Free In the Path of Falling Objects by Andrew Smith Page A

Simon?”
    “Cool.”
    “That’s my man.” Mitch laughed. I heard the sound of him opening a second can.
    “What if we get pulled over by the police?” I asked.
    “We won’t,” Mitch said, “trust me. Do you trust me, Jonah?”
    I didn’t say anything. Of course I didn’t.
    Mitch waited, a silent minute that seemed so long on that highway, and then he said, “Do you trust me, Lilly?”
    “Sure.” She smiled at me, like she was trying to get me to come along. I wished I could figure her out. She had to know that Mitch was poison, but I got the feeling that she just drank it all in and teased him because she didn’t care the least bit about herself.
    I looked away from her.
    Mitch said, “Do you trust me, Don?”
    “Don says, ‘Groovy,’ ” Lilly answered.
    “Do you trust me, Simon?”
    Simon took a swig from the beer, and then another. And he said, “Yes.”
    “So there. See? You’re outvoted, Jonah. Four to one, baby. And, after all, this is a democracy. The people have spoken. The people trust Mitch.”
    And Mitch finished his beer and tossed the can out over the back of the Lincoln.
    “Hey, Jonah, turn on the radio, man,” Mitch said, opening another beer.
    I reached for the dashboard, but swerved the Lincoln onto the shoulder and then overcorrected. Mitch and Simon spilled their beers on their laps.
    “I’ll do it,” Lilly said.
    I sighed, tightening my grip on the wheel. I felt so lost and out of control. In front of her, I felt like such an idiot.
    “It’s okay,” Lilly said, and rubbed my leg. “It’s been a tough day. Let’s just forget about it and have a good time.”
    “Yeah,” Mitch said.
    Lilly fumbled at the radio’s knob until she found a station playing“Let It Bleed” and stopped it there as soon as Mitch started singing along.
    And I tried to stay calm and watch the road and think of a way to save myself and my brother; and maybe Lilly, too.
    Mitch ducked behind the seat to get down out of the wind. He began rolling a joint. When he popped back up, he held his arm over the front seat and waved the crooked, stubby cigarette in the air between Lilly and me, saying, “Look what I got.”
    And I felt my stomach twist and chest tighten. I heard Mitch flicking that lighter. It wasn’t because our dad had gotten himself so messed up by drugs, not exactly; and it wasn’t that I’d never been around someone who was smoking pot, but it was just something that Simon and I didn’t do.
    “Not me,” I said.
    “That’s okay, man, that’s okay,” Mitch said, leaning back. “Just keep driving. And turn up the radio.”
    “It’s up all the way,” Lilly said.
    “I love this car,” Mitch said.
    “Where’d you get it?” I asked, shifting and straining to see in the small mirror at the top of the windshield, and the smaller round one on the door, anything that might show me what Simon was doing back there.
    “Ask Lilly.”
    Lilly just turned away, pretending to look out at the passing blur of red and yellow desert.
    Even in the open car on that blisteringly hot afternoon, I could smell the ropey smoke from the joint when Mitch finally got it to burn, and dreaded him offering it to Simon. I bit my cheek as hard as I could to not say anything. I felt so terrible for what I had done to my brother, and I wanted so desperately to get him out of there that I felt sick.
    So when I heard Simon say, “No thanks, man. But I’ll have a cigarette,” and Mitch reply, “It’s cool, Simon,” I felt my shoulders loosen and I could breathe again.
    “I’ll have a hit,” Lilly said, reaching over to Mitch.
    “That’s my girl,” Mitch said. “Ahh . . . the world is perfect.”
    “I guess it is,” I said.
    Mitch lay his head back and stared straight up into the sky. “I’m floating.”
    I stared down the road. “Sometimes I dream about floating.”
    “Can’t do nothing about gravity,” Mitch said, and laughed as Lilly handed the joint back over the seat.
    The radio