, and I cringed as I heard Mitch digging through his grocery sack and pulling out a six-pack of beer, then popping a ring on the first one, sending a foaming spray of warm yellow beer out like a sneeze against the leather back of the front seats.
    I looked at Simon in the rearview mirror.
    Simon’s nose had stopped bleeding, the bridge swollen smooth from his brow downward, his mouth hanging open to breathe. He sat, eyes pooled and fixed forward.
    Mitch twirled the metal ring around on his index finger.
    “Do you know what these are good for?” Mitch asked, holding the shining pop top in front of Simon.
    “No,” Simon said.
    “Nothing.” Mitch laughed and he tossed the ring over his shoulder, sending it flying back on the wind to tumble downward against the grainy surface of the highway.
    And I knew what Mitch was going to do.
    “Please don’t give him a beer,” I said.
    “You need to ease up,” Mitch said coldly, and I could hear him rustling in the bag again. “Do you want a beer,